- Hellenistic Philosophy And Science
(By Jonathan Barnes)Greek philosophy has a continuous history. The death of Alexander the Great heralded no intellectual
revolution, and the Hellenistic thinkers placed themselves in the tradition of Thales and of Socrates. But
after Aristotle the emphasis changed: Hellenistic philosophy - in its scope, its aim, its self-understanding -
differed somewhat from the discipline practised in earlier centuries.
Philosophy became an Art of Living. The pursuit of scientific knowledge ceased to be the defining mark
of the philosopher. Rather, a man's philosophy was something that he lived by, and a philosopher's task
was to discover the 'best life', to teach it, and to live it. Ethics, or practical philosophy, emerged as the
regent part of the subject.
Practical utility determined the philosophical curriculum. As ethics rose, so metaphysics descended. More
significantly, science divorced itself from philosophy and became the pursuit of professionals. The
divorce was confirmed by geographical dislocation: Athens remained the chief centre of philosophy, but
science migrated to Egyptian Alexandria and the financial subventions of the Ptolemies. Philosophy
retained indeed a part called 'physics', and the general understanding of natural science never lost its
importance; but Hellenistic philosophers did not care to describe the organs of the octopus or to chronicle
the movements of the stars.
On the other hand, the Hellenistic period was marked by a passionate concern with the theory of
knowledge. The art of living must rest upon a firm knowledge of the nature of things, and the foundations
of knowledge must be philosophically secure. The challenge of scepticism was accepted by the
Hellenistic thinkers: some of the subtlest work of the age was provoked by the debate over doubt and
dogmatism.