HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE WESTERN TRADITION, ANCIENT GREEK

The article deals the difficulty of identifying a precise moment for the beginning of philosophy is exacerbated by the sparsity of texts by those whom we commonly call philosophers. From none of the thinkers before Plato do we have complete works. Under these conditions, our access to pre-Socratic philosophy must rely on occasional citations and on summaries, usually late, of the philosophical content. From Aristotle’s work it is possible to extract four models or interpretative categories by which to read the philosophy of the beginnings (see Capecci 2005): (1) those philosophers who assert the existence of a single principle; (2) those who point to the presence of more than one principle; (3) those who identify a superiorprinciple, intellect; and (4) those who open the way to formal principles—“forms”—to explain the totality of the real. In the article then considers the role of religionThe work of Diels and Kranz, besides being of fundamental importance for the study of the pre-Socratics, also documents the cultural milieu out of which philosophy arose and allows us to rethink the origins of philosophy from another perspective. Before presenting the pre-Socratics, Diels and Kranz cite ORPHISM, the Muses, Epimenides, He- siod’s astrological poetry, cosmological poetry, and the Seven Sages. From the fifth to the fourth century BC, Athens was the center of cultural and philosophical life. Plato and Aris- totle articulated ideas fundamental for the history of Western thought. The problem of HAPPINESS dominates the philosophy of the Hellenistic period, which extends from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) and Aristotle (322 BC) to the beginning of the Roman Empire. In Aristotle’s time a movement known as Cynicism had been started by Diogenes of Sinope (c. 410–320 BC). It rejected Greek social conventions and advocated living in accord with the simplicity of nature. Thus it recommended a type of life made possible only by rigorous ascetic training. Two other influential schools that originated at Athens toward the close of the fourth century BC were Epicureanism, founded by EPICURUS, and Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium.