Within this realm of one world, a world history and monarchy created by Rome, we have Greek thought. This is the Hellenistic period of Greek thought. We distinguish :… the classical Greek period, which goes up to the death of Aristotle, from the Hellenistic period which starts after him, – which the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-Pythagoreans, Skeptics, and Neo-Platonists begin. This Hellenistic period is the immediate source of much Christian thought. It is not so much classical Greek thinking. It became this later in the 4th century. But it is more Hellenistic thinking, which influenced early Christianity. Here again I want to distinguish the negative and the positive elements in Greek thought in the period of the kairos, the period of the ancient world coming to an end. The negative side is what we would call Skepticism. Skepticism, not only in the Skeptic school but also in the other schools of Greek philosophy, is the end of the tremendous and admirable attempt of Greek philosophy to build a world of meaning on the basis of an interpretation of reality in objective or rational terms. Greek philosophy had undercut the ancient mythological and ritual traditions. In the period of the Sophists and Socrates, it became obvious that these traditions were not valid any more. Sophism is the revolution of the subjective mind against the old traditions. But now life must go on. The meaning of life in all realms – politics, law, art, social relations, knowledge, religion – has not been probed, This the Greek philosophers tried to do. They were not people who were sitting behind their desks writing philosophical books. If they were nothing but philosophers of philosophy, we would have forgotten their names long ago. But they were people who took upon themselves the task of creating a spiritual world by objectively observing reality as it was given to them, interpreting it in terms of analytic and synthetic reason.
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