Ancient Greek Terms/Ancient Greek Terminology

Akrasia
This ancient Greek term means a lack of any sort of self control or a lack of command over your own self. According to Aristotle, the akrasia can take place in two ways; the first is when we were overcome by acts of passions or simply by acts or by a sudden, irrational response. If we show signs on self control then we can call this enkrateia.

Apatheia
This basically means freedom from passion or to be simply devoid of any sort of passion. Now this is actually a very important concept in stoicism, whose goal is to achieve a self mastery which is devoid of any passions which might affect ones soul, all sorts of desires or any pleasures or even pain.

Arche
This is the first principle about the world in reality. For all of the Milesan pre- Socratics, it helped the people to understand what the principle of the underlying reality was.

Ataraxia
This means the freedom from disturbance. It basically means keeping your cool, staying clam and very tranquil. Now the Epicureans and also the Sceptics were disturbed in the soul because of the various pleasures or pains or emotions and so on, the physical or psychological thing which caused unhappiness. This ancient Greek term meant that if one practiced philosophy then, the person would be free from all these unhappy things.

Logos
This originated from the word Lego which literally meant to say, count, tell and speak. According to the ancient Greek philosophy it meant to reason a speech, to make a connection between thinking and reasoning.

Sophia
This means deep learning or even wisdom. It sometimes even means judgment which is practical in nature. Socrates made a statement in the Oracle at the Delphi which deemed Socrates as one of the wisent men in Athens at that time.

Polis
This is known as a city state. But then during the classical period a community of people was called this. So it basically refers to the city state as well as a citizen too. Again polis can also be referred to as a persons country.

Information on: Ancient Greece Terms, Terms in Ancient Greek

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