Philosophy has been understood differently in many cultures and by different generations.
Philosophy has been understood differently in many cultures and by different generations. In the broadest sense, philosophy is synonymous with wisdom or learning. In in this sense, all cultures -- whether [[prehistoric]], [[medieval]], or [[Modernism|modern]]; [[Eastern hemisphere|Eastern]], [[Western hemisphere|Western]], [[religious]] or [[secular]] — have a wisdom tradition. Mortimer Adler argues that there are about 102 big ideas that every culture tends to think deeply about: including the self, God, nature, the world, truth, reality, good and evil, and justice and so on.<ref> Adler, ''The Synopticon''</ref>
In the broadest sense, "philosophy" is synonymous with "wisdom" or learning. The history of wisdom is inseparable from global history. For every culture and time has a "philosophy", whether [[prehistoric]], [[medieval]], or [[Modernism|modern]]; [[Eastern hemisphere|Eastern]], [[Western hemisphere|Western]], [[religious]] or [[secular]]. [[Karl Jaspers]] termed the intense period of philosophical development (700 BC-300 BC) an [[Axial Age]] in human thought because of the sudden appearance of philosophy, science, mathematics, mythology, art, religion, and political society.
; Non-western philosophy
; Non-western philosophy
{{Main|Eastern philosophy}}
{{Main|Eastern philosophy}}
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* European [[Jewish philosophy]] and [[Christian philosophy]]
* European [[Jewish philosophy]] and [[Christian philosophy]]
* Mesoamerican [[Aztec philosophy]]
* Mesoamerican [[Aztec philosophy]]
The history of philosophy is inseparable from global history. Indeed, [[Karl Jaspers]] termed the intense period of philosophical development beginning around the 7th century and concluding around the 3rd century BCE an [[Axial Age]] in human thought. Philosophy or wisdom arises simultaneously with science, mathematics, mythology, art, religion, and political society.
Today, the term "philosophy" typically refers to western or non-western philosophy explored in this article. Most professional academics philosophers belong to a major tradition that divides the branches of philosophy by research topic and/or by historical period.
; Western philosophy
; Western philosophy
{{Main|Western philosophy}}
{{Main|Western philosophy}}
In a narrower, sense, "philosophy" refers to a particular tradition of [[Western philosophy]], dated to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers.
[[Western philosophy]] is typically dated to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher [[Pythagoras]] distinguished himself from other "wise ones" by calling himself a mere ''lover of wisdom'', suggesting that he was not wise.<ref name=":02" /> Socrates used this title and insisted that he possessed no ''wisdom'' but was a ''pursuer of'' wisdom.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174%3Atext%3DSym.%3Asection%3D201d|title=Plato's "Symposium"|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu|page=201d and following.|access-date=22 April 2016}}</ref> Socrate's student [[Plato]] is often credited as the founder of Western philosophy. The philosopher [[Alfred North Whitehead]] said of Plato: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them."<ref name="process" />
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher [[Pythagoras]] distinguished himself from other "wise ones" by calling himself a mere ''lover of wisdom'', suggesting that he was not wise.<ref name=":02" /> Socrates used this title and insisted that he possessed no ''wisdom'' but was a ''pursuer of'' wisdom.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174%3Atext%3DSym.%3Asection%3D201d|title=Plato's "Symposium"|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu|page=201d and following.|access-date=22 April 2016}}</ref> Socrate's student [[Plato]] is often credited as the founder of Western philosophy. The philosopher [[Alfred North Whitehead]] said of Plato: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them."<ref name="process" />
Mortimer Adler argues that there are about 102 big ideas that every culture tends to think deeply about: including the self, God, nature, the world, truth, reality, good and evil, and justice and so on.<ref>Adler, ''The Synopticon''</ref>
[[Political philosophy]] is the study of [[government]] and the relationship of individuals (or families and clans) to communities including the [[State (polity)|state]]. It includes questions about justice, law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen. Politics and ethics are traditionally inter-linked subjects, as both discuss the question of what is good and how people should live.
[[Political philosophy]] is the study of [[government]] and the relationship of individuals (or families and clans) to communities including the [[State (polity)|state]]. It includes questions about justice, law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen. Politics and ethics are traditionally inter-linked subjects, as both discuss the question of what is good and how people should live.
'''Other Branches of value theory:'''
There are a variety of branches of value theory.
* '''[[Philosophy of law]]''' (often called '''[[jurisprudence]]''') explores the varying theories explaining the nature and the interpretations of law.
* '''[[Philosophy of law]]''' (often called '''[[jurisprudence]]''') explores the varying theories explaining the nature and the interpretations of law.
Many academic disciplines have also generated philosophical inquiry. The relationship between between "X" and the "philosophy of X" is debated. [[Richard Feynman]] argues that the philosophy of a topic is irrelevant to the primary study of a topic, saying that "philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Curtis White, by contrast, argues that philosophical tools are essential to humanities, sciences, and social sciences.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers|last=White|first=Curtis|date=2014-08-05|publisher=Melville House|isbn=9781612193908|location=Brooklyn, N.Y.|language=English}}</ref>
The cluster of topics philosophy deals with numbers, symbols, and the formal methods of reasoning as employed in philosophy in the social and natural sciences.
The follow cluster of topics deal with numbers, symbols, and the formal methods of reasoning as employed in philosophy in the social and natural sciences.
==== Logic ====
==== Logic ====
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==== '''[[Philosophy of science]]''' ====
==== '''[[Philosophy of science]]''' ====
This branch explores the foundations, methods, history, implications, and purpose of science.
This branch explores the foundations, methods, history, implications, and purpose of science.
* '''[[Philosophy of biology]]''' is a subfield of philosophy of science and deals specifically with the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical issues in the biomedical and life sciences.
Many academic disciplines have also generated philosophical inquiry. The relationship between between "X" and the "philosophy of X" is debated. [[Richard Feynman]] argues that the philosophy of a topic is irrelevant to the primary study of a topic, saying that "philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Curtis White, by contrast, argues that philosophical tools are essential to humanities, sciences, and social sciences.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers|last=White|first=Curtis|date=2014-08-05|publisher=Melville House|isbn=9781612193908|location=Brooklyn, N.Y.|language=English}}</ref>
[[Philosophy of biology]] is a subfield of philosophy of science and deals specifically with the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical issues in the biomedical and life sciences.
; [[Philosophy of mathematics|'''Philosophy of mathematics''']] '''is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics.'''
==== History of Philosophy ====
==== History of Philosophy ====
The history of philosophy is also inseparable from the [[philosophy of history]]. For example, Hegel's ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]'' influenced many philosophers to interpret truth in light of history, a view called [[historicism]]. Some philosophers specialize in one or more of the periods below (or dispute this way of dividing up the historical periods).
