Representatives of the pre-Socratic schools, in particular, the Milesians, are rightfully considered the pioneers of ancient Greek philosophy; their teachings went down in history and are best known as a constituent part of Ionian philosophical science. For the first time such a term was introduced by Diogenes Laertius, a historian of the late period of antiquity, and among the Ionians he was ranked the most bright representative directions - Thales, as well as all his students and followers.

The first philosophical school of Ancient Greece

The very philosophical school began to be called Milesian after the name of the city of the same name - Miletus. In ancient times, it was the largest Greek settlement on the western coast of Asia Minor. The Milesian school had a wide range of activities, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated. The accumulated knowledge gave a significant impetus to the development of most types of European sciences, including had a tremendous impact on the formation of mathematics, biology, physics, astronomy and other natural science disciplines. It was the Milesians who created and introduced the first special scientific terminology.

Earlier, abstract-symbolic concepts and ideas, for example, about cosmogony and theology, were superficially present in a distorted form in mythology and had the status of a transmitted tradition. Thanks to the activities of representatives of the Milesian school, many areas of physics and astronomy began to be studied and presented not cultural and mythological, but scientific and practical interest.

The fundamental principle of their philosophical worldview was the theory that nothing in the outside world can arise from nothing. Based on this, the Milesians believed that the world and most things and phenomena have a single divine principle, infinite in space and time, which is also the dominant source of the life of the cosmos and of its very existence.

Another feature of the Milesian school is the consideration of the whole world as a whole. Living and nonliving, as well as physical and mental, had an extremely insignificant separation for its representatives. All objects around people were considered animate, the only difference was that some were more inherent in it, and less in others.

The decline of the Milesian school came at the end of the 5th century BC, when Miletus lost its political significance and ceased to be an independent city. This happened thanks to the Achaemenid Persians, who put an end to the development of philosophical thought in these parts. Despite this, in other areas, the Milesians still had followers of their ideas, the most famous were Hippon and Diogenes of Apollonia. The Milesian school not only created a geocentric model, but also had a tremendous influence on the formation and development of the materialistic one, although the Milesians themselves are not usually considered materialists.

Features of the philosophy of ancient Greece

The philosophy of Ancient Greece had not only a significant impact on European thought, but also set the direction for the development of world philosophy. Despite the fact that a huge amount of time has passed since then, it still arouses deep interest among most philosophers and historians.

Ancient Greek philosophy is characterized primarily by a generalization of the initial theories of various scientific knowledge, observations of nature and many achievements in culture and science, which were achieved by colleagues from the East. Another characteristic feature cosmocentrism is, therefore, the concepts of microcosm and macrocosm appear. The macrocosm includes all nature and its phenomena, as well as the known elements, while the microcosm is a kind of reflection and repetition of this natural world, that is, man. Also, the ancient Greek philosophers have the concept of fate, to which all manifestations of human activity and its final result are subject.

During the heyday, there is an active development of mathematical and natural science disciplines, and this causes a unique and very interesting synthesis of scientific knowledge and theories with mythology.

The reason why ancient Greek philosophy received such a development and had so many individual characteristics is the absence of a caste of priests, unlike, for example, the eastern states. This led to a significant spread of freedom of thought, which favorably affected the formation of the scientific and rational movement. In the East, however, conservative beliefs kept everything under control. social phenomena, which was alien to Ancient Greece. For this reason, it can be considered that the democratic structure of ancient city-states had the most significant impact on all the features of ancient Greek philosophical thought.

Periods of philosophy of ancient Greece

For the convenience of studying ancient Greek philosophy, historians have introduced a generally accepted system of its periodization.

So, early Greek philosophy began to develop in the 6th-5th centuries BC. This is the so-called pre-Socratic period, during which Thales of Miletus appeared, recognized as the very first. He belonged to the Milesian school, one of the first that arose at that time, after which the Eleatic school appeared, whose representatives were busy with questions of being. Parallel to her, Pythagoras founded his own school, in which, for the most part, questions of measure, harmony and numbers were subject to study. There is also a large number of lone philosophers who did not adhere to any of the existing schools, among them were Anaxagoras, Democritus and Heraclitus. In addition to the listed philosophers, the first sophists appeared in the same period, such as Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias and others.

In the 5th century BC, one can observe a smooth transition of ancient Greek philosophy to the classical period. Largely thanks to the three giants of thought - Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, it became a real philosophical center of all Greece. For the first time, the concept of personality and the decisions it makes, which are based on conscience and the accepted system of values, are introduced, philosophical science begins to be considered as a political, ethical and logical system, and science is further advanced through research and theoretical methods of studying the world and its phenomena.

The last period is Hellenism, which historians sometimes divide into early and late stages. In general, this is the longest period in the history of ancient Greek philosophy, which began at the very end of the 4th century BC and ended only in the 6th century AD. Hellenistic philosophy also captured a part, at this time many philosophical directions received many opportunities for their development, this happened mostly under the influence of Indian thought. The main directions that arose at this time are:

1. Epicurean school , whose representatives developed the already existing provisions of ethics, recognized the eternity of the world around them, denied the existence of fate and preached the receipt of pleasures on which their entire teaching was based.
2. Direction skepticism , whose followers showed distrust of most of the generally accepted knowledge and theories, believing that they should be tested scientifically and cognitively for truth.
3. The Teachings of Zeno of Kitis , which received the name Stoicism, the most famous representatives of which were Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. They preached endurance and courage in the face of life's hardships, which laid the foundation for early Christian moral doctrines.
4. Neoplatonism , which is the most idealistic philosophical direction of antiquity. It is a synthesis of the teachings that were created by Aristotle and Plato, as well as oriental traditions... Neoplatonist thinkers studied the hierarchy and structure of the surrounding world, the beginning, and also created the first practical methods that contributed to achieving unity with God.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANCIENT GREECE

Ancient philosophy (first Greek and then Roman) covers the period from the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. 5-6 centuries. n. e. It originated in the ancient Greek city-states (city-states) of a democratic orientation and the direction of its content, by the method of philosophizing it differed both from the ancient oriental ways of philosophizing and from the mythological explanation of the world characteristic of the works of Homer and the works of Hesiod. Of course, early Greek philosophy is still closely connected with mythology, with sensory images and metaphorical language. However, she immediately rushed to consider the question of the relationship between the sensory images of the world and itself as endless space... For myth as a non-reflective form of consciousness, the image of the world and the actual 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 motionless permanent form... The search for a stable beginning in the changeable cycle of phenomena of the immense cosmos was main goal the first philosophers. The philosophy of Greece, thus, appears in its subject matter as the doctrine of "first principles and causes" (Aristotle).

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

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 Elea school, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, the ancient Greek atomists (Leucipe and Democritus).

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

Third stage (late 4th century - 2nd century BC) is usually designated as Hellenistic. At this time, a number of philosophical schools appeared: peripatetics, academic philosophy (Plato's 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, moralizing revelations in the era of decline and decline of Hellenic culture.

Fourth stage (1st century BC - 5-6 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 fell. Roman philosophy is influenced by 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). 3-4 centuries. n. e. in Roman philosophy, neo-Platonism arises and develops, the founder was Plotinus. Neoplatonism had a tremendous impact not only on early Christian philosophy, but also on the whole of 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, a certain well-known substance, considered abstract and idealized, was taken as a substance. According to Thales, the substance is water, according to Anaximenes it is air, according to Anaximander it is an indefinite substance "apeiron". "Apeyros" - in Greek means "limitless, limitless, endless". Apeiron Anaximander is material, "does not know old age", "is immortal and indestructible" and is in perpetual motion. The infinity of apeiron allows it "not to dry out, that is, to be the eternal genetic principle of the Cosmos, and also allows it to underlie the interconversions of the four elements. Anaximander argued that apeiron is the only reason for the birth and death of all things; rotary motion, apeiron "distinguishes opposites - wet and dry, cold and warm; their paired combinations form earth (dry and cold), water (wet and cold), air (wet and hot), fire (dry and hot). this picture of the world, which actually represents a cosmogony, completely lacks gods and divine forces, that is, Anaximander tried to explain the origin and structure of the world from its internal causes and from one material-material principle.Anaximander also speaks about the origin of man: the living itself was born on the border of the sea and sushi from silt under the influence of heavenly fire. The first living creatures lived in the sea. Then some threw off their scales and became “land.” But Anaximander's man descended from a sea animal; Having been born as an adult child, he could not survive alone, without his parents, - a man went on land.

