A Critical History of Greek Philosophy
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 1479145785
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Ancient Greek philosophers have played a pivotal role in the shaping of the western philosophical tradition. This book surveys the seminal works and ideas of key figures in the Ancient Greek philosophical tradition from the Presocratics to the Neoplatonists. It highlights their main philosophical concerns and the evolution in their thought from the sixth century BCE to the sixth century CE.
The main idea of pantheism is that everything is God. The clod of earth is divine because it is a manifestation of Deity. Now this idea is all very well, and is in fact essential to philosophy. We find it in Aristotle himself, since the entire world is, for him, the actualization of reason, and reason is God. But this is also a very dangerous idea, if not supplemented by a rationally grounded scale of values. No doubt everything is, in a sense, God. But if we leave it at this, it would follow
him which makes us laugh. Tragedy brings about a purification of the soul through pity and terror. Mean, sordid, or dreadful things do not ennoble us. But the representation of truly great and tragic sufferings arouses in the beholder pity and terror which purge his spirit, and render it serene and pure. This is the thought of a great and penetrating critic. The theory of certain scholars, based upon etymological grounds, that it means that the soul is purged, not through, but of pity and
personality of the master constituted the supreme intellectual impulse of his life, and the inspiration of his entire thought. And the devotion and esteem which he felt for Socrates, so far from waning as the years went by, seem, on the contrary, to have grown continually stronger. For it is precisely in the latest dialogues of his long life that some of the most charming and admiring portraits of Socrates are to be found. Socrates became for him the pattern and exemplar of the true philosopher.
a comparatively untrue way. Philosophy, therefore, is the higher. But while any true philosophy of art must recognize this, it must not interpret it to mean that art is to be made merely a means towards philosophy. It must somehow find room for the recognition of the truth that art is an end in itself, and it is in this that Plato fails. Aristotle, who had no spark of artistic capacity in his composition, whose own writings are the severest of scientific treatises, did far greater justice to art
from another by having different qualities. And as matter has no qualities, it has no difference. And this in itself shows that the Aristotelian notion of matter is not the same as our notion of physical substance. For, according {279} to our modern usage, one kind of matter differs from another, as brass from iron. But this is a difference of quality, and for Aristotle all quality is part of the form. So in his view the difference of brass from iron is not a difference of matter, but a