The history of philosophy is also inseparable from the [[philosophy of history]]. For example, Hegel's ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]'' influenced many philosophers to interpret truth in light of history, a view called [[historicism]]. Some philosophers specialize in one or more of the periods below (or dispute this way of dividing up the historical periods).
Revision as of 16:11, 10 May 2016
Philosophy (from Greekφιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom") is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[1][2] In a more general sense, the term 'philosophy' can refer to any wisdom, knowledge, or intellectual pursuit in any culture. However, the term most commonly refers to a particular tradition dating back to Socrates and Plato. The term coined by the pre-Socratic thinker Pythagoras.[3][4]
Philosophers might ask very abstract, theoretical questions such as: is it possible to know anything and to prove it?[5][6][7] What is most real? Or they might ask concrete, practical questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust (if you can get away with it)?[8] Some questions are so basic and important that almost everyone has an opinion about them: do humans have free will or not?[9] Many philosophers attempt to answer such questions by clarifying terms and presenting rigorous arguments.
Since almost any intellectual pursuit can be a philosophical pursuit, there are no widely-agreed upon lines between philosophy and mathematics, art, science, religion, or politics. Philosophers and artists both discuss whether beauty is objective or subjective;[10][11] philosophers and scientists both discuss whether there are many scientific methods or just one;[12] philosophers and religious thinkers both discuss whether there is a God or gods; and philosophers and political thinkers discuss whether creating a political utopia a hopeful dream or foolish fantasy.[13][14] However, it is widely-agreed that philosophical methods often involve asking questions, critical reflection on tradition, religion, and culture, and rational argument.[15][16]
Some develop conceptual systems and defend their positions against rivals. Some philosophers (such as Plato and Hegel) aim for more or less complete systems while others (such as Gettier or Wittgenstein) present individual arguments or problems. No single philosopher can ask and provide detailed answers to every philosophical question.
Introduction
Philosophy has been understood differently in many cultures and by different generations.
In the broadest sense, "philosophy" is synonymous with "wisdom" or learning. The history of wisdom is inseparable from global history. For every culture and time has a "philosophy", whether prehistoric, medieval, or modern; Eastern, Western, religious or secular. Karl Jaspers termed the intense period of philosophical development (700 BC-300 BC) an Axial Age in human thought because of the sudden appearance of philosophy, science, mathematics, mythology, art, religion, and political society.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a single, monolithic "eastern philosophy". But the term is used in the the West to denote a variety of traditions in China and India, as well as in Japan, Persia, and other regions. Various Eastern philosophies have their own timelines, regions, and philosophers. Major traditions include:
In a narrower, sense, "philosophy" refers to a particular tradition of Western philosophy, dated to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers.
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Pythagoras distinguished himself from other "wise ones" by calling himself a mere lover of wisdom, suggesting that he was not wise.[4] Socrates used this title and insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom.[17] Socrate's student Plato is often credited as the founder of Western philosophy. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said of Plato: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them."[18]
Mortimer Adler argues that there are about 102 big ideas that every culture tends to think deeply about: including the self, God, nature, the world, truth, reality, good and evil, and justice and so on.[19]
Philosophy and knowledge
Traditionally, the term "philosophy" referred to any body of knowledge.[20][21] In this sense, philosophy is closely related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education, and politics. Newton's (1687) "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" is now classified as a book of physics. because "natural philosophy" encompassed disciplines today associated with sciences like astronomy, medicine, and physics.[22]
Philosophy was traditionally divided into three major branches:[23]
Natural philosophy ("physics") was the study of the the physical world (physis, lit: nature);
Moral philosophy ("ethics") was the study of goodness, right and wrong, beauty, justice, and virtue (ethos, lit: custom);
These traditional branches are not obsolete but have morphed. Natural philosophy has transformed into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the various social sciences but still includes value theory (including aesthetics, ethics, political philosophy, etc.). Metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics, philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology.
Philosophical explanation and proof
Most philosophers agree that the goal of philosophical activity is the construction or discovery of good arguments, and the criticism of bad arguments. But what counts as a good argument? A proof is sufficient evidence or an argument for the truth of a proposition. Some philosophers, called skeptics, believe that there are no good arguments for any important position. Pyrrhonism teachsethat there are good arguments for equal and opposite positions.
Tradition and critical reflection
Most people do not reflect on their lives until they are old enough to speak, reason, and question authority.
The purpose of philosophy
Does philosophy aim at truth or merely probability?
Is philosophy supposed to make "progress" like modern science? Because many philosophical debates begun in ancient times are still debated today, some think that there has been no philosophical progress. Three views
No progress. Some, such as Colin McGinn, argue that all the major questions are still unanswered.[25] Stephen Hawking believes that philosophy has been "replaced" by science.
Progress. David Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science.[26]
No need for progress. Talbot Brewer argues that "progress" across generations is the wrong standard by which to judge philosophical activity, since each individual becomes better as they practice philosophy.[27] Bertrand Russell, in his 1912 book The Problems of Philosophy argues that problems in philosophy are refined rather than solved, saying: "Philosophy is to be studied not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves."
Philosophical Topics
As with many complex things, the questions that philosophers study are often grouped into related categories. These groupings allow philosophers to focus on a set of similar topics and interact with others who are interested in the same questions. The groupings also make philosophy much easier to comprehend for students. Students can learn the basic principles involved in one aspect of the field without being overwhelmed with the entire world of philosophical theories.
There are many possible ways to organize philosophy into basic groupings. Various textbooks and websites present different organizational schemes. Each of the methods of grouping philosophy has its benefits and weaknesses and no single method stands out as the “correct” method. The method of division adopted in this article aims for breadth and simplicity.
In this organizational scheme, all of philosophy is divided into five major branches. Each major branch can be separated into sub-branches and each sub-branch contains many specific fields of study.[28]
These divisions are neither exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. (A philosopher might specialize in Kantian epistemology, or Platonic aesthetics, or modern political philosophy.) Furthermore, these philosophical inquiries sometimes overlap with other inquiries such as science, religion, or mathematics.[32]
Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality, such as existence, time, the relationship between mind and body, objects and their properties, wholes and their parts, events, processes, and causation. Traditional branches of metaphysics include cosmology, the study of the world in its entirety, and ontology, the study of being.
Philosophy of mind explores the nature of the mind, and its relationship to the body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism. In recent years there has been increasing similarity between this branch of philosophy and cognitive science.
Philosophy of religion explores questions that often arise in connection with one or several religions, including the soul, the afterlife, God, religious experiences, analysis of religious vocabulary and texts, and the relationship of religion and science.
Philosophy of human nature analyzes the unique characteristics of human beings, such as rationality, politics, and culture.
