This series explores the history of Ancient Greek philosophies, their critical study, and their enduring resonance.
Most of the texts that preserve Greek thought were composing during a period of twelve centuries, from about the sixth century BCE to the sixth century CE; but they're rooted in earlier oral traditions of poetry and mythology, and their influence continues through later periods of history.
I'm a teacher and researcher in the field of Ancient Greek philosophy. My primary area of study is the philosophy of the later ancient Mediterranean, particularly "Neoplatonic" thought in Greek sources. My doctoral research in Classics and ancient philosophy at the University of Oxford focused on logical education in the Roman Empire. You can find some of my papers and books Academia.edu, and more about me at my personal webpage.
Thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoy these ideas!
There are lots of videos on Parmenides. This is one of the select few which are very high quality in terms of explanation, knowledge, insight. I think I get it now!
I'm kinda frustrated with early academic treatments (Ritter, Ueberweg) that discount the biographical tradition and Pythagoras' travels in Phoenicia, Egypt, and Persia (detailed by Iamblichus) because they'd like to see Pythagoreanism as an innate development of the Greek mind rather than something imported from the East. Compared to those treatments that I've recently read, this was a breath of fresh air. This was excellent, thank you.
Your lectures are brilliant - so thoughtful, structured and well presented. I am curious if you would be interested in presenting Roman stoics as well (Seneca as an example) and the philosophy of the stoics in general.
What an excellent presentation on many, many levels. Can’t overstate how head-and-shoulders above the crowd it stands. Thanks very much for this, I will watch the rest of the series, and please keep going!
Good question! I think you mean: how does Plato's Socrates, in comparison to Descartes, think that individuals "know ourselves"-and who is the individual who has this knowledge? Both can be tricky, but here are a few thoughts. (1) Descartes' famous "cogito ergo sum" argument, in Meditations on First Philosophy, supposes that I can be absolutely certain of my own mental states, the direct contents of my conscious cognition, but I can't be certain about much else. So-Descartes' consciously thinking mind, attending closely to its own thoughts, is arguably a candidate for the self that knows itself. (2) Plato's Socrates seems to suggest that there are many candidates for the "self" that a self-knower knows-like one's possessions, physical appearance, and psychē (e.g. Philebus 48c-e); but Socrates usually talks as if psychē is the best of these candidates, the one that is right (Plato's Phaedo 115c-d, Xenophon's Memorabilia 53-55, etc.). When we try to care for or cultivate our selves, we should try to care for our psychē (Apology 29d-30b; Alcibiades I 128a-131a). It's important to stress that he isn't saying we should *ignore* our well-being in other ways-Xenophon says that Socrates encouraged his companions to take good care of their physical health, and to form lasting and mutually respectful friendships, for example-but that other concerns shouldn't override care for the well-being of the psychē, on which the rest somehow rely. So, what is psychē? Literally, it's "breath", but more broadly, for many Greek philosophers, it's the life-principle, that in virtue of which something is animate and not inanimate (as in Plato's Phaedrus); indeed, one Greek word for "animal", as Plato points out, is empsychos, "having-a-psychē-inside"; and similarly the English "animal" itself derives from the Latin "anima," a word used to translate the Greek psychē (both literally mean something like "breath" or "wind"). The story is more challenging in authors like Homer, but by the 5th-4th century BCE, psychē is starting to mean something more like our word "psyche" or even its later translation, "soul" (but without some of the connotations of that English word): that is, psychē is the locus of a plurality of states, experiences, and motivations, including appetites, desires, and aversions; anger, pride, and states of deep emotion; speech, reason, reflection, conscience, value, and meaning-making (see Republic 4, 443c-e for a lovely description of the "harmonization" of these faculties in a just "inner city", and see the Liddell-Scott-Jones dictionary s.v. logos for the latter). So, one answer would be: Socrates *might* think the self is the psychē, and that includes a far broader field than Descartes' "mind", because it includes many functions of life-experience and agency (above), like a wide range of sensitive and emotional and reasoning experiences and actions. But note that Plato also thinks that a lot of these psychic faculties are impermanent and likely not the core of the person (compare Symposium 207d-208b, Phaedo 65a-67d, 79c-e); what's really special is the kind of consciousness that can apprehend the Platonic Patterns or Forms, a faculty that he sometimes calls phronēsis (Phaedo 79c-e), which is close to Aristotle's notion of nous-that faculty of the psychē that might be immortal, depending on how some passages in Aristotle's De Anima are read. So a deeper question is: how similar is this more specified Platonic and Aristotelian notion of nous to Descartes' mind? I think nous is still a rather broader notion than Descartes' mind, and in some contexts (including its Homeric roots) is closer to English notions of "awareness" than "thinking," but that's another issue! Here's a more basic point. In contrast with Descartes, I think, Socrates is concerned with the question of self-knowledge because he wants to know how to cultivate or better the self (as in the possibly Platonic Alcibiades I, 128a-134c); Descartes' concern is more with certainty and defeating skepticism, with getting clear about what we can really know. So those orientations also give them different concerns. I hope that's some help! You might find this article interesting: Ancient Theories of Soul at plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/
Hi Filip, thanks for taking the time to write. Yes indeed, more content specifically on Plato and Aristotle are next on the agenda, and-eventually-I'm hoping that we'll make our way through Hellenistic philosophy and Neoplatonism too. I appreciate the feedback!
