by Julia Annas
Once we get schools of philosophy – the Stoic and Epicurean schools getting established on similar principles – we can see the activity of ancient philosophers as astonishingly like the activity of modern philosophers. Although Plato, who was rich, refused to take fees for teaching, payment by pupils soon became a necessary feature of the system. Young men (and occasionally young women) would join a philosophical school as part of their education. (Or they might have a trained philosopher as a tutor at home.) They were educated to understand and appreciate important philosophical ideas, many of which were already part of their cultural heritage. In the schools, they were also trained in argument, acquiring abilities which had more practical application when they left, in politics and law, for example. Those most gifted at philosophy, and committed to it, would stay and become part of the school’s permanent philosophical community. This does not sound so unlike the picture of philosophy teaching in universities today. (Or rather, in the less rigid university system that existed before degrees and grades came to be important as credentials.) This idea of philosophy as a kind of university education continued on until late in the ancient world, throughout vast political and cultural changes.
The similarity extends to many of the specific ways in which philosophy was carried on. We find philosophers writing treatises and essays, and also books of arguments against other philosophers’ treatises and essays. We find commentaries on texts of past philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle. We find controversies within a school, for example as to which of two contemporaries has got Epicurus right. We also find extensive arguments against other contemporary schools. In their style and purpose many of these works are quite like modern philosophy journal articles and books. Indeed, modern philosophy students can find it easier to relate to works of this kind, the products of philosophical professionalism, than to Plato’s dialogues, which are in form unlike any modern kind of philosophical writing.
Philosophy after Plato is, then, the history of philosophical schools (with two exceptions, to which we shall return). There is an interesting shadow side to it – a running complaint till the end of antiquity about bogus philosophers, who use philosophy’s prestige to further their private agenda, whether money or reputation. The bogus philosopher, high-minded in class and money-grubbing outside it, is a stock figure of ridicule. This brings home the fact that in the ancient world philosophy was taken to offer people not only intellectual challenge but also practical help in living a better life and finding answers to the search for the meaning of life. Philosophers were expected not only to convey intellectual skills but also to provide in their own persons examples of the search for living well. Nowadays we are more likely to seek the latter in religion, or in less intellectual pursuits. Ancient philosophers did not offer just one subject among many, but a subject that was uniquely close to the hearts of their audience.
A diverse range of schools
Although Aristotle was Plato’s pupil, in some ways his is the least representative of the schools which formed after the Academy. This is because of Aristotle’s own huge range of interests. He studied, furthered or invented a wide range of subjects, from literary theory to logic, from economics to biology. The works he left behind are vast, some of them theoretical treatises and others more like records of research. In this respect Aristotle’s school differs from the philosophical schools that come after him, which had narrower interests.
The Stoics’ school began, as the earlier ones had, in a public place; Epicurus was unusual in holding his school in a private residence, the Garden. And Epicurus was unusual also in requiring his views to be held deferentially and memorized. But before very long the Epicurean school and its offshoots in other places were doing very similar things to the Stoics and other schools – arguing and counter-arguing, commenting on founding texts, generally continuing the philosophical activity of the founders. Every generation of students needs to learn afresh and understand philosophical positions for themselves, and hence even philosophical schools dedicated to teaching the thought of the founders will develop philosophically in the give and take of philosophical interpretation. Moreover, with changing political and social circumstances new issues had to be dealt with and new challenges met. When the Romans became rulers of the Mediterranean, for example, Greek intellectuals started educating unintellectual Romans.
From the first century BC we find that the continuing debates between the schools give rise to some schools which are hybrids, or ‘eclectic’ – combining positions from different schools to form a new stance. One who was influential in his day was Antiochus, who thought that the core views of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics on a number of issues were compatible, and that the differences had been overplayed. Histories of philosophy tend to rank these schools lower in interest than those founded by more original thinkers. But we can sympathize with their position. Once philosophy has formed a teaching tradition, it can well seem foolish to seek originality at all costs, and sounder to argue from and build on what are already going positions. This is what most philosophers do today, so we should pause before turning up our noses at it.
8. Philosophers discussing and arguing together
In the late Roman republic and early Empire, ancient philosophy arguably had a heyday. There were no more great original thinkers, but a variety of philosophical schools flourished and interacted. A serious student would have widespread opportunities to learn and think about the ideas of a variety of philosophical schools spread throughout the Roman Empire. (By this time Athens had lost its previous dominance as a centre of philosophy, which it had held from Plato to the first century BC, and cities like Alexandria and Rome itself were as important intellectually.) Philosophy was familiar and accessible to educated people throughout the Empire. It has seldom been the case that so rich and varied an intellectual tradition has been so culturally widespread and so important to many people. Until the end of antiquity the only significant new school was a third century AD reformulation of an old one – Plotinus’ rethinking of Plato’s ideas in a new and original synthesis, giving rise to the school we call Neoplatonism, one which flourished in later centuries.
