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Sage (philosophy)
A sage ( grc, σοφός, ''sophos''), in classical philosophy, is someone who has attained wisdom. The term has also been used interchangeably with a 'good person' ( grc, ἀγαθός, ''agathos''), and a 'virtuous person' ( grc, σπουδαῖος, ''spoudaios''). Among the earliest accounts of the sage begin with Empedocles' ''Sphairos''. Horace describes the ''Sphairos'' as "Completely within itself, well-rounded and spherical, so that nothing extraneous can adhere to it, because of its smooth and polished surface."Pierre Hadot (1998).''The Inner Citadel'', trans. Michael Chase. Harvard University Press, p. 119 Alternatively, the sage is one who lives "according to an ideal which transcends the everyday." Several of the schools of Hellenistic philosophy have the sage as a featured figure. Karl Ludwig Michelet wrote that "Greek religion culminated with its true god, the sage"; Pierre Hadot develops this idea, stating that "the moment philosophers achieve a rational concepti ...
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African Philosophy
African philosophy is the philosophical discourse produced in Africa or by indigenous Africans. The term Africana philosophy covers the philosophy made by African descendants, including African Americans. African philosophers are found in the various academic fields of present philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. One particular subject that several modern African philosophers have written about is that on the subject of freedom and what it means to be free or to experience wholeness. Philosophy in Africa has a rich and varied history, some of which has been lost over time. Some of the world's oldest philosophical texts have been produced in Ancient Egypt (Kemet), written in Hieratic and on papyrus, from ca. 2200 to 1000 BCE, one of the earliest known African philosophers was Ptahhotep, an ancient Egyptian philosopher. In general, the ancient Greeks acknowledged the Egyptian forebearers, and in the fifth century BCE, the philoso ...
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Love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love for food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of a strong attraction and emotional attachment (psychology), attachment.''Oxford Illustrated American Dictionary'' (1998) Love is considered to be both positive and negative, with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another" and its vice representing human morality, moral flaw, akin to vanity, selfishness, amour-propre, and egotism, as potentially leading people into a type of mania, Obsessive love, obsessiveness or codependency. It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards ...
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Stobaeus
Joannes Stobaeus (; grc-gre, Ἰωάννης ὁ Στοβαῖος; fl. 5th-century AD), from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each. The two volumes became separated in the manuscript tradition, and the first volume became known as the ''Extracts'' (also ''Eclogues'') and the second volume became known as the ''Anthology'' (also ''Florilegium''). Modern editions now refer to both volumes as the ''Anthology''. The ''Anthology'' contains extracts from hundreds of writers, especially poets, historians, orators, philosophers and physicians. The subjects covered range from natural philosophy, dialectics, and ethics, to politics, economics, and maxims of practical wisdom. The work preserves fragments of many authors and works which otherwise might be unknown today. Life Of his life nothing is known. He derived his surname apparently from being a native of S ...
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Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve (happiness, ): one flourishes by living an ethical life. The Stoics identified the path to with a life spent practicing the cardinal virtues and living in accordance with nature. The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things, such as health, wealth, and pleasure, are not good or called in themselves ('' adiaphora'') but have value as "material for virtue to act upon". Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and they believed people shou ...
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Arius Didymus
Arius Didymus ( grc-gre, Ἄρειος Δίδυμος ''Areios Didymos''; fl. 1st century BCE) was a Stoic philosopher and teacher of Augustus. Fragments of his handbooks summarizing Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines are preserved by Stobaeus and Eusebius. Life Arius was a citizen of Alexandria. Augustus esteemed him so highly, that after the conquest of Alexandria, he declared that he spared the city chiefly for the sake of Arius. According to Plutarch, Arius advised Augustus to execute Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, with the words "ouk agathon polukaisarie" ("it is not good to have too many Caesars"), a pun on a line in Homer. Arius as well as his two sons, Dionysius and Nicanor, are said to have instructed Augustus in philosophy. He is frequently mentioned by Themistius, who says that Augustus valued him not less than Agrippa. From Quintilian it appears that Arius also taught or wrote on rhetoric. He is presumably the "Arius" whose ''Life'' was among those in ...
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Zeno Of Citium
Zeno of Citium (; grc-x-koine, Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς, ; c. 334 – c. 262 BC) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium (, ), Cyprus. Zeno was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, which he taught in Athens from about 300 BC. Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics, Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of virtue in accordance with nature. It proved very popular, and flourished as one of the major schools of philosophy from the Hellenistic period through to the Roman era, and enjoyed revivals in the Renaissance as Neostoicism and in the current era as Modern Stoicism. Life Zeno was born c. 334 BC, in Citium in Cyprus. His ancestry is disputed between Phoenician and Greek, because Citium contained both Phoenician and Greek inhabitants. Some historians consider him to have been of Phoenician descent, while other historians say that there is no real evidence for this, and consider him to be of Greek descent. ...
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Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ;  – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem '' De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into English as ''On the Nature of Things''—and somewhat less often as ''On the Nature of the Universe''. Lucretius has been credited with originating the concept of the three-age system that was formalised in 1836 by C. J. Thomsen. Very little is known about Lucretius's life; the only certainty is that he was either a friend or client of Gaius Memmius, to whom the poem was addressed and dedicated. ''De rerum natura'' was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his ''Aeneid'' and '' Georgics'', and to a lesser extent on the ''Eclogues'') and Horace. The work was almost lost during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in 1417 in a monastery in Germany by Poggio Bracciolini and it played an important role bot ...
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Léon Robin
Léon Robin (Nantes, 17 January 1866July 1947) was a French philosopher and scholar of Greek philosophy, professor of history of ancient philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1924 to 1936. Robin, the son of a merchant, began teaching in the Faculty of Letters at Paris in 1913. In 1924 he took up the chair of history of ancient philosophy, which had lapsed after the death of Louis Rodier in 1913.Cristina Chimisso, ''Writing the history of the mind: philosophy and science in France, 1900 to 1960s'', 2008, p.24-26 In 1927 he was visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. On his retirement from the Paris chair, his successor was Pierre-Maxime Schuhl. Robin subsequently served as Director of the International Institute of Philosophy.Joseph Bochenski, ''Contemporary European philosophy'', University of California Press, 1969, p.263 Léon Robin translated the dialogues of Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher b ...
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Seneca The Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was proba ...
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Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant " birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word '' physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre- ...
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Ataraxia
''Ataraxia'' (Greek: ἀταραξία, from ("a-", negation) and ''tarachē'' "disturbance, trouble"; hence, "unperturbedness", generally translated as "imperturbability", " equanimity", or "tranquility") is a Greek term first used in Ancient Greek philosophy by Pyrrho and subsequently Epicurus and the Stoics for a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry. In non-philosophical usage, the term was used to describe the ideal mental state for soldiers entering battle. Achieving ''ataraxia'' is a common goal for Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism, but the role and value of ''ataraxia'' within each philosophy varies in accordance with their philosophical theories. The mental disturbances that prevent one from achieving ''ataraxia'' vary among the philosophies, and each philosophy has a different understanding as to how to achieve ''ataraxia''. Pyrrhonism Ataraxia is the central aim of Pyrrhonist practice. Pyrrhonists view ...
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Epicurus
Epicurus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκουρος ; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to ''Menoeceus'', ''Pythocles'', and ''Herodotus''—and two collections of quotes—the ''Principal Doctrines'' and the ''Vatican Sayings''—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writing ...
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