Hellenism

Rome

Hellenism

Kingdom Of Macedon

Hellenistic Empire

Methods of Control

Cultural Splendors

• Greece ~ India + Parts of Africa
• Spread Macedonian and Greek Officials
• Intermarriage
• Centers of Greek Learning
• Violence will not guarantee permanent control

Religious tolerance policy:

Syrian cult of the sun, Cult of Isis,

Religion of Mithras etc.

3 B.C.E ~ 1 B.C.E

Culture

Early Christianity

Political Structure

Conquest,

Imperialism

Reintroduction of

Greek philosophy (Aristotle)

Conquest,

Imperialism

Initially: an underground religion, religious persecution

combined with pagan cults (Bacchus cult etc.)

Lack of originality

Cultural decay

The Gracchus Brothers

Punic Wars

Invasion of Germanic tribes

Economic recession

Military dictatorship

- responsibilities in this world

- the Catholic Church dominance

West Roman Empire

- Matthew, Mark, Luke

- transcendental inquiry

Byzantine Empire

Emperor Constantine makes it a state religion

- for the sake of a stable army

“ God promised victory as long as we carry a cross flag!”

Pragmatism + Universalism

Augustus

The Social Chaos

City of Alexandria

Break of The Empire

New Trend of Philosophy

• Moral Leprosy and Uncertainty
• “How can we live ethically?”
• “What is Ethics?”

• Absence of a leader with stableness
• No principles that could unity the society
• Social unrests
• Decline of Free farmers
• Slavery
• Change In Thoughts

Ptolemy, Seleucid, Antigonid

Epicurianism

&

Stoicism

Cynicism

&

Skepticism

Plotinus

The School of Epicurus

Ataraxia

Studies On Pleasure

What Is Pleasure

Placid Statement of Tranquility

• Pleasure, Good, Happiness
• Reach the state of Tranquility
• Pleasure = Good
• Pleasure is the end and beginning of a blessed life.
• Bodily Pleasure Pleasure of Mind

Jeremy Bentham

• “Pleasures are qualitatively same”
• Calculating Pleasures on standards

John Stuart Mill

• “Different qualities of pleasure”
• How do we know what’s better?
• Preferences of people

3rd Century B.C.E.

(412-323BCE) Diogenes

Antisthenes (445-365BCE)

Main Ideas

100 C.E.

"The Dog"

Simple

No Pleasure

Virtue

• A Socrates gone mad
• Shameless
• Rejected conventions
• Lived in a tub

Cynics were the fashion

• Simplicity
• One can be happy with the simplest of means.
• Indifference to complicated things
• it is silly to feel affection for one's country or to mourn when one's children or friends die

“Emanation”

• Live in virtue
• Live in agreement with nature
• People could gain happiness by training and natural living, rejecting all conventional desires. lead a simple life free from all possessions

• Rise of Imperial Rome
• Philosophers tuned aside from politics
• Were devoted more to individual virtue or salvation
• Cynics could be found begging and preaching in the cities

Nous and Soul

Late Roman Empire (2~3th C)

Cynicism

Influences

Highly Frugal

Active and Passive Pleasure

Dynamic and Static Pleasure

“Don’t have it, you want it”

Inner

External

Nous

Kunikos: "dog-like"

• virtue can be taught
• only the virtuous are noble
• virtue is self-sufficient

Plotinus

Teles

"Because my son or my wife is dead, is that any reason for my neglecting myself, who am still alive...?"

Derivative

204-270 C.E.

1. Traits of ‘Light’

2. All things

retain god’s nature:

not copies/ shadows, but

a lack of perfection

Principle of internal desire

(contemplation of god)

Cognition itself

(ex) pondering on ‘bravery’

External Activity: activity of all that is

intelligible

Internal Activity: contemplation of

forms

Principle of external desire

(cognition, procreation…)

= inherent deficiency

Embodiment of cognition

(ex) Hercules the brave man

Nature (intelligible structure of

the sensory world)

Psychical activities of all embodied

living things

Parmenides

Aristotle: medium to understand Plato better

Plato

Ammonious Saccas : Aristotle’s harmony with Plato

Rebuked: Stoics, Epicureans

presumably for their subjectivity

Porphyry’s second hand records: Enneads (I~VI)

vs

Zeno

Determinism

Beneficent Providence

Arcesilaus

Skeptical Life

• In this world happens for a reason
• Casual Relationship
• Zeno “Nothing happens for a chance”
• Life is an endless cycle.

