by Julia Annas
Ancient philosophy is so varied that there is no good detailed history of the entire tradition by a single author. A very brief introduction is T. Irwin, Classical Thought (Oxford, 1989). Also good is C. Gill, Greek Thought (Oxford, 1995). W. K. C. Guthrie’s six-volume History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1962–1981), ends at Aristotle and is uncritical, but is a good guide to sources. Histories of ancient philosophy have for some time taken the form of studies of particular philosophies or issues, rather than a single narrative of the whole tradition. Many can be found in the bibliographies of the works mentioned below.
A introductory reader, with texts arranged round issues rather than chronologically, is Julia Annas, Ancient Voices of Philosophy (Oxford, 2000). A more comprehensive reader for advanced students, also arranged topically, is Terence Irwin, Classical Philosophy (Oxford, 1999).
Chapters on philosophy at various periods can be found in the Oxford History of the Classical World (Oxford, 1986). Excellent reference works are the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition (Oxford, 1996), and The Encyclopaedia of Classical Philosophy, ed. Don Zeyl (Westport, 1996).
The forthcoming multi-author Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy and Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought are good guides to the areas they cover.
An extremely useful series is the Cambridge Companions to Ancient Thought, edited by Stephen Everson. These are Epistemology (1990), Psychology (1991), Language (1994) and Ethics (1998).
Notes
The Notes mention only authors and topics not covered in the Further Reading.
Chapter 1
Euripides’ play is available in many modern translations. The Epictetus passages are Discourses I 28 and II 17; many modern translations are available. Plato’s account of the divided soul can be found in Books 4 and 9 of the Republic, and in Phaedrus, especially 244–257; also in parts of Timaeus. Galen’s comments are from his On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato III 3; there is a translation in the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, the collected texts and translations of Greek medical writers. For further explorations of this theme in ancient philosophy see A. Price, Mental Conflict (Oxford, 1995), and C. Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy and Philosophy (Oxford, 1996), especially Chapters 3 and 4.
Chapter 2
The case for seeing the Republic as primarily an ethical work, as in the ancient tradition, is developed in Chapter 4 of Julia Annas, Platonic Ethics Old and New (Ithaca, 1999).
There has been extensive work on the impact of ancient Greek culture on the Victorians, but there is little good on ancient philosophy. Of the available books, the best is Frank Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1981); see also his article, ‘Why the Greeks and not the Romans in Victorian Britain?’ in G. W. Clarke (ed.), Rediscovering Hellenism: the Hellenic inheritance and the English imagination (Cambridge, 1989).
On the role of the Utilitarians see Kyriakos Demetriou, ‘The Development of Platonic Studies in Britain and the Role of the Utilitarians’, Utilitas 8 (1996). Two excellent articles are John Glucker, ‘Plato in England: the Nineteenth Century and After’, in H. Funke (ed.), Utopie und Tradition: Platons Lehre vom Staat in der Moderne (Würzburg, 1987) and ‘The Two Platos of Victorian Britain’ in K. Algra et al. (eds.), Polyhistor (Leiden, 1996).
I have considered England; for the early American tradition see Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics (Cambridge MA, 1994). The European tradition differs between countries and is highly complex: see the papers in Ada Neschke-Hentschke (ed.), Images de Platon et Lectures de ses Oeuvres: les interprétations de Platon à travers les siècles (Louvain-Paris, 1997.
Grote’s Plato and John Stuart Mill’s long review of it are still richly rewarding; see Mill’s Collected Works, vol XI (Toronto, 1978).
The quotations from Popper are from The Open Society and its Enemies, vol 1 (London, 1945). John Wild’s book was published in Chicago in 1953. Whitehead’s very famous remark is from Process and Reality (Cambridge, 1929), Part 2, chapter 1, section 1. The History of the University of Oxford is edited by T. Aston, and the quotation is from p. 529 of vol. 5, The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1986).
