Megarian school

The Megarian school of philosophy was founded by Euclides of Megara, one of the pupils of Socrates.

Two main elements went to make up the Megarian as a doctrine. Like the Cynics and the Cyrenaics, Euclides started from the Socratic principle that virtue is knowledge. But into combination with this he brought the Eleatic doctrine of Unity. Perceiving the difficulty of the Socratic dictum he endeavoured to give to the word knowledge a definite context by divorcing it absolutely from the sphere of sense and experience, and confining it to a sort of transcendental dialectic or logic.

The Eleatic unity is Goodness, and is beyond the sphere of sensible apprehension. This goodness, therefore, alone exists; matter, motion, growth and decay are figments of the senses; they have no existence for Reason. Whatever is, is! Knowledge is of ideas and is in conformity with the necessary laws of thought. Hence Plato in the Sophist describes the Megarians as the friends of ideas. Yet the Megarians were by no means in agreement with the Platonic idealism. For they held that ideas, though eternal and immovable, have neither life nor action nor movement.

This dialectic, initiated by Euclides, became more and more opposed to the testimony of experience; in the hands of Eubulides and Alexinus it degenerated into hairsplitting, mainly in the form of the reductio ad absurdum. The strength of these men lay in destructive criticism rather than in construction: as dialecticians they were successful, but they contributed little to ethical speculation. They spent their energy in attacking Plato and Aristotle, and hence earned the opprobrious epithet of Eristic. They used their dialectic subtlety to disprove the possibility of motion and decay; unity is the negation of change, increase and decrease, birth and death. None the less, in ancient times they received great respect owing to their intellectual pre-emirrence.

Cicero (Academics, ii. 42) describes their doctrine as a nobilis disciplina, and identifies them closely with Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. But their most immediate influence was upon the Stoics, whose founder, Zeno of Citium; studied under Stilpo. This philosopher, a man of striking and attractive personality, succeeded in fusing the Megarian dialectic with Cynic naturalism. The result of the combination was in fact a juxtaposition rather than a compound; it is manifestly impossible to find an organic connection between a practical code like Cynicism and the transcendental logic of the Megarians But it served as a powerful stimulus to Zeno, who by descent was imbued with oriental mysticism.

Euclid of Megara

For other people named Euclid, see Euclid (disambiguation).

Euclid of Megara, a Greek Socratic philosopher who lived around 400 B.C.E., founded the Megarian school of philosophy. Editors and translators in the Middle Ages often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria when discussing the latter's Elements. Most modern translations of Plato's Theaetetus render his name "Euclides."

Euclid was born in Megara, but in Athens he became a follower of Socrates. After Socrates's trial and death, Euclid returned to Megara, where other frightened pupils of Socrates found an asylum at his home. While none of his works have been preserved, he is quoted and discussed in various other ancient texts.

Euclid's philosophy was a synthesis of Eleatic and Socratic ideas. 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. 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." While these doctrines may appear to contradict empirical reality, he argued that, since non-being cannot exist without becoming a species of being (i.e., no longer "non-being"), and since the essence of Being is the Good, the opposite of the Good cannot exist. His doctrinal heirs, the Stoic logicians, inaugurated the most important school of logic in antiquity other than Aristotle's peripatetics.

Euclid had three important pupils: Eubulides of Miletus, Ichtyas – the second leader of the Megarian school – and Thrasymachus of Corinth. This last one was the master of Stilpo, who was the master of Zeno of Citium, the founder of the stoic school.

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