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1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / c. Classical philosophy

[philosophy 410 to 322 BCE]

6 ideas
For the truth you need Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, not his one-drachma course [Socrates]
     Full Idea: Socrates: If I'd attended Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, I could tell you the truth about names straightway, but as I've only heard the one-drachma course, I don't know the truth about it.
     From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 384b
Crates lived in poverty, and treated his whole life as a joke [Crates of Thebes, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Crates, with his bag and threadbare cloak, spent his whole life laughing and joking as though he were on holiday.
     From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Plutarch - 30: Quiet of Mind 266e
     A reaction: Crates sounds a little less alarming than Diogenes, while living a similar life. Was Crates the first ancestor of post-modernism?
Thucydides was the perfect anti-platonist sophist [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. …Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture, attains in him its perfect expression.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 9.2)
European philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato [Whitehead]
     Full Idea: The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
     From: Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929], p.39)
     A reaction: Outsiders think this is a ridiculous remark, but readers of Plato can only be struck by what a wonderful tribute Whitehead has come up with. I would say that at least 80% of this database deals with problems which were discussed at length by Plato.
Among the Greeks Aristotle is the only philosopher in the modern style [Weil]
     Full Idea: In Greece, Aristotle is perhaps the only philosopher in the modern sense, and he is entirely outside the Greek tradition.
     From: Simone Weil (God in Plato [1942], p.45)
     A reaction: She sees Plato as embodying the true tradition. Everything Aristotle writes is 'peri phusis' (about nature), and that is a standard topic of philosophy right from the start. She emphasises Plato long historical roots. Pythagoras is key.
Plato was the first philosopher who was concerned to systematize his ideas [Annas]
     Full Idea: In the ancient world Plato was seen as a pivotal figure, the first philosopher who was concerned to systematize his ideas.
     From: Julia Annas (Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction [2000], Ch.6)