Chapter 3
Xenophon’s story comes from his Memorabilia (Reminiscences of Socrates), Book II, 1. Evidence for the sophists’ ideas can be found in R. McKirahan’s Philosophy before Socrates (Indianapolis, 1994). Ancient eudaimonist theories are set out and discussed in Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford, 1993). Aristotle’s major theoretical discussion of happiness is in Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics. The views of Epicurus and the Stoics on happiness are best studied in books 1–4 of Cicero’s On Moral Ends (De Finibus); see the English translation by Raphael Woolf (Cambridge, 2001).
Chapter 4
On Socrates see Christopher Taylor’s Socrates (Oxford. 1998), an excellent short introduction. Socrates’ own account of the oracle is in the Apology. Socrates served as the symbolic figure of the ideal philosopher for most ancient schools; the Epicureans are the main exception; for them the ideal philosopher should be as serious and unironic as Epicurus. Plato’s most elaborate account of knowledge is in the central books of the Republic; his attacks on relativism, and indications of his concern with empirical knowledge, are in the Theaetetus. Aristotle’s discussion of the structure of a science is in the difficult Posterior Analytics; see also the opening chapters of Books 1 and 2 of the Metaphysics for his account of the development of knowledge, and Parts of Animals, Book 1, chapter 5, for a defence of studying widely differing kinds of subject-matter. An indispensable introduction to the wide range of ancient theories of knowledge is S. Everson (ed.), Epistemology (Cambridge, 1990).
Chapter 5
For Aristotle’s logic see Robin Smith’s translation of the Prior Analytics (Indianapolis, 1989) and his chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes (Cambridge, 1995). There is unfortunately no good English translation of the sources for Stoic logic; see the relevant sections of Inwood and Gerson, and of Long and Sedley. The sources are collected in Karlheinz Hülser, Die Fragmente der Dialektiker der Stoiker, 4 vols (Stuttgart, 1987).
On Hellenistic science see G. Lloyd, Greek Science after Aristotle (London, 1973). For clear introductions to Aristotle’s metaphysics and philosophy of science see the chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. There is little sustained philosophical discussion of Stoic and Epicurean metaphysics; there is, by contrast, a huge literature on Plato’s ‘theory of Forms’: see the Cambridge Companion to Plato.
Chapter 6
The Further Reading gives suggestions for following up the history of ancient philosophy. The quotation from Martin West is from ‘Early Greek Philosophy’ in The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, (Oxford, 1986). The comment that Plato is just Moses in Greek is fragment 8 of Numenius, a second-century Platonist who tended to see all Great Ideas in different cultures as being the same. Eusebius, in X 1 and XI 1 of his Preparation for the Gospel, claims more strongly that Greek philosophy steals all its ideas from the Jewish scriptures. The contrasting quotations about the nature of the beginnings of Greek philosophy are from John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London, 1892) pp. v, 13, 28, and from Francis Cornford, Principium Sapientiae: a study of the origins of Greek philosophical thought (Cambridge, 1952) pp. 154–155.
