A Historical Chart of Modern Western Thought

Click on picture to enlarge.

Saint Athanasios Parios On Philosophy

Saint Athanasios Parios (Feast Day - June 24)

Saint Athanasios Parios (b. Paros, 1722 - d. Chios, 1813) was one of the most significant ecclesiastical figures of the 18th and 19th century and is listed with Saints Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Makarios Notaras as the three most significant Kollyvades Fathers and defenders of traditional Orthodoxy. Saint Athanasios was especially influential in his confrontation with western models of doing philosophy and theology as a director of the Mount Athos Academy as well as the School of Chios (more can be read about St. Athanasios here).

Theoretical and Practical Philosophy

- A great and wonderful gift has been given by God to man: the faculty of reason. This invents various sciences. Employing this faculty, man digs up from the earth various kinds of metals and precious stones. Then he examines the different species of animals: the quadrupeds, the bipeds; those that crawl on the earth, the birds, the terrestrial animals, the aquatic, and the amphibious; the wild and the tame, the viviparous and the oviparous. He examines the various kinds of trees: the evergreen and those that shed their leaves, those that are fruitless and the fruitbearing. He seeks to find out which trees are suitable for the needs of the various arts, and which are useful only as firewood.

Photios Kontoglou on Ancient Greek Philosophers

Wall Painting, with which Kontoglou decorated a wall of his house, 1932; now in the National Gallery. The fifth portrait from the right on top is Pythagoras.

By Dr. Constantine Cavarnos

"Pythagoras," said Kontoglou, "was an important figure. He rose to great heights. He, Empedocles, and some other ancient Greeks were important."

"I believe you would include Heraclitos in your list," I remarked.

"Yes, indeed," he said.

Kontoglou did not explain in just what sense he thought that Pythagoras "rose to great heights", and that Pythagoras, Empedocles, and some others were "important". But from later conversations I had with him and from various writings of his it became clear to me that he believed, as did Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Saint Nektarios of Aegina, as well as earlier Saints, that some of the ancient Greek philosophers had grasped certain important truths, illuminated by God. Saint Seraphim, whom Photios esteemed very highly - as is evident from a long article he wrote about this great Russian Saint - says:

The presence of the Spirit of God also acted among the pagans who did not know the true God, although it did so less strongly than among God's people. Indeed, even among them God found for Himself chosen people.... Such were the pagan philosophers who, although they wandered in the darkness of ignorance of the Deity, yet sought the truth which is beloved of God. By this very God-pleasing search they were enabled to partake of the Spirit of God.*

Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Christian Salvation

The great Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BC) famously illustrated the difference between reality and illusion through a story about men who lived all their life in a cave. In Plato’s allegory, these men were chained to pillars and could see only shadows cast on the cave’s back wall by a fire that burned behind them, out of sight.

The men in the cave took great pride in their eyesight and in their interpretive abilities—yet all the time they were looking at shadows, mere illusions. Then, one of the men breaks out of the chains and makes it outside of the cave where he discovers a whole new world. When he reenters the cave to tell his friends about his marvelous epiphany they reject and resent him to the point of wanting to kill him.