A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval PhilosophyCushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy
A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy
Cushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy -- History
=An Historical Summary of the Anthropological Period.= The
Anthropological Period begins with the Persian Wars, 490 and
480 B. C. After the battle of Marathon there sprang up a distinct
impulse toward knowledge all over Greece; and detailed investigations
were begun in mathematics, astronomy, biology, medicine, history,
and physics. Science, which had up to this time been unorganized and
undifferentiated, now became sharply divided into the special sciences.
But what makes the Persian Wars of particular importance is that they
are the starting-point in the motherland of the movement in the study
of man and human relations. The battle of Marathon does not therefore
mark the end of the Cosmological movement and the waning of the Greeks’
interest in science; but it marks rather the beginning in Athens of
the Anthropological movement. The Cosmological and the Anthropological
Periods overlap.
The Anthropological Period easily divides itself into three epochs from
the point of view of its political affairs:――
1. The Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C.
2. The Age of Pericles, 467–428 B. C.
3. The Peloponnesian Wars, 432–403 B. C.
The first epoch is the birth and the last epoch the decadence of pure
Greek civilization, while the thirty-nine years of the supremacy of
Pericles cover the ripest period of Greek life. In this connection
it is well to mention Hegel’s thought that nations do not ripen
intellectually until they begin to decay politically (“The owl of
Minerva does not start upon its flight until the evening twilight
has begun to fall”). Plato and Aristotle do not come until after this
period, when Greek political life had begun to wane.
The following table is a partial list of the notable men of the period,
with the date of their _birth_:――
Æschylus, 525 (dramatist before Pericles).
Sophocles, 495 (dramatist during Age of Pericles).
Phidias, 490.
Euripides, 480 (dramatist of the Sophistic and the new learning).
Herodotus, 475.
Thucydides, 471.
Xenophon, 430?
Aristophanes, 444.
Anaxagoras, 500.
Empedocles, 495.
Protagoras, 480.
Democritus, 470.
Sophists (many), 450–350.
Socrates, 469.
Antisthenes, 440.
Aristippus, 435.
Plato, 427.
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