Ancient Roman philosophy: history, content and main schools

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

Ancient Roman philosophy is characterized by eclecticism, like the whole of this era. This culture was formed in conflict with the Greek civilization and at the same time felt unity with it. Roman philosophy was not very interested in how nature works - it mainly talked about life, overcoming adversity and danger, as well as how to combine religion, physics, logic and ethics.

Teaching about virtues

Seneca was one of the brightest representatives of the Stoic school. He was the teacher of Nero, the emperor of ancient Rome, known for his bad reputation. The philosophy of Seneca is set forth in such works as "Letters to Lucilius", "Questions of Nature". But Roman Stoicism was different from the classical Greek trend. So, Zeno and Chrysippus considered logic to be the skeleton of philosophy, and physics to be the soul. Ethics, they considered it to be its muscles. Seneca was the new Stoic. The soul of thought and of all virtue he called ethics. Yes, he livedin accordance with their principles. For not approving the repression of his pupil against Christians and the opposition, the emperor ordered Seneca to commit suicide, which he did with dignity.

School of Humility and Temperance

The philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome took Stoicism very positively and developed this direction until the very end of the era of antiquity. Another famous thinker of this school is Epictetus, the first philosopher of the ancient world, who was a slave by birth. This left an imprint on his views. Epictetus openly called for considering slaves to be the same people as everyone else, which was inaccessible to Greek philosophy. For him, stoicism was a way of life, a science that allows you to maintain self-control, not to seek pleasure and not be afraid of death. He declared that one should not wish for the best, but for what is already there. Then you will not be disappointed in life. Epictetus called his philosophical credo apathy, the science of dying. This he called obedience to the Logos (God). Humility with fate is a manifestation of the highest spiritual freedom. Emperor Marcus Aurelius was a follower of Epictetus.

Skeptics

Historians who study the development of human thought consider such a phenomenon as ancient philosophy to be a single entity. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were similar to each other in a number of ways. This is especially true for the period of late antiquity. For example, both Greek and Roman thought knew such a phenomenon as skepticism. This isdirection always arises in times of decline of major civilizations. In the philosophy of ancient Rome, its representatives were Aeneside from Knossos (a student of Pyrrho), Agrippa, Sextus Empiricus. All of them were similar to each other in that they opposed any kind of dogmatism. Their main slogan was the assertion that all disciplines contradict each other and negate themselves, only skepticism accepts everything and at the same time casts doubts.

On the nature of things

Epicureanism was another popular school of ancient Rome. This philosophy became known primarily thanks to Titus Lucretius Carus, who lived in a rather turbulent time. He was an interpreter of Epicurus and in the poem "On the Nature of Things" in verse he outlined his philosophical system. First of all, he explained the doctrine of atoms. They are devoid of any properties, but their totality creates the qualities of things. The number of atoms in nature is always the same. Thanks to them, the transformation of matter occurs. Nothing comes from nothing. The worlds are multiple, they arise and perish according to the law of natural necessity, and atoms are eternal. The universe is infinite, while time exists only in objects and processes, and not by itself.

Epicureanism

Lucretius was one of the best thinkers and poets of Ancient Rome. His philosophy aroused both admiration and indignation among his contemporaries. He constantly argued with representatives of other directions, especially with skeptics. Lucretius believed that they were in vain considering science to be non-existent, because otherwise we would constantlythought that every day a new sun rises. Meanwhile, we know perfectly well that this is one and the same luminary. Lucretius also criticized the Platonic idea of the transmigration of souls. He said that since the individual dies anyway, it doesn't matter where his spirit ends up. Both the material and the psychic in a person are born, grow old and die. Lucretius also thought about the origin of civilization. He wrote that people first lived in a state of savagery until they recognized fire. And society arose as a result of an agreement between individuals. Lucretius preached a kind of Epicurean atheism and at the same time criticized Roman customs as too perverted.

Rhetoric

The most prominent representative of the eclecticism of Ancient Rome, whose philosophy is the subject of this article, was Marcus Tullius Cicero. He considered rhetoric to be the basis of all thinking. This politician and speaker tried to combine the Roman desire for virtue and the Greek art of philosophizing. It was Cicero who coined the concept of "humanitas", which we now widely use in political and public discourse. In the field of science, this thinker can be called an encyclopedist. As for morality and ethics, in this area he believed that each discipline goes to virtue in its own way. Therefore, every educated person should know any ways of cognition and accept them. And all sorts of everyday hardships are overcome by willpower.

Philosophical and religious schools

During this period, the traditionalancient philosophy. Ancient Rome well accepted the teachings of Plato and his followers. Especially at that time, philosophical and religious schools that united the West and the East were fashionable. The main questions that these teachings raised were the relationship and opposition of spirit and matter.

One of the most popular trends was neo-Pythagoreanism. It promoted the idea of a single God and a world full of contradictions. The Neo-Pythagoreans believed in the magic of numbers. A very famous figure of this school was Apollonius of Tyana, whom Apuleius ridiculed in his Metamorphoses. Among the Roman intellectuals, the teachings of Philo of Alexandria dominated, who tried to combine Judaism with Platonism. He believed that Jehovah gave birth to the Logos that created the world. No wonder Engels once called Philo "the uncle of Christianity."

The most fashionable trends

The main schools of philosophy of Ancient Rome include Neoplatonism. The thinkers of this trend created the doctrine of a whole system of mediators - emanations - between God and the world. The most famous Neoplatonists were Ammonius Sakkas, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus. They professed polytheism. Philosophically, the Neoplatonists explored the process of creation as highlighting the new and eternal return. They considered God to be the cause, beginning, essence, and purpose of all things. The Creator pours out into the world, and therefore a person in a kind of frenzy can rise to Him. This state they called ecstasy. Close to Iamblichus were the eternal opponents of the Neoplatonists - the Gnostics. They believed that evil had its ownthe beginning, and all emanations are the result of the fact that creation began against the will of God.

The philosophy of Ancient Rome was briefly described above. We see that the thought of this era was strongly influenced by its predecessors. These were Greek natural philosophers, Stoics, Platonists, Pythagoreans. Of course, the Romans somehow changed or developed the meaning of previous ideas. But it was their popularization that ultimately proved useful for ancient philosophy as a whole. After all, it was thanks to the Roman philosophers that medieval Europe met the Greeks and began to study them in the future.