Similar ideas were also expressed by philosophers who did not belong to the Miletus school. For instance, Heraclitus of Ephesus he called fire a 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, is a logos for the mind - 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 the objective law of the universe. Fire, according to Heraclitus, is reasonable and divine. The philosophy of Heraclitus is definitely dialectical: the world, "ruled" by the Logos, is one and changeable, nothing in the world repeats itself, everything is transient and one-time, and the main law of the universe is the 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.

Eleyskaya school (6-5 centuries BC, city of Elea). Its representatives: Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Xenophanes, Melis. It is among the Elats that the category of being first appears, for the first time the question of the relationship between being and thinking is raised. Parmenides with his most famous dictum "There is, but there is no nonexistence" actually laid the foundations of the paradigm of ontologism as a conscious, distinct model of philosophical thinking. What is being for Parmenides? The most important definition of being is its comprehensibility by reason: that which can only be cognized by reason6 is being, but being is inaccessible to the senses. Therefore, "one and the same is thought and that about which thought exists." - In this position of Parmenides, the identity of being and thinking is affirmed. Being is what is always, what is one and indivisible, what is motionless and consistent, "like the thought of it." Thinking is the ability to comprehend unity in consistent forms, the result of thinking is knowledge (episteme). Zeno's aporias - reasoning that lead to a dead end - “Arrow” (movement cannot start, because a moving object must first reach half the way before it reaches the end, but to reach half, it must reach half half ( "dichotomy" - literally "dividing in half"), and so on - ad infinitum; 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 turtle ”(The movement can never end: Achilles will never catch up with the turtle, because when he comes to the point, the turtle will move away from its" start "for 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). From the last aporia it follows that an attempt to think of movement leads to a contradiction, therefore, movement is only an appearance. The substance is motionless. That is why the Eleatics were called “immobiles”. 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, Croton city)- 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 accepted after some tests. Pythagoras I considered number to be a substance. "Everything is number." Number is an independent entity, a special reality. Numerical ratios underlie all the 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 - the beautiful and decent (which included science), in the second - the profitable and useful, in the third - the 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 took a bath, everyone dined together and made a "libation to the gods", after which there was a general reading. Before going to sleep, every Pythagorean gave himself an account of the past day. At the heart of the Pythagorean ethics lay the doctrine of "proper" as a victory over passions, as the subordination of the younger to the elders, as the cult of friendship and comradeship, as the veneration of Pythagoras. This way of life had ideological foundations - it stemmed from the idea of ​​the cosmos as an orderly and symmetrical whole: but it was believed that the beauty of the cosmos is revealed not to everyone, but only to those who lead a correct lifestyle. Only the following can be reliably said about the views of Pythagoras himself: first, “number owns things,” including moral ones: “Justice is a number multiplied by itself”; secondly, "the soul is harmony," and harmony is a numerical ratio; the soul, according to Pythagoras, is immortal and can migrate, that is, Pythagoras had the idea of ​​the dualism of soul and body; thirdly, having put the number as the basis of the cosmos, Pythagoras endowed this old number with a new meaning - Number corresponds to a single one, while a single one serves as the beginning of certainty, which is only knowable - thus, Number is a universe ordered by number.

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

Atomistic school. Antique 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 there are “balls” of the soul. The atom is indivisible, the most small particle substances. Atoms differ in order and position (rotation). The number of atoms and their variety is infinite. The eternal property of atoms is motion. Atoms float in emptiness, colliding, they change direction, connecting, form bodies. The properties of bodies depend on the type and connection 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 with the specific course of events. All the variety of events is reduced to a single process - the movement of atoms in emptiness.

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

The Sophists and Socrates.

Appearance in Ancient Greece in the middle of the 5th century. BC. sophists are a natural phenomenon, for 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, formed after the victory of the Athenians in the Greco-Persian wars, was great: in courts and popular In meetings, speaking, persuading and persuading was vital. And the sophists taught this - art, not 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 a major 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 tremendous 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 teachings.

Socrates investigated the problem of man, considering man as a moral being. Therefore, the philosophy of Socrates can be characterized as ethical anthropologism. Socrates once expressed the essence of his philosophical concerns as follows: "According to the Delphic inscription, I still cannot know myself," and in conjunction with the confidence that he is wiser than others only because he knows that he does not know anything, that his wisdom is nothing compared to the wisdom of the gods - this motto also entered the "program" of Socrates' philosophical searches.

As a critic of the sophists, Socrates believed that each person can have his own opinion, but this is also not identical with "the truths that everyone has their own"; the truth for all should be one, and the method of Socrates, which he himself called "maieutics" (literally "midwifery"), and which is a subjective dialectic - the ability to conduct a dialogue as a result of the movement of thought through contradictory statements, is aimed at achieving such a truth. the disputants are smoothed out, the one-sidedness of the points of view of each is overcome, and 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? Speaking eloquently about virtue and not defining it is not knowing what virtue is; therefore, the goal of maieutics, the goal of a comprehensive discussion of any subject, is the definition expressed in the concept. Thus, Socrates was the first to bring knowledge to the level of a concept before, thinkers did it spontaneously, that is, the Socrates method also pursued the achievement of conceptual knowledge - and this speaks of 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 cognized, which, according to Socrates, is the task of philosophy. To know oneself is to find the concepts of moral qualities that people have in common; the conviction of the existence of objective truth in Socrates, 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 knowing 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 cannot do bad: morality is a consequence of knowledge, in the same way immorality is a consequence of ignorance of the good. This is, in short, a characteristic of the "Socratic philosophical revolution," which changed the understanding and tasks of philosophy and its subject.

From antique, so called "Socratic schools", perhaps the most popular was the cynic school ("dog philosophy") - thanks to Diogenes of Sinop, who in his life gave an example of the Cynic sage, and whom Plato called "the mad Socrates." Diogenes so "tempered" his needs that he lived in an earthen barrel, did not use dishes, subjected his body to tests; he brought contempt for pleasure to its climax, finding pleasure in the very contempt for pleasure. The Cynics philosophized their way of life, which they considered the best, freeing a person from all the conventions of life, attachments, and even almost all needs.

Plato's ontology(427-437 BC). The philosophical school of Plato in Athens was called "Academy", tk. was located near the Akadema Temple. His concept: there are two worlds - the sensory world of things and the intelligible world of ideas - eidos - which is located in a 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 ​​good. The existence of things is secondary to eidos. A thing is formed by combining eidos with a certain amount of substance. The material principle Plato called "chorus" - matter. It is a passive dead substance with no internal organization. Thus, the theoretical discrepancy is determined materialism (Democritus) and idealism (Plato). Materialism regards 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 Elats, Plato characterizes being as eternal and unchanging, cognizable only by reason 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 sensibly perceived things for Plato is by no means "non-being", but becoming - everything that is temporal, moving, mortal, always different, divisible; to these characteristics, given by Plato as opposed to the characteristics of being, one must add; corporeal, material - as opposed to the ideal world of eidos.

The soul, according to Plato, is similar to an idea - one and indivisible, but in it you can isolate parts:

a) reasonable;

b) affective (emotional);

c) lustful (sensual).

If a reasonable part of the soul prevails in a person's soul, then a person strives for the highest good, for justice and truth; such 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; such are guardians, and there are many more of them than philosophers. If the "lower", lustful part of the soul prevails, then the person should practice physical labor- be artisan or peasant, and such people are in the majority. Based on this logic of reasoning, Plato built a project of an ideal state like a pyramid: philosophers rule in it (and they must study until the age of 30), guards maintain order, and working people work ... Plato spoke about common property, about how that the upbringing of children should be dealt with by the state, and not by the family, that the individual should 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 is "memories of the soul about conversations with God."

Teaching 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 to associate human evil, social conflicts with private property. And therefore, striving for an ideal state, Plato taught about the need for government measures to curb the expansion of property and the growth of private property. In solving this problem, Plato assumed two ways: 1. Raising children apart from the family, because at the same time, they develop the same consciousness. He also envisioned destroying the family as a form of long-term living for people. 2. Limitation of luxury and expansion

personal economy.

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

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

knowledge and discrimination between true and false knowledge.

Aristotle divided sciences into theoretical, practical and creative.

