MEGARIAN SCHOOL OF

PHILOSOPHY  . founded by Euclides of Megara, one of the pupils of Socrates . Two main elements went to make up the Megarian doctrine . Like the Cynics and the Cyrenaics, Euclides started from the Socratic principle that virtue is know-ledge . 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 content 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-eminence . Cicero (Academics, ii . 42) describes their doctrine as a " nobilis disciplina," and identifies them closely with Parmenides and Zeno . But their most immediate influence was upon the Stoics (q.v.), whose founder, Zeno; 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 connexion 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 . For bibliographical l information about the Megarians, see EUCLIDES; EUBULIDES; DIODORUS CRONUS; STILPO . See also ELEATIC SCHOOL; CyNtcs; STOICS; and, for the connexion between the Megarians and the Eretrians, MENEDEMUS and PHAEDO . Also Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schaols; Dyeck, De Megaricorum doctrina (Bonn, 1827); Mallet, Histoire de l'ecole de Megare (Paris, 1845); Ritter, Ober die Philosophie der rmeg .

Schule; Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, i . 32; Henne, L'ecole de Megare (Paris, 1843);

Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (Eng. trans . 1905), ii . 170 seq .