Ionian school
(redirected from Ionian School of Philosophy)Ionian school
Ionian School
a spontaneously materialistic trend in ancient Greek philosophy that arose and developed in the Ionian colonies in the sixth through fourth centuries B.C. The school originated in the city of Miletus and was represented by the philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes (the Milesian school), and Heraclitus of Ephesus. It is customary to contrast the Ionian school to the Pythagorean, Eleatic, and Athenian schools. Among the fundamental ideas first advanced by the Ionian philosophers was that of the unity of everything that exists, the origin of all things from a single prime principle, which was understood as one or another material element (water in Thales, air in Anaximenes, and fire in Heraclitus) or as the “unlimited,” from which the fundamental opposites warm and cold emerged (the apeiron of Anaximander). The works of the Ionian philosophers were written in the Ionian dialect, in contrast to the Athenian dialect of the works of Plato and Aristotle.
REFERENCE
Mikhailova, E. N., and A. N. Chanyshev. Ioniiskaia filosofiia. Moscow, 1966.A. O. MAKOVEL’SKII