Ancient Philosophy

Plato Student of Socrates and the most influential philosopher of antiquity, Plato was born into an aristocratic Athenian family around 428 BCE. His master’s execution in 399 BCE marked him deeply and turned him away from the political career his lineage had reserved for him. After years of travel — which tradition links to contact with the Pythagoreans of southern Italy and to his failed attempts to educate the tyrants of Syracuse — he founded the Academy around 387 BCE, the first institution of higher learning in the West, which would endure for more than nine centuries. His work has reached us almost intact, almost entirely in the form of dialogues, with Socrates as the central character. ...

Porphyry Porphyry of Tyre — in Greek Porphýrios, a name adopted in place of his Semitic birth name Malchus (“king” in Phoenician) — was born around 234 CE in Tyre (on the coast of present-day Lebanon) and died around 305 CE. A caveat: he should not be confused with Porphyry of Gaza (5th century), a Christian bishop with the same name, nor with other late-antique figures bearing it. After studying in Athens with Cassius Longinus, in around 263 CE he joined the circle of Plotinus in Rome, of whom he became the most celebrated pupil. He served as editor of the Enneads (posthumously published c. 301), arranging the master’s writings into six groups of nine treatises and prefacing them with the Vita Plotini (Life of Plotinus) — a fundamental biographical source on Plotinus. His influence, however, reaches far beyond his editorial work: through the Isagoge, Porphyry shaped the entry of Aristotelian logic into the medieval world. ...

Proclus Proclus Lycaeus Diadochus (in Greek Próklos Lýkios Diádokhos, “Proclus the Lycian, the Successor”) was born in Constantinople in 412 CE and died in Athens on 17 April 485 CE. A caveat: he should not be confused with Proclus Procopius (an orator of the 5th century) or other homonymous late-antique figures. The son of a wealthy family from Lycia (in the south of present-day Turkey), he was educated in Alexandria and soon moved to Athens, where he studied with Plutarch of Athens (not to be confused with the essayist of Chaeronea) and with Syrianus, whom he succeeded as head of the Academy — hence his title Diádokhos, “the Successor.” He was the last great systematizer of pagan Neoplatonism before the closure of the Academy by Emperor Justinian in 529 CE. His work organizes the Plotinian inheritance into a rigorous network of propositions and triads, in a project comparable, in ambition, to Aquinas’s Summa — but in an entirely pagan key. ...

Protagoras Born in Abdera around 490 BCE, Protagoras was the first and most famous of the Sophists — the itinerant teachers who, for a fee, taught the young the rhetoric and aretê (excellence) needed for success in the public life of the Greek cities. He frequented the circle of Pericles in Athens and even drew up the laws for the colony of Thurii. He is the figure who best embodies the spirit of the sophistic movement. ...

Pythagoras Born on the island of Samos around 570 BCE, Pythagoras emigrated to Croton, in southern Italy (Magna Graecia), where he founded a philosophical-religious community famous for its austere way of life, its rules of silence, and the secrecy of its teachings. Since he wrote nothing and his disciples attributed everything to the master, it is difficult to separate his ideas from those of the Pythagoreans who followed him; already in antiquity his figure blended with legend. ...

Socrates Socrates is the pivot of Greek philosophy: his figure divides the tradition between the pre-Socratics, concerned with the investigation of nature (physis), and the Socratics, who shifted the focus to the human being, the soul, and ethics. An Athenian of the fifth century B.C., son of the sculptor Sophroniscus and the midwife Phaenarete, he lived through the Peloponnesian War — serving as a hoplite at Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis — and turned the streets and gymnasia of Athens into the setting for an entirely oral philosophy. He left no writings: everything we know comes from others, above all the dialogues of Plato and the writings of Xenophon, alongside the comic caricature of Aristophanes (The Clouds). The difficulty of separating the historical Socrates from the literary character is what scholars call the “Socratic problem.” ...

Thales of Miletus A philosopher from Miletus, in Ionia (in present-day Turkey), who lived around 624–546 BCE, Thales is considered the first philosopher of the Western tradition and was counted among the legendary Seven Sages of Greece. He left no writings; what we know comes from later reports, above all from Aristotle, who hailed him as the founder of this kind of inquiry (Metaphysics I, 3). Many stories gathered around his name: he is said to have predicted a solar eclipse, measured the height of the pyramids by their shadow, and, according to Aristotle, demonstrated the practical value of philosophy by foreseeing a good harvest and cornering the olive-press market. ...

Xenophanes of Colophon Itinerant Greek poet-philosopher, born in Colophon, in Ionia (the western coast of Asia Minor), around 570 BCE. When the Persian conquest of Ionia began in the mid-sixth century BCE, Xenophanes left his native city and spent the rest of his life wandering the Greek world, residing for periods in Zancle and Catana in Sicily and, according to tradition, in Elea in southern Italy. He lived to an exceptionally advanced age — ancient sources suggest he surpassed ninety years — and his entire output survives only in fragments preserved by later authors such as Sextus Empiricus, Simplicius, and Athenaeus. ...

Xunzi Xunzi (荀子 Xún Zǐ, “Master Xun”; personal name Kuàng 況), who lived around c. 310–c. 235 BCE, is, alongside Confucius and Mencius, one of the three great thinkers of classical Confucianism. He was active during the Warring States period and was a figure of prestige at the Jixia Academy in the state of Qi. His philosophy stands out for its argumentative rigour and its naturalism: whereas other Confucians grounded morality in a morally engaged celestial order, Xunzi grounds it in human culture, ritual, and deliberate education. ...

Zeno of Elea Born in Elea, in southern Italy, and active in the mid-fifth century BCE, Zeno was the most celebrated disciple of Parmenides — according to Plato, he accompanied his master to Athens, where the two are said to have conversed with the young Socrates. Tradition also attributes to him a heroic end: tortured by a tyrant whose overthrow he was plotting, he is said to have preferred death to betrayal. He is remembered above all as a master of argument. ...

Note on sources and authorship: The dates of Zhuangzi (莊子, “Master Zhuang”; personal name Zhōu 周) are uncertain — c. 369–286 BCE is the conventional scholarly estimate, derived from mentions in period texts. The eponymous text Zhuangzi (莊子), as transmitted to us, is a compilation in three sections: the 7 inner chapters (nèipiān 內篇), generally attributed to Zhuangzi himself by modern scholarship; the 15 outer chapters (wàipiān 外篇) and the 11 miscellaneous chapters (zápiān 雜篇), regarded as works by later disciples and commentators. The edition that reached modernity is due to the scholar Guo Xiang (c. 252–312 CE). ...