The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such aspure mathematics andnatural sciences such asphysics,astronomy, andbiology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics).
The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested incosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e., dogma superseded reason, albeit in a rudimentary form.[1][2] They were specifically interested in thearche (the cause or first principle) of the world. The first recognized philosopher,Thales of Miletus (bornc. 625 BCE inIonia) identified water as thearche (claiming "all is water") His use of observation and reason to derive this conclusion is the reason for distinguishing him as the first philosopher.[3] Thales' studentAnaximander claimed that thearche was theapeiron, theinfinite. Following both Thales and Anaximander,Anaximenes of Miletus claimed thatair was the most suitable candidate.
Ionia, source of early Greek philosophy, in westernAsia Minor
Pythagoras (bornc. 570 BCE), from the island ofSamos off the coast of Ionia, later lived inCroton in southern Italy (Magna Graecia).Pythagoreans hold that "all is number", givingformal accounts in contrast to the previousmaterial of the Ionians. The discovery of consonantintervals in music by the group enabled the concept ofharmony to be established in philosophy, which suggested that opposites could together give rise to new things.[4] They also believed inmetempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, orreincarnation.
Parmenides argued that, unlike the other philosophers who believed thearche was transformed into multiple things, the world must be singular, unchanging and eternal, while anything suggesting the contrary was an illusion.[5]Zeno of Elea formulated hisfamous paradoxes in order to support Parmenides' views about the illusion of plurality and change (in terms of motion), by demonstrating them to be impossible.[6] An alternative explanation was presented byHeraclitus, who claimed thateverything was in flux all the time, famously pointing out that one could not step into the same river twice.[7]Empedocles may have been an associate of both Parmenides and the Pythagoreans. He claimed thearche was in fact composed of multiple sources, giving rise to the model of the fourclassical elements. These in turn were acted upon by the forces of Love and Strife, creating the mixtures of elements which form the world. Another view of thearche being acted upon by an external force was presented by his older contemporaryAnaxagoras, who claimed thatnous, themind, was responsible for that.[8]Leucippus andDemocritus proposedatomism as an explanation for the fundamental nature of the universe.Jonathan Barnes called atomism "the culmination of early Greek thought".[9]
In addition to these philosophers, theSophists comprised teachers of rhetoric who taught students to debate on any side of an issue. While as a group, they held no specific views, in general they promotedsubjectivism andrelativism.Protagoras, one of the most influential Sophist philosophers, claimed that "man is the measure of all things", suggesting there is no objective truth.[10] This was also applied to issues of ethics, withProdicus arguing that laws could not be taken seriously because they changed all the time, whileAntiphon made the claim that conventional morality should only be followed when in society.[11]
Bust of Socrates, Roman copy after a Greek original from the 4th century BCE
The Classical period of ancient Greek philosophy centers onSocrates and the two generations of students who followed.
Socrates experienced a life-changing event when his friend,Chaerephon visited theOracle of Delphi where thePythia told him thatno one in Athens was wiser than Socrates. Learning of this, Socrates subsequently spent much of his life questioning anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to investigate the Pithia's claim.[12] Socrates developed a critical approach, now called theSocratic method, to examine people's views. He focused on issues of human life:eudaimonia,justice,beauty,truth, andvirtue. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, two of his disciples,Plato andXenophon, wrote about some of his conversations, although Plato also deployedSocrates as a fictional character in some of his dialogues. TheseSocratic dialogues display the Socratic method being applied to examine philosophical problems.
Socrates's questioning earned him enemies who eventually accused him of impiety and corrupting the youth. For this, he was tried by the Athenian democracy, was found guilty, and was sentenced to death. Although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, Socrates chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisted of drinking poisonhemlock. He died in 399 BCE.
Socrates had several other students who also founded schools of philosophy. Two of these were short-lived: theEretrian school, founded byPhaedo of Elis, and theMegarian school, founded byEuclid of Megara. Two others were long-lasting:Cynicism, founded byAntisthenes, andCyrenaicism, founded byAristippus. The Cynics considered life's purpose to live in virtue, in agreement with nature, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, leading a simple life free from all possessions. The Cyrenaics promoted a philosophy nearly opposite that of the Cynics, endorsinghedonism, holding that pleasure was the supreme good, especially immediate gratifications; and that people could only know their own experiences, beyond that truth was unknowable.
