The beginning of the emergence of Roman philosophy is traditionally considered the 2nd-1st centuries. BC e. If we talk about the ancient period as a whole, then in relation to Greek philosophy, many consider Roman philosophy to be secondary. Greek philosophical teachings began to spread among the Romans in the 1st century. BC e. The most popular at that time were the teachings of Epicurus, the philosophical views of the Stoics and skeptics, and the theory of Plato. Hellenistic philosophy is the period that became the final in the development of the philosophy of Ancient Greece and is characterized by an ethical orientation and adaptation of eastern religious movements.
One of the most famous schools of this era was a school founded by followers of kinism. This teaching proclaimed the neglect and denial of everything external - from physical needs to science. Cynics were convinced that all benefits come exclusively from within the person and are not related to the external, which not only does not contribute to the manifestation of these benefits in human life, but even constitutes an obstacle to happiness.
Epicurus (341-270 BC) and his followers put forward slightly different life and philosophical principles, although in their teaching, happiness is also one of the main philosophical categories. The teaching of Epicurus has its own epistemology, ontology, physics, but its ethics became the most significant in the history of philosophy . The ethic of Epicurus is based on the principle that pleasure and enjoyment are good, but Epicurus does not mean licentiousness, he understands by pleasures, first of all, "the absence of bodily suffering." The very concept of pleasure in the teachings of Epicurus found some intellectual refinement, and Epicurus considered classes to be one of the components of such pleasure.
At the end of the VI century. BC, a little later than the school of Epicurus, the Hellenistic period of ancient philosophy was marked by the formation of another famous philosophical school - the Stoic school. The founder of this school was Zeno. The fundamental principle of the Stoics was this: happiness consists in following nature in everything. It is worth noting that the ideas of stoicism have become quite popular in ancient Rome. Hellenistic-Roman philosophy is marked by the activities of the largest Roman Stoics: Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. The ideas of thinkers of that period have almost completely lost interest in philosophical problems that lie beyond ethics. As for ethics itself, the Roman Stoics proclaimed the idea of a universal brotherhood of people, condescension, love for their neighbors and even enemies.
Another famous trend, which is famous for Hellenistic philosophy, is skepticism. The founder of skepticism is Pirron (360 - 280 BC). The idea of his teaching was that it was the philosopher who was considered, according to Pirron, a man striving to achieve happiness. Happiness lies, first of all, in the absence of suffering and complete peace of mind. According to skeptics, no way of knowing can be defined as false or true, the philosophical attitude to things consists in refraining from judging about these things. Only our sensual impressions are true, and judgments only lead to error.
Hellenistic philosophy made some changes in the ideological orientation of the teachings of that time, these changes were caused primarily by political and socio-economic changes in the developing society. The thinkers of the Hellenistic period laid the main emphasis on solving the problems of human morality, the problems of individual behavior in society. Hellenistic philosophy was marked by revolutionary ideas for that time about recognizing their human dignity as slaves; some philosophers even expressed the idea that slaves could have the highest moral qualities. As a result of the development of new philosophical views on the world and society as a whole, the two old schools founded by Plato and Aristotle gradually lost their authority and faded into the background.