Euclid of Megara
Encyclopedia
Euclid of Megara was a Greek
Socratic
philosopher who founded the Megarian school of philosophy
. He was a pupil of Socrates
in the late 5th century BCE, and was present at his death. He held the supreme good to be one, eternal and unchangeable, and denied the existence of anything contrary to the good. Editors and translators
in the Middle Ages
often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria
when discussing the latter's Elements
.
, but in Athens
he became a follower of Socrates
. So eager was he to hear the teaching and discourse of Socrates, that when, for a time, Athens had a ban on any citizen of Megara entering the city, Euclid would sneak into Athens after nightfall, disguised as a woman
to hear him speak. He is represented in the preface of Plato
's Theaetetus
as being responsible for writing down the conversation between Socrates and the young Theaetetus
many years earlier. Socrates is also supposed to have reproved Euclid for his fondness for eristic
disputes. He was present at Socrates' death (399 BCE), after which Euclid returned to Megara, where he offered refuge to Plato and other frightened pupils of Socrates.
In Megara, Euclid founded a school of philosophy which became known as the Megarian school, and which flourished for about a century. Euclid's pupils were said to have been Ichthyas
, the second leader of the Megarian school; Eubulides of Miletus
; Clinomachus
; and Thrasymachus of Corinth
. Thrasymachus was a teacher of Stilpo
, who was the teacher of Zeno of Citium
, the founder of the Stoic
school.
Euclid himself wrote six dialogues though none survive. These diaglogues were named the Lamprias, the Aeschines, the Phoenix, the Crito, the Alcibiades, and the Amatory dialogue.
. Euclid's philosophy was a synthesis of Eleatic and Socratic ideas. Socrates claimed that the greatest knowledge was understanding the good. The Eleatics claimed the greatest knowledge is the one universal Being of the world. Mixing these two ideas, Euclid claimed that good is the knowledge of this being. Therefore this good is the only thing that exists and has many names but is really just one thing. He identified the Eleatic idea of "The One" with the Socratic "Form of the Good," which he called "Reason," "God," "Mind," "Wisdom," etc. This was the true essence of being
, and was eternal and unchangeable. The idea of a universal good also allowed Euclid to dismiss all that is not good because he claimed that good covered all things on Earth with its many names. Euclid adopted the Socratic idea that knowledge is virtue and that the only way to understand the never-changing world is through the study of philosophy. Euclid taught that virtues themselves, however, were simply the knowledge of the one good, or Being. As he said, "The Good is One, but we can call it by several names, sometimes as wisdom, sometimes as God, sometimes as Reason," and he declared, "the opposite of Good does not exist."
Euclid was also interested in concepts and dilemmas of logic
. Euclid and his Megarian followers used dialogue
and the eristic
method to defend their ideas. The Eristic method allowed them to prove their ideas by disproving those of the one they were arguing with and therefore indirectly proving one's own point (see reductio ad absurdum
). When attacking a demonstration, it was not the premises assumed but the conclusions that he attacked, which presumably means that he tried to refute his opponents by drawing absurd consequences from their conclusions. He also rejected argument from analogy. His doctrinal heirs, the Stoic
logicians, inaugurated the most important school of logic in antiquity other than Aristotle
's peripatetics.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
Socratic
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
philosopher who founded the Megarian school of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. He was a pupil of Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
in the late 5th century BCE, and was present at his death. He held the supreme good to be one, eternal and unchangeable, and denied the existence of anything contrary to the good. Editors and translators
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria
Euclid
Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
when discussing the latter's Elements
Euclid's Elements
Euclid's Elements is a mathematical and geometric treatise consisting of 13 books written by the Greek mathematician Euclid in Alexandria c. 300 BC. It is a collection of definitions, postulates , propositions , and mathematical proofs of the propositions...
.
Life
Euclid was born in MegaraMegara
Megara is an ancient city in Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King...
, but in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
he became a follower of Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
. So eager was he to hear the teaching and discourse of Socrates, that when, for a time, Athens had a ban on any citizen of Megara entering the city, Euclid would sneak into Athens after nightfall, disguised as a woman
Woman
A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
to hear him speak. He is represented in the preface of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's Theaetetus
Theaetetus (dialogue)
The Theaetetus is one of Plato's dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge. The framing of the dialogue begins when Euclides tells his friend Terpsion that he had written a book many years ago based on what Socrates had told him of a conversation he'd had with Theaetetus when Theaetetus was...
as being responsible for writing down the conversation between Socrates and the young Theaetetus
Theaetetus (mathematician)
Theaetetus, Theaitētos, of Athens, possibly son of Euphronius, of the Athenian deme Sunium, was a classical Greek mathematician...
many years earlier. Socrates is also supposed to have reproved Euclid for his fondness for eristic
Eristic
Eristic, from the ancient Greek word Eris meaning wrangle or strife, often refers to a type of argument where the participants fight and quarrel without any reasonable goal....
disputes. He was present at Socrates' death (399 BCE), after which Euclid returned to Megara, where he offered refuge to Plato and other frightened pupils of Socrates.