The final school of philosophy to be established during the Classical period was thePeripatetic school, founded by Plato's student,Aristotle. Aristotle wrote widely about topics of philosophical concern, including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics, and logic.Aristotelian logic was the first type oflogic to attempt to categorize every validsyllogism. His epistemology comprised an early form ofempiricism.[15] Aristotle criticized Plato'smetaphysics as being poetic metaphor, with its greatest failing being the lack of an explanation forchange.[16] Aristotle proposed thefour causes model to explain change – material, efficient, formal, and final – all of which were grounded on what Aristotle termed theunmoved mover.[15] His ethical views identifiedeudaimonia as the ultimate good, as it was good in itself.[17] He thought that eudaimonia could be achieved by living according to human nature, which is to live with reason and virtue,[17] definingvirtue as thegolden mean between extremes.[17] Aristotle saw politics as the highest art, as all other pursuits are subservient to its goal of improving society.[17] The state should aim to maximize the opportunities for the pursuit of reason and virtue through leisure, learning, and contemplation.[18] Aristotle tutoredAlexander the Great, who conquered much of the ancient Western world.Hellenization andAristotelian philosophy have exercised considerable influence on almost all subsequent Western andMiddle Eastern philosophers.
The various schools of philosophy proposed various and conflicting methods for attainingeudaimonia. For some schools, it was through internal means, such as calmness,ataraxia (ἀταραξία), or indifference,apatheia (ἀπάθεια), which was possibly caused by the increased insecurity of the era.[20][21] The aim of theCynics was to live according to nature and against convention with courage and self-control.[22] This was directly inspiring to the founder ofStoicism,Zeno of Citium, who took up the Cynic ideals of steadfastness and self-discipline, but applied the concept ofapatheia to personal circumstances rather than social norms, and switched shameless flouting of the latter for a resolute fulfillment of social duties.[23] The ideal of 'living in accordance with nature' also continued, with this being seen as the way toeudaimonia, which in this case was identified as the freedom from fears and desires and required choosing how to respond to external circumstances, as the quality of life was seen as based on one's beliefs about it.[24][25] An alternative view was presented by theCyrenaics and theEpicureans. The Cyrenaics werehedonists and believed that pleasure was the supreme good in life, especially physical pleasure, which they thought more intense and more desirable than mental pleasures.[26] The followers ofEpicurus also identified "the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain" as the ultimate goal of life, but noted that "We do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or of sensuality . . . we mean theabsence of pain in the body and trouble in the mind".[27] This brought hedonism back to the search forataraxia.[28]
Another important strand of thought in post-Classical Western thought was the question ofskepticism.Pyrrho of Elis, aDemocritean philosopher,traveled to India withAlexander the Great's army where Pyrrho was influenced byBuddhist teachings, most particularly thethree marks of existence.[29] After returning to Greece, Pyrrho started a new school of philosophy,Pyrrhonism, which taught that it is one's opinions about non-evident matters (i.e.,dogma) that prevent one from attainingataraxia. To bring the mind toataraxia, Pyrrhonism usesepoché (suspension of judgment) regarding all non-evident propositions. AfterArcesilaus became head of the Academy, he adopted skepticism as a central tenet ofPlatonism, making Platonism nearly the same asPyrrhonism.[30] After Arcesilaus, Academic skepticism diverged from Pyrrhonism.[31] The Academic skeptics did not doubt the existence oftruth; they just doubted that humans had the capacities for obtaining it.[32] They based this position on Plato'sPhaedo, sections 64–67,[33] in which Socrates discusses how knowledge is not accessible to mortals.[34]
Following the end of the skeptical period of the Academy withAntiochus of Ascalon, Platonic thought entered the period ofMiddle Platonism, which absorbed ideas from the Peripatetic and Stoic schools. More extremesyncretism was done byNumenius of Apamea, who combined it withNeopythagoreanism.[35] Also affected by the Neopythagoreans, theNeoplatonists, first of themPlotinus, argued that mind exists before matter, and that the universe has a singular cause which must therefore be a single mind.[36] As such, Neoplatonism become essentially areligion, and had much impact onlater Christian thought.[36]
Medieval philosophy roughly extends from the Christianization of theRoman Empire until the Renaissance.[37] It is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classicalGreek andHellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate the then-widespread sacred doctrines ofAbrahamic religion (Judaism,Christianity, andIslam) withsecular learning. Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation offaith toreason, the existence and unity ofGod, the object oftheology andmetaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.