Wonderful presentation. I was hoping to hear a bit about the mystical E on the temple though. Would you have any literature on it to recommend? Apart from Plutatch's Moralia, of course. Looking forward to future uploads, I really enjoy the channel.
Thanks for the excellent question, Marko! As you point out, the meaning of the original 'E' was already a mystery for detective work in Plutarch's time (46-after 119 CE). His characters in the dialogue on the E suggest engagingly that it may represent the Greek ei 'if' (an open-ended point about the free will included with prophecy, which is always conditional), or the Sun, or the number 5 with Pythagorean symbolism, or the verb 'ei' ('thou art', an answer to the injunction 'know thyself'), or a mystery known only to the initiated, with further Pythagorean undertones. There are other suggestions today: for instance, Berman and Losada, writing in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (1975) suggest that it was originally a ligature for the name of the Earth-goddess, GE (Gaia), who first held the Oracle. I would also draw attention to the letter's resemblance to the tripod, at least on early coinage (from Croton) depicting the Delphic tripod that was symbolic of the power of prophecy and the Pythia's authority; perhaps there's a connection. But since the historical intention may be unprovable, I think we're as free to speculate respectfully as Plutarch's characters! In that light, I think there's an appeal to almost all of these (and other) suggestions, and-like so much at Delphi-the riddle is partly a mirror for one's own intuitions. I'd highlight one of those mentioned earlier: that E stands for 'thou art, you are', and is responsive to the injunction to self-knowledge.
I have always wondered why Socrates is more widely known than other philosophers. Thank you for answering my question. Socrates is such an inspiring character.
Hi Pamir: One (fun) piece of historical background here is the Athenian legal system. Athens didn't allow prosecutors or defendants to represent a client in court; instead, professional speechwriters (logographoi) would write speeches for their clients to deliver. So, there weren't quite 'lawyers' in a typical modern sense-of barristers. One version of Plato's discussion of this in the dialogue 'Phaedrus', analyzing the difference between writing and live conversation, with reference to the famous logographos Lysias. There's certainly a similarity between the logographos and the sophist, but it's also important to consider that 'sophist' is a category constructed by Plato (and others) for criticism of a group, not necessarily a self-description of that group. Thanks for the good question!
If Pre-Socratic thinkers were alive today, they might be called "Theoretical physicists," and if Albert Einstein had lived in ancient times, he might have been remembered as a philosopher. By the way, this video has one of the best overviews of Zeno's paradoxes I have encountered so far. Thank you.
Nowadays, what the physician cannot see with the eyes nor hear with the ears, they grasp through imaging (Ultrasonography, MRI, CT ext.). Unfortunately, reasoning is not used as much as it used to be.
@@DelphicPhilosophy Thanks. Awesome answer! I'm really enjoying your videos. I think how English has utilized the letter C is so confusing and risks losing the pronunciation of the past. Our pronunciations need not be so far from the ancient pronunciation except for our miss-use of C. K and S could do fine for most usages except for the CH sounds I'm thinking. Also I'd love to see a video on the Cynics and Diogenes.
Hi Stephen: good question! (1) Briefly, there's a chance that the ancient 4th-century BCE Athenian pronunciation would have sounded like "Ku-nik-os" (based on the attempted reconstruction of Attic pronunciation by Erasmus, 1466-1536, widely used by modern Anglophone scholars, which in turn builds on guesses from ancient grammars and rhymes). (2) But the modern Greek pronunciation would be nearer "Kee-nik-os", due to the process of iotacism, where vowels take on an iota or "ee" quantity. This was already well underway by later antiquity and the Byzantine period, and some of the later ancient Cynics might have used this pronunciation! And finally (3) in English, the ordinary pronunciation is "Si-nik-os," with a soft C. I think any of them is a good choice! (And sorry for the double reply; it looks like the earlier one was deleted by error).
I've seen quite a few presentations on Hesiod's Theogony. This one is head and shoulders above the rest. You produce top notch informative content, Michael. Many thanks!
Maybe Pythagoras is a good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, a phenomenon which we encounter frequently in ancient mythology. In a sense what Mnesarchus heard at Delphi was actually what he wished for his son. By providing adequate resources to his son he made the prophecy come true. Thank you for doing this.
Hi Stephen, thanks for the excellent question! Briefly, we're not certain whether Socrates himself (or even Plato's Socrates) draws a clear line between Sophia and Phronesis-both can arguably mean 'wisdom', 'insight', or 'understanding'. But Aristotle draws fairly technical distinctions, for example in Nicomachean Ethics 6: roughly, Sophia amounts to knowledge about Forms or patterns, general non-contingent principles, while Phronesis involves the application of that knowledge in practice, with sensitivity to particular circumstances. John Cooper's book Pursuits of Wisdom (Princeton, 2012) has a chapter on Socrates that attempts to determine how he uses wisdom-terms to describe a grasp of human values. I hope that's helpful (and sorry for the double reply; it looks like the earlier one was deleted due to a glitch)!