Metaphilosophy explores the aims of philosophy, its boundaries, and its methods.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge (Greek: episteme).[33] Epistemologists study the various sources of putative knowledge, including intuition, a priori reason, memory, perceptual knowledge, self-knowledge, and testimony. Tey also ask: What is truth? Is knowledge justified true belief? Are any beliefs justified? Various kinds of putative knowledge include propositional knowledge (knowledge that something is the case), know-how (knowledge of how to do something), and acquaintance (familiarity with someone or something). Epistemologists examine some or all of these and ask whether knowledge is really possible.
Value Theory
Value theory (or axiology) is the major branch of philosophy dealing with such topics as goodness, beauty, and justice. Fields of value theory
Ethics, or "moral philosophy," is the branch of axiology that studies good and bad, right and wrong. The primary investigation of ethics or morality is the best way to live.
More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."[34][35]
It is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, enjoyment, emotional values, perception, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty.[36][37] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.[38] More specific aesthetic theory, often with practical implications, relating to a particular branch of the arts is divided into areas of aesthetics such as art theory, literary theory, film theory and music theory. An example from art theory is aesthetic theory as a set of principles underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement: such as the Cubist aesthetic.[39]
Philosophy of film analyzes films and filmmakers for their philosophical content and style explores film (images, cinema, etc.) as a medium for philosophical reflection and expression.
Political philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals (or families and clans) to communities including the state. It includes questions about justice, law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen. Politics and ethics are traditionally inter-linked subjects, as both discuss the question of what is good and how people should live.
Other Branches of value theory:
There are a variety of branches of value theory.
Philosophy of law (often called jurisprudence) explores the varying theories explaining the nature and the interpretations of law.
Philosophy of education analyzes the definition and content of education, as well as the goals and challenges of educators.
Feminist philosophy explores questions surrounding gender, sexuality, and the body including the nature of feminism itself as a social and philosophical movement.
Philosophy of sport analyzes activities such as sports, games, and other forms of play as sociological and uniquely human activities.
Logic, Science, and Mathematics
Many academic disciplines have also generated philosophical inquiry. The relationship between between "X" and the "philosophy of X" is debated. Richard Feynman argues that the philosophy of a topic is irrelevant to the primary study of a topic, saying that "philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Curtis White, by contrast, argues that philosophical tools are essential to humanities, sciences, and social sciences.[40]
The follow cluster of topics deal with numbers, symbols, and the formal methods of reasoning as employed in philosophy in the social and natural sciences.
Logic is the study of reasoning and argument. An argument is "aconnected series of statements intended to establish a proposition." The connected series of statements are called "premises", and the proposition being established is called the conclusion. For example:
This branch explores the foundations, methods, history, implications, and purpose of science.
Philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science and deals specifically with the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical issues in the biomedical and life sciences.
Philosophy of mathematicsis the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics.
History of Philosophy
The history of philosophy is also inseparable from the philosophy of history. For example, Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History influenced many philosophers to interpret truth in light of history, a view called historicism. Some philosophers specialize in one or more of the periods below (or dispute this way of dividing up the historical periods).
Ionia, source of early Greek philosophy, in western Asia Minor
Ancient philosophers first articulated questions about the "arche" (the cause or first principle) of the universe. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor (Ionia) with Thales of Miletus, who was active around 585 B.C. and left us the opaque dictum, "all is water." His most noted students were respectively Anaximander (all is apeiron (roughly, the unlimited)) and Anaximenes of Miletus ("all is air"). Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, later lived at Croton in southern Italy (Magna Graecia). Pythagoreans hold that "all is number," giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation.
The key figure in transforming Greek philosophy into a unified and continuous project - one still being pursued today - is Socrates, who studied under several Sophists.
It is said that following a visit to the Oracle of Delphi he spent much of his life questioning anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to disprove the oracular prophecy that there would be no man wiser than Socrates. Socrates is said to have been the initiator of more focused study upon the human things including the analysis of patterns of reasoning and argument and the nature of the good life and the importance of understanding and knowledge in order to pursue it; the explication of the concept of justice, and its relation to various political systems.[42] In this period the crucial features of the Western philosophical method were established: a critical approach to received or established views, and the appeal to reason and argumentation. Through these live dialogues, he examined common but critical concepts that lacked clear or concrete definitions, such as beauty and truth, and the virtues of piety, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Socrates' awareness of his own ignorance allowed him to discover his errors as well as the errors of those who claimed knowledge based upon falsifiable or unclear precepts and beliefs. He wrote nothing, but inspired many disciples, including many sons of prominent Athenian citizens (including Plato), which led to his trial and execution in 399 B.C. on the charge that his philosophy and sophistry were undermining the youth, piety, and moral fiber of the city. He was offered a chance to flee from his fate but chose to remain in Athens, abide by his principles, and drink the poison hemlock.
Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Socrates' most important student was Plato, who founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, which applied the Socratic method of inquiry to examine philosophical problems. Some central ideas of Plato's dialogues are the Theory of Forms, i.e., that the mind is imbued with an innate capacity to understand and contemplate concepts from a higher order preeminent world, realities more permanent and universal than or representative of the things of this world, which are only changing and temporal; the idea of the immortal soul being superior to the body; the idea of evil as simple ignorance of truth; that true knowledge leads to true virtue; that art is subordinate to moral purpose; and that the society of the city-state should be governed by a merit class of propertyless philosopher kings, with no permanent wives or paternity rights over their children, and be protected by an athletically gifted, honorable, duty bound military class. In the later dialogues Socrates figures less prominently, but Plato had previously woven his own thoughts into some of Socrates' words. Interestingly, in his most famous work, The Republic, Plato critiques democracy, condemns tyranny, and proposes a three tiered merit based structure of society, with workers, guardians and philosophers, in an equal relationship, where no innocents would ever be put to death again, citing the philosophers' relentless love of truth and knowledge of the forms or ideals, concern for general welfare and lack of propertied interest as causes for their being suited to govern.
Aristotle
Plato's most outstanding student was Aristotle, perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher. Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. A syllogism is a form of argument that is guaranteed to be accepted, because it is known (by all educated persons) to be valid. A crucial assumption in Aristotelian logic is that it has to be about real objects. Two of Aristotle's syllogisms are invalid to modern eyes. For example, "All A are B. All A are C. Therefore, some B are C." This syllogism fails if set A is empty, but there are real members of set B. In Aristotle's syllogistic logic you could say this, because his logic should only be used for things that really exist ("no empty classes").
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right)
The application of Aristotelian logic is preceded by having the student memorize a rather large set of syllogisms. The memorization proceeded from diagrams, or learning a key sentence, with the first letter of each word reminding the student of the names of the syllogisms. Each syllogism had a name, for example: modus ponens had the form of "If A is true, then B is true. A is true, therefore B is true." Most university students of logic memorized Aristotle's 19 syllogisms of two subjects, permitting them to validly connect a subject and object. A few logicians developed systems with three subjects, or described a way of elaborating the rules of three subjects.