A prominent figure of this period wasAugustine of Hippo, one of the most importantChurch Fathers inWestern Christianity. Augustine adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it. His influence dominated medieval philosophy perhaps up to the end of era and the rediscovery of Aristotle's texts.Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. Among the issues his philosophy touched upon were theproblem of evil,just war and whattime is. On the problem of evil, he argued that evil was a necessary product of humanfree will.[38] When this raised the issue of the incompatibility of free will anddivine foreknowledge, both he andBoethius solved the issue by arguing that God did not see the future, but rather stood outside of time entirely.[39]
An influential school of thought was that ofscholasticism, which is not so much a philosophy or a theology as amethodology, as it places a strong emphasis ondialectical reasoning to extend knowledge byinference and to resolvecontradictions. Scholastic thought is also known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In the classroom and in writing, it often takes the form of explicitdisputation; a topic drawn from the tradition is broached in the form of a question, oppositional responses are given, a counterproposal is argued and oppositional arguments rebutted. Because of its emphasis on rigorousdialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to many other fields of study.[40][41][42]
Anselm of Canterbury (called the 'father of scholasticism') argued that the existence of God could be irrefutably proved with the logical conclusion apparent in theontological argument, according to which God is by definition the greatest thing in conceivable, and since an existing thing is greater than a non-existing one, it must be that God exists or is not the greatest thing conceivable (the latter being by definition impossible).[43] A refutation of this was offered byGaunilo of Marmoutiers, who applied the same logic to an imagined island, arguing that somewhere there must exist a perfect island using the same steps of reasoning (therefore leading toan absurd outcome). Boethius also worked on the problem ofuniversals, arguing that they did not exist independently as claimed by Plato, but still believed, in line with Aristotle, that they existed in the substance of particular things.[27] Another important figure for scholasticism,Peter Abelard, extended this tonominalism, which states (in complete opposition to Plato) that universals were in fact just names given to characteristics shared byparticulars.[44]
Thomas Aquinas, an academic philosopher and the father ofThomism, was immensely influential in medievalChristendom. He was influenced by newly discoveredAristotle, and aimed to reconcile his philosophy withChristian theology.[45] Aiming to develop an understanding of thesoul, he was led to consider metaphysical questions ofsubstance, matter, form, and change.[45] He defined a material substance as the combination of anessence and accidental features, with the essence being a combination of matter and form, similar to the Aristotelian view.[46] For humans, the soul is the essence.[46] Also influenced by Plato, he saw the soul as unchangeable and independent of the body.[46]
The Renaissance ("rebirth") was a period of transition between the Middle Ages and modern thought,[47] in which the recovery ofancient Greek philosophical texts helped shift philosophical interests away from technical studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology towards eclectic inquiries into morality, philology, and mysticism.[48][49] 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 ashumanism.[50][51] Displacing the medieval interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists followedPetrarch in making humanity and its virtues the focus of philosophy.[52][53]
At the point of passage from Renaissance into early/classical modern philosophy, the dialogue was used as a primary style of writing by Renaissance philosophers, such asGiordano Bruno.[54]
The dividing line between what is classified as Renaissance versus modern philosophy is disputed.[55]
The term "modern philosophy" has multiple usages. For example,Thomas Hobbes is sometimes considered the first modern philosopher because he applied a systematic method to political philosophy.[56][57] By contrast,René Descartes is often considered the first modern philosopher because he grounded his philosophy in problems ofknowledge, rather than problems of metaphysics.[58]
Modern philosophy and especiallyEnlightenment philosophy[59] is distinguished by its increasing independence from traditional authorities such as the Church, academia, and Aristotelianism;[60][61] a new focus on the foundations of knowledge and metaphysical system-building;[62][63] and the emergence of modern physics out of natural philosophy.[64]
Some central topics of Western philosophy in itsearly modern (also classical modern)[65][66] 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.[67] These trends first distinctively coalesce inFrancis Bacon's call for a new, empirical program for expanding knowledge, and soon found massively influential form in the mechanical physics and rationalist metaphysics ofRené Descartes.[68]
Descartes's epistemology was based on a method calledCartesian doubt, whereby only the most certain belief could act as the foundation for further inquiry, with each step to further ideas being as cautious and clear as possible.[69] This led him to his famous maximcogito ergo sum ('I think, therefore I exist'), though similar arguments had been made by earlier philosophers.[70] This became foundational for much of further Western philosophy, as the need to find a route from the private world of consciousness to the externally existing reality was widely accepted until the 20th century.[70] A major issue for his thought remained in themind–body problem, however.[70] One solution to the problem was presented byBaruch Spinoza, who argued that the mind and the body areone substance.[71] This was based on his view that God and the universe are one and the same, encompassing the totality of existence.[72] In the other extreme,Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, argued instead that the world was composed of numerous individual substances, calledmonads.[73] Together, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are considered influential earlyrationalists.[74]
In contrast to Descartes,Thomas Hobbes was amaterialist who believed that everything was physical, and an empiricist who thought that all knowledge comes from sensation which is triggered by objects existing in the external world, with thought being a kind of computation.[75]John Locke was another classic empiricist, with his arguments helping it overtake rationalism as the generally preferred approach.[76] Together withDavid Hume, they form the core of 'British empiricism'.[76]George Berkeley agreed with empiricism, but instead of believing in an ultimate reality which created perceptions, argued in favourimmaterialism and the world existing asa result of being perceived.[77] In contrast, theCambridge Platonists continued to represent rationalism in Britain.[76]
In terms of political philosophy, arguments often started from arguing over the first principles of human nature through the thought experiment of what the world would look like without society, a scenario referred to as thestate of nature. Hobbes believed that this would be a violent and anarchic, calling life under such a state of affairs "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".[75] To prevent this, he believed that the sovereign of the state should have essentially unlimited power.[78] In contrast, Locke believed the state of nature be one where individuals enjoyed freedom, but that some of that (excluding those covered bynatural rights) had to be given up when forming a society, but not to the degree of absolute rule.[79]Jean-Jacques Rousseau meanwhile argued that in nature people were living in apeaceful and comfortable state, and that the formation of society led to the rise ofinequality.[80]
The approximate end of the early modern period is most often identified withImmanuel Kant's systematic attempt to limit metaphysics, justify scientific knowledge, and reconcile both of these with morality and freedom.[81][82][83] Whereas the rationalists had believed that knowledge came froma priori reasoning, the empiricists had argued that it came froma posteriori sensory experience, Kant aimed to reconcile these views by arguing that the mind usesa priori understanding to interpret thea posteriori experiences.[84] He had been inspired to take this approach by the philosophy of Hume, who argued that the mechanisms of the mind gave people the perception ofcause and effect.[84]
German idealism emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work ofImmanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s.[85]
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 hisCritique of Pure Reason (1781) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose aconceptual orcategorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data—a framework including space and time themselves—he maintained thatthings-in-themselves existed independently of human 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 andFriedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy.
The most notable work ofabsolute idealism wasG. W. F. Hegel'sPhenomenology 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".
Late modern philosophy is usually considered to begin around the pivotal year of 1781, whenGotthold Ephraim Lessing died andImmanuel Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason appeared.[86] The 19th century saw the beginnings of what would later grow into the divide betweenContinental andanalytic traditions of philosophy, with the former more interested in general frameworks of metaphysics (more common in the German-speaking world), and the latter focusing on issues of epistemology, ethics, law and politics (more common in the English-speaking world).[87]
Hegel argued that history was thedialectical journey of theGeist (universal mind) towards self-fulfilment and self-realization.[91] The Geist's self-awareness is absolute knowledge, which itself brings complete freedom.[92] His philosophy was based onabsolute idealism, with reality itself being mental.[92] His legacy was divided between the conservativeRight Hegelians and radicalYoung Hegelians, with the latter includingDavid Strauss andLudwig Feuerbach.[93] Feuerbach argued for a materialist conception of Hegel's thought, inspiringKarl Marx.[93]
Arthur Schopenhauer was inspired by Kant andIndian philosophy.[94] Accepting Kant's division of the world into thenoumenal (the real) andphenomenal (the apparent) realities, he, nevertheless, disagreed on the accessibility of the former, arguing that it could in fact be accessed.[95] The experience ofwill was how this reality was accessible, with the will underlying the whole of nature, with everything else being appearance.[95] Whereas he believed the frustration of this will was the cause of suffering,Friedrich Nietzsche thought that thewill to power was empowering, leading to growth and expansion, and therefore forming the basis of ethics.
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 ofGeorge Boole andGottlob Frege.[100] Other philosophers who initiated lines of thought that would continue to shape philosophy into the 20th century include:
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.[101] It asserts that the truth of beliefs consists in their usefulness and efficacy rather than their correspondence with reality.[102]Charles Sanders Peirce andWilliam James were its co-founders and it was later modified byJohn Dewey asinstrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualized final truth as something established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion.[103]
Pragmatism attempted to find a scientific concept of truth that does not depend on personal insight (revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. It interpreted the meaning of a statement by the effect its acceptance would have on practice. Inquiry taken far enough is thus the only path to truth.[104]
For Peirce commitment to inquiry was essential to truth-finding, implied by the idea and hope that inquiry is not fruitless. The interpretation of these principles has been subject to discussion ever since. Peirce'smaxim of pragmatism is, "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."[105]
Critics accused pragmatism falling victim to a simple fallacy: that because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is an appropriate basis for its truthfulness.[106] Pragmatist thinkers include Dewey,George Santayana, andC. I. Lewis.
The20th 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 includeBertrand Russell,Ludwig Wittgenstein,Edmund Husserl,Martin Heidegger, andJean-Paul Sartre. The publication of Husserl'sLogical Investigations (1900–1) and Russell'sThe Principles of Mathematics (1903) is considered to mark the beginning of 20th-century philosophy.[110] The 20th century also saw the increasingprofessionalization of the discipline and the beginning of the current (contemporary) era of philosophy.[111]
Since theSecond World War, contemporary philosophy has been divided mostly intoanalytic andcontinental 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.
In the English-speaking world,analytic philosophy became the dominant school for much of the 20th century. 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 logic and clarity of meaning above all other criteria. Though the movement has broadened, it was a cohesive school in the first half of the century. Analytic philosophers were shaped strongly bylogical positivism, united by the notion that philosophical problems could and should be solved by attention tologic andlanguage.
