Why did the discipline of philosophy arise in ancient Greece?

This is a question that even Westerners themselves do not understand, and people can see some philosophical reflections from the materials left by history, but the history books will not write down the reasons, and many of the reasons are understood by later generations, and even in the academic world, they are also inconsistent. Anyone who has read Western philosophy knows that Russell, in his famous History of Western Philosophy, begins with a discussion of the rise of Greek philosophy. "In all of history, there is nothing more surprising or difficult to explain than the sudden rise of Greek civilization.

Most of the things that make up civilization have existed in Egypt and Mesopotamia for thousands of years, and from there they have spread to neighboring countries. But there were some elements that were missing, and it wasn't until the Greeks provided them that they were provided. The achievements of the Greeks in literature and art are well known, but their contribution to the realm of pure knowledge is even more extraordinary.

They pioneered mathematics, science, and philosophy; They were the first to write a history book that was different from a mere chronology; They are free to contemplate the nature of the world and the purpose of life, without being bound by the rigidity of any orthodoxy. Everything that happened was so amazing that, until recent times, people were content to marvel and mysteriously talk about the genius of Greece. However, it is now possible to understand the development of Greece from a scientific point of view, and it is indeed worth doing so.

From his text, we have made it clear that the origin of philosophy in the West is only the conclusion reached by people who rely on the so-called scientific vision to look at history after modern times, in addition, the real situation of history is far from being summarized by a person or a certain sentence of a person, and the study of the origin of philosophy is often not the most important thing for a person who studies philosophy, so there is no need to ** this, the content of philosophy is the direct response of philosophy.

A lot of stories the devil knows if he's real or not.

Philosophy is not necessarily the first to arise in ancient Greece, but the concept originated in ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece implemented the city-state system, small countries and widows, and the city-state system ensured the democracy of male citizens in the ancient Greek city-state, which made ancient Greece a country where ideas and cultures stirred each other, and this natural and social situation led to the emergence of ancient Greek philosophers such as the school of the wise men.

Its citizens' assemblies guaranteed citizens' right to speech, and citizens actively expressed their views at the meetings, and over time, a stable and democratic environment gave birth to philosophy.

Upstairs, a country where ideology and culture are agitating with each other, this was also the case during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in China.

In support of the second floor, each country has its own philosophy.

<> I remember that ancient Greek philosophy, also known as natural philosophy, was the first stage of the emergence and development of Western philosophy.

I remember that the reason for this is that the object of their study is nature, and they want to provide a reasonable basis and explanation for various phenomena in nature, which can be summed up as follows: The theme of Greek natural philosophy is the search for the necessity or regularity of everything in the universe and all things.

Unlike theologians who looked at nature in a fantastical and imaginary way, the Greeks looked at nature in the way of rational understanding, and they tried to explain nature with natural things, so "natural philosophy" is also called "cosmology" or "cosmogenesis", and the core issue of research is the origin of all things in the universe and the process of generation, evolution, and development.

In the whole Greek philosophical system, natural philosophy has always occupied a very important position, even after the decline of cosmology, natural philosophy still constitutes an important part of Greek philosophy, for example, in the classical period, Aristotle left us 80% of the works in natural philosophy. Therefore, ancient Greek philosophy is also called natural philosophy.

Generation: Greek religious mythology is the prehistory of ancient Greek philosophy. The basic spirit and ideas of ancient Greek philosophy can be found in their rudiments from Greek religious mythology. That is, ancient Greek philosophy arose from Greek religious mythology.

The development of ancient Greek philosophy can be roughly divided into three stages.

1. Natural philosophical period: In the 6th century B.C., some philosophers in the Ionian region of the East began to put forward the question of the origin of the world, they opposed various myths and creation theories that circulated in the past, and they were the first to use nature itself to explain the generation of the world, and they were the earliest materialist philosophers in the West.

2. Hellenistic and Roman philosophical period: In 336 BC, Alexander of Macedon ascended the throne, and he established a great empire spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa. Hellenistic culture was widely spread around the city of Alexandria, which is known in pure history as the Hellenistic period.

3. The period of humanism and systematic philosophy: In the 5th century BC, Athens had already undergone several democratic reforms, and under the leadership of Pericles, it achieved a developed democratic politics, and Athens became the economic, political, and cultural center of the ancient Greek world. Thinkers who taught oratories as a profession appeared.

The center of their discussion was on the socio-political and ethical aspects of human society.

In the 6th century B.C., some philosophers in the Ionian region of the East began to raise the question of the origin of the world, and they opposed various myths and creation theories that had been circulated in the past, believing that the origin of the world was some material elements, such as water, air, fire, etc.; They were the first to explain the generation of the world in terms of nature itself, and were the earliest materialist philosophers in the West. Notable representatives are Thales of Miletus, Anaximande, Anaximene, and Heraclitus of Ephes. At the same time, a philosophical school of thought with another ideological tendency emerged in southern Italy, which believed that the essence of all things was not a material element, but some abstract principles, the Pythagoreans considered "number", and the Elian school, represented by Parmenides, believed that "being" was unchanging, immortal, and that it was only the phenomenon of things that changed in motion.

The abstract principle of immateriality they proposed had a great influence on the later idealistic philosophy.

Raphael's masterpiece "The School of Athens".

Later natural philosophers, while acknowledging the changes in movement, sought to find the eternal and unchanging factors behind them. Empedocles considers the four "elements" of water, fire, earth, and air; Anaxagoras, on the other hand, believed to be "seeds" containing various properties from which all things are combined in different proportions; Democritus reduced the origin of all things to the smallest indivisible "atoms" (see Atoms and Voids), which have no qualitative differences, only shapes, arrangements, and states. Everything is made up of atoms.

Although Anaxagoras's proposal of "Nuss" as the final cause of the movement of things opened the door to later idealistic philosophies, these natural philosophers were all materialists, especially Democritus's atomism, which was the forerunner of the modern theory of the structure of matter. Lenin presented him as a representative of the philosophical line of ancient materialism.

The period of humanism and systems philosophy.

In the 5th century BC, Athens had already undergone several democratic reforms, became the leader of the Greek city-states in the war against Persia, and under the leadership of Pericles, achieved a developed democracy, Athens became the economic, political, and cultural center of the ancient Greek world. Due to the needs of democratic politics, a group of thinkers who made their profession the art of teaching oratories emerged, known as "wise men". The focus of their discussion is no longer on the creation of the universe in nature, but on the aspects of human society, politics and ethics, and "man" has become the center of research.

A well-known representative of the wise man is Protagoras. In order to oppose the system and ideology of traditional slave owners and aristocratic rule, he put forward the famous proposition that "man is the measure of all things", believing that the standard for judging right and wrong, good and evil, can only be personal feelings and interests, which provided a theoretical basis for the democracy system at that time. But his thinking also leads to a denial of the existence of objective truth.

This idea of relativism developed to the extreme, giving rise to the skepticism and agnosticism of the wise Gorgias. Although the ideas of the wise men played a progressive role in politics, they were the original philosophies of ancient Greek philosophy with subjective idealism.