Studies of modern scientists show that philosophy as an independent science was born thanks to the works of the ancient Greeks. Of course, even primitive people can see some rudiments of philosophy, but they do not have integrity. The ancient Chinese and Indians also attempted to develop philosophy, but their contribution is minimal compared to the ancient Greeks. The pinnacle of ancient Greek philosophy is ancient ethics. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle are its ancestors.
Antique philosophy
You can analyze ancient philosophy by its representatives, whose ideas are based on ancient ethics. Socrates, Epicurus and the Stoics, Plato, Aristotle studied this philosophical direction at about the same time, but each with its own special position.
Socrates set out his methods and tried to convey the idea of ​​the impossibility of influencing a person from the outside, since all changes should happen inside him.
Epicurus is a follower of Democritus and a successor of atomic teachings. He left the modern generation more than three hundred works, of which only one sixth remained. Epicurus argued that the main thing is to teach people to live happily, because everything else does not matter.
The philosophy of the Stoics includes three aspects - logic, physics and ethics. In their opinion, logic is responsible for fastening the system, physics allows you to know nature, and ethics teaches life according to the laws of nature.
Plato was the best of Socrates's disciples. He was deeply imbued with Socratic teaching and sought to develop it as much as possible. Together with his student Aristotle, he made a major contribution to the development of philosophy through the creation of a school of peripatetics. Plato deeply studied the achievements of his predecessors and brought them into one single set.
Aristotle, following the teachings of Plato, became one of the most prominent scientists who came from ancient Greece. It was he who became the founder of true natural science.
Antiquity developed very rapidly in antiquity. Socrates, Epicurus and the Stoics, as well as Plato and Aristotle were the most prominent philosophers of that period.
Socrates as a person
The years of life of Socrates - 470 (469) –399. BC e. Socrates is an Athenian philosopher immortalized in the dialogues of Plato as the main character. His mother was called Fenareta, and his father was Safronix. Father was a wealthy sculptor. Socrates did not care about his well-being and by the end of his life he became practically a beggar. Information about his life and worldview has been preserved very little. Scientists draw basic data from the works of his students.
According to Xenophon, Socrates was distinguished by a high degree of abstinence from love pleasures and from excessive consumption of food. He easily endured the various hardships of life, difficult work, heat and cold. He always had very few means of subsistence, but this did not prevent him from having everything necessary to sustain life.
According to contemporaries, Socrates had an amazing power of influence on the interlocutor. After talking with him, people rethought their lives and realized that it was no longer possible to live like that.
Socrates belongs to the last representative of the sophists. Although he had practical work contrary to their ideology. Having advanced the formal foundations conducive to the emergence of a new science, Socrates became the founder of the ethical stage of philosophical development.
Socrates as the founder of ethical philosophy
He noted that only those sciences are real whose truths are equally true for all. As an example, the situation is given that if for one person twice two equals four, for another five, and for the third six, then mathematics would never become a science.
This principle is also relevant for morality. Ethics of Socrates speaks of the existence of generally accepted norms of behavior. He believed that it was necessary to derive these norms and bring them to human minds. In this case, all people will cease to quarrel. The philosophy and ethics of Socrates states that there is a virtue in everyone, and if it is revealed to all people, universal happiness will come.
The main merit of Socrates is the definition of the fact that people of the whole world have exactly the same values. They say this now, but 2500 years ago Socrates received an answer.
The paradoxes of Socratic ethics are different, they include a statement that defines a person by the measure of all things, which contradicts the idea of ​​the universality of moral norms. Ethics of Socrates distinguishes him from the sophists in his presentation. Socrates did not just teach people, but used a method to help people comprehend the truth. Thanks to this, people came to the truth on their own.
Methods of Socratic philosophy
The ethics and method of Socrates aroused dormant knowledge in the minds of people. This philosophical approach is called the Mayevtika method. He says that if a person has decided to enter into an argument, he must come to the truth by putting forward rational arguments that will help him to know the truth. After all, it is impossible to inspire it, but you can only discover for yourself. Socrates noted that one can come to knowledge only with one's own mind. It is impossible to influence a person’s behavior and worldview from the outside, it all depends on changes within him.