Gottlob Frege'sThe Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) was the first analytic work, according toMichael Dummett (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, 1993). Frege was the first to take 'thelinguistic turn,' analyzing philosophical problems through language.[112] He invented a formal notational system for logic.[113] His stance was one ofanti-psychologism, arguing that logical truths were independent of the human minds discovering them.[114]
The logical positivists of theVienna Circle started as a study group of Russell and Whitehead.[123] They argued that the arguments of metaphysics, ethics and theology were meaningless, as they were not logically or empirically verifiable.[124] This was based on their division of meaningful statements into either the analytic (logical and mathematical statements) and the synthetic (scientific claims).[124]Moritz Schlick andRudolf Carnap argued that science rested at its roots on direct observation, butOtto Neurath noted that observation already requires theory in order to have meaning.[125] Another participant in the Circle was Carnap's self-confessed disciple,Willard Van Orman Quine.[126] In 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', Quine criticized the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.[127] Instead, he advocated for a 'web of belief' approach, whereby all beliefs come from contact with reality (including mathematical ones), but with some being further removed from this contact than others.[128]
Another former participant in the Circle wasKarl Popper. He argued thatverificationism was logically incoherent, promoting insteadfalsificationism as the basis for science.[129] A further advancement in thephilosophy of science was made byImre Lakatos, who argued that negative findings in individual tests did not falsify theories, but rather entire research programmes would eventually fail explain phenomena.[130]Thomas Kuhn further argued that science was composed ofparadigms, which would eventuallyshift when evidence accumulated against them.[131] Based on the idea that different paradigms had different meanings of expressions,Paul Feyerabend went further in arguing forrelativism in science.[132]
Wittgenstein had first brought up the idea that ordinary language could solve philosophical problems.[133] A loosely associated group of philosophers later became known as practitioners ofordinary language philosophy.[133] It includedGilbert Ryle,J. L. Austin,R. M. Hare, andP. F. Strawson.[134] They believed that as philosophy was not science, it could only be advanced through careful conceptual clarification and connection instead of observation and experimentation.[134] However, they had given up the earlier analytic pursuit of using formal logic to express anideal language, but did nevertheless share the scepticism of metaphysical grand theories.[134] Unlike Wittgenstein, they believed only some problems of philosophy to be artifacts of language.[135] This approach has been described as thelinguistic turn of analytic philosophy.[135] Ryle introduced the concept ofcategory mistake, which described the misapplication of a concept in the wrong context (which he accused Descartes of doing with theghost in the machine).[136] One of Austin's key insights was that some language perform aperlocutionary function (creating by themselves an effect on the world), thereby beingspeech acts.[137] This idea was later taken up byJohn Searle.[137]
In the final third of the 20th century, philosophy of language emerged as its own programme.[138] The theory of meaning became central to this programme.[139]Donald Davidson argued that meaning could be understood through a theory oftruth.[140] This was based on the work ofAlfred Tarski.[141] Empirically, Davidson would find the meaning of words in different languages by linking them with the objective conditions of their utterance, which established their truthness.[142] Meaning therefore emerges from the consensus of interpretations of speaker behaviour.[142]Michael Dummett argued against this view on the basis of itsrealism.[143] This was because realism would make the truthness of many sentences beyond measurability.[144] Instead, he argued for verifiability, based on the idea that one could recognise the proof of truth when offered it.[145] Alternative to these,Paul Grice put forward a theory that meaning was based on the intention of the speaker, which over time becomes established after repeated use.[146]
Theories of reference were another major strand of thought on language. Frege had argued thatproper names were linked to its referent through a description of what the name refers to.[147] Russell agreed with this, adding that "this" can replace a description in cases of familiarity.[147] Later, Searle and Strawson expanded these ideas by noting that a cluster of descriptions, each of them usable, may be used by linguistic communities.[147]Keith Donnellan further argued that sometimes a description could be wrong but still make the correct reference, this being different from the attributive use of a description.[147] He, as well asSaul Kripke andHilary Putnam independently, argued that often the referents of proper names are not based on description, but rather on a history of usage passing through users.[148] Towards the end of the century, philosophy of language began to diverge in two directions: the philosophy of mind, and more specific study of particular aspects of language, the latter supported bylinguistics.[149]
Earlyidentity theories of mind in the 1950s and '60s were based on the work ofUllin Place,Herbert Feigl, andJ. J. C. Smart.[150] While earlier philosophers such as the Logical Positivists, Quine, Wittgenstein, and Ryle had all used some form ofbehaviorism to dispense with the mental, they believed that behaviorism was insufficient in explaining many aspects of mental phenomena.[150] Feigl argued thatintentional states could not be thus explained.[150] Instead, he espousedexternalism.[151] Place meanwhile argued that the mind could be reduced to physical events, while Feigl and Sense agreed they were identical.[151]Functionalism in contrast argued that the mind was defined by what it does, rather than what it is based on.[152] To argue against this,John Searle developed theChinese room thought experiment.[153] Davidson argued foranomalous monism, which claims that while mental events cause physical ones, and the all causal relations are governed by natural laws, there are however no natural laws governing the causality between mental and physical events.[142] This anomaly in the name was explained bysupervenience.[143]
Ethics in 20th century analytic philosophy has been argued to have begun with Moore'sPrincipia Ethica.[158] Moore argued that what is good cannot be defined.[159] Instead, he saw ethical behaviour a result ofintuition, which led tonon-cognitivism.[160]W. D. Ross in contrast argued thatduty formed the basis for ethics.[158]
Russell'smeta-ethical thought anticipatedemotivism anderror theory.[119] This was supported by the logical positivists, and later popularised byA. J. Ayer.[158]Charles Stevenson also argued that ethical terms were expressions of emotive meanings by speakers.[158]R. M. Hare aimed to expand their meaning from mere expressions, to also being prescriptions which are universalizable.[161]J. L. Mackie supported error theory on the basis that objective values do not exist, as they areculturally relative and would be metaphysically strange.[162]
Notable students of Quine includeDonald Davidson andDaniel Dennett. The later work of Russell and the philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quine are influential exemplars of the naturalist approach dominant in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. 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" ofpossible worlds, as in the influential work ofDavid Lewis. Recently, theexperimental philosophy movement has sought to reappraise philosophical problems through social science research techniques.
