Mind Mapping:

The debut of philosophy goes all the way back to the B.C. era, when philosophers like Thales
and Pythagoras were asking questions about the universe, figuring out what stuff was made of,
determining if empty space actually exists, and uncovering logic and mathematical theories.
Historically, western philosophy began in Greece. The rise of the Ancient Greek Philosophers
started after the Peloponnesian War (the war between Sparta and Athens), which lasted from 431-404
B.C., where absolute peace was flourished. As peace was in its conquest, Greece started to expand its
territories and undoubtedly, became progressive.
This progression after the civil war between Sparta and Athens, many philosophers become
prominent in Greece. In Ionia, thinkers in the likes of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus,
and Xenophanes flourished. Italy produce its own in the caliber of Pythagoras, Parmenides and Zeno of
Citium. Northern Aegean produced Democritus and Protagoras, while Athens had its more pronounced
triumvirate in the persons of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (The Big Three).
The earliest of Greek philosophers tried to answer the question of what exists by coming up with
a number of different ideas. These philosophers asked questions about "the essence of things":
From where does everything come?
From what is everything created?
How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?
How might we describe nature mathematically

THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS

Milesian School
During the sixth century, in the Greek colony at Miletus, a group of thinkers began to engage in
an extended exploration of the speculative issues. Their central urge was to show that the complex world
has a simple, permanent foundation in the reality of a single kind of stuff from which all else emerges or
the "urstuff". It was these early ideas that helped later philosophers to classify the entire world
according to the four elements: Earth (Xenophanes), Air (Anaximenes), Fire (Heraclitus), and Water
(Thales).
Milesian School
Thales
Milesian
school
(c.624-546
BCE)

Thales is usually considered to be the first philosopher as well

as the father of science as he was the first to try to explain
things in nature without relying on mythology. He was the first
of three major figures in the Milesian school, all of whom felt
that one single substance was the source of all things. According
to Thales, that one subtance was water.

Anaximenes
Milesian
school
(c.585-528
BCE)

Anaximenes was a student of Anaximander. He believed

that airwas the single substance that was the source of all things.
To him, air undergoes two processes, namely: condensation and
rarefaction. The former is the source of cold, while the latter, of
heat. According to him the body is the condensed air and the
soul is rarefied air. He explained it based on the traditional belief
that as death comes and the soul separates from the body, the
cadaver is cold, since the heat principle (the soul) is gone.

Anaximande
r
Milesian
school
(c.610-546
BCE)

Anaximander was a student of Thales. He believed that the

single substance that was the source of all things was an endless,
unlimited substance called apeiron. Apeiron is the source of a
ceaseless motion that produced warmth, cold, earth, air, and fire.

Xenophanes
(c.570
475BCE)

For Xenophanes the earth is the urstuff. The earth itself is

infinite, just as it reaches to infinity. He said that "For all things
come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth."

Heraclitus
Ephesian
school
(c.535-475
BCE)

Parmenides
Eleatic school
(c. early
500s BCE)

Anaximander is also a protoevolutionist, he propagates the idea

that man is an animal who has eveolved from animals of another
species which are lower than his.

Heraclitus believes that fire makes the urstuff. The fire

symbolizes change. Heraclitus believed that everything is in a
constant state of change and that are sense are generally reliable.

On the other hand, The founder of the Eleatic school,

Parmenides believed that all is one, that everything that exists
has always existed, and that nothing ever really changes.

Pythagorean School
The Greek colony in Italy at the same time devoted much more concern to practical matters.
Followers of the legendary Pythagoras developed a comprehensive view of a human life in harmony
with all of the natural world.
The Pythagorean
Pythagoras
Pythagorianis
m
(570-495
BCE)

Although little is known of the historical figure, Pythagoras is

considered to be the founder of the mystical/religious
movement that bears his name. He made important
contributions to the field of mathematics, the most famous of
which is thePythagorean theorem. He also believed in
reincarnation. To the Pythagorean, the human soul is immortal,
divine, and is subjected to metempsychosis. They believed that
the soul has fallen and is, so to say, imprisoned in the body.
The Sophists

Around the same time as some philosophers were trying to figure out what the world was made
out of, other philosophers were trying to figure out people, and how they should live their lives.
Around 450 BC, philosophers known as Sophists thought that man is the measure of
everything. In other words, they thought that the only things that matter are human beings and the way
we see the world. They taught their students that they should use their reason, or intelligence, in order to
succeed in life. Sophists also believed that there is an important difference between things that are manmade versus things that are naturally made, and said that natural products were better than man-made
ones.

The Sophists
Protagoras
Sophist
(c.490-420
BCE)

Protagoras was one of the first sophists practical

philosophers who taught the wealthy for money. He is most
famous for his saying, Man is the measure of all things.