Theoretical sciences - philosophy, mathematics, physics. It is they and, first of all, philosophy that reveal the unchanging principles of existence.

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

Aristotle divided first and second entities. The first essences are what lies at the basis of all things, this is an individual, singular, indivisible being. The second essence is expressed not by individual being, but by genera and species.

Aristotle believed that changes can be found in 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. Changes can speed up and slow down, and time evenly. Time is not associated with a person, it is a characteristic of movement. But time is not movement itself, although it cannot exist without it. In time there is always a previous and a subsequent one, and we recognize time when we distinguish between movement, defining the previous and the next. And this can be done because movement encompasses a number, and the now category is an important factor. Time is the number of displacement, and "now", like displacement, is, as it were, a unit of number.

Aristotle's materialism is manifested in the fact that for him does not exist

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

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

there are sources, like action, of one body on 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 "stationary engine" - God. For a person, the source of his movement is his needs and interests, as the need for an external object.

Principal place philosophy of Aristotle lies in the doctrine of matter and form. “I call matter that from which any thing arises, that is. matter is the material of a thing. " Matter is indestructible and does not disappear, but it is only material. Until it takes a certain form, it is in a state of nonexistence; 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 opposite is also possible

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

The soul cannot be without a body, but it is not a body. The soul is something inherent in the body. Aristotle believed that it is in the heart. Exists three types of soul: vegetal, sensual and intelligent. The first is the cause of growth and nourishment, the second senses, and the third cognizes and thinks. Animals and humans have perception, but humans perceive things, bodies, movement, etc. through concepts and categories, this is the essence of an intelligent soul.

Teaching about the state of Aristotle: the state is the final form of organizing 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. The best form of government, he called the monarchy and aristocracy and was an opponent of democracy, tk. it easily grew into "okhpocracy" (okpo - the crowd). Aristotle divided the state into three estates: aristocracy, warriors and small farmers, artisans. Horsemen will be able to rule the state best of all, because they are not burdened with worries about wealth.

Aristotle's doctrine developed as a result of his criticism of Plato's doctrine of ideas. Aristotle proves the inconsistency of Plato's "idea" hypothesis, proceeding from the following:

1. "Ideas" of Plato are simple copies (doubles) 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 characteristics that belong to an individual.

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 an essence, since it, in turn, participates in a more general "idea" standing above it, which will be its essence.

5. The Platonic doctrine of the sensory perception of the world of the "world of ideas" independent of things leads to an "absurd conclusion": since there is a similarity between ideas and sensibly perceived things, and since, according to Plato, for everything that is similar there must also exist an "idea" (" similarity "), then besides the idea, for example, of a" person "and besides the things (people) corresponding to it, there must also exist an idea of ​​the similarity that exists between them. Further - for this new idea and the first "idea" underneath it and its things, there must be one more idea - and so on - ad infinitum.

6. Having isolated the "idea" in the world of eternal essences, different from the changeable 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 ​​Good. However, this contradicts the existence of such concepts that cannot be raised to a single higher concept ...

According to Aristotle, each single thought is a unity of matter and form, but the form, in contrast to Plato's "idea", despite its immateriality, is not some otherworldly essence that comes from outside into matter. "Form" is the reality of what is possible " matter ", and, conversely," matter "is the possibility of that, the reality of which will be" form ". - So Aristotle tried to bridge the gap between the world of things and the world of eidos: according to Aristotle, within the perceptual 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 small special essay "Categories" and in the famous "Metaphysics". Here Aristotle tried to answer the question of what the initial approach to the problem of essence should be, introducing science into science: the most complete knowledge of 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 of "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 the essence, - explains Aristotle, - then we answer the question "what is a thing", and not the question "what is this thing" (quality), "how great is it" (quantity), etc. Aristotle has 2 criteria of essence "

1) thinkability (cognizability in the concept)

2) "the ability for a 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, is not expressed by a concept, it cannot be defined. Therefore, Aristotle has to look for a compromise between two criteria, and such a compromise consists in the fact that Aristotle takes for the essence not a single thing, not a kind of thing, and not a quantity, etc., but something that has already been determined and is so close to a single one, that almost merges with him. then it will be the sought-after "essence", called in "Metaphysics" "the essence of things", or "the essence of the existence of things." The "essence of being" is the form of a thing, or its "first essence". Therefore, any single thing is the unity of matter and form.

In addition to the "material" cause of a thing and its "formal" cause, Aristotle spoke about two more principles (masks) of everything that exists. This is the target reason: “Conditioning through purpose occurs not only among 'thought-driven actions', but also among 'things that arise naturally' (# 5).

Aristotle has in mind the implementation of a certain purposeful process and calls it "entelechy", striving for one's own good as the implementation of a specific potential (possibility). This is the target reason: "Conditioning through the goal occurs not only among" actions determined by thought ", but also among "things that arise 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 cause in Aristotle turns out to be God. But the god of Aristotle is an exclusively philosophical god, this is divine thinking, an activity mind, self-sufficient, self-contained thinking, this is a kind of spiritual Absolute - "mind that thinks about itself, and his thought is thinking about thinking."

Aristotle paid much attention to the problems of thinking in general, leaving 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 , able to become the source of his explanation. Three problems are given 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 two main methods of ascertaining reliable knowledge, which are the essence and definition and proof.

3) The question of the method of finding the premises of knowledge, that is, induction ("guidance") 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 presupposes its own, special method - not the method of science in the exact sense, but approaching scientific method... it is the method that Aristotle called "dialectics", thus deviating from the traditions of Socrates and Plato. In "dialectics", first, inferences develop that could lead to a probable answer to the question posed and that would be free of contradictions; second, it provides ways to investigate whether the answer to a question may be false.

Aristotle taught that what a person strives for is good. And good is a goal that people want not for themselves, but for the sake of the goal itself, and, therefore, the highest good is bliss. Bliss is good life and right action. It cannot consist in material welfare, 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, choose the appropriate deed, determine the location of good. For this, Aristotle spoke about the general principle of human activity, which he defined as the middle. There are many ways to make mistakes, 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, exchange of household goods. Therefore, justice is an equal attitude towards material goods. Aristotle considered two forms of justice: distributing and equalizing. The first criterion is the dignity of the persons among whom the distribution takes place. Aristotle assumes that people are not equal in nature, and distributing justice takes into account the social status of the individual. In the second, the transfer of objects from one hand to another is determined not by dignity, but by economic foundations. Arithmetic proportionality is at work here: society is maintained by the fact that everyone is rewarded depending on his activities.

Aristotle thus first spoke of value as

economic property of 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 agreement, and it is money. Fortunately, virtue is not bodily properties, but the revelation of the human. For Aristotle, leisure is necessary condition for 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 stage (late 4th century - 2nd century BC) is usually designated as Hellenistic.

For philosophers and schools of thought of the Hellenistic period ancient history it is not so much the advancement of new ideas that is characteristic, but the comprehension, clarification, commenting on ideas and teachings created by the thinkers of the previous period.

Interest in theoretical clarification of the picture of the world, the physics of cosmology, 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, comprehending the Micro- and Macrocosm, is now becoming a "craftsman of life", the earner of not so much knowledge as happiness. In philosophy, he sees the activity and structure of thought that frees a person from insecurity, deceit, from fear and anxiety, with which life is so full and ruined. Interest is revived and attitudes towards cinema change, in which the inner torn society "makes up" for social lack of freedom with asocial freedom. There are also original, not "commentatorial" philosophical and ethical concepts, generated by the cultural state of the Hellenic era - first of all, these are skepticism, stoicism and the ethical doctrine of the materialist-atomist Epicurus.

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

1) what are things made of?

2) how should we feel about these things?

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

1. no answer can be received: nothing should be called beautiful, ugly, just or unjust;

2. Since no true statements are possible about any objects, Pyrrho calls abstinence ("erohe") from any judgments about them as the only way of relating to things befitting a philosopher. But such abstinence from judgment is not perfect agnosticism: certainly, according to Pyrrho, our sensory perceptions or impressions are reliable, and judgments like “It seems to me bitter or sweet” will be true;

3. the result, or benefit, of the mandatory for a skeptic to abstain from any judgments about the true nature of things will be that equanimity, serenity, in which skepticism sees the highest goal accessible 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 ones.

