Preliminary Remarks: Greco-Oriental Philosophy
Why Greek philosophy declined and how it fused with Oriental religious thought.
Greek philosophy retrograded after Aristotle into Skepticism and Eclecticism, and Glenn has already identified the causes: a lack of philosophers of the first talent, and the relaxing of the vigorous inquiry that had marked the earlier schools. Into this exhaustion came the religious and speculative traditions of the East, carried west along the trade and imperial routes and meeting Greek thought above all at Alexandria. The result was a series of syncretic systems in which Greek philosophical vocabulary was put to the service of oriental religious doctrine. This Book accordingly treats Greco-Jewish philosophy, in which Greek thought is blended with the Scriptures of the Hebrews, and Neoplatonism, in its Alexandrian, Syrian, and Athenian Schools.
Preliminary Remarks
We have seen that Greek Philosophy retrograded after Aristotle into Skepticism and Eclecticism. The causes of this decline we discovered to be a lack of philosophers of the first talent, and the relaxing of the effort which true speculation exacts. Inadequate minds, wearying of the quest for truth, gave up the search, and spread the noxious doctrine that certainty is not to be had in anything, and that philosophy can serve men only by pointing out the best manner of living peacefully on earth.
Now the desire for truth cannot be quelled in the souls of men; it is a driving power that can be made to suffer a lull, but never extinction. The Stoic, Skeptic, Epicurean, and other eclectic systems could not long satisfy either human minds or human hearts. Something new inevitably developed.
Alexander’s conquests and those of Rome brought into intimate political and commercial relations the peoples of the East and the West. Naturally the new urge for learning, the reaction from Skepticism and Eclecticism, resulted in combinations of Oriental religion-philosophy and Greek speculation. Such syncretic systems flourished during the last two centuries before Christ, and were in existence in parts of the Roman Empire—notably in the larger cities-—for the first three centuries after Christ. Indeed, some syncretists did not hesitate to weave elements of the Christian Revelation into their fabric erfpagan philosophy.
Qf the Greek philosophies that of Plato was best adapted
for blending with Oriental mysticism: and for this reason the Greco-Oriental Systems of Philosophy are markedly Platonic.
Of these systems we shall treat in two Chapters: