The Story of Philosophy: Lives, Ideas and Impact of History’s Greatest Philosophers (Grapevine Edition)

by Will Durant

But the most characteristic and fertile developments of Greek philosophy took form with the Sophists, travelling teachers of wisdom, who looked within upon their own thought and nature, rather than out upon the world of things.

that by nature all men are equal, becoming unequal only by class-made institutions; and that law is an invention of the strong to chain and rule the weak.

that morality is an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong;

But no doubt they liked best in him the modesty of his wisdom: he did not claim to have wisdom, but only to seek it lovingly; he was wisdom’s amateur, not its professional.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.

What do you mean by honor, virtue, morality, patriotism? What do you mean by yourself? It was with such moral and psychological questions that Socrates loved to deal. Some who suffered from this “Socratic method,” this demand for accurate definitions, and clear thinking, and exact analysis, objected that he asked more than he answered, and left men’s minds more confused than before. Nevertheless he bequeathed to philosophy two very definite answers to two of our most difficult problems—What is the meaning of virtue?

If one could build a system of morality absolutely independent of religious doctrine, as valid for the atheist as for the pietist, then theologies might come and go without loosening the moral cement that makes of wilful individuals the peaceful citizens of a community.

And in an intelligently administered society—one that returned to the individual, in widened powers, more than it took from him in restricted liberty—the advantage of every man would lie in social and loyal conduct, and only clear sight would be needed to ensure peace and order and good will.

On the contrary is it not universally seen that men in crowds are more foolish and more violent and more cruel than men separate and alone?

Had not Aristophanes predicted precisely such a result from this specious replacement of the old virtues by unsocial intelligence?

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

“Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato,” says Emerson;

For injustice is censured because those who censure it are afraid of suffering, and not from any scruple they might have of doing injustice themselves” (338–44).

the Sophist Callicles denounces morality as an invention of the weak to neutralize the strength of the strong.

Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.

To devise a method of barring incompetence and knavery from public office, and of selecting and preparing the best to rule for the common good—that is the problem of political philosophy.

“How charming people are!—always doctoring, increasing and complicating their disorders, fancying they will be cured by some nostrum which somebody advises them to try, never getting better, but always growing worse . . .

Human behavior, says Plato, flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and wisdom and political leadership meet in the same man, . . . cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race” (473).