This whole philosophical movement gradually became more concentrated in Athens, which had become the dominant city-state in Greece. There is considerable discussion about why Athenian culture encouraged philosophy. It is known from Plato's writings that many sophists maintained schools of debate, were respected members of society, and were well paid by their students. Orators influenced Athenian history, possibly even causing its failure (See Battle of Lade). Another theory explains the birth of philosophical debate in Athens with the presence of a slave labor workforce which performed the necessary functions that would otherwise have consumed the time of the free male citizenry. Freed from working in the fields or other manual economic activities, they were able to participate in the assemblies of Athens and spend long periods in discussions on popular philosophical questions. Students of Sophists needed to acquire the skills of oration in order to influence the Athenian Assembly and thereby increase respect and wealth. In response, the subjects and methods of debate became highly developed by the Sophists.
Other pupils of Socrates aside from Plato founded their own schools, such as Euclid of Megara. The Hellenistic period involves the Cyrenaics of Aristippus and Cynics of Antisthenes resolving themselves in the Epicurean and Stoic schools. Skepticism also belongs to this period.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the Christianization of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance.[43] Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate the then widespread sacred doctrines of Abrahamic religion (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) with secular learning. Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.
Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the philosophy of Plato himself. The prominent figure of this period was St. Augustine who adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it in the 4th century and whose influence dominated medieval philosophy perhaps up to end of the era but was checked with the arrival of Aristotle's texts. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers (including the great St. Anselm of Canterbury) up until the 13th century.
Aquinas, the father of Thomism, was immensely influential in Catholic Europe; he placed a great emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. His work was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early Scholasticism.
During the later years of the early medieval period and throughout the years of the high medieval period, there was a great emphasis on the nature of God and the application of Aristotle's logic and thought to every area of life. Attempts were made to reconcile these three things by means of scholasticism. One continuing interest in this time was to prove the existence of God, through logic alone, if possible. The point of this exercise was not so much to justify belief in God, since in the view of medieval Christianity this was self-evident, but to make classical philosophy, with its extra-biblical pagan origins, respectable in a Christian context.
Thomas Aquinas
Jorge Gracia has argued that "in intensity, sophistication, and achievement, the philosophical flowering in the thirteenth century could be rightly said to rival the golden age of Greek philosophy in the fourth century B.C."[44]
The Renaissance ("rebirth") was a period of transition between the Middle Ages and modern thought,[45] in which the recovery of classical texts helped shift philosophical interests away from technical studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology towards eclectic inquiries into morality, philology, and mysticism.[46][47] The study of the classics and the humane arts generally, such as history and literature, enjoyed a scholarly interest hitherto unknown in Christendom, a tendency referred to as humanism.[48][49] Displacing the medieval interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists followed Petrarch in making man and his virtues the focus of philosophy.[50][51]
The study of classical philosophy also developed in two new ways. On the one hand, the study of Aristotle was changed through the influence of Averroism. The disagreements between these Averroist Aristotelians, and more orthodox catholic Aristotelians such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas eventually contributed to the development of a "humanist Aristotelianism" developed in the Renaissance, as exemplified in the thought of Pietro Pomponazzi and Giacomo Zabarella. Secondly, as an alternative to Aristotle, the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists became common. This was assisted by the rediscovery of works which had not been well known previously in Western Europe. Notable Renaissance Platonists include Nicholas of Cusa, and later Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.[51]
The Renaissance also renewed interest in anti-Aristotelian theories of nature considered as an organic, living whole comprehensible independently of theology, as in the work of Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Telesius, and Tommaso Campanella.[52] Such movements in natural philosophy dovetailed with a revival of interest in occultism, magic, hermeticism, and astrology, which were thought to yield hidden ways of knowing and mastering nature (e.g., in Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola).[53]
These new movements in philosophy developed contemporaneously with larger religious and political transformations in Europe: the Reformation and the decline of feudalism. Though the theologians of the Protestant Reformation showed little direct interest in philosophy, their destruction of the traditional foundations of theological and intellectual authority harmonized with a revival of fideism and skepticism in thinkers such as Erasmus, Montaigne, and Francisco Sanches.[54][55][56] Meanwhile, the gradual centralization of political power in nation-states was echoed by the emergence of secular political philosophies, as in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli (often described as the first modern political thinker, or a key turning point towards modern political thinking[57]), Thomas More, Erasmus, Justus Lipsius, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius.[58][59]
Chronologically, the early modern era of Western philosophy is usually identified with the 17th and 18th centuries, with the 18th century often being referred to as the Enlightenment.[60] Modern philosophy is distinguished from its predecessors by its increasing independence from traditional authorities such as the Church, academia, and Aristotelianism;[61][62] a new focus on the foundations of knowledge and metaphysical system-building;[63][64] and the emergence of modern physics out of natural philosophy.[65]
Other central topics of philosophy in this period include the nature of the mind and its relation to the body, the implications of the new natural sciences for traditional theological topics such as free will and God, and the emergence of a secular basis for moral and political philosophy.[66] These trends first distinctively coalesce in Francis Bacon's call for a new, empirical program for expanding knowledge, and soon found massively influential form in the mechanical physics and rationalist metaphysics of René Descartes.[67]
As with many periodizations, there are multiple current usages for the term "Modern Philosophy" that exist in practice. One - common - usage is to date modern philosophy from the "Age of Reason", where systematic philosophy became common, excluding Erasmus and Machiavelli (writing in the 15th century) as "modern philosophers", and traditionally considering Hobbes (writing in the 17th century) as the first truly "modern" philosopher. The grounding of philosophy in problems of knowledge, rather than problems of metaphysics, dominates the era, exemplified most perhaps in the philosophy of René Descartes[76]
Immanuel Kant
Another is to date it, the way the entire larger modern period is dated, from the Renaissance. There is also the lumpers/splitters problem, namely that some works split philosophy into more periods than others: one author might feel a strong need to differentiate between "The Age of Reason" or "Early Modern Philosophers" and "The Enlightenment"; another author might write from the perspective that 1600-1800 is essentially one continuous evolution, and therefore a single period. Wikipedia's philosophy section therefore hews more closely to centuries as a means of avoiding long discussions over periods, but it is important to note the variety of practice that occurs.
17th-century philosophy is dominated by the need to organize philosophy on rational, skeptical, logical and axiomatic grounds, such as the work of Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Thomas Hobbes. This type of philosophy attempts to integrate religious belief into philosophical frameworks, and, often to combat atheism or other skeptical beliefs, by adopting the idea of material reality, and the dualism between spirit and material. The extension, and reaction, against this would be the monism of George Berkeley (idealism) and Benedict de Spinoza (dual aspect theory). It was during this time period that the empiricism was developed as an alternative to skepticism by John Locke, George Berkeley and others. It should be mentioned that John Locke and Thomas Hobbes developed their well known political philosophies during this time, as well.
