Материал: isaeva_av_sost_professionalnyi_angliiskii_iazyk_dlia_student (1)

to profess – открыто признавать, заявлять; scrutiny – изучение, исследование;

watershed – граница между эпохами, поворотный пункт.

Read the text and give a short summary of it.

2.4 Philosophy in the 4th century BC.

Socrates and the Sophists helped to make Athens the philosophical centre of the Greek world, and it was there, in the 4th century, that the two greatest philosophers of antiquity lived and taught, namely Plato and Aristotle. Plato,

Socrates‟ pupil, set up his school the Academy in Athens. Plato‟s published dialogues are literary masterpieces as well as philosophical classics, and develop, albeit unsystematically, a global philosophy which embraces ethics, politics, physics, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics and psychology.

The Academy‟s most eminent alumnus was Aristotle, whose own school the Lyceum came for a time to rival the Academy's importance as an educational centre. Aristotle‟s highly technical but also often provisional and exploratory school treatises may not have been intended for publication; at all events, they did not become widely disseminated and discussed until the late 1st century BC. The main philosophical treatises (leaving aside his important zoological works) include seminal studies in all the areas covered by Plato, plus logic, a branch of philosophy which Aristotle pioneered. These treatises are, like Plato‟s, among the leading classics of Western philosophy.

Platonism and Aristotelianism were to become the dominant philosophies of the Western tradition from the 2nd century AD at least until the end of the

Renaissance, and the legacy of both remains central to Western philosophy today10.

Vocabulary

albeit – хотя и;

to embrace – охватывать;

alumnus – бывший студент, воспитанник, ученик;

Lyceum – Лицей;

to rival – соперничать, конкурировать; provisional – предварительный, временный;

10 SEDLEY, DAVID (1998). Ancient philosophy. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved February 05, 2014, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A130

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disseminated – распространенный;

seminal – плодотворный, конструктивный; legacy – наследие.

Read the text and answer the questions after it.

2.5 Hellenistic Philosophy.

Down to the late 4th century BC, philosophy was widely seen as a search for universal understanding, so that in the major schools its activities could comfortably include, for example, biological and historical research. In the ensuing era of Hellenistic philosophy, however, a geographical split helped to demarcate philosophy more sharply as a self-contained discipline. Alexandria, with its magnificent library and royal patronage, became the new centre of scientific, literary and historical research, while the philosophical schools at Athens concentrated on those areas which correspond more closely to philosophy as it has since come to be understood. The following features were to characterize philosophy not only in the Hellenistic age but also for the remainder of antiquity.

The three main parts of philosophy were most commonly labelled “physics” (a primarily speculative discipline, concerned with such concepts as causation, change, god and matter, and virtually devoid of empirical research), “logic” (which sometimes included epistemology) and “ethics”. Ethics was agreed to be the ultimate focus of philosophy, which was thus in essence a systematized route to personal virtue and happiness. There was also a strong spiritual dimension. One‟s religious beliefs – that is, the way one rationalized and elaborated one‟s own (normally pagan) beliefs and practices concerning the divine – were themselves an integral part of both physics and ethics, never a mere adjunct of philosophy.

The dominant philosophical creeds of the Hellenistic age (officially 323– 31 BC) were Stoicism (founded by Zeno of Citium) and Epicureanism (founded by Epicurus). Scepticism was also a powerful force, largely through the Academy, which in this period functioned as a critical rather than a doctrinal school, and also, starting from the last decades of the era, through Pyrrhonism11.

Vocabulary

ensuing – следующий;

11 SEDLEY, DAVID (1998). Ancient philosophy. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved February 05, 2014, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A130

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Hellenistic – эллинистический (эллинский); split – раскол, разделение;

to demarcate – разграничивать; patronage – покровительство; remainder – остаток, остальная часть;

to label – обозначать, классифицировать;

speculative – спекулятивный, теоретический, умозрительный; causation – причинность, причинная связь;

devoid of – свободный от, лишенный чего-либо; ultimate – окончательный, безусловный; dimension – направление;

to elaborate – тщательно обдумывать, разрабатывать; adjunct – дополнение;

creeds – убеждения;

Zeno of Citium – Зенон из Кития; doctrinal – догматический; Pyrrhonism – пирронизм.

Questions:

1.What was the characteristic feature of philosophy in the 4th century BC?

2.What place became the new centre of scientific, literary and historical research?

3.What place concentrated on areas connected more closely with philosophy?

4.What were the three main parts of philosophy in the Hellenistic age?

5.What were the dominant philosophical creeds of the Hellenistic age?

Read the text and give the summary of it.