Analytic philosophy has sometimes been accused of not contributing to the political debate or to traditional questions in aesthetics. However, with the appearance ofA Theory of Justice byJohn Rawls andAnarchy, State, and Utopia byRobert Nozick, analytic political philosophy acquired respectability. Analytic philosophers have also shown depth in their investigations of aesthetics, withRoger Scruton,Nelson Goodman,Arthur Danto and others developing the subject to its current shape.
Continental philosophy is a set of 19th- and 20th-century philosophical traditions from mainland Europe. 20th-century movements such asGerman idealism,phenomenology,existentialism,modern hermeneutics (the theory and methodology of interpretation),critical theory,structuralism,post-structuralism and others are included within this loose category. While identifying any non-trivial common factor in all these schools of thought is bound to be controversial, Michael E. Rosen has hypothesized a few common continental themes: that the natural sciences cannot replace the human sciences; that the thinker is affected by the conditions of experience (one's place and time in history); that philosophy is both theoretical and practical; that metaphilosophy or reflection upon the methods and nature of philosophy itself is an important part of philosophy proper.[167]
The founder of phenomenology,Edmund Husserl, sought to study consciousness as experienced from a first-person perspective, whileMartin Heidegger drew on the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl to propose an unconventionalexistential approach toontology.
Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[168][169] shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.[170] 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.[171] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[172][173]
Although they did not use the term, the 19th-century philosophersSøren Kierkegaard andFriedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.[174][175][176]
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis, originating fromKarl Marx andFriedrich Engels. It analyzesclass relations and societal conflict using amaterialist interpretation of historical development and adialectical view of social transformation. Marxist analyses and methodologies influenced political ideologies and social movements. Marxist understandings of history and society were adopted by academics in archeology, anthropology, media studies, political science, theater, history, sociology, art history and theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology and philosophy.
Edmund Husserl'sphenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general.[178] 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 calledintentionality.[179] 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 (Munich phenomenology) and Göttingen (Göttingen phenomenology). Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers asMartin Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant and a proponent ofhermeneutic phenomenology, a theoreticalsynthesis ofmodern hermeneutics and phenomenology),Maurice Merleau-Ponty, andJean-Paul Sartre. Through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.
Inaugurated by the linguistFerdinand de Saussure,structuralism sought to clarify systems of signs through analyzing thediscourses 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 post-structuralism, 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.
Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in continental departments.[181] However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus continental methods in contemporary philosophy.[182][183]
TheAncient Greek philosopherPyrrho accompaniedAlexander the Great in his eastern campaigns, spending about 18 months in India. Pyrrho subsequently returned to Greece and foundedPyrrhonism, a philosophy withsubstantial similarities withBuddhism. The Greek biographerDiogenes Laërtius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.[184] Pyrrho was directly influenced by Buddhism in developing his philosophy, which is based on Pyrrho's interpretation of the Buddhistthree marks of existence.[185] According toEdward Conze, Pyrrhonism can be compared to Buddhist philosophy, especially the IndianMadhyamika school.[186] The Pyrrhonists' goal ofataraxia (the state of being untroubled) is asoteriological goal similar tonirvana. The Pyrrhonists promoted suspending judgment (epoché) aboutdogma (beliefs about non-evident matters) as the way to reach ataraxia. This is similar to the Buddha's refusal to answercertain metaphysical questions which he saw as non-conductive to the path of Buddhist practice andNagarjuna's "relinquishing of all views (drsti)". Adrian Kuzminski argues for direct influence between these two systems of thought. InPyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism[187] According to Kuzminski, both philosophies argue against assenting to any dogmatic assertions about an ultimate metaphysical reality behind our sense impressions as a tactic to reach tranquility and both also make use of logical arguments against other philosophies in order to expose their contradictions.[187]
TheCyrenaic philosopherHegesias of Cyrene is thought by some to have been influenced by the teachings of Ashoka's Buddhist missionaries.[188]
Empiricist philosophers, such asHume andBerkeley, favoured thebundle theory ofpersonal identity.[189] In this theory, the mind is simply 'a bundle of perceptions' without unity.[190] One interpretation of Hume's view of the self, argued for by philosopher and psychologistJames Giles, is that Hume is not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of reductionism, but rather for an eliminative view of the self. Rather than reducing the self to a bundle of perceptions, Hume rejects the idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation, Hume is proposing a "no-self theory" and thus has much in common withBuddhist thought (seeanattā). PsychologistAlison Gopnik has argued that Hume was in a position to learn about Buddhist thought during his time in France in the 1730s.[191]
