Greek Philosophers Shaped The Cultural And Intellectual Development Of The World

Greek Philosophers “Philo-” means love, and “-sophia” means wisdom. The term “philosophy” translates to “the love of wisdom.” Ancient Greek philosophy opened the doors to a new way of thinking. This was a non-religious approach to understanding how the world works. Instead of using stories and myths, philosophers were determined to use their own intelligence and knowledge of reasoning. Socrates lived from 469 to 399 BCE. He was a Greek philosopher and is considered to be the father of Western philosophy. Socrates shaped the cultural and intellectual developments of the world. Without him, history would be profoundly different. He is best known for his teachings of the Socratic Method. The Socratic Method is a way of cooperative debate between individuals. This method is based on asking and answering questions to stimulate comprehensive thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions. He claimed himself as ignorant, he also believed that the “unexamined” life is not worth living, for humans. Socrates never wrote any of his teachings down. Instead, he was committed to living simply, and questioning the views and popular opinions of the people living in his hometown of

Plato was a student of Socrates. Plato was mostly influenced by his mentor, Socrates. As I stated earlier, Socrates did not right his teachings down. After Socrates was killed, Plato immediately wrote down all of Socrates teachings to keep record of them. In Plato's own writings, Socrates was usually the main character. Plato wrote mostly throughout the 4th century BCE. His writings covered topics from: ethics, political philosophy, moral philosophy, epistemology (the study of knowledge), and metaphysics into an interconnected systematic philosophy. It is mostly from Plato that we get the theory of the Forms, according to which the world we know through the senses is only an imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the Forms