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Greek philosophy encompasses a variety of schools and philosophers, including pre-Socratic thinkers who believed in individual experience, Socrates who established the pursuit of truth, Plato who refined and expanded on Socrates’ teachings, and Aristotle who built on Plato’s ideas. These teachings laid the foundation for many concepts still studied today.
Greek philosophy is often synonymous with ancient Western philosophy where people like Socrates and Plato developed a great deal of thought and work on the nature of the universe. There is no single, unified school of thought that could be termed “Greek philosophy” as many different philosophers and schools have arisen in this area over many hundreds of years. In general, however, these different schools are often grouped together as pre-Socratic, and thus with the names of the different schools or teachers who have spearheaded these various movements. Famous Greek philosophers who established various movements within ancient philosophy include the Sophists, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
The pre-Socratic era of Greek philosophy typically refers to those Greek philosophers who lived and taught before Socrates. There are a number of different schools and philosophers that belong to this group, although the sophists may be among the most famous. Sophists were rhetoricians and teachers who often argued that anything beyond personal experience and observation was non-existent. This type of Greek philosophy largely considered that there was no overall or encompassing “truth” in the universe, rather that each person experienced the universe individually and had only their own experiences to draw upon.
Socrates, however, challenged this view and established a school of thought which indicated that certain truths could be claimed to be real and meaningful. While Socrates was quite influential among the philosophers of his time, his student Plato may have made more significant contributions to Greek philosophy. Plato expanded the teachings of Socrates, who was put to death by his influential enemies, and set about refining ancient Greek philosophy into a more comprehensive system. Plato’s teachings established “the Good” as the highest reason in the universe, and the aim of all action and knowledge was the pursuit of this ideal.
Plato’s teachings, which were further refined and expanded by his student Aristotle, laid the foundation for many of the ideas commonly associated with Greek philosophy. The concept of ‘the Good’ and absolute ideals, such as ‘beauty’ and ‘truth’, which could be understood and aspired to remain influential in much of the philosophical thought which followed these teachings. Greek philosophy continued to develop beyond the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, as they were then followed by other philosophers such as the Stoics and Neo-Platonists. Each of these groups further utilized the teachings of earlier philosophers and contributed new ideas or developments within the philosophy that are still studied today.
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