Guthrie : Synopsis of Greek Philosophy

Page 19

A great part of Aristotle's achievement is scientific, especially in the descriptive and classificatory work of natural history, where the extent of his knowledge and the soundness of his method still excite the admiration of workers in the same field. The identification and description of species was of course a task particularly suited to the genius of the philosopher who, like his master, saw reality in form, yet discovered this form in the natural world instead of banishing it beyond space and time. He was the founder of the natural sciences as separate disciplines, though the doubtful advantage of an admitted cleavage between 'science' and philosophy still lay in the future. In logic, which he regarded not as a part of philosophy but as its organon or tool, he stood on Plato's shoulders to a greater extent than is sometimes realized. Yet here as elsewhere, his genius for system and order takes him far beyond the mere rearrangement of other men's ideas, and entitles him to his place as the true founder of formal logic and scientific method.

Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great, remained his friend throughout the period of his conquests, and died within a year of Alexander's death in 323. He stood therefore on the threshold of the new historical order which begins the third main period of Greek philosophy. Whether or not Alexander aimed at establishing a worldwide community (and this is a much-disputed question), he at least succeeded in bringing it about that after his time the small, independent and self-contained city-states, which had formed the essential framework of classical Greek life and thought, lost much of their reality as fully independent communities. Dying early with his work unfinished, he left a vast European, Asiatic and African dominion to his successors, who carved it up into unwieldy empires monarchically ruled. The changes in outlook that followed these momentous military and political events were manifold, though doubtless gradual. Certainly the Greek did not easily or quickly give up his belief in the city as the natural unit, the community to which he belonged and owed his loyalty. These local loyalties were fostered by the successor-kings themselves, who respected the power of the city-states and also saw in their preservation the best hope for the survival of Hellenic civilization among the exotic influences of the Eastern lands to which it was now transplanted. The cities therefore still exerted a direct controlling power over local affairs and the lives of their citizens, though supervised by the central government, and the old political spirit of the Greeks was kept alive, though inevitably, as time went on, it became (as Rostovtzeff has said) rather municipal than political in the true sense. On the mainland, especially, the combination of the cities into leagues went with a growing consciousness of Hellenic unity.

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W.K.C. Guthrie
A Synopsis of Greek Philosophy

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W.K.C. Guthrie A Synopsis of Greek Philosophy

Learned Freeware

W.K.C. Guthrie
A Synopsis of Greek Philosophy