The 18th-century philosophy article deals with the period often called the early part of "The Enlightenment" in the shorter form of the word, and centers on the rise of systematic empiricism, following after Sir Isaac Newton's natural philosophy. Thus the philosophes like Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu and the political philosophies embodied by and influencing the American Revolution and American Enlightenment, such as Beccaria, are part of The Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant perhaps is most prominent in the period, seeking a large, systematic reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism with claim that the mind structured experience. Kant took himself to have anointed a Copernican Revolution in philosophy.
Other prominent philosophers of this time period were David Hume and Adam Smith, who, along with Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid, were the primary philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment; and Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who were philosophers of the American Enlightenment. Edmund Burke was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, namely Hume's skepticism and reliance on tradition and the passions, and while supporting the American Revolution based on the established rights of Englishmen, rejected the "natural rights" claims of the Enlightenment and vehemently rejected the Rationalism of the French Revolution (see Reflections on the Revolution in France).
The 19th century took the radical notions of self-organization and intrinsic order from Goethe and Kantian metaphysics, and proceeded to produce a long elaboration on the tension between systematization and organic development. Foremost was the work of Hegel, whose Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit produced a "dialectical" framework for ordering of knowledge. The 19th century would also include Schopenhauer's affirmation of the will, drawing parallels to Eastern philosophy. Schopenhauer profoundly influenced Friedrich Nietzsche.
Hegel
Also in the 19th century, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard took philosophy in a new direction by focusing less on abstract concepts and more on what it means to be an existing individual. His work provided impetus for many 20th century philosophical movements, including existentialism. As with the 18th century, it would be developments in science that would arise from, and then challenge, philosophy: most importantly the work of Charles Darwin, which was based on the idea of organic self-regulation found in philosophers such as Smith, but fundamentally challenged established conceptions.
Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th century.[77] German philosophy exercised broad influence in this century, owing in part to the dominance of the German university system.[78]German idealists, such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, transformed the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is constituted by a rational or mind-like process, and as such is entirely knowable.[79]Arthur Schopenhauer's identification of this world-constituting process as an irrational will to live influenced later 19th- and early 20th-century thinking, such as the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.
After Hegel's death in 1831, 19th-century philosophy largely turned against idealism in favor of varieties of philosophical naturalism, such as the positivism of Auguste Comte, the empiricism of John Stuart Mill, and the materialism of Karl Marx. Logic began a period of its most significant advances since the inception of the discipline, as increasing mathematical precision opened entire fields of inference to formalization in the work of George Boole and Gottlob Frege.[80] Other philosophers who initiated lines of thought that would continue to shape philosophy into the 20th century include:
The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress detailed argumentation, attention to semantics, use of classical logic and non-classical logics and clarity of meaning above all other criteria. Some have held that philosophical problems arise through misuse of language or because of misunderstandings of the logic of our language, while some maintain that there are genuine philosophical problems and that philosophy is continuous with science. Michael Dummett in his Origins of Analytical Philosophy makes the case for counting Gottlob Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic as the first analytic work, on the grounds that in that book Frege took the linguistic turn, analyzing philosophical problems through language. Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore are also often counted as founders of analytic philosophy, beginning with their rejection of British idealism, their defense of realism and the emphasis they laid on the legitimacy of analysis.
Russell's classic works The Principles of Mathematics,[81]On Denoting and Principia Mathematica with Alfred North Whitehead, aside from greatly promoting the use of mathematical logic in philosophy, set the ground for much of the research program in the early stages of the analytic tradition, emphasizing such problems as: the reference of proper names, whether 'existence' is a property, the nature of propositions, the analysis of definite descriptions, the discussions on the foundations of mathematics; as well as exploring issues of ontological commitment and even metaphysical problems regarding time, the nature of matter, mind, persistence and change, which Russell tackled often with the aid of mathematical logic. Russell and Moore's philosophy, in the beginning of the 20th century, developed as a critique of Hegel and his British followers in particular, and of grand systems of speculative philosophy in general, though by no means all analytic philosophers reject the philosophy of Hegel (see Charles Taylor) nor speculative philosophy. Some schools in the group include logical positivism, and ordinary language both markedly influenced by Russell and Wittgenstein's development of Logical Atomism the former positively and the latter negatively.
In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who studied under Russell at Cambridge, published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly "logical" account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles of language, which could be solved by investigating and then minding the logical structure of language. Years later, he reversed a number of the positions he set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations was influential in the development of "ordinary language philosophy," which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others.
In the United States, meanwhile, the philosophy of Quine was having a major influence, with the paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In that paper Quine criticizes the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, arguing that a clear conception of analyticity is unattainable. He argued for holism, the thesis that language, including scientific language, is a set of interconnected sentences, none of which can be verified on its own, rather, the sentences in the language depend on each other for their meaning and truth conditions. A consequence of Quine's approach is that language as a whole has only a thin relation to experience. Some sentences that refer directly to experience might be modified by sense impressions, but as the whole of language is theory-laden, for the whole language to be modified, more than this is required. However, most of the linguistic structure can in principle be revised, even logic, in order to better model the world.
Notable students of Quine include Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The former devised a program for giving a semantics to natural language and thereby answer the philosophical conundrum "what is meaning?". A crucial part of the program was the use of Alfred Tarski's semantic theory of truth. Dummett, among others, argued that truth conditions should be dispensed with in the theory of meaning, and replaced by assertability conditions. Some propositions, on this view, are neither true nor false, and thus such a theory of meaning entails a rejection of the law of the excluded middle. This, for Dummett, entails antirealism, as Russell himself pointed out in his An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.
By the 1970s there was a renewed interest in many traditional philosophical problems by the younger generations of analytic philosophers. David Lewis, Saul Kripke, Derek Parfit and others took an interest in traditional metaphysical problems, which they began exploring by the use of logic and philosophy of language. Among those problems some distinguished ones were: free will, essentialism, the nature of personal identity, identity over time, the nature of the mind, the nature of causal laws, space-time, the properties of material beings, modality, etc. In those universities where analytic philosophy has spread, these problems are still being discussed passionately. Analytic philosophers are also interested in the methodology of analytic philosophy itself, with Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, publishing recently a book entitled The Philosophy of Philosophy. Some influential figures in contemporary analytic philosophy are: Timothy Williamson, David Lewis, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett, Peter van Inwagen, Saul Kripke and Patricia Churchland. Analytic philosophy has sometimes been accused of not contributing to the political debate or to traditional questions in aesthetics. However, with the appearance of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick, analytic political philosophy acquired respectability. Analytic philosophers have also shown depth in their investigations of aesthetics, with Roger Scruton, Nelson Goodman, Arthur Danto and others developing the subject to its current shape.
