A History of Philosophy in EpitomeSchwegler, Albert
Philosophy
A History of Philosophy in Epitome
Schwegler, Albert
Philosophy -- History
VI.—THE PERIPATETIC SCHOOL.—The school of Aristotle, called the
Peripatetic, can here only be mentioned; the want of independence in its
philosophizing, and the absence of any great and universal influence,
rendering it unworthy an extended notice. Theophrastus, Eudemus, and
Strato are its most famous leaders. Like most philosophical schools, it
confines itself chiefly to a more thorough elaboration and explanation
of the system of its master. In some empirical provinces, especially the
physical, the attempt was made to carry out still further the system,
while at the same time its speculative basis was set aside and
neglected.
VII.—TRANSITION TO THE POST-ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY.—The productive
energy of Grecian philosophy expends itself with Aristotle,
contemporaneously and in connection with the universal decay of Grecian
life and spirit. Instead of the great and universal systems of a Plato
and an Aristotle, we have now systems of a partial and one-sided
character, corresponding to that universal breach between the subject
and the objective world which characterized the civil, religious, and
social life of this last epoch of Greece, the time succeeding Alexander
the Great. That subjectivity, which had been first propounded by the
Sophists, was at length, after numerous struggles, victorious, though
its triumph was gained upon the ruins of the Grecian civil and artistic
life; the individual has become emancipated, the subject is no longer to
be given up to the objective world, the liberated subjectivity must now
be perfected and satisfied. This process of development is seen in the
post-Aristotelian philosophy, though it finds its conditioning cause in
the character of the preceding philosophical strivings. The dualism
which formed the chief want of the systems both of Plato and Aristotle,
has forced itself upon our attention at every step. The attempt which
had been made, with the greatest expenditure of which the Grecian mind
was capable, to refer back to one ultimate ground both subject and
object, mind and matter, had produced no satisfactory result; and these
two oppositions, around which all previous philosophy had struggled in
vain, still remained disconnected. Wearied with the fruitless attempts
at mediation, the subject now breaks with the objective world. Its
attention is directed towards itself in its own self-consciousness. The
result of this gives us either STOICISM, where the moral subject appears
in the self-sufficiency of the sage to whom every external good and
every objective work is indifferent, and who finds a good only in a
moral activity; or EPICUREANISM, where the subject delights itself in
the inner feeling of pleasure and the calm repose of a satisfied heart,
enjoying the present and the past, and never fearing the future while it
sees in the objective world only a means by which it can utter itself;
or, again, Scepticism, where the subject, doubting and rejecting all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account