Epicurus, who created a materialistic doctrine named after his name ( epicureanism), also understood philosophy as an activity that gives people, through reflection and research, a serene life, free from suffering: "Let no one in his youth postpone philosophy, and in old age do not get tired of doing philosophy ... Who says what has not yet come or has passed time for philosophy, he is like the one who says that there is no time for happiness or there is no time. " The main section of philosophy is ethics, which is preceded by physics (according to Epicurus, it discovers its natural principles and connections in the world, freeing the soul from faith in divine forces, in fate or fate 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 of its cognition). Ultimately, Epicurus, as a criterion of knowledge, sensory perceptions and general representations based on them and general representations based on them - in epistemology, this orientation was called sensationalism (from the Latin "sensus" of feelings). The physical picture of the world, according to Epicurus, is as follows: the universe consists of bodies and space, "that is, emptiness." Bodies, on the other hand, are either connections of bodies, or that from which their connections are formed, and these are indivisible, uncut "dense bodies - atoms, - which differ not only in shape and size, but also in weight, as in Democritus. a void with a constant speed for all and - unlike the views of Democritus - 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 at least a minimum of freedom, which it is necessary to assume in the elements of the microcosm - in atoms, in order to explain the possibility of freedom in man.

Ethics Epicurus proceeds from the position that for a person the first and innate good is pleasure, understood as the absence of suffering, and not the predominant state of pleasure. It is through liberation from suffering that, according to Epicureanism, the goal of a happy life is achieved - health of the body and the absence of anxiety, 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. On the whole, Epicurus' ethics is individualistic and utilitarian: even friendship is no longer valued for its own sake, but for 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, alive and dismembered, permeated through and through with bodily breathing 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 ("fate", "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 by compulsion - the necessity, inevitable in all cases and intended for all, is fulfilled and fulfilled. Fate "leads" the one who resists it foolishly and recklessly. The sage seeks to lead a life in accordance with nature, and for this he is guided by reason. The mood in which he lives is humility, obedience to the inevitable. Reasonable and consistent with nature life 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 science to die" is associated. But, despite such obvious pessimism, the Stoic ethics is focused on the altruistic principle of duty and fearlessness in the face of the blows of fate, while the ideal of Epicureanism is selfish, despite its refinement and "enlightenment".

Features of ancient Greek philosophy:

1. Cosmocentrism- understanding the world as a cosmos, an ordered and purposeful whole (as opposed to chaos). Man was viewed as a Microcosm in relation to the Macrocosm, as a part and a kind of repetition, a reflection of the Macrocosm. Orientation towards identifying harmony in human existence - after all, if the world is harmoniously ordered, if the world is the Cosmos, and man is its reflection and the laws of human life are similar to the laws of the Macrocosm, it means that such harmony is (hidden) in man.

2.Ontologism(moreover, explicit, expressed in the fact that the first sages-physicists were looking for "the causes and beginnings of being") - an orientation towards the study of being, i.e. of all that exists in unity, in a spontaneously materialistic and naively dialectical embodiment: "arche" was thought of as something material, and as soon as the whole Cosmos was "deduced" (precisely in the ontological, and not in the logical plane) from the material principle, then it was thought by some connected by means of this principle - a unity that is in change, movement. And the principle of communication and development (movement) is the main characteristics (signs) 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 in about 8-6 centuries. BC e. prephilosophy develops, i.e. a complex of ideas, not yet philosophical, of which in the 5-3 centuries. BC e. philosophy arises. Pre-philosophy includes:

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

the complex is formed by the Vedas, Upanishads. Vedas - the oldest religious

texts. The Upanishads are commentaries on them. They address issues

about the birth of the world, about the foundation of the world and the threads that bind it, about its

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

Greece, religious and mythological ideas were systematized

in the epic of Homer, in the poem of Hesiod "Theogony" and in the teachings of the Orphic.

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

3. Worldly wisdom. Its carriers 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 seven sages. Their activity dates back to the late 7th - early 6th centuries. BC. In different texts, different personalities are mentioned, but, of course, these are Thales, Bias, Pittak, Solon of Athens. General form their reasoning is a gnome. Gnome is a short general statement. Most gnomes are moral. Biant: "Don't talk, you miss, you will lose", "Take with conviction, not force." Pittak: "Rely on friends", "Know when to stop." 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 presented as an attempt to respond in a rational way to those posed in mythology, religion, everyday life.

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 principle. In India, the beginning of everything is the brahmana - the supreme essence that lies at the basis of the universe. In Chinese philosophy, the concept of Tao is what the world is created by and to which it obeys.

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

Greek philosophy created to express the principle of universal unity

the first is an entirely rational concept. Substance (arche - beginning) -

a stable origin, which lies at the basis of everything that exists, thereby sets its unity and ensures orderliness.

The philosophy of Ancient Greece is the greatest flowering of human genius. The ancient Greeks had the priority of creating philosophy as a science about the universal laws of the development of nature, society and thinking; as a system of ideas exploring the cognitive, value, ethical and aesthetic attitude of man to the world. Philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle and Plato are the founders of philosophy as such. Originating in ancient Greece, philosophy formed a method that could be used in almost all walks of life.

Greek philosophy cannot be understood without aesthetics - the theory of beauty and harmony. Ancient Greek aesthetics were part of undifferentiated knowledge. The rudiments of many sciences have not yet branched off into independent branches from the single tree of human knowledge. Unlike the ancient Egyptians, who developed science in a practical aspect, the ancient Greeks preferred theory. Philosophy and philosophical approaches to solving any scientific problem lie at the basis of ancient Greek science. Therefore, it is impossible to single out scientists who dealt with "pure" scientific problems. In ancient Greece, all scientists were philosophers, thinkers and possessed knowledge of the main philosophical categories.

The idea of ​​the beauty of the world runs through the whole of ancient aesthetics. In the worldview of the ancient Greek natural philosophers, there is not a shadow of doubt about the objective existence of the world and the reality of its beauty. For the first natural philosophers, beauty is the universal harmony and beauty of the Universe. In their teaching, the aesthetic and cosmological appear in unity. The universe for the ancient Greek natural philosophers is space (the universe, peace, harmony, decoration, beauty, outfit, order). The general picture of the world includes the idea of ​​its harmony and beauty. Therefore, at first all sciences in Ancient Greece were united into one - cosmology.

Socrates

Socrates is one of the founders of dialectics as a method of seeking and cognizing truth. The main principle is “Know yourself and you will know the whole world”, that is, the conviction that self-knowledge is the way to comprehend the true good. In ethics, virtue is equal to knowledge, therefore, reason pushes a person to good deeds. A man who knows will not do wrong. Socrates expounded his teaching orally, passing on knowledge in the form of dialogues to his students, from whose writings we learned about Socrates.

Having created a "Socratic" method of dispute, Socrates argued that truth is born only in a dispute, in which the sage, using a series of leading questions, forces his opponents to admit first the incorrectness of his own positions, and then the fairness of the views of their opponent. The sage, according to Socrates, comes to truth through self-knowledge, and then knowledge of the objectively existing spirit, objectively existing truth. The most important in the general political views of Socrates was the idea of ​​professional knowledge, from which it was concluded that a person who is not professionally engaged in political activity has no right to judge it. This was a challenge to the basic principles of Athenian democracy.

Plato

Plato's doctrine is the first classical form of objective idealism. Ideas (among them the highest is the idea of ​​good) are eternal and unchanging prototypes of things, of all transitory and changeable being. Things are the likeness and reflection of ideas. These provisions are stated in the works of Plato "Feast", "Phaedrus", "State" and others. In Plato's dialogues, we find a multifaceted description of the beautiful. When answering the question: "What is beautiful?" he tried to characterize the very essence of beauty. Ultimately, beauty for Plato is an aesthetically unique idea. A person can get to know her only when he is in a state of special inspiration. Plato's concept of beauty is idealistic. Rational in his teaching is the idea of ​​the specificity of aesthetic experience.

Aristotle

A student of Plato, Aristotle, was the tutor of Alexander the Great. He is the founder of scientific philosophy, trays, the doctrine of the basic principles of being (possibility and implementation, form and matter, reason and purpose). The main areas of his interests are man, ethics, politics, art. Aristotle is the author of the books Metaphysics, Physics, On the Soul, and Poetics. Unlike Plato, for Aristotle, what is beautiful is not an objective idea, but an objective quality of things. Size, proportions, order, symmetry are the properties of beauty.

