Other Greek philosophy schools

And for contrast, this page includes short bits of information on the more obscure greek philosophy schools. Note that this section does not really have game tie ins. But may be useful to read to understand the bigger greek schools.

**Milesian school.** The first Presocratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia. Though they were not formed into a concrete school, and the idea of calling them one was for later classification purposes. Thales (624-546 BCE) is reputedly the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis, and fundamental substance of all things. Next came Anaximander (610-546 BCE), the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His younger contemporary, Anaximenes (585-525 BCE), took for his principle air, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth.

**Cynicism** is a school of ancient Greek philosophy. For the Cynics, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training, both mentally and physically, which were seen as necessary to fuel the other, and by living in a way which was natural for humans, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions. They lived with minimal things, sometimes even in barrels on the street, saying they had no need for a house. Stoicism was seen as a spiritual successor to their ideas, but one which jettisoned the pointless extreme self sacrifice, in favor of arranging it in a practical sense. They also swore off conventional norms as meaningless, and one of the founders Diogenes of Sinope was known to often masturbate in public because he gave zero fucks. Some historians have also noted some similarities to the teachings of Jesus, and the cynics, noting that his in public ideology seemed inspired by some of their works, but taken in a more practical way, like the stoics.

**Cyrenaicism** was an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC. The Cyrenaics taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain, (as it did for Epicurus) but positively enjoyable sensations. Cyrenaicism deduces a single, universal aim for all people which is their own pleasure. Furthermore, all feeling is momentary and homogeneous. It follows that past and future pleasure have no real existence for us, and that among present pleasures there is no distinction of kind. Socrates had spoken of the higher pleasures of the intellect; the Cyrenaics denied the validity of this distinction and said that bodily pleasures, being more simple and more intense, were preferable. Momentary pleasure, preferably of a physical kind, is the only good for humans. They admitted that social obligations could benefit you long term, but denied any intrinsic worth to them other than self benefit.

They were known more for intense desire to indulge than anything else. They did however have a theory of epistemology, which scaled things down merely to sensory experience, and its relation to pleasure. They thought that we can know with certainty our immediate sense-experiences (for instance, that I am having a sweet sensation now) but can know nothing about the nature of the objects that cause these sensations (for instance, that the honey is sweet). They also denied that we can have knowledge of what the experiences of other people are like. All knowledge is of one's own immediate sensation. These sensations are motions which are purely subjective, and are painful, indifferent or pleasant, according as they are violent, tranquil or gentle. Further they are entirely individual, and can in no way be described as being of the world objectively. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion of knowledge and of conduct. Our ways of being affected are alone knowable. Thus the sole aim for everyone should be pleasure.

**Ephesian school**. Heraclitus of Ephesus posited that all things in nature are in a state of perpetual flux, connected by logical structure or pattern, which he termed Logos. To Heraclitus, fire, one of the four classical elements, motivates and substantiates this eternal pattern. From fire all things originate, and return to it again in a process of eternal cycles.

**Heraclitus** considered that the fundamental being of all the universe is fire. According to him, the being is material and one, but at the same time he acknowledges that the world witnesses constant change. Motion of the archelement (fire) is discordant and unharmonious, even though harmony is the final result of the process. You can note that this too seems to be an inspiration on the later stoics.

**Eleaticism**. Xenophanes espoused a belief that "God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind." The school debated the possibility of motion and other such fundamental questions, sometimes stating that change was not possible, and the true nature of existence was timeless and unchanging and uniform. The Eleatics rejected the epistemological validity of sense experience, (in part since it implied motion, which they saw as unlikely). It considered everything to be part of this single static timeless reality that they called God.

**Pyrrhonism**, or **Pyrrhonian skepticism**, was a school of skepticism named after Pyrrho, a philosopher who lived from c. 360 to c. 270 BC, although the relationship between the philosophy of the school and that of the historical figure is murky. A revival of the use of the term occurred during the 17th century. Its main focus was on the unreliability of all knowledge. The term ataraxia was made by this school, and was an inspiration to the epicureans.

**Sophistry** was began by Protagoras, who taught that all virtue is conventional. It was Protagoras who claimed that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not," which Plato interprets as a radical perspectivism or relativism, where some things seem to be one way for one person (and so actually are that way) and another way for another person (and so actually are that way as well); the conclusion being that one cannot look to nature for guidance regarding how to live one's life. The sophists in practice functioned like lawyers, thinking that making cases was the highest reality there was, since there was no external truth. Sophistry is now used as a term for people trying to use misleading language.

**Eclecticism** was first recorded to have been practiced by a group of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers who attached themselves to no real system, but selected from existing philosophical beliefs those doctrines that seemed most reasonable to them. Out of this collected material they constructed their new system of philosophy. The term comes from the Greek (eklektikos), literally "choosing the best", and that from (eklektos), "picked out, select". Well known eclectics in Greek philosophy were the Stoics Panaetius and Posidonius, and the New Academics Carneades and Philo of Larissa. Among the Romans, Cicero was thoroughly eclectic, as he united the Peripatetic, Stoic, and New Academic doctrines. Other eclectics included Varro and Seneca.

**Atomist school**. The first explicitly materialistic system was formed by Leucippus (5th century BCE) and his pupil Democritus of Abdera (460-370 BCE) from Thrace. This was the doctrine of atoms - small primary bodies infinite in number, indivisible and imperishable, qualitatively similar, but distinguished by their shapes. Moving eternally through the infinite void, they collide and unite, thus generating objects which differ in accordance with the varieties, in number, size, shape, and arrangement, of the atoms which compose them.

**The Pluralist school** was a school of pre-Socratic philosophers who attempted to reconcile Parmenides' rejection of change with the apparently changing world of sense experience. The school consisted of Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Empedocles. It can also be said to have included the Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus. The Pluralists rejected the idea that the diversity of nature can be reduced to a single principle (monism). Anaxagoras posited that nature contained an innumerable number of principles, while Empedocles reduced nature to four elements (fire, air, earth, and water) which could not be reduced to one another and which would be sufficient to explain change and diversity.