ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 1, Book 1 Chapter 5: Alexandrio Syriac Thought Alexandrio Syriac Thought by C.A Qadir The Neo ‑Pythagoreans The great conquering sweep of Alexander the Great eastwards not only destroyed the old, intense and narrow life of the self‑contained Greek City­ States but also marked a decisive change in the intellectual and spiritual life of Greece.

With the spread of Greek civilisation over the Near East, the hori­zons of the individual Greeks were greatly enlarged; but the break‑up of the old City‑States engendered a sense of isolation and rootlessness which made people look inward for stability and security, rather than outward as hitherto done. Another and a more potent reason for this shift in Greek thinking can be discovered in widespread scepticism after the death of Aristotle.

True, scepticism also prevailed when Socrates was born, but the metaphysical speculations of pre‑Socratic thinkers led them into the inextricable confusion of doubt. Socrates asked people to look at man instead of nature, for in the domain of human problems the competence of reason could be demonstrated more easily than in that of the physical or the metaphysical. But the protest which scepticism made after Aristotle was more devastating.

It was declared by the sceptics that the entire philosophical venture of their predecessors was hopelessly wrong and also that their error was without a remedy. This was indeed very saddening. It amounted to the confession that not only were the solutions of the so‑called perennial problems of philosophy nonsensical but also that no satisfactory solution was possible, at least with the techniques and methods hitherto pursued. Reason thus assailed could find refuge only in faith.

In the period that follows we find philosophy renouncing its independence and becoming merely an instrument of theology.