In the mix were two philosophical movements mentioned earlier, which were anti-schools rather than schools.
The first of these movements is Pyrrhonian scepticism, which, as we saw in Chapter 4, was a breakaway movement from the scepticism of Plato’s Academy. Pyrrhonism is perfectly viable as a methodology, and as such can be systematized, rather as we find it in our main source, Sextus Empiricus. But in its own terms it is self-defeating for a Pyrrhonist to set up as an authority on anything, even the nature of Pyrrhonism. For this would convict him of firm enough commitment to some beliefs to threaten sceptical tranquillity. Hence Pyrrhonism could never coherently be an institutionalized school. This is one reason why we know so little about its spread and influence.
The second ‘anti-school’ movement is the Cynics, deriving from the fourth-century figure Diogenes of Sinope, who set a model which was followed rather than setting up any formal institution. Cynics took their name from dogs (the ancient symbol of shamelessness), went in for street preaching and lived in ways which deliberately flouted social norms, the aim being to ‘return to nature’ by rejecting social convention. Some Cynics did teach informally, but as a philosophy it remained a way of life, attracting moralizing drop-outs. It could never be a philosophical school, since Cynics rejected reasoned argument, taking it that there is really nothing difficult to understand and that the answers to life’s problems are simple.
The final break
The end of ancient philosophy as a living tradition is hard to date, especially since the end of antiquity – the culture of Greece and Rome – is also not something to which a neat date can be given. When the Roman Empire split, the Eastern, Byzantine empire retained political and cultural unity, and philosophy remained there as an academic study, though in partial and restricted form. In the Western part all such unity crumbled, an
d philosophical texts were (some of them) preserved in monasteries by people who were no longer part of the tradition they contained. Even knowledge of Greek, the language of the major texts, was lost. When philosophy developed again, some of the tradition, mainly Aristotle and some Plato, became part of it, but within a different, theological framework. Not until the Renaissance did it become possible to study the ancient texts independently, and study of Aristotle still has to contend with the after-effects of his medieval transformation.
There is therefore something to be said for dating the end of ancient philosophy, as a living tradition, in AD 529, the year in which the Christian Emperor Justinian closed the schools of pagan philosophy in Athens. Like many famous historical moments, this one crumbles somewhat under historical investigation. Athens had long ceased to be the major philosophical centre; it is not clear that any philosophical schools were functioning there other than the Platonists; Justinian did not actually close the schools, but at most seems to have forbidden pagans to teach, and the decree does not seem to have been effective. Pagan philosophy was in trouble before 529, and trickled on to some extent afterwards.
Yet there is a rightness to the idea that it was intolerance by a Christian Emperor that marked the tradition’s end. Jews and Christians in the ancient world had always faced a choice between rejecting philosophy entirely in favour of faith and loyalty to scripture, and trying to incorporate at least some philosophy into their own traditions. They did this by claiming that philosophy was a development in distorted form of some of the deep truths in Judaism and Christianity. Such an approach, however, is not only selective but curtails drastically the space for reason and argument, always so central to the activity of ancient philosophers. Jewish and Christian writers in the ancient world have by and large served as transmitters to us of (parts of) the philosophical tradition, rather than as
9. On a Christian tomb, a philosopher sits next to a praying figure
participants in it. With Christianity a single intellectual view of the world was imposed, and philosophy was mostly unable to continue its task of questioning and reasoning about our beliefs.
Ancient philosophy and philosophy today
Since its recovery, ancient philosophy has played a mostly respected and occasionally influential role in the development of philosophy in Western European countries, which have seen themselves as the inheritors of the culture of the ancient Greek and Roman world, and also in philosophy in countries culturally influenced by Western Europe, such as North America and Australia. Different parts of the hugely varied ancient tradition have been found compelling at different times. The Stoics were influential in the eighteenth century, relegated to specialist studies in the nineteenth; exactly the opposite happened to Plato. At times the idea of Great Thinkers has led to a view of ‘the canon’ as a parade of Great Thoughts, to the neglect of their argumentative context. The tradition has been capacious enough to give rise to an variety of differing engagements – all, for the last three centuries at least, appreciating the importance to it of reasoned argument for philosophical understanding.