THE SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS

THE THREE GREATEST GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

Socrates
Athens
(c.469399 BCE)

He disagreed with the sophists because they charged their

students money, but didnt teach them how to be ethical. Being
ethical means acting in a morally responsible manner, like doing
the right thing, no matter what. Socrates was one of the first
philosophers to ask the question What is right and wrong? His
teaching technique, later called the Socratic Method, involved
asking his students questions and correcting them, so that they
would come up with the right answers.
Socrates fashions his philosophy in an ethical foundation. He
maintains his recurring dictum: Knowing-what-is-right-meansdoing-what-is-right. Socrates insists that all sorts of evil or all
kinds of evil acts are circumstantial. He adheres to the idea that
man does evil only accidentally due to ignorance. To Socrates
no one does evil wilfully. It is ignorance of the knowledge of the
right and good life that enables man to do evil deeds.

Plato
Athens
(428-327
BCE)

A student of Socrates, Plato founded The Academy in Athens

and became one of the greatest figures in the entire history of
philosophy. He believed in the existence of ideal forms, residing
beyond the physical world and known by reason alone, upon
which our world of senses is based.
Plato fashions his philosophy in a metaphysical foundation by
explaning that there are two kinds of worlds, the Ideal world
(the noumenon) and the Phenomenal world (the phenomenon).
To Plato, the Ideal world is the world of idea. The Ideal world is
the ultimate reality since ideas or forms are eternal and
unchanging. On the contraty, the Phenomenal world, or the
empirical world, is a world of becoming; it is a world of
constant change.
Plato posites that the nature of man lies in the metaphysical
dischotomy between body and soul. Plato assigned the human
body to the Phenomenal world, while the human soul to the
Ideal world.

 For Plato, the body is material; it cannot love and move apart
from the soul; it is mutable and destructible. On the contrary, the
soul is immaterial; it can exist apart from the body; it is
immutable and indestructible. Plato contends that the soul is a
substance that can exist independently of the body. He then
concludes that man is a soul using a body.
In Platos view, the soul has three parts, namely, the rational,
appetitive, and spiritual parts. Because man is a soul using a
body, the three parts of the soul has its locus in the body. The
rational parts is located in the head, specifically in the brain; the
appetitive part, in the abdomen; and the spiritual part, in the
chest.
Fact:
Socrates Trial and Death: The story of Socrates does not end well.
Socrates welcomed any students into his lectures, and so he ended
up teaching some students that were enemies of the state. This led
some of his enemies in the Greek government to accuse him of
being disloyal to the Greek democracy. The jury found him guilty
and sentenced him to the death penalty. At the age of 70, Socrates
accepted his punishment, drank a cup of poison, and died.
Aristotle
Athens
(c.384322
BCE2)

A student of Plato, Aristotle is perhaps the most influential of all

the ancient Greek philosophers. He was also a tutor for
Alexander the Great.
If Plato has his Academy, Aristotle has his Lyceum. It is in this
school where Aristotle gathered his disciples who sat at his feet.
Man is a rational animal. This is Aristotles famous dictum of
man. (Throughout the course of history man has been described
as many different things. One of the most famous of these is
Aristotles definition of man; Aristotle defined man as being a
rational animal. According to this definition, rationality is what
separates man from all other animals; it is what makes them
unique.)
Opposite to Platos, Aristotle speaks of man as a single essence,
or a substance, composed of body and soul; The body has no
life, it can only possess life when it is united with the soul.
Mans body is matter (hyle in Greek) to the soul, while mans
soul in form (morpos in Greek) to the body (thus, the
combination of body, as hyle, and soul, as morpos, the term
hylemorphism was introduced).
Soul is the principle of life; it causes the body to live. The body
is matter to the soul and the soul form to the body. Body and
soul, therefore, are inseparable. They constitute man as a whole.
If the soul, however, is the principle of life problem is that not

all bodies are human bodies. According to Aristotle, there are

three kinds of soul, namely, vegetative, sensitive, amd rational.
Vegetative soul is the lowest type which is found in all living
things. Plants, specifically, possess this type of soul. Sensitive
soul exists in animals. And rational soul exists only in man.

THE POST-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS

The Stoics
Zeno of
Citium
Stoicism
(c.334262
BCE)

Zeno was the founder of Stoicism, a philosophy that developed

out of Cynicism and encourages people to use their free will to
repress emotions and simply be at peace with whatever nature
throws their way.
The Stoics teach that the soul is matter and that it has seven
parts. These parts are the five senses, the power of speech, and
the power of reproduction. For them, speech is tantamount to
reasoning.
Zeno lived in Athens, which was a great center of learning. He
used to lecture not in a classroom but outside (in Greece's sunny
weather), on the porch of a public building. The word for porch
in Greek is STOA, and so people called his students Stoics,
"people who hang out on the porch."
According to Zeno of Elea people should try not to want
anything too much, but be happy with what they had. This would
lead to a happy life.