Index
A
Academy, the xiv, 5, 75, 107
style of argument 57, 71–2, 102–3
ad hominem argument 62–3, 71, 102
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae xiii, 99, 113
Anaximander xii, 96, 97, 113
Anaximenes xii, 96, 113
ancient Greece see Greek city-states
animals 9–10, 80, 83–6, 88–9
anthropocentrism 86, 89, 98
Antiochus 106, 113
anti-schools 107–8
Antisthenes xiii, 57, 113
appearances 38, 69–70, 73–4, 78
Arcesilaus 113
Archimed
es 80, 113
arete 47
Arete 44
argument (reasoned) 37, 76, 82, 104–5
as a means to knowledge 27, 62–3, 72, 78, 100–3
criticized 44, 108, 110–11
in ancient tradition xi, 11, 17, 19, 96
Aristippus xiii, 36, 44, 57, 113
ethics 43, 46
Aristippus the Younger 44
Aristotelian syllogisms 77
Aristotle xiii, 22, 26, 92, 113
and Middle Ages 90–1, 93
ethics 41–2, 49–52, 53, 118
influence of 15–16, 19, 75, 104–5
logic and epistemology 65–7, 76–8, 119
metaphysics 80–1, 82, 85, 96
astronomy 80
Athens 19, 24, 58, 107–8
Atlantis 25
Atomism xiii, 44, 99
Atticus 52
Augustine xiv, 113
authority xii, 44, 91, 93
axiomata 78
B
beautiful, the 82
Berkeley, George (Bishop) 93
bogus philosopher 104, 112
Buddhism 68, 111
Burnet, John 98, 120
Byzantine Empire 19, 108
C
canon 19, 35, 110
Carneades 113
causes (Aristotelian) 81, 84, 85
certainty 64
Chaerephon 56
change 80, 83, 98–9
character 47–8
charioteer 9, 10
children 26, 28
choice 4–5, 41, 52
Choice of Heracles 36, 38–9, 42, 46–7, 53
Christianity xiv, 19, 94, 109–10
ancient philosophy in 26, 88, 90–1
Chryssipus of Soli 3, 4, 113
Cicero 113, 119
Colotes 60
common good 24, 25, 28
common sense 57, 66, 73, 97–9
ethics 42, 49
psychology 3, 5, 9–10
complexity 88
conservativism 53
context (historical) 33–4, 91, 93, 110
of readers 18, 20–2, 33–4
contingency see random events
Cooper, Anthony Ashley 38
Cornford, Francis 98, 120
cosmology 81, 82, 85, 87–90, 95–6
craft see expertise
creator 87, 88
culture 29, 53, 56, 65
ancient 2, 89, 103–5, 112
curriculum 75–6, 79
Cynicism xiii, xiv, 57, 107–8
Cyrenaics 43, 44
D
Dante 91
Darwin, Charles 86, 88
deductions (Aristotelian) 76–7
Delacroix, Eugene 12, 13
deliberate action 1, 7, 10, 12
de Matteis, Paolo 38
democracy 24, 28, 29
Democritus of Abdera xiii, 44, 99, 101, 113
design see teleological explanation
desire 6, 8–9, 42
dialectic 102–3
dialogue form 5, 22, 102, 104
Diogenes of Sinope 107, 113
disagreement 11, 16–17, 42, 72, 101
and relativism 33, 72
discussion see argument
dogmatism 68, 70, 71
E
Eastern philosophy 68, 110–11
eclectic schools 105–6
economic activity 24, 28, 80
education 25, 28–9, 103–4, 112
Egypt 20, 94, 95, 107
elitism 24, 29, 53
emotions xi, 1–9, 10–11, 16, 48
Empedocles of Acragas xiii, 99, 113
empiricism 73, 74, 111
England 26, 27–9
Epictetus 3, 51, 113, 117
on inner conflict 10, 45
Epicureans 19, 74, 81, 103, 119
Epicurus of Athens xii, 20, 22, 44, 113
epistemology and physics 73–4, 78, 89–90
in philosophical schools 101, 103–5
view of happiness 45–6, 48, 118–19
epistemology 55, 62, 76, 119
ancient approach distinctive 56–8, 71–2, 74
ethics 40–1, 47–8, 50, 53
hedonistic 43, 45
in Republic 29, 32
Euclid 63, 64, 80
eudaimonism 41, 46, 53, 118
Euripides see Medea
Eusebius 95, 120
excellence 47
experience 78, 82, 98–9
as a source of knowledge 64–5, 73–4, 87
