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Ancient Greek Philosophy: The Roots of Western Thought
How the Presocratic thinkers, from Thales and Heraclitus to Parmenides and Democritus, asked about nature and prepared the ground for Socrates and Plato.
Greece, Rome and Europe
Greek Philosophy
The schools and thinkers of ancient Greek philosophy.
Ancient Greek Philosophy: The Cynics and the Skeptics
Diogenes and the Cynics rejected social convention, while Pyrrho and the Skeptics suspended judgment; how the two schools differed and what they shared.
Ancient Greek Philosophy: The Epicureans and the Stoics
Epicurus, his Garden school and atomist view of the world: why Epicurean pleasure meant a calm life free from fear, and how it differed from Stoic thought.
Ancient Greek Philosophy: The School of Athens
Raphael's fresco is a way into the real Plato and Aristotle: the Academy and the Lyceum, the theory of Forms, and how their views of knowledge and ethics differed.
Ancient Greek Philosophy: The Stoics and the Epicureans
Zeno of Citium, the Painted Porch and Stoic virtue: how the Stoics linked reason, duty and acceptance of fate, with the Epicureans as a contrasting school.
The Ancient Greek Philosophy: A Legacy of Wisdom and Knowledge
How Greek philosophy survived antiquity: copied in Rome and Byzantium, translated in Baghdad, and brought back to Latin Europe in the Middle Ages.
The Ancient Greeks: The Birthplace of Philosophy and Theater
How philosophy and drama grew side by side in Athens: tragedy as moral inquiry, Aristophanes on Socrates, Plato's wariness of poets and Aristotle's reply.
The Ancient Greeks: The Origins of Western Philosophy
Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus: how Ionian thinkers around 600 BCE began explaining nature by reason, what they claimed and what we really know.
The Ancient Greeks' Contributions to Western Philosophy
The methods and concepts Greek thinkers gave philosophy: the Socratic method, dialectic, formal logic, virtue ethics and the idea of the examined life.
The Ancient Greeks' Love Affair with Philosophy
Why philosophy flourished in Greek cities: civic debate, leisure, wealth, the Sophists and the schools, and the limits of that public enthusiasm.
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