Beauty, according to Aristotle, lies in the mathematical proportions of things, “therefore, in order to comprehend it, one should do mathematics. Aristotle put forward the principle of proportionality between a person and a beautiful object. Beauty in Aristotle acts as a measure, and the measure of everything is the person himself. In comparison, a beautiful object should not be "excessive." These arguments of Aristotle about the truly beautiful contain the same humanistic principle that is expressed in ancient art itself. Philosophy responded to the needs of the human orientation of a person who broke with traditional values ​​and turned to reason as a way to clarify problems.

Pythagoras

In mathematics, the figure of Pythagoras stands out, who created the multiplication table and a theorem that bears his name, who studied the properties of integers and proportions. The Pythagoreans developed the doctrine of the "harmony of the spheres". For them, the world is a harmonious space. They associate the concept of the beautiful not only with the general picture of the world, but also, in accordance with the moral and religious orientation of their philosophy, with the concept of the good. Developing questions of musical acoustics, the Pythagoreans posed the problem of the ratio of tones and tried to give its mathematical expression: the ratio of the octave to the fundamental is 1: 2, the fifth - 2: 3, the fourth - 3: 4, etc. Hence the conclusion that beauty is harmonious.

Where the main opposites are in a "proportionate mixture", there is good, human health. Equal and consistent does not need harmony. Harmony appears where there is inequality, unity and complementarity of the diverse. Musical harmony is a special case of world harmony, its sound expression. “The whole sky is harmony and number,” the planets are surrounded by air and attached to transparent spheres. The intervals between the spheres are strictly harmoniously correlated between the Self as the intervals of the tones of the musical octave. From these ideas of the Pythagoreans, the expression "Music of the Spheres" came from. The planets move by making sounds, and the pitch of the sound depends on the speed of their movement. However, our ear is not able to catch the world harmony of the spheres. These views of the Pythagoreans are important as evidence of their belief that the universe is harmonious.

Democritus

Democritus, who discovered the existence of atoms, also paid attention to the search for an answer to the question: "What is beauty?" He combined the aesthetics of beauty with his ethical views and the principle of utilitarianism. He believed that a person should strive for bliss and complacency. In his opinion, "one should not strive for every pleasure, but only for that which is associated with the beautiful." In defining beauty, Democritus emphasizes such a property as measure, proportionality. To the one who transcends them, "the most pleasant can become unpleasant."

Heraclitus

Heraclitus' understanding of beauty is permeated with dialectics. For him, harmony is not a static balance, as for the Pythagoreans, but a moving, dynamic state. Contradiction is the creator of harmony and the condition for the existence of the beautiful: the divergent converges, and the most beautiful harmony comes from the opposite, and everything happens due to discord. In this unity of fighting opposites, Heraclitus sees an example of harmony and the essence of beauty. For the first time, Heraclitus raised the question of the nature of the perception of the beautiful: it is incomprehensible through calculation or abstract thinking, it is cognized intuitively, through contemplation.

Hippocrates

The works of Hippocrates in the field of medicine and ethics are known. He is the founder of scientific medicine, the author of the doctrine of the integrity of the human body, the theory of an individual approach to the patient, the tradition of keeping a medical history, works on medical ethics, in which he paid special attention to the high moral character of the doctor, the author of the famous professional oath that everyone who receives medical diploma. His immortal rule for doctors has survived to this day: do no harm to the patient.

With the medicine of Hippocrates, the transition from religious and mystical ideas about all processes associated with human health and diseases to the rational explanation begun by the Ionian natural philosophers was completed. The medicine of the priests was replaced by the medicine of doctors based on accurate observations. The doctors of the Hippocratic school were also philosophers.

Ancient philosophy Ancient Greece.

The primary source of Greek philosophy was mythology. In this case, the dominant role was played by cosmological myths telling about the origin of the world and man. The works of Hesiod, Homer, Orpheus became a kind of basis for the scientific and philosophical understanding of the problems of the surrounding world.

On the first stage(pre-Socratics) (VI-V centuries BC) early Greek philosophers were undoubtedly influenced by mythological images. However, they have already tried to explain the phenomena of nature and society on the basis of natural causes that a person is able to cognize with the help of reason, by carefully studying them through observation. At the center of ancient research lies the cosmos - the ideal creature. He is nothing more than a huge body of a living human being. The origin and structure of the world, properties of nature - this is the main object of interest to the early ancient Greek philosophers. Therefore, they were called "physicists", i.e. researchers of nature. Today, early ancient Greek philosophy is called the philosophy of "physis" or natural philosophy. Natural philosophy- a science that studies the philosophy of nature, "the wisdom of nature."

Second phase(classical) (V-IV centuries BC) is associated with the names of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

On the third stage(Hellenism) (IV-III centuries BC) there were 3 main currents of Hellenistic philosophy: skepticism, epicureanism and stoicism.

The first ancient philosophical schools emerged at the turn of the 7th-6th centuries. BC. The center of philosophy at that time was Miletus. Therefore, the term is often used "Milesian school"... The founder of the Milesian school is considered Thales of Miletus(the end of the 7th - the beginning of the 6th centuries BC). He was a philosopher, geometer, mathematician, astronomer. Thales is credited with determining the length of the year at 365 days and dividing the year into 12 months of thirty days each. Thales was the richest philosopher in ancient Greece. In addition, he discovered some mathematical and geometric laws (Thales' theorem). And it is not for nothing that Thales of Miletus became one of the semi-legendary ancient Greek "seven wise men". Thales's significance for philosophical thought primarily consisted in the fact that he was the first to pose a question in which he expressed the main task of philosophical knowledge: "What is everything?" Answering his posed question, Thales was guided by the cosmological concept. There are three main components of this concept:

1) The beginning of everything is water.

2) The earth floats on water, like a piece of wood.

3) Everything in the world is animated.

For Thales, water is a primordial substance that has material characteristics, the properties of a natural material object.

At the same time, Thales also recognizes the presence of gods. But he believes that the gods exist in nature itself.

Another Milesian philosopher was Anaximander(VI century BC). Finding out the signs of the beginning, he considered them apeiron. "Apeyros" means immortal, limitless and endless. It is abstract, i.e. mental picture of the origin of the world. Apeiron, being the origin of the world, produces from itself all other natural phenomena. Due to the rotation of the apeiron, the opposite qualities are distinguished - wet and dry, cold and warm. Then these qualities mix with each other and natural objects arise: Earth (dry and cold), water (wet and cold), air (wet and warm), fire (dry and warm). Apeiron is not only the substantial, but also the genetic origin of the cosmos. The universe looks like 3 hollow rings filled with fire. Each ring has holes through which fire is visible. In the 1st ring, many holes are stars; in the 2nd - 1 hole - the Moon; in the 3rd - also 1 hole - the Sun. At the center of the Universe is the motionlessly hanging Earth, which has the shape of a cylinder. Anaximander invented the elementary " sundial"-" gnomon ", built a globe, drew a geographic map. All living things originated in the moist silt that once covered the earth. With its gradual drying, all living things came out onto land. Among them were some fish-like creatures, in the womb of which people were born. When people grew up, these scales disintegrated. Anaximander's dialectic was expressed in the doctrine of the eternity of the movement of the apeiron, of the separation of opposites from it. Anaximander's disciple was Anaximen(VI century BC). Continuing the search for the beginning, in his work "On Nature" he argued that all things come from the air by thinning or thickening. Discharging, the air becomes first fire, then ether, and thickening - wind, clouds, water, earth and stone. Understanding the Universe. The earth is flat and hangs motionless in the center of the universe, supported from below by air. The firmament moves around the Earth, like a cap that turns around the head of a person.

Thus, the following general features are characteristic of the thinkers of the Milesian school:

1) searches for the beginning;

2) it is thought of monistically;

3) it is presented as a primary substance;

4) it is presented as living (hylozoism), i.e. in perpetual motion and transformation.

