Welcome to Foggytown's Hellenistic Philosophy Page!  An out of the way corner of the web.

Hellenistic Philosophy is Western thought that followed Aristotle and continued until Neoplatonism.  There were 12 schools of thought during this period; including Platonism, Peripateticism, Cynicism, Cyrenaicism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism, Eclecticism, Hellenistic Judaism, Neopythagoreanism, Hellenistic Christianity, and Neoplatonism.  This site currently focuses on three of these schools which, this writer believes, have the most impact and use in today's world.

Stoicism: A school of philosophy organized at Athens in the third century B.C.E. by Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus. The stoics provided a unified account of the world that comprised formal logic, materialistic physics, and naturalistic ethics. Later Roman stoics emphasized more exclusively the development of recommendations for living in harmony with a natural world over which one has no direct control.

Epicureanism: A system of philosophy based chiefly on the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. The essential doctrine of Epicureanism is that pleasure is the supreme good and main goal of life. Intellectual pleasures are preferred to sensual ones, which tend to disturb peace of mind.

Christianity: Before the Council of Nicea created a dogmatic view, an attempt was made to reconcile Christianity with Greek philosophy.  It was an effort to provide the emerging Christianity with a philosophical framework.

At a future date the philosophies of Cynicism and Skepticism may be added.

This site focuses on the original early texts and attempts to promote a secular ethics  based in rationality.  Each of these texts help elucidate--or make clear-- what the ancient Greeks would phrase as Gnothi seauton or the later Latin writers would know as nosce te ipsum, or what we, modern speakers of English, would phrase as know thyself.  It is this simple maxim that each of these texts aims to aid the reader in achieving. 

Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of humankind. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.
-Epicurus