The Mayevtiki method refers to inductive, along with methods of doubt (I know that I don’t know anything), induction (following the traces of facts), irony (finding contradictions) and definition (the final formulation of the knowledge sought). Inductive methods are relevant today. Most often they are used in a scientific discussion. In the process of finding solutions lies the rationalistic ethics of Socrates. According to him, the basis of any virtue is the mind. Socrates presented ignorance as an indicator of immorality.
Question answer
Good and evil Socrates defined the term "ethical rationalism." Hence the rational ethics of Socrates. He considered it very important to assign his individual name to absolutely every moral category. The scientist actively used the question-answer principle of comprehension of the truth, which in those days was called dialectics. The ethics and dialectics of Socrates played a huge role in his vision of philosophy. Realization of true knowledge is carried out only through dialogue. It is he who helps reveal the truth to the participants. Socrates defined dialectics as the art of competent dialogue.
Noble Plato
Plato belonged to a noble family, the oldest of its kind. His parents had a family relationship with the Athenian king Kodr. In the family, Plato was not the only child, he had two brothers and a sister. Plato was born during the reign of Pericles, when Athens flourished and developed rapidly in the field of science. This had a very beneficial effect on his mental enrichment in his childhood and youth.
But after a while everything turned upside down. The reins of power passed to foolish people, and chaos began in society. The nobles began to oppress, which affected the Plato family. Such experience and teachings of Socrates led him to the path of the Spartan state system and his opposition to Athenian democracy. In the carefree times of his youth, Plato used all the possible benefits to receive a diverse education. In addition to key areas, he studied drawing, music, gymnastics. He was so perfect that he was even able to win the champion title at the Olympic and non-family games.
Poverty was a blow to Plato, he even thought to move into a mercenary army, but Socrates did not allow him to do this. Before meeting his teacher, Plato was eager to become a famous poet. His praises and dramas turned out to be especially eloquent. Philosophy also interested him from an early age, and acquaintance with Socrates only strengthened this interest. In his youth, he was attracted to the Heraclitian school and its teachings on the limitless changes in sensory objects.
Platonic philosophy
Plato in his teachings has always attributed philosophy to the highest of sciences. After all, it is she who helps in the quest to know the truth. Philosophy, according to Plato, is the only way to personal knowledge, knowledge of God and true happiness. He believed that getting daily impressions contributed to the distortion of the image of reality. Plato paid particular attention to the world of things and ideas. He calls the idea something the same, which can be found at least in a couple of different things. But nobody knows the non-existent, therefore the idea is real and exists, despite the fact that people cannot touch it. In addition, Plato noted that it is precisely the world of intelligible ideas that is real, while the world of sensual things is just its pale shadow.
The universe, according to Plato, has a somewhat mythological connotation with notes of oriental traditions. Such a view was planted on Plato during his long journeys. According to his theory, God is the creator of the entire universe. In the process of creation, he combined ideas and material matter together. Controlling the symbiosis of ideas and material things takes not the mind, but three forces, which are called inert, inert, and blind.
Plato set forth his thoughts and studies about the soul in the writings of “Fedr” and “Timaeus”. He notes that the human soul has immortality. The creation of the soul occurred at the moment when the universe was formed. According to Plato, in the soul there are 3 independent parts. The first is in the head and is called reasonable. The two remaining parts are unreasonable. One lives in the chest, actively interacts with the mind and is called the will. The other is located in the stomach and consists of passion and the lowest instincts, which deprives it of all nobility.
Socrates and his disciple Plato
Plato's acquaintance with Socrates occurred when the first was about twenty years old. This acquaintance became the most significant in his life, because thanks to Socrates, he both soul and body embarked on the path of philosophy. After some time, Plato thanked heaven for the fact that he was not born an animal, but a man, not a woman, but a man, not a barbarian, but a Greek, and most importantly, that he was born precisely in Athens and precisely at the time when Socrates lived.
