by Linda Falk

Created on: October 24, 2008

The western ancient philosophy can be divided into three subcategories: pre-socratic, classic and Hellenic. The pre-socratic eras first known philosopher was Thales (624 BCca. 546 BC) and his line of followers ended with Lycophron, sometime between 285 and 247 BC. Not much is known about the actual lines of thinking during this time since all of the texts written during the era have been lost. The only hints, we have today, about their work comes from quotations by later philosophers and historians plus the occasional textual fragment. What is known is that the pre-socratic philosophers rejected the traditional mythological explanations to unsolved phenomena around them. They tried to find more rational explanations to questions like: "From where does everything come", "from what is everything made" and "how can we describe nature mathematically". Others worked on defining problems and paradoxes that became the base for later mathematicians and philosophers. Even if these early philosophers ideas were often rejected by later philosophers they regarded their questions as important.

The classical era began with Socrates (469 BC-399 BC) and ended with Theophrastus (370-288 BC). Many people today agree that the ideas and advances that were made during this period has highly helped shape the western thought up until today. The focus of philosophers of the classical era was on reason and inquiry. This was not a new concept but with new applications and great advances in geometry, logic and natural science the impact of philosophers like Plato (428-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) is evident all through later history.

The Hellinistic era began, following Aristotle (384-322 BC), with the skeptic Pyrrho (365-275 BC) and ending with the neoplatonism between the 3rd century CE and the 6th century CE. During this time a number of schools of thought was founded, such as platonism (founded on the idea of the divine archetypes), peripateticism (with the idea that the perfect life is happiness through virtuous actions), cynicism (founded on the idea of ascetic living as the only virtues way of life) and stoism (that based it's ideas of self-control and fortitude on the cynical school of thought). The last school of the Hellenic philosophy was the neoplatonism, this was actually founded in Rome, unlike the previous that were based in the ancient Greek empire. The neoplatonic school had it's emphasis on a scientific philosophy of religion. It fused together platos ideas with those of the aristotelian and stoic systems.

The ancient philpsophers conserned themselves with a wide range of topics and problems, such as mathematics, science, theology, ethics and astonomy. Many of their ideas are still the basics for how we think and live today.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/g/greekphi.htm

http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_philosophy

http://wiki.an swers.com/Q/What_effect_does_ancient_Greek_philosoph y_have_on_the_modern_world

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