Close to the Milesians in their search for the beginning was Heraclitus Ephesian (late VI - early V centuries BC). He belonged to a noble royal priestly family, but he renounced his rights and privileges in favor of his brother, and he himself led a hermitic lifestyle, spending his last years in a cave in the mountains. Heraclitus defined fire as the fundamental principle of the world as a symbol of perpetual motion. Fire, according to Heraclitus, is eternal, but not absolute. He is constantly changing. The extinction of fire leads to the emergence of the universe. The ignition of a fire leads to the destruction of the universe. The most important concept in the philosophy of Heraclitus is Logos. Logos is a kind of abstract universal law that governs the world and people, reigns in the Universe. The essence of the Logos itself is revealed in the principles:

1) the principle of struggle and unity of opposites;

2) the principle of constant change (only development itself is constant): Everything flows, everything changes; You cannot enter the same river twice; Even the sun is new every day;

3) the principle of relativity (some live at the expense of the death of others, at the expense of the life of others they die).

In the Logos, Heraclitus metaphorically formulated the idea of ​​the dialectical nature of the whole world. For such complexity and contradictory philosophy, Heraclitus was called "dark." He was also called the "weeping philosopher" because every time he left the house and saw many people living badly around him, he cried, feeling sorry for everyone.

Eleyskaya school. Xenophanes. Lived at least 92 years. He expounded his work exclusively in poetic form. For the first time in the history of philosophy, he expressed the idea that all gods are the fruit of human fantasy, that people invented gods in their own image, attributing to them their physical traits and moral defects: “Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; the Frakians / represent their gods / blue-eyed and reddish ... But if bulls, horses and lions had hands and could draw with them and create works / art / like people, then horses would depict gods like horses, bulls - like bulls and would give / them / bodies of the same kind, which is their bodily image, / each in its own way / ". Xenophanes opposed to the gods of antiquity one god who is one with nature: “Everything, that is the whole universe is one. One is God. Deity is spherical and not like a person. The Divine sees and hears everything, but does not breathe; it is mind, thinking and eternity. People were not created by gods, but were born from earth and water. " This worldview of Xenophanes can be attributed to pantheism ( pantheism- a philosophical doctrine that identifies God with nature and considers nature as the embodiment of deity), since for him "everything or the universe is God." The anti-anthropomorphism and anti-polytheism of Xenophanes were associated with this. Xenophanes was a skeptic because he argued that one cannot know for certain!

Parmenides... His philosophical teaching is set forth in hexameters. Parmenides was the first to pose two major philosophical problems: the question of the relationship between being and non-being and the question of the relationship between being and thinking. The whole philosophy of Parmenides is based on the dilemma: IS - NOT IS. IS - this is what cannot but be, this is being. Being is what is. NOT IS - this, on the contrary, is something that cannot be, i.e. nothingness. Non-being is something that does not exist. The main proof of non-being is that it cannot be known, it is impossible to express it in a word. Moreover, the thought of non-being presupposes the existence of this non-being, otherwise there would be nothing to think about. It means that nothingness exists. But if non-being exists, then in that case it is being. Consequently, the very idea of ​​the existence of non-being proves just the opposite - that non-being does not exist. There is only that which is conceivable and expressible in words, i.e. being. And then it turns out that "thinking is the same as being." In this phrase, the identity of thinking and being is formulated. Moreover, the most important existence of being lies in the fact that it can be comprehended.

Parmenides highlights the main signs or properties of being:

1) being did not arise;

2) being is not subject to destruction;

3) being is whole, i.e. does not consist of many parts;

4) being is unique, i.e. only;

5) being is motionless;

6) being is finished or perfect.

All these properties of being necessarily follow from the non-existence of non-being. The teaching of Parmenides contradicts and contradicts the teaching of Heraclitus, for whom everything is changeable: To think in contradictions you need to have two heads, otherwise contradictory thoughts cannot be understood. What happened after Parmenides? Obviously, it was necessary to further prove the unity and immobility of being. This was done Zeno from Elea (favorite disciple of Parmenides). Aristotle calls Zeno the inventor of dialectics. But this is subjective dialectics - the art of dialectical reasoning and dispute, the art of "refuting / the enemy / and, through objections, put him in a difficult position." Zeno owns 4 judgments about the absence of movement, called aporias ( aporia–The logical insolubility of the problem): 1. Flying arrow. 2. Achilles and the tortoise. 3. Dichotomy. 4. Stadium. In these aporias Zeno proves that there is no movement.

Pythagorean Union.Pythagoras born ca. 570 BC The Pythagoreans studied mathematics, geometry, astronomy, music, medicine and anatomy, and held many southern Italian cities under political control. The core of Pythagorean philosophy was the "doctrine of number." The philosophy of the Pythagoreans was often called "the magic of numbers." Number and harmony rule the world, for the world itself is ruled by some laws that can be calculated using numbers. Numbers, he taught, contain the mystery of things, and universal harmony is the perfect expression of God. Number in Pythagoras is not an abstract quantity, but an essential and active quality of the supreme Unit, i.e. God, the source of world harmony. Pythagoras was also the author of the philosophy of transmigration (transmigration), which was expressed sparingly.

Empedocles- philosopher, poet, orator, natural scientist, orator, religious preacher . (480-420s BC). He was a student of Parmenides, he also studied with the Pythagoreans.

He considered four elements to be the origin of the world, which he called "the roots of all things." Fire, air, water and earth are eternal and unchanging, they have the qualities of being Parmenides. All other things come from mixing. However, the primary elements of Empedocles are passive, therefore, all processes of the universe are determined by the struggle of two forces that do not have material embodiment - Love (Harmony, Joy, Aphrodite) and Hatred (Strife, Enmity). Love connects dissimilar elements, Hatred separates them. All this goes through an endlessly repeating four-phase cycle: 1) love wins; 2) balance; 3) hatred prevails over love; 4) balance. Thus, the world is characterized by an unchanging and constantly repeating "circle of time". Empedocles recognizes the ideas of metempsychosis (transmigration of souls). Empedocles became the last outstanding representative of Italian philosophy, who tried to reconcile the natural philosophical and already proper philosophical teachings of their predecessors.

The last who tried to answer the question about the birth and structure of the universe from the standpoint of the philosophy of "physis" were Leucippus and Democritus from Abder. The birth of materialism is associated with their names.

The atomism of ancient philosophy is represented mainly by Democritus(c. 460 - c. 370 BC), who was a student of Leucippus. Democritus received the nickname "the laughing philosopher", because he considered all human affairs worthy of laughter. Atomists, starting from the ideas of the Eleatics, recognized that the main philosophical categories are the concepts of being and non-being. But, unlike the Eleatics, the atomists believed that non-being exists as well as being. Nothingness is emptiness, motionless, limitless, formless, densityless and unified space. Being is multiple and consists of indivisible particles - atoms. Atom in translation from ancient Greek means "indivisible". Atoms - tiny particles being, and due to their smallness cannot be perceived by human feelings. The atom has absolute density, does not contain emptiness. Atoms are in constant motion. The movement of atoms is possible because they are in emptiness. There is always some kind of empty space between atoms, so atoms cannot collide with each other and even more so turn into each other. Atoms differ in shape, size, motion, weight. The atoms themselves can be spherical, angular, concave, convex, etc. The atoms themselves do not possess the qualities of any substance. The quality of a thing arises only when certain atoms are combined. Atoms are eternal and unchanging, but things are transitory and finite. Why? The atoms, being in constant motion, constantly create their new combinations, eliminating the old ones. The main law of the universe is necessity: "Not a single thing happens in vain, but everything is due to causality and necessity." Everything has a reason.

In the V century. BC. the economic, political and cultural upsurge of the ancient city-states. The most important concept of ancient Greek life is the concept citizen... In the public consciousness, the problem of civic virtues is becoming one of the main ones. With the flourishing of the democratic polis structure, an urgent need arose for educated people capable of running the state. Therefore, scientists appeared who, for a certain fee, began to teach citizens rhetoric (the art of eloquence), eristics (the art of arguing), and philosophy. The teachers of philosophy were called sophists, i.e. connoisseurs, sages, masters of the word. However, in those days the word "sophist" acquired a somewhat offensive sound, since the sophists were not interested in the truth. They taught the art of deftly conquering opponents in disputes. At the same time, the sophists played a positive role in the spiritual development of Hellas. The Sophists were practically not interested in natural philosophy. Their main merit was that they put the problem of a person as a citizen of a polis at the center of worldview research.

The main provision Protagoras became the famous axiom: "Man is the measure of all things." Man-measure independently determines what is good and evil, what is true and what is untrue. Another important position of Protagoras - everything is true... Any inference is true. Everything is true in its own way, for there is no absolute truth nor absolute moral values.

Another sophist philosopher Gorgias, talking about the fact that nothing exists, just like Protagoras, he put forward the thesis that there is no absolute truth. But, since there is no absolute truth, then everything is false.

Socrates(470/469 - 399 BC) - the first Athenian philosopher by birth. He did not leave a single work after himself. Information about Socrates, his speeches and conversations have come down to us in the records of his students Plato and Xenophon. The problem of the meaning of life; What is the essence of the human person? What are good and evil? - these questions are fundamental for Socrates. Therefore, Socrates is rightfully considered the creator of the first moral philosophy in European history. The philosophy of Socrates is his life. With his own life and death, he showed that real life values ​​do not lie in external circumstances, which people so strive for (wealth, high position, etc.). Even in his last words at the trial of the donkey of the death sentence, Socrates regrets the too elementary understanding of the meaning of life by the inhabitants of Athens: “But it’s time to leave here, for me to die, you to live, and which of us is going for the better, nobody knows besides God. " Socrates recognized the existence of objective truth, in contrast to the sophists. All fundamental concepts (good, evil, wisdom, beautiful, ugly, beauty, hatred, etc.) are given by God from above. From here we find an explanation for the famous aphorism of Socrates: "I know that I know nothing." The meaning of this aphorism is that absolute true knowledge exists, but it is accessible only to God, and people reveal the abilities of their souls in striving for this knowledge. A person with the help of his mind must comprehend the fundamental concepts. For example, you cannot teach a person to be good. He must identify it himself, remember. If a person does not do good, then he simply does not know what good is. Knowledge is a virtue. For the process of cognition, Socrates used the method of meieutics - "Socratic conversation". This method consisted in identifying definitions for general concepts and was a completely scientific method for revealing knowledge, which Aristotle later called induction. Thus, Socrates taught logic. Socrates did not seem to have created a complete philosophical doctrine, but among his students he lit the fire of striving for truth. Socrates' activity served as the basis for the ethical schools of Ancient Greece: hedonic and cynical (cynical).

Hedonic school ("pleasure", "pleasure") or Cyrenaica (city of Cyrene), founded by the disciple of Socrates Aristippus, who considered pleasure to be the only meaning of life. Subsequently, the hedonic school merged with the Epicurean school founded by Epicurus in Athens in 306 BC. Its representatives taught that spiritual pleasures are preferable to bodily pleasures, and among spiritual ones there are the most preferable ones (friendship, a successful family life, a correct state system). The ethics of hedonism led to immoralism, when pleasure was the criterion of good and evil. So, after the lectures of Hegesius of Alexandria (the "mortal preacher"), some listeners committed suicide. However, this can be understood: if the only goal of life is pleasure, then it turns out to be meaningless, and therefore not worth living.

Cinemas(dogs). The school was founded by Socrates' student Antisthenes (444-368 BC). Human needs are animalistic. The ideal of cynical life: unlimited spiritual freedom of the individual; demonstrative disregard for all customs and generally accepted norms of life; rejection of pleasures, wealth, power; contempt for fame, success, nobility. The motto of Diogenes of Sinop: "I am looking for a man!", The meaning of which was to demonstrate to people their misunderstanding of the essence of man. Plato called Diogenes "a maddened Socrates." True happiness is freedom. The means for achieving freedom is asceticism - effort, hard work, which helps to rule over one's own desires. The ideal, the goal of life - autarky - self-sufficiency. When a person comprehends the vanity of life, indifference to everything becomes the meaning of his existence (meeting of Diogenes with Alexander the Great). The teachings of the Cynics are called the shortest road to virtue.

The most consistent student of Socrates was Plato(427-347 BC), born into a noble aristocratic family. At birth, he was given the name Aristocles. Plato is a nickname (broad, broad-browed). Almost all of Plato's works are written in the form of dialogues, the protagonist of which is Socrates. This is the so-called "Platonic question" - it is not always clear which ideas expressed in the dialogues belong to Plato himself. But in his writings, Plato appears as the first thinker in European history, striving to create an integral philosophical system. From the position of his philosophical views, he developed a doctrine about almost all aspects of human life: about being, about space, about knowledge, about the soul, about God, about society, about morality. Plato's doctrine is called the theory of ideas. Each concept, according to Plato, corresponds to the real being. There are not only separate things (for example, a round table, a spotted horse, Socrates, etc.), but also a special being corresponding to the concept of a round table, a spotted horse, Socrates, etc. This being of concepts Plato called ideas. Ideas reflect general properties objects designated by Plato by nouns: "stolnost", "horseness", "humanity", etc. The world of ideas is true being. He is eternal, constant. An idea is a general concept of specific objects. Individual objects arise and are destroyed (for example, a round table, a spotted horse, Socrates, etc.), but general ideas (a table in general, a horse in general, a person, etc.) remain. Properties of an idea: 1. An idea is the meaning of a thing, i.e. idea - the essence and cause of sensually perceived objects. 2. The idea of ​​a thing is the wholeness of all separate parts and manifestations of a thing. 3. The idea of ​​a thing is the law of the emergence of individual manifestations of things. 4. The idea of ​​a thing itself is immaterial, that is, it is not perceived by the senses, but only thought. 5. The idea of ​​a thing has its own existence. The world of eidos, the world of ideas, is outside the physical space. Plato called this world Hyperurania. Along with the world of ideas, the material world opposite to it also exists primordially. It is fluid, constantly changing. The basis of the material world is the "chorus", later Plato called it "matter" - an inert, immovable, crude phenomenon that spoils great ideas. Consequently, the material world is only a stupid, distorted copy of the ideal world. Due to all this, Plato called the material, real world seeming being... Originally independent from each other, the existing world of ideas and chorus - matter came into motion and created the universe thanks to the third principle - demiurge - to Plato's god. God-demiurge is not just a prime mover, with his energy he generates a certain phenomenon - the Soul of the World, which surrounds the entire physical world and spreads the divine energy inherent in it.

Aristotle(384-322 BC) built a whole system of proofs of the fallacy of the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Saying: "Plato is my friend, but truth is dearer", Aristotle agreed with Plato on one thing - in fact, every thing is the result of the combination of idea and matter. In this case, the idea is the meaning of the thing (according to Aristotle - the “essence of being” of the thing), matter is the means of the embodiment of the thing. The idea of ​​a thing and the thing itself do not exist separately from each other. There is no world of "eidos" - the idea of ​​a thing is in the thing itself. In his philosophy, Aristotle replaces the term "eidos" with the term "form", and "chorus" - "matter". Every thing is a unity of form and matter. The cause of the union of form and matter is motion, or a driving cause for the sake of a goal. The purpose of the emergence of any thing (for example, a table) is the real thing itself (a table). Consequently, every thing is a reified form with a causal purpose.

The form, movement and purpose of all things are generated by the eternal essence - Mind by means of his "desire" and by the power of his "thoughts". In fact, the Aristotelian Mind is God, but not a religious, but a philosophical God.

Main currents Hellenistic philosophy: Stoicism and Epicureanism.

Stoics(end of the 4th century) - followers of the philosophical school of Stoi (Athens), their ideal in life is equanimity and calmness, the ability not to react to internal and external irritating factors. Stoic school founded by a philosopher Zeno from Kition approx. 300 BC In ancient Rome, the popular Stoics were the philosopher Seneca(c. 5 BC - 65 AD), his disciple Epictetus and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius(121 - 180 AD).

Epicureanism- philosophical direction, founded by the ancient Greek materialist Epicurus(341 - 270 BC), and in the Roman Empire represented Lucretius Kar(c. 99 - 55 BC).

Ethics of the Epicureans is hedonic (from the Greek. hedone- pleasure); pleasure was given the meaning of the purpose of life. But this is not sensual pleasure, not gross animal pleasure, but a state of spiritual stability ( ataraxia- Greek. equanimity, complete peace of mind), which can only be developed by a sage who is able to overcome the fear of death. “When we exist, death is not yet present; when death is present, then we do not exist ”(Epicurus).

The teachings of Epicurus were the last great materialistic school of ancient Greek philosophy.

Great thinkers of ancient Greece.

Plato of Athens

The great thinker, founder of the Academy - a philosophical school, Plato of Athens was born in 427 BC. e. and lived to 347. BC e. The philosophical school founded by him existed for almost 1000 years - until 529. n. e. Plato dealt with the creation of the World. When asked how it could appear harmoniously arranged world Plato replied that he was created according to a certain plan. According to Plato's convictions, the world, conceived and created by the Eternal God, is animate and divine.

