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- [Instructor] Ancient Greece was not even
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a cohesive empire.
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It was made up of many city states,
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led by Athens and Sparta.
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But, despite its fragmentation,
it's made innumerable
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contributions to, not
just Western civilization,
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but civilization as a whole.
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And those are contributions in terms of
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forms of governance, like democracy,
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contributions in medicine,
contributions in the arts,
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in mathematics, in the sciences.
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But perhaps their most famous contribution
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is in terms of philosophy.
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And if we're going to
talk about philosophy
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in ancient Greece, the most
famous three philosophers
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are Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
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Now, before we get into the first of them,
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and really the teacher of Plato,
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who was then the teacher of Aristotle,
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let's get a little bit of
context on this time period.
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So, as we enter into
the fifth century BCE,
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a couple of things are emerging.
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First, you have a new Athenian democracy.
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Then, as you get into that
century, the Persians invade,
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try to conquer Greece several
times, but unsuccessfully.
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But then, the Greeks start
fighting amongst themselves,
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led on one side by Athens,
on the other side by Sparta,
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and that's the Peloponnesian
War, which ends with
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Sparta being victorious, but
all of the Greek city states
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being weakened dramatically.
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Now, between the end,
especially the first part
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of the Greco-Persian
Wars, and the end of the
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Peloponnesian War, it
was actually a time of
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Athenian prosperity.
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They were leading this semi-empire,
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they were investing in the arts,
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and it's often called
the Golden Age of Athens,
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and that's the world in
which Socrates emerged.
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Like many philosophers,
Socrates led a very
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interesting life, and it's worth noting
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what we know about him
does not come directly
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from his writing.
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We don't have surviving
accounts of his writing.
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It comes mainly through the
writing of his students,
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Xenophon, and, most notably, Plato.
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We also get some parody of
Socrates from Aristophanes,
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that Socrates himself
did not appreciate much.
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But what we know is
that he started in life,
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he was a stone mason,
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he even acted as a soldier, a hoplite,
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during the Peloponnesian War.
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But he is, of course, most
famous for being a philosopher
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and for being a teacher.
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And his teaching style,
the Socratic method,
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is still viewed as something
of a best practice today.
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Rather than lecturing
students, to, instead,
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ask incisive questions that
force a student to deepen
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their thinking and get closer
to the root of an issue,
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and to learn how to think
rather than just having
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knowledge transmitted to them.
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Now, what's also notable about Socrates
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and his many students,
including Plato and Aristotle,
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is that they took a departure
of how to think about
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the world from most of the ancient world.
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Most of the ancient world
was focused on the gods
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and the metaphysical
explaining everything.
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And, while the ancient Greeks
did have a large pantheon
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of gods, Socrates and
his fellow philosophers
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tried to figure out how the world works,
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why we are here, somewhat
independent of the gods.
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They tried to reason it through,
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they tried to talk it
through, think about it
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from a rational point of view.
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And to get a flavor of
that, here is a quote.
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"True wisdom comes to
each of us when we realize
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"how little we understand
about life, ourselves,
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"and the world around us."
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So, unlike many ancient
societies that just tried to
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explain everything
through the metaphysical
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or through the gods, here
you have Socrates saying, no,
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an ideal true wisdom
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is when you appreciate how little we know,
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this form of intellectual humility.
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Now, Socrates lived during
this Golden Age of Athens,
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a time when democracy was
flourishing, the Age of Pericles.
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But he himself was a little bit skeptical
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of unfettered or pure democracy.
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He was worried, well,
what if the people voting
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aren't educated to make
the types of decisions?
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Maybe they can be
manipulated by a demagogue,
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someone who just tells 'em
exactly what they want to hear.
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And so he was a bit of
a controversial figure,
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especially as you get to the
end of the Peloponnesian War.
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Remember, Athens loses
the Peloponnesian War.
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It went from being this powerful
head of this Delian League,
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something of an empire, this wealthy city,
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and now it's a subjugated
state, it's tired from war.
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And so you can imagine there's a lot of
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political infighting, and
Socrates ends up being
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one of the casualties.
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He is actually put on trial
by his fellow Athenians.
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This is a depiction of
the trial of Socrates,
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and it shows Socrates defending himself
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from the accusations brought against him.
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Refusing to recognize the gods
acknowledged by the state,
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importing strange divinities of his own,
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corrupting the young.
