Hellenistic Schools of Philosophy

 

 

Walking Visit to Athens in late 3rd Century BCE

   West of walls of city, road to  Diplon Gate: Academy seeks Truth

                                                                    Garden

    In Agora,   Stoa

    East of walls of city, Lyceum

 

Philosophies attributed back to Founders.

What is the highest good? What leads to Eudaemonia, Happiness?

 

Plato's Academy.  Knowledge is Virtue. Contemplate the True Forms of Justice, Truth, and Beauty.

 

Aristotelian Lyeum      Balanced Life of virtue, pleasure, material goods, friendship; therefore aristocrats are better equipped for attaining the highest good.

Golden Mean-courage between recklessness and cowardice. Sexism in golden mean as

    different standards of virtue for male and female

 

Epicurean Garden   Highest good is Pleasure.  What kind of pleasures are best? Alternative portraits of Epicurus.  

 

Stoic School  Highest good is Virtue. Conform human will to universal natural moral law. Slaves and Aristocrats equally capable of attaining highest good.

 

Middle Academy of Carneades   Academic skeptics  say “I do not know.”  Too hard to attain knowledge of  Plato’s forms. One cannot know universal natural moral law. Carneades teaches probabilism—cast all in doubt, accept likely view tentatively.

 

 

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Academy, founded by Plato, 387 BCE and continues until Justinian closes it in 529 CE 

 

     Republic (Allegory of the Cave on reality of Forms or Ideas;  Tripartite Psyche: reason=Philosopher Kings, spirit = Guardians, appetites= Workers).

 Crito (on obeying unjust law or decree)

      Some scholars interpret Socrates as Platonic

    Academy under Plato

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    Academy Sceptical under Carneades 213-129 BCE (influences Cicero 106-43 BCE)   

       Plato’s Apology (Socrates speech at his trial on role as gadfly), dialectical method

     Other scholars interpret Socrates as Sceptical 

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    Academy Neoplatonistic under Plotinus (205-270 CE)

               influences mysticism of Augustine

 

Lyceum, founded by Aristotle, 335 BCE  

     Politics (6 forms of government; status of women and slaves), Nicomachean Ethics (golden mean); also wrote biological works such as On the Generation of Animals

      Most influential school on Thomas Aquinas and 13th century universities

 

The Garden, founded by Epicurus, ca. 306 BCE   

       Fragments of Epicurus

       Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

     

The Stoa, founded by Zeno, ca. 304 BCE 

        Greek fragments

        Romans Cicero and Seneca and  Roman Jew Josephus

        Most influential school on Romans--Emperor Marcus Aurelius as well as slave Epictetus

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Diogenes Laertius, Greek author, wrote Lives of the Philosophers

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Horatio has Stoic tendencies and Hamlet has Skeptical tendencies.