Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (2000) Anthony Gottlieb

Anthony Gottlieb’s “The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance” (2000) stands as a remarkable achievement in making the complex world of ancient philosophy accessible to modern readers, much the way Bertrand Russell’s seminal “The History of Western Philosophy” (1946) did for previous generations. Gottlieb’s group biography does for western philosophy what Robert Heilbroner’s “The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers” (1953) did for economists: it makes often esoteric theories and recondite subject matter easily accessible to the average reader. The psychologist William James once described philosophy as “a peculiarly stubborn effort to think clearly.” Gottlieb ultimately helps you think clearly about thinking clearly.

Part One of Gottlieb’s work establishes the foundation of Western philosophy through his exploration of the pre-Socratic thinkers, those revolutionary minds who first dared to seek rational, rather than mystical, explanations for the world around them, although much of what we know about many of them, such as Pythogoras, is mostly speculation. Dozens of philosophers are discussed but only seven have chapters dedicated to them: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus.

Gottlieb develops several key themes that illuminate the significance of these early philosophers. First, he emphasizes their radical departure from mythological explanations of natural phenomena. Where previous generations had attributed earthquakes to Poseidon’s anger or lightning to Zeus’s wrath, thinkers like Thales and Anaximander sought natural causes for natural events. The pre-Socratics saw mathematics as the key to understanding the order and beauty of the universe. This represents what Gottlieb calls the birth of rational inquiry itself.

The second major theme Gottlieb explores is the pre-Socratics’ obsession with the problem of change and permanence. Heraclitus once supposedly declared that one cannot step into the same river twice, emphasizing the constant flux of reality, while Parmenides argued that true being must be unchanging and eternal and thus anything that changes cannot be real. This fundamental tension between appearance and reality, between the world as we experience it and the world as it truly is, would become central to all subsequent philosophical inquiry. Democritus (460-357 BC), who Gottlieb calls “a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the Delphic Oracle,” postulated that the material world was built by tiny, moving, eternal, and unchanging atoms. Gottlieb shows how this debate established the philosophical vocabulary that would dominate Western thought for millennia.

A third crucial theme is the emergence of systematic thinking about the nature of knowledge itself. They seem to be the first to use the term philosophia – “love of wisdom for its own sake.” The pre-Socratics didn’t merely propose theories about the world; they began to develop methods for testing and evaluating these theories. Gottlieb demonstrates how figures like Xenophanes introduced crucial skeptical elements, questioning whether human knowledge could ever achieve certainty about divine matters or the ultimate nature of reality. Anaxagoras sought to understand what the world is made of, while Socrates asked, in what Gottlieb calls “a turning point in the history of philosophy,” how should we live in it? This self-reflective turn, where philosophy began to examine its own methods and limitations, laid the groundwork for the more sophisticated epistemological investigations that would follow.

In Part Two, Gottlieb presents Socrates as a figure who fundamentally transformed the direction of philosophical inquiry. Rather than focusing primarily on questions about the natural world, Socrates turned philosophy’s attention to questions of human conduct and the good life, and did so by asking questions, or as Gottleib writes: “teasing, cajoling, and provoking.” For Socrates, philosophy was an intimate and collaborative activity; he would have had little use for his student Plato’s concept of Forms and the rare skills necessary to find them. The author emphasizes that Socrates’ famous declaration that “the unexamined life is not worth living” represented more than mere intellectual curiosity – it was a moral imperative that connected self-knowledge to ethical living.

The Socratic method, as Gottlieb presents it, was revolutionary in its approach to knowledge. Rather than claiming to possess wisdom, Socrates claimed to know only that he knew nothing. (“Avowed ignorance was his trademark,” Gottlieb says.) This profession of ignorance became a powerful tool for exposing the pretensions of those who claimed knowledge they didn’t actually possess. Gottlieb shows how Socrates’ relentless questioning – his famous “elenchus” – served not merely to embarrass his interlocutors but to demonstrate the complexity of concepts that most people take for granted. What exactly is courage? What is justice? What is piety? These seemingly simple questions, when subjected to Socratic scrutiny, revealed depths of complexity that challenged conventional assumptions.

Gottlieb also emphasizes Socrates’ conviction that virtue is knowledge and that no one does wrong willingly. Indeed, he believed that happiness and virtue were directly linked. This intellectualist approach to ethics, which seems counterintuitive to modern readers, reflected Socrates’ belief that proper understanding of good and evil would necessarily lead to virtuous action, which he distilled down to courage, moderation, piety, wisdom, and justice. If people truly understood what was good for them, they would inevitably choose it, which would be a demonstration of wisdom, perhaps the most critical of all Socrates’ virtues. In short, wisdom brought virtue – and virtue brought happiness. This perspective would profoundly influence his successors, even as they modified or rejected aspects of his teaching.

Plato emerges in Gottlieb’s account as the philosopher who transformed Socratic insights into a comprehensive philosophical system, albeit with plenty of hang-ups. Where Socrates had been content to ask questions and expose ignorance, Plato sought to provide answers and construct a complete worldview, much of it based on mathematics, which he perceived as “ideal, eternal, unchanging, and pleasingly independent.” Gottlieb demonstrates how Plato’s theory of Forms – “the center of [Plato’s] intellectual universe” – addressed the fundamental problems raised by the pre-Socratics about permanence and change, appearance and reality.

According to Gottlieb’s analysis, Plato’s Forms represent perfect, eternal patterns that exist beyond the physical world. The objects we encounter in daily experience are mere shadows or inferior copies of these perfect Forms. This theory allowed Plato to preserve both the Heraclitean insight that the physical world is in constant flux and the Parmenidean conviction that true reality must be eternal and unchanging. The Forms exist in a realm beyond change, while the physical world participates in them imperfectly. These concepts were taught at Plato’s school in Athens, the Academy, founded in 387 BC when he was forty, for close to 900 years. The famous allegory of the cave was created to articulate Plato’s concepts of the Forms – the blurry images projected on the cave wall before the chained audience represented how everyday man sees the world.

Gottlieb shows how this metaphysical framework supported Plato’s approach to ethics and politics. Just as there is a perfect Form of Justice, there are objective moral truths that exist independently of human opinion or convention. The philosopher’s task is to apprehend these truths through reason and to structure society accordingly. This leads to Plato’s vision of the ideal state ruled by philosopher-kings who understand the Form of Justice and can implement it in the world.

In the Republic, Plato hypothesized about a perfect city, although the author says that the philosopher never intended the idealized polity to be achievable. It would be a hierarchical society with a large class of producers (craftsmen, farmers and traders) at the bottom, who would be kept in-line by a virtuous class of warrior-monk guardians who lived communally and possessed no property. At the top would be a small class of rulers picked from the most outstanding guardians. The required training for the philosopher-king was exhaustive: three years of military training, ten years of advanced scientific study, five years training in dialectical argument, and fifteen years of training in politics and administration, suggesting that candidates would graduate at about age fifty. Only the most extraordinary people would make the grade. Those who did would be wise, able, balanced, and virtuous with significant practical experience in military affairs and political administration. Plato suggests that these elite philosopher-kings would be able to see the Form of the Good as directly as lesser mortals see the sun.

Plato’s universe was ruled by reason. He argued that different forms of government were driven by different animating spirits. The absolute best, philosopher-kings, were ruled by reason; timocracy (military rule) ruled by passion for glory; oligarchy by hunger for wealth; democracy by immediate and base gratification. The main takeaway is that justice and the best form of happiness are found together in the rule of reason.

The similarities between Socrates and Plato, as Gottlieb presents them, include their shared conviction that virtue is objective and knowable, their belief in the immortality of the soul, and their confidence in reason’s ability to discover truth. However, Gottlieb also highlights crucial differences. Where Socrates claimed ignorance, Plato claimed knowledge. Where Socrates was content to examine and question, Plato constructed elaborate theories. Most importantly, where Socrates focused on individual moral development, Plato extended his inquiries to encompass politics, education, and the structure of reality itself.