In Megara, Euclid founded a school of philosophy which became known as the Megarian school, and which flourished for about a century. Euclid's pupils were said to have been Ichthyas
Ichthyas
Ichthyas , the son of Metallus, was a Greek philosopher and a disciple and successor of Euclid of Megara in the Megarian school. He was a colleague of Thrasymachus of Corinth in the school...
, the second leader of the Megarian school; Eubulides of Miletus
Eubulides of Miletus
Eubulides of Miletus was a philosopher of the Megarian school, and a pupil of Euclid of Megara. He is famous for his paradoxes.-Life:Eubulides was a pupil of Euclid of Megara, the founder of the Megarian school. He was a contemporary of Aristotle, against whom he wrote with great bitterness...
; Clinomachus
Clinomachus
Clinomachus , was a Megarian philosopher from Thurii. He is said by Diogenes Laërtius to have been the first who composed treatises on the fundamental principles of dialectics, and he is described as the founder of the Dialectical school. According to the Suda, he was the disciple of Euclid of...
; and Thrasymachus of Corinth
Thrasymachus of Corinth
Thrasymachus of Corinth, was a philosopher of the Megarian school. Little is known about him except that he was colleague and friend of Ichthyas, and he had presumably been taught by Euclid of Megara, the founder of the school. He was said to have been the teacher of Stilpo.-References:*D. Zeyl,...
. Thrasymachus was a teacher of Stilpo
Stilpo
Stilpo was a Greek philosopher of the Megarian school. He was a contemporary of Theophrastus, Diodorus Cronus, and Crates of Thebes. None of his writings survive, he was interested in logic and dialectic, and he argued that the universal is fundamentally separated from the individual and concrete...
, who was the teacher of Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher from Citium . Zeno was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, which he taught in Athens from about 300 BC. Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics, Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of virtue in...
, the founder of the Stoic
STOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
school.
Euclid himself wrote six dialogues though none survive. These diaglogues were named the Lamprias, the Aeschines, the Phoenix, the Crito, the Alcibiades, and the Amatory dialogue.
Philosophy
None of Euclid's works have survived. The main source we have for his views is the brief summary by Diogenes LaërtiusDiogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...
. Euclid's philosophy was a synthesis of Eleatic and Socratic ideas. Socrates claimed that the greatest knowledge was understanding the good. The Eleatics claimed the greatest knowledge is the one universal Being of the world. Mixing these two ideas, Euclid claimed that good is the knowledge of this being. Therefore this good is the only thing that exists and has many names but is really just one thing. He identified the Eleatic idea of "The One" with the Socratic "Form of the Good," which he called "Reason," "God," "Mind," "Wisdom," etc. This was the true essence of being
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
, and was eternal and unchangeable. The idea of a universal good also allowed Euclid to dismiss all that is not good because he claimed that good covered all things on Earth with its many names. Euclid adopted the Socratic idea that knowledge is virtue and that the only way to understand the never-changing world is through the study of philosophy. Euclid taught that virtues themselves, however, were simply the knowledge of the one good, or Being. As he said, "The Good is One, but we can call it by several names, sometimes as wisdom, sometimes as God, sometimes as Reason," and he declared, "the opposite of Good does not exist."
Euclid was also interested in concepts and dilemmas of logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
. Euclid and his Megarian followers used dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
and the eristic
Eristic
Eristic, from the ancient Greek word Eris meaning wrangle or strife, often refers to a type of argument where the participants fight and quarrel without any reasonable goal....
method to defend their ideas. The Eristic method allowed them to prove their ideas by disproving those of the one they were arguing with and therefore indirectly proving one's own point (see reductio ad absurdum
Reductio ad absurdum
In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or validity of a proposition by showing that the proposition's being false would imply a contradiction...
). When attacking a demonstration, it was not the premises assumed but the conclusions that he attacked, which presumably means that he tried to refute his opponents by drawing absurd consequences from their conclusions. He also rejected argument from analogy. His doctrinal heirs, the Stoic
STOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
logicians, inaugurated the most important school of logic in antiquity other than Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's peripatetics.
Further reading
- Bobzien, Susanne, Dialectical School, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008 Edition)
- Turner, William. Chapter VIII: The Imperfectly Socratic Schools. Jaques Martain Center. University of Notre Dame. 11 Nov. 2008