Is philosophy an exclusive invention of the Greeks? This was for a long time the opinion of many thinkers, including the English historian J. Burnet. However, at present, this idea is under discussion. Although Eastern philosophy has characteristics different from Western ones, both India with China, they had developed a philosophical knowledge long before the ancient Greeks.
The Greeks have the merit of having initiated Western philosophy. This emergence was a gradual process that spanned different stages and reflected the social, political and cultural transformations of the time.
The early Greek philosophers focused their interest in cosmology, from the Ionian materialists to the metaphysical Parmenides. These interests are then transferred to the polis, the city, through which man is discovered as a citizen. Socrates and the sophists, will clearly represent this period. Then, the time will come for the philosophical systems with Democritus, Plato and Aristotle, which with their remarkable differences, will construct theories that will have the daring ambition to pretend to encompass an explanation of reality. And finally, when the metaphysics problem seems to have been exhausted, it will be the moment of practical philosophy: ethics will find its echo between stoics and epicureans.
Synthesis of the history of philosophy during the Greek period