ABSTRACT
In the heart of Greece, at Athens, there had been no philosophy hitherto, because other tasks, like the liberation of Greece, had been more urgent. It is only after the achievements that Athens enjoys the leisure which Aristotle says is required for philosophy. In Anaxagoras, Greek philosophy issued out of its embryonic condition, in which its doctrine was pre-Hellenic. The first principle of its own and all existence is now no longer found by the human mind in a single element, or in a mathematical rule, or in the collisions of atoms, but in that in which it transcends the natural. This is the first solution of the problem of philosophy in a Greek spirit, and hence the philosophy of Anaxagoras does not reflect any stage of pre-Hellenism, but the life of the Greek, and especially of the Athenian. This chapter reviews attic philosophers and their doctrines. These philosophers include Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
