Ancient Greece is known for being the place of birth of western philosophy. With many great minds like Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Plato (428-348 BC) they have provided us with a seemingly endless pool of ideas that are so universal that they are still being discussed to this day. Most of these pioneers of philosophy followed a similar path to arrive at their now famous conclusions.

Generalists and specialists

The typical Greek philosopher was a universal thinker with a very broad spectrum when it comes to their wisdom and the topics they investigate. They usually covered all of the major topics in philosophy: Metaphysics, political philosophy, ethics and every other category one can think of. The opposite is the case for most philosophers of our age. Some areas that were originally thought of being part of philosophy are now separate disciplines in themselves like the different sciences which were originally all combined in a subbranch of philosophy called the philosophy of nature. Adding to this separation is that the modern branches of philosophy are also more divided than they used to be. Modern academic philosophers are very specialized contrary to the very founders of the craft. There are modern philosophers that work in one field of philosophy but completely dismiss an other branch of philosophy. For example there are many philosophers working in practical philosophy that greatly criticize metaphysics.

The Greek tradition

As covered in the previous paragraph most Greek philosophers were generalists. There is a specific tradition among these thinkers in terms of the way one should approach and link the different branches of philosophy. They start by creating a metaphysical model of the world, a theory of what keeps the core of the world together. It is a theory that tries to tackle fundamental questions of existence itself like the origins of the universe, whether there is a god or what constitutes reality. When they complete this theory they use the knowledge they gathered about the fundamental questions of being to draw conclusions about the questions of our everyday life. They applied the concepts that hold true for the very core of our existence to the way we should live our lives, the way our society should function or the way we should organize our government. You can say that they went from the universal, metaphysics, to the specific, practical philosophy.

Conclusion

While most modern philosophers are very specialized in one field the philosophers from ancient Greece usually covered a plethora of different topics and they started by investigating the very universal questions and continued by using their acquired knowledge to answer the more specific questions posed by philosophy.

(img source:https://medium.com/the-mission/plato-and-his-gang-224660ed9707)

Do you want to find out more about one Greek philosopher in particular? Check out my last article about Zeno of Elea:
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@apartphilosopher/zeno-of-elea-where-philosophy-and-mathematics-merge

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