Glossary of Ancient Greek Philosophy Concepts
Nature (Physis)
The intrinsic principle of motion and rest of natural things. From the Latin word natura, translated from Greek physis. This notion is important in all but the Greek philosophers. Aristotle was the one who studied it in more detail; his whole philosophy revolves around this concept, just as Plato’s does around the theme of Ideas.
Arché
The principle or ultimate essence of all things. The Greek word arché (or arche) is translated into English as “principle.” This concept is very important in pre-Socratic philosophy, as one of the most important concerns of the early philosophers was the investigation of the arché or element that makes up all things.
Matter (Aristotle)
The reality that something is made of, from the Greek hyle. This term originally meant wood, construction material. The element that matters is that something. Along with form, it is a constituent of individual substances and from the dynamic point of view is that which may determine any form, therefore a potential reality.
Soul of the World
Or cosmic soul. For the Stoics and the Neoplatonists, the soul that pervades and permeates the physical world, giving rationality, perfection, and life to the entire universe.
Hyle
For the Stoics, together with pneuma or spirit, the principle that makes all things. Understood as corporeal matter and the potentiality from which all things of nature are made.
Pneuma
For the Stoics, God as spirit or breath of life that fills, legislates, and directs the universe.
The Stoics distinguished two principles in reality: matter (hyle), report, pure chance and passivity, and the Spirit (Pneuma) or murmur that shapes, and movement to present the matter. But they did not reach a concept of the Spirit as radically opposed to the material and immaterial. Probably influenced by the idea that the material can act only in corporeal reality, what they thought made up of invisible subtle matter. Matter and spirit are in everything; all reality is involved in varying degrees of these two principles. This thesis involves a pantheistic conception of God or Spirit is everywhere — is everywhere, although the human soul is the truest expression of his nature.
Espermatikós Logos
For the Stoics, the reason that provides all things, the divinity covering, directs, gives life and destiny of all things of nature.
Materialism
Philosophical theory for which the whole of reality can be explained in terms of matter in motion.
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is the philosophical system, as opposed to materialism, defending the reality of the spirit or existence of spiritual beings.
Apeiron
A term used by Anaximander (Greek philosopher) to refer to what for him was the beginning of everything: something undefined that was neither water nor earth, nor air, nor fire, the elements considered essential. The Apeiron is immortal and indestructible, imperishable, unbegotten, but it will give birth to all things. Everything comes and everything goes back to the apeiron as a necessary cycle. From it, the substances are separated, opposing each other in the world, and where one prevails over the other, a reaction restores the balance “as needed, for mutual paid compensation for their pain and injustice as the provision of time” (Anaximander).
Harmonia (Heraclitus)
The harmony of Heraclitus is very different from that of the Pythagoreans. Theirs was a static, mathematical one; Heraclitus follows the dynamic balance of opposites. It is not a static harmony whose equilibrium is rest, but a balance of two opposing forces, which allow one to overdo it. The disappearance of one would lead to the disappearance of its opposite and the world. That was too much for the time; even Aristotle believed that it was breaking the law of contradiction in his words.
Heraclitus’s Logos
To be saying, “Not me, but having heard the logos, it is wise to say with him that all is one.” Taking the logos as the great unity of reality, Heraclitus calls for listening, which means, hopefully, it is revealed only in place of Heraclitus. The logos can be understood as the Intelligence that directs, orders, and gives harmony to the evolution of the changes occurring in the war that is existence itself. This is a substantial intelligence, present in all things. When an entity loses the meaning of its existence, it strays from the Logos.
A Priori
In general, the “a priori” opposes the “a posteriori,” and refers to the passage of something prior to an afterthought in any ordered series of elements, regardless of whether this series takes place or not in time, and before referring to a temporary, logical or ontological scholasticism are called “a priori” shows ranging from cause to effect, the essence of an object to their properties.
Doxa (Plato)
The “opinion” or “doxa” is the title given by Plato to a form of knowledge. This knowledge is based on perception, refers to the tangible world, i.e., spatiotemporal things, physical entities, and in the level of knowledge, the kind of knowledge is lower.
Doxa is divided into two species or types of knowledge: conjecture, which is the knowledge we have of things when we see their shadows or reflections, and belief, which is the knowledge we have when we perceive things directly and we form a view of them.
Aporia of Zeno
Or Zeno’s paradoxes. Arguments presented by Zeno of Elea to demonstrate the absurdity of the belief in movement and multiplicity, and thus defend their master’s theses, Parmenides.
Aporia
Aporia: Greek (step impracticable dead end). With the term aporia, we refer to the situation created when a problem has no solution or leads to absurd conclusions.
Nous (Anaxagoras)
The term nous appears in the philosophy of Anaxagoras and can be translated as “mind.” Anaxagoras held that there is an immaterial reality endowed with knowledge and will that directs the behavior of all natural things and that somehow God can identify with. This view introduces finalist explanations of natural change. The philosophical tradition picked up the idea (but not the term nous) of a Supreme Being who commands and leads the world in terms of a plan, and we find it in Plato, Aristotle, and all Christian thought.
Nous (Aristotle)
Or intelligent insight. The Nous is the intellectual vision of the truth of first principles, as the first principles of mathematics called axioms or first principles of the usual topics of philosophy. It is not discursive but intuitive knowledge and can be expressed also as intellectual and immediate knowledge of the essences of things.
Homeomerías
Particles or seeds from which all things are made, according to Anaxagoras. Homoioméreiai the Greek word (like particles). Influenced by Parmenides, Anaxagoras held that being cannot come from nothing, so it is uncreated and imperishable. This view was forced to consider (such as atoms and Empedocles) that there is no birth and perish in the strict sense. Unlike the atom, to which the atoms do not differ qualitatively from each other, Anaxagoras thought that there are some seeds or substances whose meeting qualitatively different results in visible things. He believed that only we can consider that an object can be transformed into another, or may lead to another (as with food intake which allows the growth of muscles, tendons …) if we assume that the object that is transformed into another It is in some way what they give rise. So, he thought that in everything there are seeds or homeomerías of all things.
Determinism
Philosophical theory according to which events or world events occur by necessity.
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is the general philosophical position which takes as the primary factor in all truth and morality the mental individuality of the particular subject material, ever-changing and impossible to transcend into an absolute truth and universal. Subjectivism limits the validity of the truth to the knowing subject and is judged primarily according to their understanding, “but as a constituent part of the subject.