Pyrrho (360-270BCE)

Main Ideas

• Metaphysics X Materialism: the first existence
• Virtue was still important
• Existence of the Real World

What are things?

How are we related to these things?

What should be our attitude towards them?

(316-241BCE)

The Stoicism

Argued both sides of a question

Turned Plato's Academy to a form of skepticism

Nothing can be known with certainty

Why mention Beauty?

1. Why does ‘Evil’ exist?

2.How does Plotinus reinterpret Plato?

• Stoic Physiology
• The Lawgiver = The Soul of the World
• Individuals = parts of the divine Fire
• Good Life = Harmony with the Nature
• Will to harmonize, agree with nature
• Virtue (the sole good) consists in a will
• Up on to one to be good or not.

How can a person reach the divine?

Relationship with

Christianity

Carneades

Skepticism

• Frustrated with the asserions of the Dogmatists
• Founded a new school in which he taught Fallibilism
• Every object of human knowledge involves uncertainty. It is impossible ever to arrive at the knowledge of truth

Logics, Physiologies, Ethics

• A practice more than a set of doctrines
• Doubt
• Nothing is in itself true or false
• All action is founded on belief, all belief is delusion
• The skeptic is supposed to live without belief
• Actions should be guided by nature, necessity, laws and customs, and kinds of expertise

• The ideal(wise) person is free from desires(opinions), free from unhappiness
• Though people struggle and fight for what they desire, vainly supposing some things better than others, such activity is but a futile struggle about nothing, for all things are equally indifferent, and nothing matters

(214-129BCE)

?

skepsis: inquiry

Gnosticism

The World is evil itself (dualism)

Emancipation through gnosis, abstinence

- echo of mystic religions? (Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism)

Scholasticism

Medieval age universities

Extend knowledge by learning

- Aristotelian influence

(ex) Thomas Aquinas!

“Abstract Beauty”

Greek idea of beauty = harmony, order (canon)

Christian idea of beauty = by revelation, the energy of creation

(light) of god is revealed within nature

Christian ontology

- Great Chain of Being

Intellect Devotion

- Separation from Greek tradition

Motivated by Socratic goal of relieving others of the false pretense to knowledge.

Pursued the goal by arguing for and against philosophical positions

Went as an Athenian ambassador to Rome. There he presented arguments one day in favor of justice and the next he presented arguments against it.

People cannot have conclusive support for their views

How does he differ from Plato?

On what points does he adopt?

Shouldn’t the absolute being, ‘the One’, ensure that

everything is ‘good’?

Is Evil also part of the plan?

What did later Christians think on this matter?

We can't know. (We only know appearances, not inner substances.)

We have opinions of things

We should have complete suspense of judgement

The Divine Will is forgotten as soul enters body

Revelation: Study the mind when it is most god-like

= ignore bodily pleasure

Nous = soul + intellect (Logos?)

intermediate between the One and soul

Aristotelian idea? <-> Saint Augustine

Scholasticism?

Happiness

How Should We Live?

Emotions

Justice, Universal Love

Apatethia

Why Is God Stupid

Enough

To Create Evil?

• Harmonize, Follow the Lawmaker
• Individuals can acknowledge the law
• Emotions: Things To Disregard
• Apatethia: Ascetic Life, Balance
• Later Stoicism: Epiketetos, Marcus Aurelius
• Social Obligations, Universal Justice, Love

• Virtue and Good What comes first.
• Stoic Good “What is Complete according to the nature for a rational being qua rational being”
• Virtue= Only Good
• Chrysippos “Good people are always happy and evil people aren’t”
• Good people’s happiness = God’s