Ancient Greek philosophy came from the pre-Socratic period through to the Hellenistic period, focusing on the development of Greek views of the cosmos, the soul, and the virtuous life. The philosophy of the Greco-Roman world from the sixth century bc to the sixth century ad laid the foundations for all subsequent Western philosophy. Its greatest figures are Socrates (fifth century bc) and Plato and Aristotle (fourth century bc). But the enormously diverse range of further important thinkers who populated the period includes the Presocratics and Sophists of the sixth and fifth centuries bc; the Stoics, Epicureans and skeptics of the Hellenistic age; and the many Aristotelian and Platonist philosophers who wrote under the Roman Empire, including the great Neo-Platonist Plotinus. Ancient philosophy was principally pagan, and was finally eclipsed by Christianity in the sixth century ad, but it was so comprehensively annexed by its conqueror that it came, through Christianity, to dominate medieval and Renaissance philosophy. This eventual symbiosis between ancient philosophy and Christianity may reflect the fact that philosophical creeds in late antiquity fulfilled much the same role as religious movements, with which they shared many of their aims and practices.
Philosophy is broken up in to several primary areas, there is the Philosophy of religion, the philosophy of the mind and there is also the philosophy of science. The philosophy of religion is the branch of philosophy which discusses the nature and existence of God. Central questions include: Does God exist? What sort of evidence could justify belief in God? If there is a God, why is there so much suffering in the world? And is there life after death?
Whereas the Philosophy of he mind studies the nature of the mind. Central questions in the philosophy of mind include: Is it possible for a machine to think? How is the mind related to the brain? And do animals have minds? However the philosophy of science analysis’s the nature and results of scientific inquiry. Central questions include: Do scientist describe reality or just appearances? And can we have good reason to believe in the existence of unobservable entities.
Ethics via ethica is from the Greeks” moral philosophy", from the of ethos "custom, ", a major branch of , it deals with moral issues and is the study of and of a person or group. It covers the and employment of such as and , , and . It is divided into three primary areas: meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Meta-ethics is concerned primarily with the meaning of ethical judgments and/or prescriptions and with the notion of which properties, if any, are responsible for the truth or validity thereof.
Normative ethics is the study of ethical - moral standards that tell us how to judge right from wrong, or good from bad, and how to live moral lives. This may involve articulating the or good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our actions on ourselves and others. These have traditionally been the three main approaches to normative ethics.
Applied ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to apply ethical theory to real-life situations. The lines of distinction between meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry.
In the history of Philosophy the question of Ethics comes to the fore soon after the Persian wars, since the Persian wars Ethics, or the investigation of this mysterious regulator of human action – the moral law – comes to the front in Greek Philosophy. Up to this time Greek Philosophy had been in the main natural philosophy. It made it its duty to investigate and explain the laws which hold in the world of nature. Now nature lost interest with the philosophers ever more and more. Man, or the ethical nature of humanity, became the central point of their investigations. Natural Philosophy ceased to make further progress, the natural sciences were divided from philosophy; all progress of the ancient philosophy came now from the study of the spiritual nature of man and his morality.