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And his defense, which both
Xenophon and Plato write about,
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called The Apology, he's
bewildered, he says,
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where is all of this coming from?
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Now, it is true, he
did not invoke the gods
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when he's trying to explain the universe.
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And, yes, he was trying to
teach the young to think.
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But by no means, if you
look at what he was doing,
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or at least our modern
accounts coming through Plato
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and Xenophon, does it
seem like he was trying to
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undermine the state in some way.
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But, needless to say, it comes to a vote,
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and maybe he's a victim of his own fears
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of a pure democratic process,
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but, amongst the 500 Athenians voting,
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280 say that he is guilty,
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and 220 say that he is not guilty.
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He is given a chance to think about
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what his penalty should be.
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And the charges, at least
in the Athenian's minds,
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were quite serious.
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But Socrates famously says,
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"An unexamined life is not worth living."
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And so, even though many
historians think that
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he might have been able to
get exile if he asked for it,
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he was sentenced to death.
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And this is a painting
done much, much later
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of what that death of Socrates
might have looked like.
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But you see here Socrates about
to, or maybe he just drank
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the hemlock, which is the
poison which will kill him.
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So, even though he had to
die for these pretty spurious
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allegations, his legacy lives on,
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and it lives on most famously
in his student Plato.
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Now, Plato is famous for many things.
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There's this notion of a
Platonic ideal form that,
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whether you're talking about a circle,
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or a ball, or a dog, or a chair,
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that there's an ideal
form that is independent
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of what your senses are telling you,
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or what the chair in
front of you might be,
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that that's an imperfect
version of that ideal form.
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The word Platonic, in
general, you'll hear applied
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to many different concepts,
some of the meanings
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having changed over time.
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The other thing that Plato is famous for
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is the notion of an academy.
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The place where he taught his students
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was a little field outside
the walls of Athens,
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named for the Athenian hero Akademos,
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and so that area became
known as Plato's Academy.
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And ever since then, places
of learning have often been
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referred to as academies,
just like Khan Academy.
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But Plato was also concerned,
like his teacher Socrates,
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with the nature of how we should be ruled.
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"There will be no end to
the troubles of states,
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"or indeed of humanity
itself, till philosophers
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"become rulers in this
world, or till those
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"we now call kings and
rulers really and truly
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"become philosophers, and
political power and philosophy
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"thus come into the same hands."
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So, like Socrates, he's weary of how
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they have been governed.
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And, remember, we're now after the period
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of the Peloponnesian War.
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The city states of
Greece, especially Athens,
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have been dramatically
weakened, so a lot of people
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might be thinking, including Plato,
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is there a better way to govern ourselves?
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Now, Plato's most famous
student is Aristotle.
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And, like his teacher, Aristotle
is famous for many things
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and explored many
dimensions of the universe.
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But he is probably most
famous for being the tutor
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of Alexander the Great when
Alexander the Great was young.
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Phillip of Macedon,
Alexander the Great's father,
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as he conquers the weakened city states
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after the Peloponnesian War,
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he also conquers Aristotle's
home town of Stagira,
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and he enslaves the population.
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And so, when he goes to
Aristotle to tutor his young son,
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who ends up being called
Alexander the Great eventually,
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Aristotle says, okay, my fee will be
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free the people of my town.
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His town is freed, he
tutors a young Alexander,
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when Alexander is in his early teens,
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and he also gets support
for a center of learning.
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He creates a Lyceum,
which is his version of
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Plato's Academy.
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And, just like you saw with
Socrates and you see with Plato,
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Aristotle continued this
tradition of a focus on learning
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and a humble acceptance
of all that there might be
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in the world, this
rationality that we now see
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in modern science, that you didn't see
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from a lot of the ancients,
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who were focused on the
metaphysics and the gods.
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"It is the mark of an educated mind
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"to be able to entertain a
thought without accepting it."
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And I'll leave you there,
but the big takeaway is,
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going from Socrates,
to Plato, to Aristotle,
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and there were many
other Greek philosophers,
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you have the seed of what you
could call modern rationality.
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Roughly 2,000 years later, you
have the European Renaissance
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that starts reemerging
many of these same ideas,
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all the way providing a
bridge into the Enlightenment,
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and now our modern, hopefully
fairly rational view
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of the world.
