Aristotle
49 BCE Julius Caesar and his forces cross the Rubicon river to seize power in Rome.
30 CE Christ dies by crucifi xion.
The exact year of his death is still disputed and 33 CE has also been proposed as a likely date.
121 CE Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius studies Greek philosophy, and commends the Stoic ethos in his infl uential Meditations.
150 CE Ptolemy of Alexandria, a Greek scholar of astronomy and mathematics, proves that the world is round.
205 CEThe Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus is born in Egypt. His explication of Plato’s works informs the development of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
0 100 CE 200 CE 300 CE
While Socrates and Plato were laying the foundations for Western philosophy, Confucius and Lao Tzu ushered in the classical era of Chinese philosophy, which lasted for 400 years and was enriched by such thinkers as Mozi, Mengzi (Mencius), and Han Feizi. These thinkers were all concerned primarily with social and political issues and established the four principal schools of Chinese thought.
SHAPING SOCIETY The fi rst such school is Confucianism, an enduring infl uence on government within China and the offi cial philosophy of the Han Dynasty.
Confucius emphasized the value of traditional social roles and structures, arguing that rulers needed to foster a natural moral sense in their subjects.
The second is Daoism, which began with the Dao De Jing, a work attributed to Lao Tzu, and was later developed by Zhuangzi. Daoism argues for minimal interference from government in order to allow society to return to an unforced condition that is more in tune with nature. Lao Tzu himself rejected all artifi cial social distinctions, and eventually left the civilized world, never to be heard of again.
The third strand of Eastern philosophical thought begins with Mozi, who founded a community based on mutual support in the 4th century BCE. Mohism, like Confucianism, argues that the inherent moral virtue in people must be allowed to fl ower.
Opposed to this view is the fourth school, Legalism, founded by Han Feizi, which stresses the need for strict laws in order to ensure conformity to moral codes of behavior among an inherently immoral populace. Legalism was the guiding principle of the autocratic and ruthless Qin Dynasty that oversaw the fi rst Great Unifi cation of China into a single imperial state in 221 BCE. From the classical era (which came to its
Ancient Eastern thought
conclusion at the end of the Qin Dynasty) onward, Chinese philosophy is essentially a working through and development of the various themes of
these four main schools of thought.
THE VEDAS
Indian philosophy grows out of what are essentially a set of ancient religious writings, the Vedas, which date back as far as the 14th century BCE. Little is known of their authors.
The concerns of the Vedas are primarily cosmological, metaphysical, and religious: for example, in one section, sages dispute the question of what the origin of the universe was.
Several schools of thought grew up in reaction to the Vedas, either accepting their authority or questioning their tenets. Buddhism, founded by Siddhartha Gautama, represents one of the nine schools within this tradition and one that is sceptical of the Vedas.
It urges that spiritual enlightenment can only be gained once an individual is free of the shackles of earthly desires.
Deities, not philosophers, are the vehicles of wisdom in the Vedas. Here, an effi gy of one such deity, Ganesh, undergoes ritual immersion during a Hindu festival.
The “three wise men” of the East:
Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Confucius.
Chinese philosophy is shaped by the infl uence of a few key thinkers.
Throughout most of the Golden Age the Greek city-states remained independent.
It was only in 330 BCE that they were united as one nation by the Macedonian leader, Alexander, who went on to conquer most of the known world, from Greece and Egypt in the west to China and India in the east. This empire ensured that Greek
culture would have a lasting infl uence on the world. One of Alexander’s greatest achievements was the construction of the port of Alexandria in Egypt, which became a center for Western and Eastern culture and thought.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Mediterranean, a small
state was steadily growing. Rome, initially a crossing point over the Tiber River, had grown into an Empire that had begun to dominate Western trade routes. Having defeated and razed the rival trading power Carthage,
they turned their attention to Greece. By 146 BCE Rome had
brought the Greek
From Greece to Rome
mainland under its control, fi nally ending the Golden Age of Greek culture.
Although the Roman Empire went on to new heights, the Greeks still gained a victory, for Rome held up Greek culture as a standard for its Empire. And so the traditions of Plato, and to a lesser extent Aristotle, found their way into Roman
intellectual life.
THE ERA OF
“SCHOOLS”
There were many philosophical sects that sprang up in Greece after the death of Aristotle and found their way to Rome.
The fi rst philosophical school of this new era was formed by the Cynics. Antisthenes (ca.445–360 BCE) was a contemporary of Plato who, after Socrates’s death, abandoned the aristocratic life of leisure and began to live and work among the poor. He rejected the trappings of civilization in order to embrace a more natural way of being. Diogenes (ca.400–325 BCE), his better-known disciple, was more radical still, rejecting all artifi cial
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius followed the Stoic school of thought. His own writings stressed the fl eeting, ephemeral nature of human life.