Ancient Ethics.

The Eleatics, especially, in that opposition to polytheism and the humanising of the nature-gods, which was begun by their founder Xenophanes, cleared the way at least for later ethical speculations. The Socratic ethics was too much the outcome of its founder’s life to regard the life according to duty and the happy life as in general distinct But the realisation of such an unity in one’s own life is one thing; the doctrinal expression of it another. Plato’s philosophy rests wholly and entirely on an ethical basis. Apparently, the ethical thought upon which this whole system is based is identical with that which lies at the bottom of the religious idea of retribution. The ethics of the Stoa finds its closest affiliations with the past in Socrates, and in that Socratic School which according to its own opinion gave completest expression to the fundamental thought of the master’s life and teachings, the Cynics.

Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Philosophy