Famous philosophers: the ancient Greeks - the founders of the method of searching and knowing the truth

The statements of well-known ancient philosophers are still striking in their depth. In their spare time, the ancient Greeks reflected on the laws of the development of society and nature, as well as the place of man in the world. Such well-known philosophers as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle created a special method of cognition, which is used in our time in all sciences. Therefore, every educated person today must necessarily understand the main ideas that these great thinkers put forward.

Famous ancient Greek philosophers actually became the ancestors of all sciences, developing their theoretical foundations. Harmony and beauty are the basis of any reasoning. That is why the Greeks, unlike their Egyptian counterparts, sought to engage exclusively in theory, fearing that the practice would destroy the elegance and clarity of the conclusions.

Famous philosophers of ancient Greece are above all Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It is with them that we need to start studying the development of methods of searching for truth. These well-known philosophers have created fundamental principles that have already been directly developed in the work of their colleagues, including our contemporaries. Let's consider each of them in more detail.

Socrates is the ancestor of the dialectical method of searching and knowing the truth. His most important principle was the conviction in the comprehensibility of the surrounding world through the knowledge of himself. According to Socrates, an intelligent person is not capable of bad deeds, so knowledge in his ethics equals virtue. All his thoughts he expounded to his student verbally in the form of a conversation. Dissenters could always express their opinions, but the teacher almost always managed to convince them to recognize the incorrectness of their positions, and then the fairness of his views, because Socrates is also the founder of a special, "Socratic" method of dispute. It is interesting that Socrates did not agree with the basic principles of Greek democracy, because he believed that a person who does not engage in political activity, has no right to talk about it.

All modern well-known idealist philosophers rely primarily on the teachings of Plato. Unlike Socrates for him, the world that surrounds us did not seem to be an objective reality. Things are only a reflection of eternal and immutable prototypes. Beauty for Plato is a kind of idea that does not have the basic characteristics, but which a person feels at special moments of inspiration. All these provisions are well described in such works as "State", "Phaedrus" and "Feast".

Aristotle, known as the educator of the great commander Alexander of Macedon, although he was a disciple of Plato, but with his views on the nature of things was fundamentally disagree. Beauty for him is an objective property that can be inherent in certain things. It lies in the symmetry and harmony of proportions. That is why Aristotle pays great attention to mathematics. But the real originator of this science, of course, was Pythagoras.