Plato wrote in one of his dialogues: “All this plan of the Everlasting God regarding God, who was just about to be, demanded that the body of the cosmos be created smooth ... equally spread in all directions from the center ... In its center, the builder gave place to the soul, from where he extended it along the entire length and, in addition, covered the body with it from the outside. "

In the writings of Plato, for the first time in European culture, the idea of ​​a single God - the Creator - is encountered. Plato calls him Demiurge, which means Master. According to Plato, the Demiurge for the device of the Universe created a special substance in the form of a mixture of two essences - "indivisible ideal" and "divisible material". Then the Demiurge "cut the train lengthwise into two parts", folded them and made the sky of fixed stars out of one, and the second - the blank of the rest of the celestial bodies - "divided into seven unequal circles, keeping the number of double and triple intervals."

This division, which determines the distance between the Earth and the orbits of the luminaries, is called the Platonic harmony of spheres.

The relative distances from the Earth to the luminaries turned out as follows:

Moon - 1, Sun - 2, Venus - 3, Mercury - 4, Mars - 8, Jupiter - 9, Saturn - 27.

In fact, the intervals proposed by Plato have nothing to do with reality, they have only historical significance. But in the development of astronomy, the principle of searching for patterns in the sizes of orbits played a rather important role.

In one of his most recent dialogues - "Timaeus", Plato mentioned the mobility of the Earth: "The Earth is our nurse, he (Demiurge (author)) determined to rotate around an axis passing through the Universe, and made her the guardian of day and night."

This movement of the Earth contradicted the rotation, which the philosopher attributed to the sky and stars.

Perhaps Plato, in his conclusions on the motion of celestial bodies, doubted and did not decide which rotation to prefer.

At the Academy founded by Plato, the Philosopher lectured on the creation of the world, on morality. As for morality, one of the examples of his beliefs is that he did not approve of expensive outfits on young people and even condemned this, as he claimed, female passion for outfits and adornments. He understood that young people wanted to be liked, that they felt much better in expensive and beautiful outfits than in a one-color chlamys, but Plato's long-term habits do not agree with the arguments of his reason. He was broad-shouldered, handsome, stately - he was noble. And a simple outfit, the philosopher believed, only emphasized his nobility.

Many students graduated from the school of philosophy of Plato, who later became thinkers, scientists, logicians. Some of them followed the views of their teacher, others did not agree with the great philosopher in everything and created their own theories that were opposite to Plato's ideas. This is how science was born - in contradictions and disputes, I must say, and not only in ancient times. So it develops to the present time.

Speaking about the correct and erroneous points of view on the numerous problems that Plato had to face, I would like to note that there are “eternal” questions, the answers to which are still ambiguous. The question of the creation of the world, that is, of the origin of the Universe - can someone ever answer exactly or with a high degree of probability - how it happened.

Or, for example, where to find Atlantis? What happened on the planet at the time when Atlantis disappeared? Amazingly, at one time Plato also wrote about the catastrophe that led to the death of the Atlanteans and their habitat. Plato in his works indicated that Atlantis was located beyond the Strait of Gibraltar in the Atlantic. An ancient Greek scientist gave two very approximate dates for the death of Atlantis: eleven and twelve thousand years ago, if we keep counting from our time.

Alas, he alone, the great philosopher of Ancient Greece, Plato, told the world about the beautiful island and the mighty state of the Atlanteans. But Plato, according to him, relied on the story of Atlantis of his maternal ancestor, "the wisest of the seven wise", Solon. (The year of Solon's birth has not been established, but it is known that in 594 BC he was an archon in Athens. The date of his death is also not known. Solon lived to a ripe old age).

The semi-legendary - semi-historical genealogy of Solon and Plato is extremely interesting. Their ancestor was none other than the god Poseidon himself. The same Poseidon who "founded Atlantis and populated it with his children."

The great-grandson of Poseidon's son Neleus was the Athenian king Codri. Solon was a descendant of Codru, and Plato was the great-great-grandson of Codru. Traveling through Egypt, the Greek sage Solon learned from the priests, and perhaps read in the temple of the goddess Neith in Sais, the history of Atlantis.

In the writings of Plutarch, it is reported that Solon began an "extensive work" on Atlantis, but did not finish it. Unfortunately, nothing has come down to us from this work. 200 years later, a descendant of Solon Plato told the world in his dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias" Solon's legend about Atlantis, which he had heard from Solon's grandson, Critias. This legend amazes the imagination of our contemporaries with the accuracy of coincidences of many processes occurring on the planet, which led to the death of the mysterious island, with the data of modern scientists. Plato tells about the great and mighty people of the Atlanteans, about their beautiful island and high civilization. Plato wrote: “The power of the alliance of kings extended to the entire island, to many other islands and to part of the mainland. And on this side of the strait, the Atlanteans seized Libya as far as Egypt and Europe up to Tyrrhenia (Etruria), since the Atlantean fleet reigned supreme over the seas. " Plato talks about state structure Atlanteans. He describes temples, palaces, ring canals, bridges, harbors. Plato also tells about the tragic death of the beautiful island - as a result of a grand catastrophe, the island was swallowed up by the sea. Not a single written source of the ancients, except for the dialogues of Plato, reports anything about Atlantis.

Aristotle Stagirsky

Plato's disciple Aristotle said "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer." These words have become a proverb, but few people know that one of the reasons that prompted Aristotle to prefer "truth" to his teacher was the same story with Atlantis. The verdict handed down to Atlantis by Aristotle found support among Christian dogmatists: after all, in the Middle Ages, the year of the creation of the world was well known - 5508 BC. e. It was not allowed to dispute this fact: they were tough with heretics.

But not only Atlantis was the cause of different "truths" of the student and teacher.

These were the first creators of philosophical teachings, theoretical schemes and models. They lived several centuries BC. e.

One of the greatest philosophers and scientists was born in 384 BC. e. in Stagira, a Greek colony in Thrace, near Mount Athos.

His father Nicomachus and mother Festida were of noble birth.

His father was the court physician of the Macedonian physician Amynta III, the same position he promised to his boy.

Nicomachus initially taught his son the art of medicine and philosophy, at that time inseparable from medicine. But he died early and before his death was very grieved that he did not have time to fully teach his son the art of healing, and thus did not provide him with a place under the king, according to his words - the best place with the best king.

Before the hour of death, the father advised his son, upon reaching the age of 17, to go to Athens, at that time - the capital of all Hellenic wisdom, and find real teachers of life there.

The father urged his son to remember the name of Plato, who, according to him, descended from Solon, who was the son of Apollo. Since our family is noble, for we are the descendants of Asclepius, the father said to his son, and in whom the wisdom of Asclepius and the wisdom of Apollo will unite, he will become the wisest of people and will approach the gods.

Aristotle vowed that he would do so, and when he reached the age of 17, the very next day he went to Athens, to Plato.

In 367 BC. e. he entered the school founded by Plato, a student of Socrates (469 -399 BC) in the town of Academia, near Athens.

After 20 years of study, Aristotle founded his philosophical school in Athens, in some way controversial to the Academy of Plato.

After the death of Plato, Aristotle, along with the beloved disciple of the latter, Xenophon, moved to the atharnean tyrant Hermine. Having married his niece Pithnad, Aristotle settled with her in Mistylene, from where he was called by the Macedonian king Philip to raise his son. The noble spirit of the pupil, the greatness of his deeds speak of the life-giving and beneficent influence of the great philosopher on the boy, who later became the famous military leader Alexander.

Having moved to 334 BC. e. again in Athens, Aristotle founded his school there, which was called the peripatetic.

During his lifetime, Aristotle was not loved and was not always recognized, the vicissitudes of fate affected the fact that some works were incomplete and fragmentary. However, many scientists who lived much later suffered the same fate.

The scientist's appearance was not attractive. He was short, lean, short-sighted, bursting. With a sarcastic smile on his lips, he was cold and mocking. Opponents were afraid of his speech, always logical and dexterous, witty and sarcastic, which, of course, contributed to the appearance a large number enemies.

The negative disposition of the Greeks towards Aristotle persecuted even after death. During his lifetime, he was accused of atheism, as a result of which the 62-year-old left Athens and moved to Halpis on Euba, where a few months later he died of a stomach disease.