What Is Classical Philosophy And What Are Its Characteristics?
Philosophy is an academic discipline that is made up of a set of knowledge and reflections developed over the centuries in order to study the essence or nature, the origins and purposes of things and ideas.
Due to the ambitious nature of this goal, with the passage of time different areas of philosophical activity and currents of philosophy have emerged, some so different from each other that they have even come to confront each other.
For its part, Classical philosophy was developed mainly in ancient Greece during several 7th centuries BC and 5th AD being the essence of Western thought, the basis of the triumph of logos over mythos, the rise of the study and development of various subjects (mathematics, ethics, epistemology, etc.) by various philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, etc.
In this article we will see the characteristics of classical philosophy and its main schools and thinkers taking into account that the intellectual activity that occurred in it was so relevant in Ancient Greece that it has managed to transcend to the present day.
Classical philosophy: its main schools and its representatives
Within the extensive period that includes the development of classical philosophy (approximately between the 7th centuries BC-5th AD) we can find various schools; each of them with their respective representatives. Below we will see a brief review of each of them.
1. Presocratic philosophy
The first stage of classical or ancient philosophy is the pre-Socratic one in which we can find that entire group of thinkers prior to the philosopher Socrates and after the Dark Ages (which ended in the 8th century BC) who, although not shared the same philosophical theory, they had in common the fact that they shared the path of searching for the truth, the why of things, the essence of the universe and the origin of everything that exists, through reason. All of this They did it trying to get rid of mythological and/or religious explanations ; all of this in a context of intellectual creation dominated by oral communication or lyrical writing (which is why some of them did not even write prose books).
1.1. Ionian school
One of the first schools of classical philosophy is the Ionic, which It is mainly represented by philosophers such as Thales of Miletus, Anaximander and Anaximedes among others.
Thales of Miletus (c. 625 – c. 546 BC) was a Greek philosopher, considered the father of Greek philosophy and was also the one who introduced geometry to ancient Greece it should be noted that for this philosopher water was the essential principle of all things, so that everything would come from it and, in turn, everything returns to it again.
Anaximander (c. 611 – c. 547 BC), disciple of Thales and also born in Miletus, He was a mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who is credited with the discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic and, furthermore, he is known for being the one who introduced the sundial to Greece. Another invention attributed to Anaximadro is cartography.
Anaximenes (c. 570 – 500 BC), born in Miletus (Ionia), was a Greek philosopher who He stated that the primary element that makes up the world is air and, in order to explain it, he resorted to the notions of rarefaction and condensation, these processes being those that transform air into other states, such as solid (when cooling), liquid and also into fire (with the rarefaction process).
1.2. Pythagorean school
Another of the first and most relevant schools of classical philosophy is the Pythagorean, in which the philosopher and mathematician mainly stands out. Pythagoras (c. 582 – c. 500 BC), who considered that the origin of everything can be explained by a series of mathematical principles and, more specifically, thanks to the numbers. For Pythagoras, numbers were considered the essence of everything, and it is believed that he gave them divine properties.
It should be noted that the school of Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of the soul and, therefore, in immortality, with its teacher stating that he was capable of remembering all the lives he had lived in previous times.
1.3. Elea School
The school of Elea is another of the schools worth mentioning in classical philosophy, where four philosophers mainly stand out: Heraclitus, Parmenides of Elea, Empedocles and Anaxagoras.
Heraclitus (550 – 480 BC), was a philosopher known for being the one who used the word for the first time in the 5th century BC logos in his “Theory of Being” when he said: “Not to me, but having listened to the logos, it is wise to say with him that everything is one”, for him “being” is that intelligence that is responsible for ordering, directing and also give harmony to the evolution of that series of changes that occur throughout existence itself. The logos would end up becoming the basis of all Western philosophy and thought.
Heraclitus is also credited with the concept “panta rei” (everything flows) to refer to the fact that everything in nature changes continually so there is nothing that remains.
Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 – c. 440 BC) He was a philosopher who defended the existence of an “Absolute Being” He also stated that natural things are nothing other than appearance and the true being can only be known through reason and not by the senses, further stating that change does not actually exist.