^Frederick Copleston,A History of Philosophy, Volume II: From Augustine to Scotus (Burns & Oates, 1950), p. 1, dates medieval philosophy proper from the Carolingian Renaissance in the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth century, though he includesAugustine and the Patristic fathers as precursors. Desmond Henry, inEdwards 1967, pp. 252–257 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFEdwards1967 (help) volume 5, starts with Augustine and ends withNicholas of Oresme in the late fourteenth century. David Luscombe,Medieval Thought (Oxford University Press, 1997), dates medieval philosophy from the conversion ofConstantine in 312 to theProtestant Reformation in the 1520s. Christopher Hughes, in A.C. Grayling (ed.),Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), covers philosophers from Augustine to Ockham.Gracia 2008, p. 620 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFGracia2008 (help) identifies medieval philosophy as running from Augustine toJohn of St. Thomas in the seventeenth century.Kenny 2012, volume II harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKenny2012 (help) begins with Augustine and ends with the Lateran Council of 1512.
^Schmitt & Skinner 1988, p. 5, loosely define the period as extending "from the age of Ockham to the revisionary work of Bacon, Descartes and their contemporaries. harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSchmittSkinner1988 (help)
^Frederick Copleston,A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez (The Newman Press, 1953), p. 18: "When one looks at Renaissance philosophy ... one is faced at first sight with a rather bewildering assortment of philosophies."
^Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt,Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4: "one may identify the hallmark of Renaissance philosophy as an accelerated and enlarged interest, stimulated by newly available texts, in primary sources of Greek and Roman thought that were previously unknown or partially known or little read."
^Gracia, Jorge J.E.Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject. p. 621.the humanists ... restored man to the centre of attention and channeled their efforts to the recovery and transmission of classical learning, particularly in the philosophy of Plato. inBunnin & Tsui-James 2008 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBunninTsui-James2008 (help).
^Frederick Copleston,A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez (The Newman Press, 1953), p. 29: "The bulk of Renaissance thinkers, scholars and scientists were, of course, Christians ... but none the less the classical revival ... helped to bring to the fore a conception of autonomous man or an idea of the development of the human personality, which, though generally Christian, was more 'naturalistic' and less ascetic than the mediaeval conception."
^Schmitt & Skinner 1988, pp. 61, 63: "From Petrarch the early humanists learnt their conviction that the revival ofhumanae literae was only the first step in a greater intellectual renewal" [...] "the very conception of philosophy was changing because its chief object was now man—man was at centre of every inquiry." harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSchmittSkinner1988 (help)
^James Daniel Collins,Interpreting Modern Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 85.
^Brian Leiter (ed.),The Future for Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 44 n. 2.
^"Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy".Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Archived from the original on 2011-07-05. Retrieved2016-10-18. "Hobbes is the founding father of modern political philosophy. Directly or indirectly, he has set the terms of debate about the fundamentals of political life right into our own times."
^"Contractarianism".Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2018.Archived from the original on 2011-04-29. Retrieved2016-10-18.: "Contractarianism [...] stems from the Hobbesian line of social contract thought"
^Diane Collinson (1987).Fifty Major Philosophers, A Reference Guide. p. 125.
^Rutherford 2006, p. xiii, defines its subject thus: "what has come to be known as "early modern philosophy"—roughly, philosophy spanning the period between the end of the sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, or, in terms of figures, Montaigne through Kant."Nadler 2008, p. 1, likewise identifies its subject as "the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries harvnb error: no target: CITEREFNadler2008 (help).Kenny 2012, p. 107, introduces "early modern philosophy" as "the writings of the classical philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe". harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKenny2012 (help)
^Steven Nadler,A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, 2008, pp. 1–2: "By the seventeenth century [...] it had become more common to find original philosophical minds working outside the strictures of the university—i.e., ecclesiastic—framework. [...] by the end of the eighteenth century, [philosophy] was a secular enterprise."
^Anthony Kenny,A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. xii: "To someone approaching the early modern period of philosophy from an ancient and medieval background the most striking feature of the age is the absence of Aristotle from the philosophic scene."
^Donald Rutherford,The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 1: "epistemology assumes a new significance in the early modern period as philosophers strive to define the conditions and limits of human knowledge."
^Kenny,A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, p. 211: "The period between Descartes and Hegel was the great age of metaphysical system-building."