Analytic 2
In the English-speaking world, analytic philosophy became the dominant school for much of the 20th century. In the first half of the century, it was a cohesive school, shaped strongly by logical positivism, united by the notion that philosophical problems could and should be solved by attention to logic and language. The pioneering work of Bertrand Russell was a model for the early development of analytic philosophy, moving from a rejection of the idealism dominant in late 19th-century British philosophy to an neo-Humean empiricism, strengthened by the conceptual resources of modern mathematical logic.[82][83][84]
In the latter half of the 20th century, analytic philosophy diffused into a wide variety of disparate philosophical views, only loosely united by historical lines of influence and a self-identified commitment to clarity and rigor. The post-war transformation of the analytic program led in two broad directions: on one hand, an interest in ordinary language as a way of avoiding or redescribing traditional philosophical problems, and on the other, a more thoroughgoing naturalism that sought to dissolve the puzzles of modern philosophy via the results of the natural sciences (such as cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology). The shift in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, from a view congruent with logical positivism to a therapeutic dissolution of traditional philosophy as a linguistic misunderstanding of normal forms of life, was the most influential version of the first direction in analytic philosophy.[85][86] The later work of Russell and the philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quine are influential exemplars of the naturalist approach dominant in the second half of the 20th century.[87][88][89][90] But the diversity of analytic philosophy from the 1970s onward defies easy generalization: the naturalism of Quine and his epigoni was in some precincts superseded by a "new metaphysics" of possible worlds, as in the influential work of David Lewis.[91][92] Recently, the experimental philosophy movement has sought to reappraise philosophical problems through social science research techniques.
On continental Europe, no single school or temperament enjoyed dominance. The flight of the logical positivists from central Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, however, diminished philosophical interest in natural science, and an emphasis on the humanities, broadly construed, figures prominently in what is usually called "continental philosophy". 20th-century movements such as phenomenology, existentialism, modern hermeneutics, critical theory, structuralism, and poststructuralism are included within this loose category. The founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, sought to study consciousness as experienced from a first-person perspective,[93][94] while Martin Heidegger drew on the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl to propose an unconventional existential approach to ontology.[95][96]
In the Arabic-speaking world, Arab nationalist philosophy became the dominant school of thought, involving philosophers such as Michel Aflaq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, Salah al-Din al-Bitar of Ba'athism and Sati' al-Husri.
Contemporary 2 current approaches
The 20th century deals with the upheavals produced by a series of conflicts within philosophical discourse over the basis of knowledge, with classical certainties overthrown, and new social, economic, scientific and logical problems. 20th century philosophy was set for a series of attempts to reform and preserve, and to alter or abolish, older knowledge systems. Seminal figures include Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Edmund Husserl. Since the Second World War, contemporary philosophy has been divided mostly into analytic and continental traditions; the former carried in the English speaking world and the latter on the continent of Europe. The perceived conflict between continental and analytic schools of philosophy remains prominent, despite increasing skepticism regarding the distinction's usefulness. Knowledge and its basis has been a central concern, as seen from the work of Heidegger, Russell, G. E. Moore, Karl Popper, and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
The philosophy of the present century is difficult to clarify due to its immaturity. A number of surviving 20th century philosophers have established themselves as early voices of influence in the 21st. These include Noam Chomsky, Saul Kripke, and Jürgen Habermas. A variety of new topics have risen to the stage in analytic philosophy, orienting much of contemporary discourse in the field of ethics. New inquiries consider, for example, the ethical implications of new media and information exchange. Such developments have rekindled interest in the philosophy of technology and science. There has been increased enthusiasm for highly specialized areas in philosophy of science, such as in the Bayesian school of epistemology.
Russell, during his early career, along with his collaborator Alfred North Whitehead, much influenced by Frege, who developed predicate logic, which allowed a much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancient Aristotelian logic.
Like Frege, Russell attempted to show that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). Later, his book written with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910–13), encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest with the development of symbolic logic. Additionally, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method Russell thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. Russell sought to resolve various philosophical problems by applying such logical distinctions, most famously in his analysis of definite descriptions in "On Denoting."[97]
The period is marked by the logical holism of Moore, Russell, early Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap Inspired by developments of modern logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions.[98] An important aspect of British idealism was logical holism—the opinion that the aspects of the world cannot be known wholly without also knowing the whole world. This is closely related to the opinion that relations between items are actually internal relations, that is, properties internal to the nature of those items. Russell, along with Wittgenstein, in response promulgated logical atomism and the doctrine of external relations—- the belief that the world consists of independent facts.[99]
"Psychologism"
Since its beginning, a basic principle of analytic philosophy has been conceptual clarity,[98] in the name of which Moore and Russell rejected Hegelianism, which they accused of obscurity.[100][101]
Ludwig Wittgenstein
In contrast to Husserl's 1891 book Philosophie der Arithmetik, which attempted to show that the concept of the cardinal number derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them,[102] Frege sought to show that mathematics and logic have their own validity, independent of the judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians (which were the basis of arithmetic according to the "psychologism" of Husserl's Philosophie). Frege further developed his philosophy of logic and mathematics in The Foundations of Arithmetic and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic where he provided an alternative to psychological accounts of the concept of number. Husserl later gave devastating critiques of psychologism.
Late 19th-century English philosophy was dominated by British idealism, as taught by philosophers like F. H. Bradley and Thomas Hill Green. It was with reference to this intellectual basis that the initiators of analytic philosophy, Moore and Russell, articulated early analytic philosophy.
Language
Though much alluded to in Frege, Wittgenstein saw all philosophical problems as problems of language. The early Wittgenstein and the logical positivists saw language as utterly reducible to logical terms, perhaps best exemplified in Russell's theory of definite descriptions. The later Wittgenstein, as well as the overthrow of the logical positivists by the likes of Quine, has led others to see language as a social phenomenon on the whole not reducible to simplest terms. These latter thinkers have been pejoratively dubbed "lotus eaters". The strongest support of the latter is probably found in the theory of implicature and in J. L. Austin's theory of performative utterance.
The issue of whether terms have meaning in virtue of the objects to which they refer has also led to much debate. Frege denied this, and much of Kripke's fame comes from disputing Frege on this. Kripke has made influential and original contributions to logic, especially modal logic. His work has profoundly influenced the analytic tradition, with his principal contribution being a semantics for modal logic, involving possible worlds as described in a system now called Kripke semantics.[103]David Lewis, a notable student of Quine, is probably best known for his controversial modal realist stance that possible worlds exist; our world but one among them. That is, when you say "It is possible you could jump over the moon" an actual world exists wherein you are jumping over the moon.