Aristotle appears in Gottlieb’s narrative as both Plato’s greatest student and his most effective critic. Only about a quarter of Aristotle’s writings have survived, which are the treatises he used at his research institute he set up in Athens in 335 BC known as the Lyceum, and yet they amount to a million and a half words. “Any credible description of the impressiveness of his work would be an understatement,” Gottleib writes. He made significant contributions across an array of subjects, but none more than formal logic, which he essentially invented along with the concept of a “variable”, and biology, where he captured the physiology and behavior of 540 zoological specimens. Aristotle’s legacy and influence were profound. “Educated people of late medieval times ate, drank and breathed him,” the author says, but “what Aristotle was held to have said is not what he actually said.”

Gottlieb demonstrates how Aristotle systematically dismantled many of Plato’s core doctrines while preserving the scientific spirit of philosophical inquiry. Aristotle’s famous criticism that Plato’s Forms merely duplicate the problems they were designed to solve reflects his more empirical approach to understanding reality. He taught that there are only four main things that one should ask about something: What is it made of? What is its form/structure? What purpose does it serve? What made it come into being or change? This line of reasoning led him to believe in intelligent design or a Master-Craftsman who organized the universe (although Gottlieb says that “Aristotle’s God would not have cared two hoots for man”).

Gottlieb shows how Aristotle replaced Plato’s two-world theory with a more integrated view of reality. Rather than existing in a separate realm, universal essences exist within particular objects. The form of a tree doesn’t exist in some heavenly realm but is present in each individual tree. This allows Aristotle to take the physical world seriously as a proper object of philosophical investigation rather than dismissing it as mere appearance.

The similarities between Aristotle and his predecessors, according to Gottlieb, include their shared belief in objective truth and the power of reason to discover it. Like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle believed that virtue could be understood rationally and cultivated through proper education. All three philosophers shared a conviction that the good life required more than mere pleasure or material success; it demanded the development of human excellence in accordance with our rational nature. In other words, Gottleib says, “the good life will require a certain minimum of material comfort and general good fortune, but the crucial thing is to do all the characteristically human things well and from the right motives.” This activity turns out to be Aristotle’s self-sufficient concept of “theoria”: intellectual contemplation as the ultimate form of happiness, or the pursuit and enjoyment of truth for its own sake.

However, Gottlieb emphasizes significant differences in their approaches. Aristotle’s ethics is more practical and flexible than Plato’s rigid moral geometry. Where Plato sought absolute definitions of virtues, Aristotle developed his doctrine of the mean, which recognizes that virtuous action often involves finding the appropriate balance between extremes. Courage, for example, is the mean between cowardice and recklessness. This approach allows for more nuanced moral judgments that take circumstances into account.

Gottlieb also highlights Aristotle’s more systematic approach to organizing knowledge. Where Plato’s writings are largely dialogues that explore questions without necessarily reaching definitive conclusions, Aristotle’s works are treatises that systematically examine particular subjects. His logic, biology, physics, ethics, and politics represent distinct but interconnected areas of inquiry, each with its own methods and principles.

The collapse of the classical Greek city-state system created new challenges for philosophical thinking, and Gottlieb shows how the Hellenistic schools – Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics – each developed distinctive responses to these changed circumstances and how they tried to argue each other out of existence. These schools shared a common concern with practical ethics and the achievement of happiness, but they offered radically different prescriptions for the good life.

Gottlieb presents the Epicureans as sophisticated hedonists who sought to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. However, he emphasizes that Epicurean hedonism was far more nuanced than crude sensual indulgence (many have argued that “Roman vice sheltered itself under the name of Epicurus”). Epicurus distinguished between different types of pleasures and argued that intellectual pleasures were generally superior to physical ones because they were less likely to be accompanied by pain, the avoidance of which was the real focus. The Epicurean sage sought ataraxia – tranquility or freedom from disturbance – rather than intense positive pleasures. The key to wisdom, they argued, was knowing what not to worry about. The social philosophy of Epicurus inspired the nineteenth century philosophy of “utilitarianism” championed by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, who argued: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.”

The Epicurean approach to death exemplifies their practical philosophy. Gottlieb shows how Epicurus argued that death is “nothing to us” because we cannot experience non-existence. This view encapsulates the general perspective of the epicureans that one of the main obstacles to happiness is irrational fear. This wasn’t mere intellectual sophistry but a therapeutic technique designed to free people from one of their deepest sources of anxiety. Similarly, the Epicurean rejection of political involvement wasn’t based on indifference to others but on the recognition that political life was too turbulent to allow for genuine happiness. The main legacy of Epicurean philosophy was delivered in the writings of Lucretius (99–55 BC), particularly “On the Nature of Things,” published some two centuries after Epicurus had died in 271 BC.

