Philosophers

"For philosophic men must be inquirers into very many things," according to Heraclitus;

And yet the philosophers too hold the virtues to be habits and dispositions and sciences.

If, then, one were to take away fear and honour, I do not know whether even the noble among the philosophers who boast of their frankness would still hold out under their afflictions.

The philosophers know of demons, Socrates himself awaiting the judgment of his demon.

Among your own sages too it is agreed that the Logos — that is, the Word and Reason — is seen to be the artificer of the universe.

For they are surnamed philosophers, not Christians.

I mean the philosopher, the truest and perhaps most perfect expositor and prophet, by reason, of the immortal nature.

but if as philosophers they do this for the sake of gain and their own reputation, not of your benefit, this is now dreadful.

And this perhaps is not your fault — you will show whether it is, if you bear with me today — but rather the fault of the so-called philosophers.

But things of this sort will be reckoned not so much parts of the soul as powers and efficacies and operations;

but according to the common opinion, the fate of providence too, and necessity, and the free arbitration of fortune.

But more, both philosophers — against Dicaearchus, Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle — and physicians against Andreas and Asclepiades, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself;

For surely you did not believe a poetic myth that records Minos the Cretan as the familiar of Zeus, and yet will disbelieve us, who have become disciples of God, having taken up the truly true wisdom, which the topmost of the philosophers only hinted at, but the disciples of Christ both grasped and proclaimed.

Since, then, Helen has power to punish as well as to reward, it is the duty of those who have great wealth to propitiate and to honor her with thank-offerings, sacrifices, and processions, and philosophers should endeavour to speak of her in a manner worthy of her merits;

Whom do you mean, then, by the true philosophers?

Then is each of these multiples rather than it is not that which one affirms it to be?

Excellent, said I, and we are plainly agreed that opinion is a different thing from scientific knowledge.

How do they differ?

Then it is in some region like this that we shall always, both now and hereafter, discover the philosopher, if we look for him;

But you surely, I suppose, will not grant the art of dialectic to any but the man who pursues philosophy in purity and righteousness.

What do you mean by this, Socrates?

That all happens just as you say, Socrates.

for why should anyone talk about the inferior philosophers?

nor does anyone stir up hatred against them, though against your manners, rites, worship, and way of life they openly and publicly bark out all the bitterness of their eloquence, with contempt of the laws, without respect of persons, so that some even hurl their freedom of speech against the emperors themselves with impunity.

To be sure, Matter conferred something on itself too, that it might be acknowledged together with God — coequal with God, nay, even his helper — except that Hermogenes alone has acknowledged it, and the philosophers, those patriarchs of the heretics.

For, turned from the Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he took from there, from the Stoics, the notion of setting Matter alongside the Lord — Matter which, on his view, has itself always existed, neither born nor made, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which the Lord afterwards made all things.

We are taught God by the prophets and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus.

But even if in the brain, or in the midpoint between the brows, or wheresoever it pleases the philosophers, the principality of the senses has been consecrated — what is called the HEGEMONIKON — the whole place of the soul's thinking will be flesh.

The philosophers indeed, who are reckoned creatures of some wisdom, ascribe so much to it that, although among themselves they are at variance through the various passions of their sects and the rivalries of their opinions, yet, mindful in common of patience alone, to this one thing they have entrusted the peace of their pursuits.

and that the restoration of the flesh be denied is taken from the one common school of all the philosophers;

Certain philosophers gave this name to quiet and tranquillity;

Those wise philosophers, blushing before their own disciples burning together with them, to whom they used to persuade that nothing pertains to God, to whom they affirmed that souls were either nothing or would not return into their former bodies?

Certainly the soul is prior to literature, and discourse prior to the book, and sense prior to the pen, and man himself prior to the philosopher and poet.

Great curiosity, and a far greater memory, is needed for the study, if anyone should wish to excerpt, from any of the most approved writings of the philosophers, or of the poets, or of any masters whatsoever of secular learning and wisdom, testimonies to Christian truth, so that its rivals and persecutors may be convicted out of their own document — guilty both of error in themselves and of injustice toward us.

for the sophists hunt the rich and young, but the philosophers are friends to all alike:

Many others besides myself blame the sophists of our generation—philosophers I will not call them —because the wisdom they profess consists of words and not of thoughts.