Forms of idealism were prevalent in philosophy from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the view that there are limits on what can be understood, since there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781–1787) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Kant's intention with this work was to look at what we know and then consider what must be true about it, as a logical consequence of the way we know it. One major theme was that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our direct knowledge because of the natural limits of the human faculties.[105] Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data—a framework including space and time themselves—he maintained that things-in-themselves existed independently of our perceptions and judgments; he was therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Kant's account of things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex. Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy.
The most notable work of this German idealism was G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas were not new, but that all the previous philosophies had been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between "being" and "not being"), and also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their compatibility at a higher level of examination ("being" and "not being" are resolved with "becoming"). This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as the "Hegelian dialectic". Philosophers influenced by Hegel include Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, who coined the term projection as pertaining to our inability to recognize anything in the external world without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things; Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; and the British idealists, notably T. H. Green, J. M. E. McTaggart and F. H. Bradley.
Few 20th-century philosophers have embraced idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic. Immanuel Kant's "Copernican Turn" also remains an important philosophical concept today.
Edmund Husserl's phenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general.[106] An important part of Husserl's phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality.[107]
In the first part of his two-volume work, the Logical Investigations (1901), Husserl launched an extended attack on psychologism. In the second part, he began to develop the technique of descriptive phenomenology, with the aim of showing how objective judgments are grounded in conscious experience—not, however, in the first-person experience of particular individuals, but in the properties essential to any experiences of the kind in question.[106]
He also attempted to identify the essential properties of any act of meaning. He developed the method further in Ideas (1913) as transcendental phenomenology, proposing to ground actual experience, and thus all fields of human knowledge, in the structure of consciousness of an ideal, or transcendental, ego. Later, he attempted to reconcile his transcendental standpoint with an acknowledgement of the intersubjective life-world in which real individual subjects interact. Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses.
Husserl's work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Göttingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.
Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[108][109] shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.[110] In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[111] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[112][113]
Although they did not use the term, the 19th-century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.[114][115][116]
The main target of Kierkegaard's writings was the idealist philosophical system of Hegel which, he thought, ignored or excluded the inner subjective life of living human beings. Kierkegaard, conversely, held that "truth is subjectivity", arguing that what is most important to an actual human being are questions dealing with an individual's inner relationship to existence. In particular, Kierkegaard, a Christian, believed that the truth of religious faith was a subjective question, and one to be wrestled with passionately.[117][118]
Although Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were among his influences, the extent to which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. However, in The Letter on Humanism, Heidegger explicitly rejected the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre became the best-known proponent of existentialism, exploring it not only in theoretical works such as Being and Nothingness, but also in plays and novels. Sartre, along with Simone de Beauvoir, represented an avowedly atheistic branch of existentialism, which is now more closely associated with their ideas of nausea, contingency, bad faith, and the absurd than with Kierkegaard's spiritual angst. Nevertheless, the focus on the individual human being, responsible before the universe for the authenticity of his or her existence, is common to all these thinkers.
Inaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism sought to clarify systems of signs through analyzing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought. This led continental thought away from humanism, and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man.
Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its positivism soon came under fire by poststructuralism, a wide field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyze systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines, while the distinction between the signifier and signified was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to grasp the signified results in more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible.
Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan. Post-structuralism came to predominate from the 1970s onwards, including thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and even Roland Barthes; it incorporated a critique of structuralism's limitations.
Pragmatism was founded in the spirit of finding a scientific concept of truth that does not depend on personal insight (revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. The meaning or purport of a statement should be judged by the effect its acceptance would have on practice. Truth is that opinion which inquiry taken far enough would ultimately reach.[119] For Charles Sanders Peirce these were principles of the inquirer's self-regulation, implied by the idea and hope that inquiry is not generally fruitless. The details of how these principles should be interpreted have been subject to discussion since Peirce first conceived them. Peirce's maxim of pragmatism is as follows: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."[120] Like postmodern neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, many are convinced that pragmatism asserts that the truth of beliefs does not consist in their correspondence with reality, but in their usefulness and efficacy.[121]
The late 19th-century American philosophersCharles Sanders Peirce and William James were its co-founders, and it was later developed by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as something only established by the future, final settlement of all opinion.[122] Critics have accused pragmatism falling victim to a simple fallacy: because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is the basis for its truth.[123] Thinkers in the pragmatist tradition have included John Dewey, George Santayana, Quine and C. I. Lewis. Pragmatism has more recently been taken in new directions by Richard Rorty, John Lachs, Donald Davidson, Susan Haack, and Hilary Putnam.
Largely Aristotelian in its approach and content, Thomism is a philosophical tradition that follows the writings of Thomas Aquinas. His work has been read, studied, and disputed since the 13th century, especially by Roman Catholics. However, Aquinas has enjoyed a revived interest since the late 19th century, among both atheists (like Philippa Foot) and theists (like Elizabeth Anscombe).[124]
Thomist philosophers tend to be rationalists in epistemology, as well as metaphysical realists, and virtue ethicists. Human beings are rational animals whose good can be known by reason and pursued by the will. With regard to the soul, Thomists (like Aristotle) argue that soul or psyche is real and immaterial but inseparable from matter in organisms. Soul is the form of the body. Thomists accept all four of Aristotle's causes as natural, including teleological or final causes. In this way, though Aquinas argued that whatever is in the intellect begins in the senses, natural teleology can be discerned with the senses and abstracted from nature through induction.[125]
Contemporary Thomism contains a diversity of philosophical styles, from Neo-Scholasticism to Existential Thomism.[126] The so-called new natural lawyers like Germain Grisez and Robert P. George have applied Thomistic legal principles to contemporary ethical debates, while cognitive neuroscientist Walter Freeman proposes that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal Mind and Matter entitled "Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas." So-called Analytical Thomism of John Haldane and others encourages dialogue between analytic philosophy and broadly Aristotelian philosophy of mind, psychology, and hylomorphic metaphysics.[127] Other modern or contemporary Thomists include Eleonore Stump, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Finnis.
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Germany was the first country to professionalize philosophy. At the end of 1817, Hegel was the first philosopher to be appointed Professor by the State, namely by the Prussian Minister of Education, as an effect of Napoleonic reform in Prussia. In the United States, the professionalisation grew out of reforms to the American higher-education system largely based on the German model.