There has, however, been one unfortunate result of this stress on reason and argument. It has sometimes given rise, in the later ancient world and also in the twentieth century, to a simplifying tendency to see other philosophical traditions, particularly ‘Eastern’ ones, as radically different and ‘other’, characterized by lessened emphasis on argument and a greater stress on mysticism and a search for wisdom by non-rational means. This has sometimes led to the view that they are more primitive than the ‘Western’ tradition, because it honours reason. But it has also led, by reaction, to the view that they are more profound than the ‘Western’ tradition, which prizes what gets seen as superficial squabbling. In the late twentieth century especially, sweeping attacks have been made on reason and its place in the ‘Western’ tradition, and ancient philosophy has often been the subject of (usually ill-informed) attacks.
Both tendencies have been unfortunate; they lead to crude contrasts which are unhelpful and in large part untrue. This holds particularly with respect to the philosophy of India. Ancient India produced a large and wide philosophical tradition, encompassing materialism, scepticism and empiricism as well as schools tending to mysticism and forms of idealism – a tradition which is comparable to ancient Greek and Roman philosophy in extent and variety. Yet both Westerners and many Indians have (unless they are specialists) emphasized only those schools that form a contrast to Western philosophy. Students often think that ‘Eastern’ philosophy, including Indian, will be all similar and nothing like the ‘Western’ tradition. We have yet to reach a completely post-colonial view, which can get beyond the false contrast of ‘Western rationalism’ and ‘Eastern mysticism’ and recognizes the strong affinities between some of the Indian traditions and ancient Greek and Roman traditions more familiar in the West. (It has been suggested, for example, that there are affinities between Pyrrhonian scepticism and the Madhyamika school of North Indian Buddhism, whose founding figure is Nagarjuna, who was perhaps contemporary with Sextus Empiricus. In view of the story that Pyrrho earlier visited North India with Alexander’s army, there is even the possibility of historical influences on both sides, particularly given the continued Greek presence in Northern India.)
I shall close with a view of ancient philosophy by an intellectual insider with an outsider’s perspective – Lucian of Samosata, a second century AD satirical author. In his essay The Runaways he has Philosophy remind her father, the chief god Zeus, of the reason he sent her down to earth in the first place, namely so that humans, hitherto ignorantly and violently mismanaging their lives, would do better. First, she continues, she went to India, to the Brahmans, then to Ethiopia, Egypt and Babylon, and then to Thrace, the wild north. Finally she went to the Greeks, which she had thought would be the easy part, given their intellectual reputation. But it turned out to be harder than she expected. After a promising start, the Sophists mixed philosophy up with – well, sophistry. And then the Athenians executed Socrates! Philosophy goes on to complain about the less than wonderful time she went on to have in Greece. Most people respect her, she says, though without much understanding her, and there are genuine philosophers who love and strive for truth, and this makes it all worth while. But there are also bogus philosophers who aim only at money and status, and bring her into discredit, and they drive her crazy. She needs a bit of divine help to improve the situation.
In the ancient Greco-Roman world philosophy, for better and worse, became a subject, with its own practices, texts and institutions. It was a more urgent matter to its practitioners and its audience than it is for us now. Philosophy was seen as a natural extension of an ordinary good education, given the importance of living well, and the importance of philosophy for doing that. For us there is more of a tension than there was for the ancients between the idea that philosophy enables us to understand ourselves and the world, and the idea that it is a rigorous and intellectually demanding matter. The important role in life played by philosophy in the ancient world has been taken over by a variety of other interests and pursuits. But philosophy still matters, and in many ways we can still relate our concerns to those of the ancients, and find that our study of them leads naturally to direct philosophical engagement. We still have Philosophy’s problem and, lacking divine help, we still have to do the work, search for the truth, and expose the bogus for ourselves.
Timeline
Timeline
Further Reading
The fragments of the Presocratics can be read in Jonathan Barnes’s Early Greek Philosophy (London, 1987) and in Richard McKirahan’s Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis, 1994). The McKirahan collection contains commentary, and an excellent philosophical introduction is Jonathan Barnes’s The Presocratic Philosophers (London, 1979).
Plato’s dialogues can be best read in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. Cooper and D. Hutchinson (Indianapolis, 1998). There are also good translations of single dialogue
s, with commentaries and introductions, published by Oxford (in the World’s Classics series), Penguin, and Hackett. A good introduction is The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge, 1992).
The standard translation of Aristotle is the revised Oxford translation, to be found in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, 1984). Aristotle: Selections, ed. T. Irwin and G. Fine (Indianapolis, 1995) is a good introductory selection. A good introduction is The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge, 1995).
Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics can be read in B. Inwood and L. Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy (Indianapolis, 1997), and also in A. A. Long and D. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987). There is unfortunately no good English collection of the fragments of the Cyrenaics. For Pyrrhonism see Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism, trans. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge, 1994), and also The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1985) by the same authors. A good introduction is R. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (London, 1996). For Middle Platonism see John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca, 1997), and for Neoplatonism see R. T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (London, 1972).