Ancient philosophers wondered about the fundamental principle of all that exists, about the origin of the world, nature and man. Many of their ideas laid the foundation for modern scientific concepts.
Ancient philosophy covers the period from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. Based on the evolution and development of scientific views, three large periods are distinguished in it: natural philosophical (VI-V centuries BC), classical (V-IV centuries BC) and Hellenistic (III century BC - IV century AD). Sometimes the period of the Alexandrian doctors is added to the main periods.
Natural philosophy
In the era of natural philosophy, scientific thought developed through logical reasoning. Experiments and other objective methods have not yet found their place at this stage in the development of philosophy. The main theme that worried thinkers is "arche" (from the Greek. "Beginning"), that is, the fundamental principle, the origin of all that exists.
The main representatives of the period:
- a representative of the Miletus school, a resident of the ancient Greek city of Miletus, a materialist. He believed that the fundamental principle of all that exists is water. He was a supporter of giloism - the doctrine of the animacy of any matter. According to Thales, even a magnet has a soul, since it is capable of moving iron by its own power. - a student of Thales, a materialist. He considered the origin of everything apeiron - a special substance from which absolutely everything in the world originates. - a student of Anaximenes. Arche, according to Anaximenes, is air, since life is impossible without breathing.
believed that the quantitative side of all things and phenomena of the world should be put in the foreground. Even the soul Pythagoras represented in the form of a number, explaining it as follows. Number is an abstraction, it is eternal, it cannot be destroyed. You can eat 2 apples, but the number "2" as an abstract concept is something indestructible. The soul is as immortal as the number. Thus, he was the first to speak about the immateriality and some otherworldlyness of the human soul.
a resident of the city of Ephesus. He believed that everything that exists comes from fire, and in it he will perish. He developed the idea of constant development and change of the whole world according to a certain force - the Logos. In a sense, he equated this term with the concept of "fate."
believed that everything comes from 4 elements - water, fire, earth and air. In each item, the proportions of these elements only differ.
- a materialist, one of the brightest and most important representatives of natural philosophy. His merits include the development of the following ideas:
- Atomistic theory. The whole world consists of small, indivisible particles - atoms. All atoms differ from each other in four parameters: size, shape, order, rotation.
- The theory of general determinism. Everything is predetermined, all events occurring in the world have their own reason. For this idea, Democritus received many negative comments, because for ancient people freedom was too desirable.
- Expiration theory. Each object radiates into the surrounding world its reduced copies - eidols. These eidols, "flowing" from objects, touch the surface of our senses, generating sensations.
- Democritus believed that human behavior is completely and completely controlled by emotions, as he seeks to avoid suffering and achieve pleasure.
Classic period
The heyday of ancient philosophy falls on the 5th-4th centuries. BC. During these times, minds lived who made an invaluable contribution to the development of all branches of scientific knowledge: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
- an idealist, a representative of such a philosophical trend as maieutics (translated from Greek - "help during childbirth"). He believed that the teacher should help the student "give birth to a thought", ie. to extract the knowledge already available in a person about the phenomena. This is done using a method later called the Socratic dialogue - the use of leading and clarifying questions. He considered the most important goal of a person's life to know himself.
- a disciple of Socrates, a supporter of objective idealism. He believed that there are 2 worlds: the world of things and the world of ideas. The human soul is immortal, it comes from the world of ideas, enters the world of things (the body), and after death it returns to the ideal world. This cycle is endless. In addition, in the world of ideas, the soul contemplates and perceives all the truths, all the knowledge of the world. But, getting to Earth, she forgets them. Therefore, the goal of a person's life is to restore knowledge from the ideal world.
- a student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great. He can be attributed to both the materialists (since the soul is inextricably linked with the body, and, therefore, mortal), and the idealists (because he developed the idea of the existence of a higher mind). He actively criticized the concepts of his teacher, believing that two worlds cannot exist. He believed that every living body has its own soul, but in plants, animals and humans, souls differ in their abilities. He introduced the concept of catharsis - the experience of timeless joy arising from the release from strong emotions (affects). Affects too strongly influence human behavior and do not lend themselves well to rationalization, it is difficult to deal with them, so that a person can achieve harmony only by getting rid of them. In addition, Aristotle developed teachings about sensation, memory, imagination, thinking, feelings and will.
Hellenism
During the Hellenistic period, the ideas of ethics were actively developed. At the same time, ethics was understood in the sense of a way of life, an approach to it, overcoming anxiety and fears in order to be able to create in conditions of peace of mind, harmony and balance.
The most important representative of this stage in the development of ancient philosophy is a follower of Democritus, a materialist, who founded his own philosophical school "The Garden of Epicurus" in Athens. He was critical of the theory of universal determinism, and argued that atoms, in addition to the 4 parameters named by Democritus, also have weight. With the help of weight, an atom can deviate from its usual trajectory, which leads to randomness and the possibility of many outcomes of events.
The soul, according to Epicurus, is a material substance. It contains 4 parts:
- fire that gives warmth;
- pneuma, which sets the body in motion;
- the wind that allows a person to breathe;
- the soul of the soul is what makes a person a person: feelings, thinking, morality.
The Ethics of Epicurus received many supporters and followers. This is a whole teaching, according to which the knowledge of the truth by a person is possible only in a state of complete calmness and serenity - ataraxia. But human life is constantly poisoned by 2 fears - the fear of the Gods and the fear of death. Rationally comprehending the problem of these fears, Epicurus came to the conclusion that they can also be overcome. He believed that the Gods should not be afraid, since they have absolutely nothing to do with us. The fear of death is also meaningless, because when we are, there is no death, and when there is death, we are no longer there.
The period of the Alexandrian doctors
This period should be considered separately, since at this time there was an active study of anatomy and the development of medicine. Representatives of this period are ancient Greek scientists and. Before them, philosophy was dominated by the opinion that truth, if it is such, does not need to be tested; verification is the lot of those who do not have the power of logic. But the Alexandrian doctors are the first representatives of Antiquity who moved on to testing knowledge in practice, with the help of experiments. They experimentally proved that the organ of the psyche is the brain.
Thus, the thoughts of ancient scientists were occupied with the most complex issues of human existence: the problem of the origin of all objects and phenomena, the determination of human behavior, the differences between animals and humans. In addition, important practical questions about free will, morality and way of life were addressed.