Within the last century, philosophy has increasingly become a professional discipline practiced within universities, like other academic disciplines. Accordingly, it has become less general and more specialized. In the view of one prominent recent historian: "Philosophy has become a highly organized discipline, done by specialists primarily for other specialists. The number of philosophers has exploded, the volume of publication has swelled, and the subfields of serious philosophical investigation have multiplied. Not only is the broad field of philosophy today far too vast to be embraced by one mind, something similar is true even of many highly specialized subfields."[128] Some philosophers argue that this professionalization has negatively affected the discipline.[129]
The end result of professionalization for philosophy has meant that work being done in the field is now almost exclusively done by university professors holding a doctorate in the field publishing in highly technical, peer-reviewed journals. While it remains common among the population at large for a person to have a set of religious, political or philosophical views that they consider their “philosophy”, these views are rarely informed or connected to the work being done in professional philosophy today. Furthermore, unlike many of the sciences for which there has come to be a healthy industry of books, magazines, and television shows meant to popularize science and communicate the technical results of a scientific field to the general populace, works by professional philosophers directed at an audience outside the profession remain rare. Philosopher Michael Sandel's book “Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?” and Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit” are examples of works that hold the uncommon distinction of having been written by professional philosophers but directed at and ultimately popular among a broader audience of non-philosophers. Both works became New York Times best sellers.
Many inquiries outside of academia are philosophical in the broad sense. Novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, musicians, as well as scientists, social scientists, and others engage in recognizably philosophical activity.
Ayn Rand is the foremost example of an intellectual working contemporaneously with contemporary philosophy but whose contributions were not made within the professional discipline of "philosophy": "For all her [Ayn Rand's] popularity, however, only a few professional philosophers have taken her work seriously. As a result, most of the serious philosophical work on Rand has appeared in non-academic, non-peer-reviewed journals, or in books, and the bibliography reflects this fact."[15]
Also working from outside the profession were philosophers such as Gerd B. Achenbach (Die reine und die praktische Philosophie. Drei Vorträge zur philosophischen Praxis, 1983) and Michel Weber (see his Épreuve de la philosophie, 2008) who have proposed since the 1980s various forms of philosophical counseling claiming to bring Socratic dialogues back to life in a quasi-psychotherapeutic framework.
Pierre Hadot is famous for his analysis on the conception of philosophy during Greco-Roman antiquity. Hadot identified and analyzed the "spiritual exercises" used in ancient philosophy (influencing Michel Foucault’s interest in such practices in the second and third volumes of his History of Sexuality). By "spiritual exercises" Hadot means "practices ... intended to effect a modification and a transformation in the subjects who practice them.[6] The philosophy teacher's discourse could be presented in such a way that the disciple, as auditor, reader, or interlocutor, could make spiritual progress and transform himself within."[7] Hadot shows that the key to understanding the original philosophical impulse is to be found in Socrates. What characterizes Socratic therapy above all is the importance given to living contact between human beings. Hadot's recurring theme is that philosophy in Antiquity was characterized by a series of spiritual exercises intended to transform the perception, and therefore the being, of those who practice it; that philosophy is best pursued in real conversation and not through written texts and lectures; and that philosophy, as it is taught in universities today, is for the most part a distortion of its original, therapeutic impulse. He brings these concerns together in What Is Ancient Philosophy?,[7] which has been critically reviewed.[8]
Philosophy and society
Some of those who study philosophy in college or graduate school become professional philosophers who teach, research, and write in academic institutions.[130]
However, most people trained in academic philosophy go on to contribute to law, journalism, religion, sciences, politics, business, or various arts.[131][132] For example, notable public figures who have degrees in philosophy include comedians Steve Martin and Ricky Gervais, filmmaker Terrence Malick, pope John Paul II, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer, and vice presidential candidate Carly Fiorina.[133][134] Philosphy majors also earn more on average than business majors.[135]
Philosophy and pop culture
In 2000, the Open Court Publishing Company began a series of books on philosophy and popular culture. Each book consists of essays written by top philosophers for general readers. The books "explore the meanings, concepts, and puzzles within television shows, movies, music, and other icons of popular culture"[136] analyzing topics such as Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Matrix, Star Wars, IPod, and Facebook. Their most recent publication (as of 2016) is titled "Louis C.K. and Philosophy."
Philosophy in film
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
The Matrix
Tree of Life
Monty Python, Philosopher's Drinking Song, Philosopher's Soccor match
Philosophy policy
Bioethics is a major influence on public policy.
Media perspectives
Political usage
Philosophy and the public
^Cite error: The named reference philosophy was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^A.C. Grayling, Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1: "The aim of philosophical inquiry is to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth, reason, reality, meaning, mind, and value."
^Cite error: The named reference tufts1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Greco, John, ed. (2011-10-01). The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN9780199836802.
^Glymour, Clark (2015-04-10). "Chapters 1-6". Thinking Things Through: An Introduction to Philosophical Issues and Achievements (2nd ed.). A Bradford Book. ISBN9780262527200.
^Adler, Mortimer J. (2000-03-28). How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization. Chicago, Ill.: Open Court. ISBN9780812694123.
^Cite error: The named reference justification was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Plato's "Symposium"". www.perseus.tufts.edu. p. 201d and following. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
^Cite error: The named reference process was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Philosophy". www.etymonline.com. Online Etymological Dictionary. Retrieved 19 March 2016. The English word "philosophy" is first attested to c. 1300, meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge."
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^Kant, Immanuel (2012-05-21). Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN9781107401068. Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three branches of knowledge: natural science, ethics, and logic.
^McGinn, Colin (8 December 1993). Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry (1st ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN978-1-55786-475-8.
^Plantinga, Alvin (2014-01-01). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Religion and Science (Spring 2014 ed.).
^G & C. Merriam Co. (1913). Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 ed.). G & C. Merriam Co. p. 501. Retrieved 13 May 2012. E*pis`te*mol"o*gy (?), n. [Gr. knowledge + -logy.] The theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge.{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
^White, Curtis (2014-08-05). The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House. ISBN9781612193908.
^"Analytic philosophy opposed right from its beginning English neo-Hegelianism of Bradley's sort and similar ones. It did not only criticize the latter's denial of the existence of an external world (anyway an unjust criticism), but also the bombastic, obscure style of Hegel's writings." Jonkers, Peter (2003). "Perspectives on Twentieth Century Philosophy:A Reply to Tom Rockmore"(PDF). Ars Disputandi. 3. ISSN1566-5399.
^Willard, Dallas. "Husserl on a Logic that Failed". Philosophical Review. 89 (1): 52–53. doi:10.2307/2184863.
^Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope>. Penguin.1999: 47-48.
^Cite error: The named reference Critique of Pure Reason was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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^Peirce, C. S. (1878), "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, 286–302. Reprinted often, including Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 388–410 and Essential Peirce v. 1, 124–41. See end of §II for the pragmatic maxim. See third and fourth paragraphs in §IV for the discoverability of truth and the real by sufficient investigation. Also see quotes from Peirce from across the years in the entries for "Truth" and "Pragmatism, Maxim of..." in the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola, editors, University of Helsinki.
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^Kerr, Fergu. After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism. Blackwell.
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