A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

1. Athens. With the overflow of Hellenism to the east and west the active history of Athens had ceased,but she became venerated for what she had been. Greece became hallowed and Athens became the shrine of Greece in the imaginations of men. Although the city was brutally ravished, she exercised a charm over the human mind for eight hundred years after Alexander. Athens remained the intellectual centre through the entire period. It became the conservative university town, where philosophy and rhetoric were taught. It is remarkable how many Oriental philosophers came to Athens to teach, how many youths from the whole world came to be taught. The rhetorical schools, such as that of Isocrates, did much toward making Athens the centre of culture, and they offered for many years the highest practical training to Greek, Roman, and Oriental. Besides the rhetorical were the philosophical or dialectical schools, which debated privately questions of speculative metaphysics. These did not offer public training, but groups of students were taught in the grounds attached to gymnasia. Four principal philosophical schools were thus formed,—the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Porch of the Stoics, and the Gardens of Epicurus. In the first two we have had especial interest in the previous period. All four, and especially the Stoic and Epicurean schools, will engage our attention in this period. They are known in history as “the Schools.” (See [map] for their location in Athens.) There were many minor schools in Athens which later became religious cults. These Schools lost their original interest in speculative inquiry, and in this period devoted themselves to the exposition of the teaching of their respective founders on ethical lines. The University of Athens was built upon the four Schools. Its chairs were endowed by Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century A. D.It grew to have an elaborate organization. It was abolished by Justinian in 529 A. D.

2. Alexandria. There were many other centres of Hellenism and of other learning at this time,—Rhodes, Antioch, Alexandria, Pergamos, Tarsus,—but none of these could be said to rival Athens in the veneration of men. Some were much more active and creative than Athens. Alexandria surpassed Athens and all other cities as the centre of the natural sciences in the Ethical Period and of religions in the Religious Period. Here, too, rather than at Athens, were to be found the real interpreters of Plato and Aristotle. Nothing in ancient times can be compared to the wonders of the museum of Alexandria, which was its university. Scholars of every nation were entertained here at the public expense. A vast botanical garden, a zoölogical collection, an anatomical museum, an astronomical observatory, a library of seven hundred thousand volumes were here. Here Euclid (290 B. C.) wrote his geometry, Eratosthenes pursued his astronomical, geographical, and historical labors, Apollonius wrote his treatise on conic sections; and here were made the observations that led to the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Here Ptolemy and his school formulated the system of astronomy which was authoritative for fifteen hundred years. Here the Christian theologians were educated, and from this city neo-Platonism sprang. Literature and art, history, philology and criticism flourished. The Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. All religions were welcomed. Buddhist, Jew, Greek, and Egyptian mingled, and comparative theology rose to be a science.

General Characteristics of the Ethical Period (322 B. C.–1 A. D.)—On the death of Aristotle the hithertocompact body of Greek thought disintegrated into its several elements. Theoretical and practical knowledge, which had been so successfully fused in the great systems of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, became separated. The whole tendency of the time was toward segregation.

1. The Abandonment of Metaphysical Speculation. The theoretical side of philosophy, which had been so successfully completed by the great Greek masters, now became subordinated and almost completely lost to view. Metaphysical speculation was neglected except as it threw light on the practical sciences—on ethics and the natural sciences. Knowledge was no longer loved for its own sake.

2. The Growth of Science. Since theory was regarded as completed, attention was naturally turned upon the details of erudition and the specializing of science. The natural sciences survived the systems of philosophy because of their usefulness. There was great interest in investigations in mathematics, natural science, grammar, philology, literary history and general history—and all with very rich results. It was the time of commentaries, criticism, collaboration of the work of the past and completion of the special work begun by the past. By far the greater number of the so-called “philosophers” of this time are connected with special science and literature, and not with metaphysics.

It was in the Greek Islands and Egypt (Alexandria) that this advance was made. Nevertheless, it must be said that the advance in science was a good deal restricted. The empirical sciences are dependent on observation and experiment, and these opportunities were wanting at this time. Good progress was, however, madein mathematics and the sciences dependent on reasoning. Reasoning alone is incapable of advancing a science like physics, for physics depends on investigation. But even the prevalent skepticism of the time could not doubt the truths of mathematics.

3. Ethics became the Central Interest. For the first time in the history of European thought ethics was no longer a part of politics. In the time of the autonomous Greek states ethics and politics were two sides of the same question both in theory and practice. Ethics and politics were not disjoined even by the Sophists, who nevertheless paved the way for the divorce of the two. Now for the first time ethical questions have become such that the individual must disregard the iron-bound political situation and answer them entirely with reference to himself. The decadent Greek state was no longer a moral entity in the eyes of the people, nor could the concentration of government in Rome raise the state to moral dignity. Moreover, life had become cosmopolitan. The nations were commingling. Ethics must meet the needs of men as human beings, and not as Athenians, Spartans, or Romans. Vices had become cosmopolitan and virtues must needs be cosmopolitan also. But cosmopolitanism is in the last analysis only individualism. The man who conceives his duty so large that it embraces the whole world is usually cold to any special interests except his own. The Roman dictators and afterwards the emperor were the personification of this cosmopolitan individualism which the subjects imitated so far as they could.

Thus the public life was in danger of being swamped by private interests and mere enjoyment, by gain and the struggle for existence. The old belief in the gods,the vigorous political activity for great ends, the pleasure in free scientific inquiry had disappeared. The only refuge for the reflective mind was within itself and the study of its own moral problems. Yet for this a definite science of ethics was necessary, if the individual was to be systematically independent of external things. Plato and Aristotle had prepared the way for such retirement, and the tendency toward ethical separation from the world of political events was an aspect of the cosmopolitanism of the time. Ethical individuality and cosmopolitanism go together. The development of the inner life belongs to those individuals who dwell together in spiritual community. The same cosmopolitanism was sought by the skeptics of the period through the abandonment of all knowledge.

The Schools. The beginning of the Ethical Period is marked by the rise of the Schools into prominence, the end of that period by the fusion of the Schools with one another through either eclecticism or skepticism. At the beginning of the period each School had its distinctive doctrine and was in open controversy with the others; at the end their doctrines were much alike. The Epicurean School was an exception, for it always remained isolated from the other Schools. While each School had a host of notable representatives, it would be difficult to find a creative thinker among them.