Greek Philosophy

The title “Ancient Greek Philosophy” may be applied to philosophical texts written in Greek over a period of somewhat more than one thousand years, from the Milesian Anaximander before 500 bce to the Alexandrian John Philoponus, who died in 570 ce. The bibliography of the available texts, and translations, is significantly large, and the bibliography of secondary literature written about those texts in subsequent centuries is vast. This article is necessarily highly selective, designed primarily to give access to some of the basic works in each area of investigation. Separate bibliographies on individual philosophers, periods, and schools will follow. This article begins with a section on philosophy before Plato, including the Presocratics and Socrates, with some references to philosophers who were contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle. The second section focuses on Plato and early Platonists; the third section, on Aristotle and his immediate successors in the Peripatetic school. The fourth section focuses on philosophy after Aristotle, often called “Hellenistic” philosophy. This period notably includes Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics, as well as followers of Plato and Aristotle during the period from 322 bce until the Roman Empire engulfed the Greek world. The fifth section includes access to philosophy written in Greek during the Roman Imperial period, from the middle of the 1st century bce until the closing of the philosophical schools in the 5th and 6th centuries ce. It was during this time that many of the texts that provide our information about the earlier periods were written; many of the surviving texts are commentaries on works by Plato or Aristotle, for example, but significant original philosophical work was written, for instance, by Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and Porphyry, by Aristotelians such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, and by the medical philosopher Galen. This bibliography includes something of a combination of introductory texts suitable for someone beginning a study of a particular field, plus a significant number of texts and translations of the ancient authors, and a few more-specialized studies, where those may be of special interest.