pleasure as an 42–3
expertise 51, 56, 58–9
as a model for knowledge 63–5, 67, 72
explanation 2, 11–12, 15–16, 96–9
and knowledge 59, 62
in Aristotle 66–7, 81, 3, 84–6
external goods 49–50, 51–2
F
family life 25, 26
fascism 29, 31, 32
final causes 84, 85
first principles 63–4, 66–7
formal argument 65, 77, 78
Forms, the 25, 65, 81, 82, 119
Frege, Gottlob 79
function 83, 84, 85, 86
G
Galen 10–11, 12, 117
Garden, the 44, 105
geometry 63, 65–6
see also mathematics
giving an account 62–3, 67–8, 74, 100
see also explanation
God 87, 88, 90, 98
gods 44, 57, 89, 97
Great Thinkers 17, 110
Greek city-states 19, 28, 117
Grote, George 27
Guardians 24, 25, 28–9, 32
gymnosophists 68
H
happiness 38, 40–2, 104, 112
and virtue 25, 49–50, 51–2
hedonist accounts of 36, 43, 45–6, 81
hedonism 43, 44, 46, 57
Hellenistic philosophy xiii–xiv, 5, 79–80, 119
texts lost 20, 22
Heraclitus of Ephesus xii-xiii, 97, 113
Herculaneum 20
Heron of Alexandria 80
Hippias of Elis xiii, 37
I
ideal society 24, 28–30, 31
as a model for the soul 25, 32
Idealism (British) 27, 29
India 68, 111
induction 74, 78
inner conflict 6–10
interpretation xii, 12, 18, 20
challenges of 22–3, 27, 33–4, 93
investigation 27, 63, 65, 98
empirical 79–80, 84, 93, 96
sceptical 67–9, 70
Islamic tradition 26
J
Jowett, Benjamin 27–9, 30
Judaism 90, 94, 95, 109
justification 55, 64, 74
Justinian (Emperor) 108–9
K
Kant, Immanuel 51, 52, 79
knowledge 15–16, 63–5, 93, 95
conditions on 43, 55–9, 69–72, 78
empirical 66–7, 79–81, 83–4, 119
see also explanation
L
Laws 26, 32
Leucippus xiii, 99
literature 25, 102–3
living by appearances 69–70
logic 76–9
logon didonai 62
logos 62, 97
Ludan of Samosata 111
M
Madhyamika school 111
Marcus Aurelius 3, 51
materialism 19, 111
mathematics 63–4, 66, 80, 82
matter 80, 84–5, 87, 96
Medea 1, 12–14
explanations of 2–4, 7, 10
medicine 80
Meletus 58
meritocracy 28, 32
metaphysics 29, 80–1, 119
see also cosmology
Middle Ages 19, 26, 77, 79
and Aristotle 90–1, 93
middle term 77
Mill, John Stuart 27, 40, 60, 83, 118
misfortune 25, 50, 51
modal logic 77
Mos
es 95, 120
mysticism xii, 19, 110, 111
N
Nagarjuna 111
nature 81, 83–4, 89–90, 108
necessity 76
Neoplatonism xiv, 27, 107
nineteenth century 26, 28–30, 118
non-moral value 51
Numenius of Apamea 95, 120
O
observation 66, 74, 87
see also experience
oracle at Delphi 56, 58, 119
originality 95, 106, 120
P
paradoxes xiii, 3, 98–9
Parmenides xiii, 98, 113
Parmenides 82
passion see emotions
Phaedo 82
Phaedrus 9
Philodemus 21, 74
philosopher-kings 24, 25, 30
philosophia 94
philosophos 58
philosophy xi, 11, 24, 84, 91
a distinct way of thinking 37, 64–5, 102–3
and disagreement 11, 33, 94
as a subject 24, 101, 75, 104–6, 112
history of xii-xiv, 5, 22, 100, 108–11
in Graeco-Roman world 2, 56, 94–8, 120
transmission of texts 18–20, 22–3, 27, 33–4
phronesis 48
physics 79–81, 84
Plato xiii–xiv, 22, 37, 57, 110, 113
as a systematic thinker 75–6, 101–4
cosmology 81, 82, 87
epistemology 50, 63–5, 72, 119
political thought 26, 32
psychology 5, 6–11, 15, 117
Republic 24, 25, 27–9, 33–4
Platonism 5, 102, 108
pleasure 38, 40–3, 45–6, 48
Plotinus xiv, 107, 113
Popper, Karl 30, 31, 118
popular religion 88
Posterior Analytics 65, 66
post-modernism 33