The Stoics, by contrast, embraced engagement with the world while maintaining emotional detachment from outcomes beyond their control. Gottlieb demonstrates how Stoic philosophy developed a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between reason and emotion. The Stoics didn’t advocate emotional numbness but rather the cultivation of rational emotions appropriate to circumstances. The sage feels joy at virtue and sorrow at vice, but these emotions are based on correct judgments about what is truly good or bad.

Gottlieb shows how Stoic ethics centered on the concept of living “according to nature.” This meant accepting the rational order of the universe and playing one’s assigned role to the best of one’s ability. The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius exemplified this approach, fulfilling his political duties while maintaining philosophical detachment from the outcomes of his actions. This combination of engagement and detachment allowed Stoicism to appeal to both rulers and slaves, offering a philosophy that could be practiced regardless of external circumstances.

The Skeptics, as Gottlieb presents them, offered a more radical solution to the problem of achieving happiness. Rather than seeking to discover truth about the world, they argued that the suspension of judgment (epoché) was the path to tranquility. Gottlieb shows how Skeptic philosophers like Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus developed sophisticated arguments to show that every claim to knowledge could be matched by an equally plausible contrary claim.

The similarities between these schools, according to Gottlieb, include their shared focus on practical ethics and their concern with achieving happiness through philosophical practice. All three schools offered therapeutic philosophies designed to help people live better lives in an uncertain world. They also shared a more individualistic orientation than their classical predecessors, focusing on personal development rather than political reform.

However, their differences were profound. The Epicureans sought happiness through the intelligent pursuit of pleasure, the Stoics through the acceptance of fate and the cultivation of virtue, and the Skeptics through the suspension of judgment. These different approaches reflected different assessments of human nature and the possibilities for knowledge and action.

Gottlieb concludes his survey by examining the state of Western philosophy as it stood on the verge of the Renaissance. His perspective reveals a tradition that had become increasingly complex and sophisticated but also somewhat removed from the practical concerns that had motivated its founders. Medieval philosophy had achieved remarkable syntheses of Greek philosophy with Christian theology, but these elaborate systems often seemed more concerned with maintaining doctrinal consistency than with addressing the lived experience of human beings.

Gottlieb suggests that by the late medieval period, philosophy had become overly scholastic and abstract. The elaborate logical machinery developed by thinkers like Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, while impressively sophisticated, often seemed to generate more problems than it solved. The famous medieval debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, while not as silly as later critics suggested, exemplified a tendency toward minute distinctions that lost sight of philosophy’s larger purposes.

Yet Gottlieb also recognizes the genuine achievements of medieval philosophy. The translation and preservation of Greek texts, the development of sophisticated logical techniques, and the creation of comprehensive worldviews that integrated faith and reason all represent significant contributions to the philosophical tradition. Thinkers like Thomas Aquinas had shown how Aristotelian philosophy could be adapted to Christian purposes without sacrificing intellectual rigor.

As philosophy stood on the threshold of the Renaissance, Gottlieb sees it poised for renewal. The rediscovery of additional Greek texts, the development of new scientific methods, and the changing social and political circumstances of European life would soon create new opportunities for philosophical innovation. The Renaissance would bring a return to the practical concerns that had motivated ancient philosophy while building on the technical achievements of the medieval period.

Gottlieb’s “The Dream of Reason” thus presents Western philosophy not as a series of abstract theories but as a living tradition of inquiry into the deepest questions of human existence. From the pre-Socratics’ first attempts to understand the natural world through reason to the Hellenistic schools’ sophisticated analyses of human happiness, philosophy emerges as humanity’s ongoing attempt to understand itself and its place in the cosmos. The strength of Gottlieb’s approach lies in his ability to show how these ancient questions remain relevant to contemporary life while respecting the historical distance that separates us from these remarkable thinkers. His work demonstrates that philosophy’s “dream of reason” continues to inspire and challenge us, offering resources for thinking about perennial human concerns in an ever-changing world.