Empedocles (c. 493 BC – 433 BC) was a poet, statesman and philosopher, disciple of Pythagoras and Parmenides, known for stating in his theories that all things existing in the world are composed of four main elements: water, fire, earth and air
Anaxagoras (c. 500 – 428 BC) was a Greek philosopher known for propose the existence of infinite atoms that give shape to everything that exists in the universe, having been ordered by the “nous” or original principle.
1.4. Atomists
In this school of classical philosophy we are only going to highlight its greatest representative, the Greek philosopher Democritus (c. 460 BC-370 BC), who is known for having developed the “atomistic theory of the universe”, in which he defended that all existing things are composed of tiny, invisible and indestructible particles of totally pure matter; Likewise, he stated that the universe was created as a result of the rotating movements of atoms that collided and formed all matter.
1.5. sophist school
The philosophers who belonged to the sophist school They were heavily attacked by great philosophers such as Socrates, Plato or Aristotle due to their relativism and also for their skepticism ; However, they were also very renowned in their time, being a very heterogeneous and eclectic philosophical movement. Among them it is worth highlighting Protagoras, who is known for his famous phrase “man is the measure of all things”, being a phrase that very well explains the thought of this philosophical school in which its members denied that there was an absolute truth. .
2. The schools of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
Perhaps the schools of philosophy that have transcended the most to our times are those of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, schools that were developed one after the other because Plato was a disciple of Socrates and, in turn, Aristotle was a disciple of Plato. ; despite the fact that each one later developed his own theories and separated himself from many ideas that he learned from his teacher.
Socrates (c. 470 – c. 399 BC) was a philosopher who believed that the soul carries truth within itself and that it is only possible to know it through reason and reflection. It should be noted that no texts have been found that were written by Socrates, but it was Plato’s disciple who captured them with his own handwriting in the dialogues. After his death, he left the Socratic schools as a legacy.
Plato (c. 428 – c. 347 BC) was a scholar-philosopher who researched widely on various areas of knowledge such as metaphysics, theology, epistemology or politics, among others, laying the foundations of Western thought with his theories, highlighting his “theory of ideas”, in which he divided the world into two: the sensible and the intelligible. .
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) came to propose philosophical theories very different from those of his teacher Plato, going so far as to deny the existence of the sensible world and also of the separate essences of existing things. For Aristotle there was only one world and this was the sensible one; That is to say, there is only everything that can be known through experience and perceived through the senses.
3. Philosophical currents of the Hellenistic and Roman eras
In these last stages of classical philosophy, various currents should be highlighted:
Characteristics of classical philosophy
Next we are going to see the main characteristics that serve to unite the main theories and schools that were developed throughout the entire history of classical philosophy.
1. Classical philosophy is the essence of Western thought
Western thought, which has evolved throughout history, has its roots in classical philosophy at the hands of the Greek philosophers. This cultural and intellectual influence continued through Roman times another very influential era, and resurfaced more strongly in the Renaissance, among others.
2. The universe surrounding human beings was questioned for the first time
Thanks to classical philosophy, for the first time in the West everything about the universe and everything that surrounds the human being began to be questioned, so that religious explanations about why what happens around us were losing prominence ; Philosophers dedicated themselves to the search for understanding and knowing reality, things and the world from a rational perspective.
3. In classical philosophy the logos was above the mythos
Classical philosophers developed reasoning that moved away from religious explanations about the universe and everything that surrounds human beings, including their origins, having thus triumphed logos, rational thought, against mythos, uncritical and unfounded thought
Furthermore, classical philosophers never took things for granted, but rather questioned, analyzed and rethought everything based on solid arguments, so that philosophy would manage to establish itself as a discipline that was aimed at enriching the knowledge of human beings. in the search for wisdom.
4. Anthropocentrism begins to develop
With classical philosophy, anthropocentrism begins to gain importance, so that The human being is taking on a greater role as the center of all things compared to divinity so an idea developed that it is human beings who should be in charge of charting their own destinies instead of waiting for a divinity to do it for them.
5. Human beings have innate knowledge
Classical philosophers generally They considered that human beings have innate abilities that allow them to develop knowledge throughout his life, thus acquiring wisdom, so that he could fight against the worst vice he could fall into, ignorance.
6. With classical philosophy, the study of various subjects is born
A very important characteristic of the classical philosophers was their dedication at all stages to the research, development, study and teaching of various areas of knowledge such as ethics, logic, physics, mathematics, aesthetics, political philosophy or rhetoric, among others.