2.6 Philosophy in the Imperial Era.

The crucial watershed belongs, however, not at the very end of the Hellenistic age (31 BC, when the Roman empire officially begins), but half a century earlier in the 80s BC. Political and military upheavals at Athens drove most of the philosophers out of the city, to cultural havens such as Alexandria and Rome. The philosophical institutions of Athens never fully recovered, so that this decentralization amounted to a permanent redrawing of the philosophical map. (The chairs of Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Epicureanism which the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius established at Athens in 176 AD were a significant gesture, but did not fully restore Athens‟ former philosophical preeminence.) Philosophy was no longer, for most of its adherents, a living activity within the Athenian school founded by Plato, Aristotle, Zeno or Epicurus. Instead it was a subject pursued in small study groups led by professional teachers all over the Greco-Roman world. To a large extent, it was felt that the history of philosophy had now come to an end, and that the job was to seek the correct

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interpretation of the “ancients” by close study of their texts. One symptom of this feeling is that doxography – the systematic cataloguing of philosophical and scientific opinions – concentrated largely on the period down to about 80 BC, as did the biographical history of philosophy written 300 AD by Diogenes Laertius.

Another such symptom is that a huge part of the philosophical activity of late antiquity went into the composition of commentaries on classic philosophical texts. In this final phase of ancient philosophy, conveniently called “imperial” because it more or less coincides with the era of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic creeds were gradually eclipsed by the revival of doctrinal Platonism, based on the close study of Plato‟s texts, out of which it developed a massively elaborate metaphysical scheme. Aristotle was usually regarded as an ally by these Platonists, and became therefore himself the focus of many commentaries. Despite its formal concern with recovering the wisdom of the ancients, however, this age produced many powerfully original thinkers, of whom the greatest is Plotinus12.

Vocabulary

crucial – ключевой, значимый;

watershed - граница между эпохами, этапами, поворотный пункт; Hellenistic – эллинистический, эллинский;

upheaval – потрясение;

redrawing – переделка, перерисовывание; pre-eminence – превосходство, преимущество; adherent – последователь, сторонник;

Zeno – Зенон;

to pursue – проявлять интерес; doxography – доксография;

Diogenes Laertius – Диоген Лаэртский; creeds – убеждения;

to eclipse – затмевать, заслонять;

elaborate – детально разработанный, продуманный; ally – союзник;

concern – интерес; Plotinus – Плотин.

12 SEDLEY, DAVID (1998). Ancient philosophy. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved February 05, 2014, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A130

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Read the text and answer the questions after it.

2.7 Schools and Movements.

The early Pythagoreans constituted the first philosophical group that can be called even approximately a “school”. They acquired a reputation for secrecy, as well as for virtually religious devotion to the word of their founder Pythagoras.

“He himself said it” (best known in its Latin form „ipse dixit‟) was alleged to be their watchword. In some ways it is more accurate to consider them a sect than a school, and their beliefs and practices were certainly intimately bound up in religious teachings about the soul‟s purification.

It is no longer accepted, as it long was, that the Athenian philosophical schools had the status of formal religious institutions for the worship of the muses. Their legal and institutional standing is in fact quite obscure. Both the Academy and the Lyceum were so named after public groves just outside the walls of Athens, in which their public activities were held. The Stoics too got their name from the public portico, or “stoa”, in which they met, alongside the Athenian agora. Although these schools undoubtedly also conducted classes and discussions on private premises too, it was their public profile that was crucial to their identity as schools. In the last four centuries BC, prospective philosophy students flocked to Athens from all over the Greek world, and the high public visibility of the schools there was undoubtedly cultivated partly with an eye to recruitment. Only the Epicurean school kept its activities out of the public gaze, in line with

Epicurus‟ policy of minimal civic involvement.

A school normally started as an informal grouping of philosophers with a shared set of interests and commitments, under the nominal leadership of some individual, but without a strong party line to which all members owed unquestioning allegiance. In the first generation of the Academy, for example, many of Plato‟s own leading colleagues dissented from his views on central issues. The same openness is discernible in the first generations of the other schools, even (if to a much lesser extent) that of the Epicureans. However, after the death of the founder the picture usually changed. His word thereafter became largely beyond challenge, and further progress was presented as the supplementation or reinterpretation of the founder‟s pronouncements, rather than as their replacement.

To this extent, the allegiance which in the long term bound a school together usually depended on a virtually religious reverence for the movement‟s foundational texts, which provided the framework within which its discussions were conducted. The resemblance to the structure of religious sects is no accident. In later antiquity, philosophical and religious movements constituted in effect a single cultural phenomenon, and competed for the same spiritual and intellectual high ground. This includes Christianity, which became a serious rival to pagan philosophy (primarily Platonism) from the 3rd century onwards and eventually

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