There is a legend saying that the night before the teacher recognized his student, the first one had a wonderful dream. In him, Socrates saw a snow-white swan, who came to him, having left the altar of Eros, and with extraordinary grace soared into the sky on the incredibly powerful wings that had grown at that very moment. The next day, Socrates first saw Plato, such a tall young man with a face close to ideal and high intellect, he immediately noted that this was that lovely swan from sleep. It was at this moment that the ancient ethics of Socrates and Plato was born.
The lessons of Socrates Plato received during all nine years of their acquaintance. The relationship between them was filled with deep friendliness and mutual understanding, as well as respect and love. Information about their relationship is very abstract, since records of them are extremely rare. It is known that Plato wrote Socrates' Apology, in which he indicated that his teacher was brought to trial. Plato appeared in court and offered to pay for Socrates in the event of a verdict in monetary terms. Also during the trial, Plato broadcast from the rostrum in defense of his teacher. When Socrates was imprisoned, Plato could not visit him, as he was seriously ill. The death of Socrates was a severe blow to his beloved student.
Antique Ethics through the Eyes of Socrates and Plato
The ethics of Socrates and Plato were actively promoted and broadcast to the masses in ancient times. Their teachings said that, in anticipation of a happy life for a person, it is necessary to be a virtuous and moral person. Only a moral person can know true happiness. To achieve this goal, Socrates developed the stages of the method of cognition. Initially, doubt arises, which makes it possible to identify the need for further discussion of the problem, and then the stage comes to identify conflicting points, which allows you to determine the desired concept.
First of all, the ancient ethics of Socrates and Plato was based on the principles of rationalism. In other words, virtuous actions are determined by knowledge, while ignorance is considered a source of immoral behavior. From this, the scientist and his student identified a happy life as right, moral and reasonable. The philosophy and ethics of Socrates and Plato teach people to take the path of virtue. In their opinion, if a person does not have enough knowledge, he is a potential source of malice. As an example, they cite the virtue of courage, which is generated by knowledge about overcoming danger, or the virtue of moderation, which is born in a person who knows about overcoming passion.
The ethics and philosophy of Socrates and Plato included a number of basic ideas. Firstly, that person who has a knowledge base about a right and virtuous life will always commit moral and virtuous acts. Secondly, life proceeds according to a single common pattern for all, which is represented in the "world of ideas", therefore only life is considered to be correct according to its principles and no other.
Followers of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato
Modern scholars conclude that the ethics of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle made it possible to most deeply understand ancient philosophy. Socrates is called the father of ancient philosophy not because he was her first ancestor, but because it was he who developed the basic principles, which later became the basis for other scholars.
The most striking follower of Socrates was his disciple Plato. He was delighted with his teacher, based on his knowledge and created something of his own. He developed the stages of the decline of the state, introduced the concept of justice, and also introduced philosophy in the form of three foundations - these are physics, logic and ethics.
Based on the teachings of Plato, Aristotle began to study philosophy. For twenty years he studied and learned the principles of Platonic philosophy at the academy of his teacher. It was thanks to the knowledge gained at the academy that Aristotle came to the creation of an original form of Platonism.
Developing the ideas of his teacher, he tried to put in the first place the formative properties of philosophy. He calls a form or idea a general form, which he characterizes as the essence of a thing, studied by the mind with the support of logic.
The philosophical path of Aristotle was different from the Platonic one, since the first completely broke the connection between philosophy and mythology. In addition, Aristotle paid much attention to detail and detailed analysis. He refuted the words of Plato that the idea cannot be in the thing and beyond at the same time. Aristotle characterizes things by essence or substance. In his opinion, the essence is presented in the form of a concrete thing from matter and form, a physical object and concept, material and ideal parts.
Aristotle is the creator of the Lyceum, serving for the benefit of science. Theofrast is considered the most talented scientist who has stepped out of the walls of Aristotle’s school. He was a peripatetic and continued the philosophical teachings begun by his teacher . “History of plants”, “History of physics” are the creations of the hands of Theophast.