^Kenny,A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, pp. 179–180: "the seventeenth century saw the gradual separation of the old discipline of natural philosophy into the science of physics [...] [b]y the nineteenth century physics was a fully mature empirical science, operating independently of philosophy."
^Jeffrey Tlumak,Classical Modern Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, Routledge, 2006, p. xi: "[Classical Modern Philosophy] is a guide through the systems of the seven brilliant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophers most regularly taught in college Modern Philosophy courses".
^Richard Schacht,Classical Modern Philosophers: Descartes to Kant, Routledge, 2013, p. 1: "Seven men have come to stand out from all of their counterparts in what has come to be known as the 'modern' period in the history of philosophy (i.e., the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries): Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant".
^Kenny,A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, pp. 212–331.
^Nadler,A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, pp. 2–3: "Why should the early modern period in philosophy begin with Descartes and Bacon, for example, rather than with Erasmus and Montaigne? [...] Suffice it to say that at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and especially with Bacon and Descartes, certain questions and concerns come to the fore—a variety of issues that motivated the inquiries and debates that would characterize much philosophical thinking for the next two centuries."
^Rutherford 2006, p. 1: "epistemology assumes a new significance in the early modern period as philosophers strive to define the conditions and limits of human knowledge."
^Kenny,A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, p. xiii.
^Nadler,A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, p. 3.
^Frederick C. Beiser,German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801, Harvard University Press, 2002, part I.
^Karl Ameriks,Kant's Elliptical Path, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 307: "The phenomenon oflate modern philosophy can be said to have begun right around the pivotal year of 1781, when Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason appeared. It was around this time that German thoughtstarted to understand itself as existing in a period when philosophy's main traditional options appeared to have been played out, and it no longer seemed appropriate to define oneself as simply modern or enlightened."
^Baldwin 2003, p. Western philosophy, p. 4, atGoogle Booksby the 1870s Germany contained much of the best universities in the world. [...] There were certainly more professors of philosophy in Germany in 1870 than anywhere else in the world, and perhaps more even than everywhere else put together. harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBaldwin2003 (help)
^Frederick C. Beiser,German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801, Harvard University Press, 2002, p. viii: "the young romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, Novalis—[were] crucial figures in the development of German idealism."
^Baldwin 2003, p. 119: "within a hundred years of the first stirrings in the early nineteenth century [logic] had undergone the most fundamental transformation and substantial advance in its history." harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBaldwin2003 (help)
^Peirce, C. S. (1878), "How to Make Our Ideas Clear",Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, 286–302. Reprinted often, includingCollected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 388–410 andEssential 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"Archived 2013-05-15 at theWayback Machine and"Pragmatism, Maxim of..."Archived 2013-01-13 at theWayback Machine in theCommens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola, editors, University of Helsinki.
^Peirce on p. 293 of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 286–302. Reprinted widely, including Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (CP) v. 5, paragraphs 388–410.
^Pratt, J.B. (1909).What is Pragmatism?. New York: Macmillan. p. 89.
^William Egginton/Mike Sandbothe (eds.).The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy. Contemporary Engagement between Analytic and Continental Thought. SUNY Press. 2004. Back cover.
^Michael Rosen, "Continental Philosophy from Hegel", inA. C. Grayling (ed.),Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject, Oxford University Press (1998), p. 665.
^John Macquarrie,Existentialism, New York (1972), pages 18–21.
^Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, New York (1995), page 259.
^John Macquarrie,Existentialism, New York (1972), pages 14–15.
^Robert C. Solomon,Existentialism (McGraw-Hill, 1974), pages 1–2.
^Ernst Breisach,Introduction to Modern Existentialism, New York (1962), page 5
^Walter Kaufmann,Existentialism: From Dostoevesky to Sartre, New York (1956), page 12
^Matustik, Martin J. (1995).Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity. Indiana University Press.ISBN978-0-253-20967-2.
^Nicholas Gaskill, A.J. Nocek,The Lure of Whitehead, University of Minnesota Press, 2014, p. 4: "it is no wonder that Whitehead fell by the wayside. He was too scientific for the "continentals," not scientific enough for the "analytics," and too metaphysical—which is to sayuncritical—for them both" and p. 231: "the analytics and continentals are both inclined towardKantian presuppositions in a manner that Latour and Whitehead brazenly renounce."
^"He would withdraw from the world and live in solitude, rarely showing himself to his relatives; this is because he had heard an Indian reproachAnaxarchus, telling him that he would never be able to teach others what is good while he himself danced attendance on kings in their court. He would maintain the same composure at all times." (Diogenes Laertius, IX.63 on Pyrrhon)
^"The philosopher Hegesias of Cyrene (nicknamedPeisithanatos, "The advocate of death") was a contemporary of Magas and was probably influenced by the teachings of the Buddhist missionaries to Cyrene and Alexandria. His influence was such that he was ultimately prohibited from teaching." Jean-Marie Lafont,Inalco in "Les Dossiers d'Archéologie", No. 254, p. 78
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