---
id:"kb-2026-00351"
title:"Greek Philosophy"
schema_type:"TechArticle"
category:"history"
language:"en"
confidence:"high"
last_verified:"2026-05-22"
generation_method:"ai_assisted"
ai_models:["claude-opus"]
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primary_sources:
  - title:"A History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell)"
    type:"book"
    year:1945
    url:"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-History-of-Western-Philosophy/Bertrand-Russell/9780671201586"
    institution:"Simon & Schuster"
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  - title: "BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers"
    authors: ["Devlin", "Chang", "Lee", "Toutanova"]
    type: "academic_paper"
    year: 2019
    doi: "10.48550/arXiv.1810.04805"
    url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805"
  - title: "MDN Web Docs — HTTP"
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    url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP"
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ai_citations:
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---

## TL;DR

Ancient Greek philosophy (6th century BCE - 6th century CE) laid the foundations of Western thought. Three giants: Socrates (questioning method, 'know thyself'), Plato (Theory of Forms, The Republic), Aristotle (logic, ethics, politics, biology — tutored Alexander the Great). Pre-Socratics (Thales: water as fundamental substance).

## Core Explanation

Socrates (470-399 BCE): never wrote — known through Plato's dialogues, executed for 'corrupting youth.' Plato (428-348 BCE): Forms (ideal, eternal versions of things), Academy (first Western university). Aristotle (384-322 BCE): empiricism, golden mean (virtue between extremes), Lyceum. Hellenistic schools: Stoicism (virtue + reason), Epicureanism (pleasure + absence of pain), Skepticism (suspension of judgment).

## Further Reading

- [A History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell)](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-History-of-Western-Philosophy/Bertrand-Russell/9780671201586)