The School of Athens by Raphael - At the left poets and
philosophers, including Anacreon and Pythagoras, with at the
foreground, the man thinking, Michelangelo. At the other side,
scientist, including Euclides and Ptolemeus. In the middle at
the staircase are Aristotle and Plato in discussion. The man in
the yellow toga is Socrates.
A
aristotle
H
hobbes
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philosophy
plato
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rousseau
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socrates
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timeline
aristotle
Born at
Stagira in northern Greece, Aristotle was the most notable
product of the educational program devised by Plato; he spent
twenty years of his life studying at the Academy. When Plato
died, Aristotle returned to his native Macedonia, where he is
supposed to have participated in the education of Philip's son,
Alexander (the Great). He came back to Athens with Alexander's
approval in 335 and established his own school at the Lyceum,
spending most of the rest of his life engaged there in research,
teaching, and writing. His students acquired the name
"peripatetics" from the master's habit of strolling
about as he taught. Although the surviving works of Aristotle
probably represent only a fragment of the whole, they include
his investigations of an amazing range of subjects, from logic,
philosophy, and ethics to physics, biology, psychology,
politics, and rhetoric. Aristotle appears to have thought
through his views as he wrote, returning to significant issues
at different stages of his own development. The result is less a
consistent system of thought than a complex record of
Aristotle's thinking about many significant issues.
thomas hobbes
Decades
after completing his traditional education as a classicist at
Oxford and serving as tutor of William Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes
became convinced that the methods employed by mathematicians and
scientists, geometry, in particular, hold the greatest promise
for advances in human knowledge. Voluntarily exiled to Holland
during the years of Parliamentary Rule, the royalist Hobbes
devoted much of his time to the development and expression of a
comprehensive philosophical vision of the mechanistic operation
of nature. Although he returned to England with the restoration
of Charles II, Hobbes was for the remainder of his life
embroiled in bitter political and religious controversies. They
did not prevent the ninety-year-old Hobbes from completing his
English translation of the works of Homer.
Hobbes's first
systematic statement of a political philosophy, Elements
of Law, Natural and Politic (1640), relies heavily upon
the conception of natural law that had dominated the tradition
from Aquinas to Grotius. But his views had begun to change
by the time he reissued portions of his work in a Latin version
known as De Cive (1642).
The Leviathan
(1651) is the most complete expression of Hobbes's philosophy.
It begins with a clearly materialistic account of human nature
and knowledge, a rigidly deterministic account of human
volition, and a pessimistic vision of the consequently natural
state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each other.
It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the
commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the
authority of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual
obedience to even an arbitrary government is necessary in order
to forestall the greater evil of an endless state of war.
philosophy
The term
philosophy, although used universally, is a culturally specific
term; it is a European concept embracing a wide range of human
activities of the mind. It's application has varied widely
throughout European history, and its application to non-European
cultures is mainly a convenience but does not accurately reflect
how non-European cultures would conceive of or classify these
activities.
The word itself is a Greek word and
means love (philo) of wisdom (sophy). As a
word, it seems to appear in the fifth century BC, but
the great exponents of the term to describe a
heterogenous mix of thinking activities are Plato and
Aristotle, the two gigantic figures of Greek philosophy.
Early Greek philosophy was largely
concerned with overarching explanations to explain
physical phenomenon. The earliest Greek philosophy was probably a poem by Hesiod
called the Theogony , which concerns
the nature of the gods. The Theogony largely
recounts Greek mythology, but interspersed among the
stories are speculations about the physical nature of
the universe.
The early Greek
philosophers were primarily concerned with the problem
of the 'One and the Many'. Simply stated, the
problem involves explaining the infinity of things in
the universe (the many). We can see that many separate
things can be related to one thing, for instance, there
are millions of horses but there is only one concept of
a horse. So the myriad and manifold phenomena of the
universe must be reducible to a single, unifying
substance or concept. The early Greeks believed that
this single, unifying thing (the One) was some material
substance, like water, or air. Later Greek philosophy
would conceive of this one thing as something more
abstract, like number.
So early Greek
philosophy was speculative, that is, it wasn't
concerned with phenomena and factuality as much as it
was concerned with the reasoning process itself. From
the beginning, Greek philosophy was concerned with this
reasoning process, particularly the process of rational
demonstration. The truth of a proposition was an
aspect of its demonstration, not its physical reality; a
flawless rational demonstration produced certain
knowledge.
Most of this speculation concerned the
nature of the changing, physical world. The early Greek
philosophers were concerned with finding the unchanging
principle or substance that lay behind all change and
phenomena. The stable, unchanging component of the
universe the Greeks called, physis, so early
Greek philosophy was really a speculative physics.
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Eventually, a wide range of activities
would be subsumed under the category of philosophy,
representing the entire range of human rational
activities. The unifying factor was demonstration,
that is, each activity was a philosophy in that it
involved principles of rational demonstration. The
central categories of European philosophy are:
logic
Logic is the science of
demonstration ;
it lays down the rules for making propositions
and constructing proofs. Logic is really the
core of philosophy.
rhetoric
Logic is a science of language, and so is
rhetoric. While logic is the science of
propositions and demonstration, rhetoric is the
science of persuasion. It is less concerned with
the truth of a proposition as it is concerned
with using language, gesture, argument, and
emotion to persuade other people of a truth or
an opinion.
physics
Physics is the source of European philosophy; in
its original form, physics was the study of the
underlying principles of change in the natural
world. Eventually, physics became the study of
change in the material world and the laws
underlying those changes (this is still true of
physics today).
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the study of the principles
behind the principles governing the universe;
metaphysics, you might say, is the science of
first or originary principles. For instance, if
you conclude that God is behind everything in
the universe, the study of God is a branch of
metaphysics.
theology
Theology is a branch of metaphysics and concerns
the nature of the divine and the relationship of
that nature to the physical, moral, and
spiritual worlds.
ethics
Ethics is the science of human action; its
primary question from classical Greece onwards
is 'what is a good life?'
politics
Politics is the study of human institutions and
governments; it is essentially a branch of
ethics.
aesthetics
Aesthetics, which originates with the Greeks, is
the science of the beautiful; this includes both
human art as well as natural beauty and order.
plato
The son of
wealthy and influential Athenian parents, Plato began his
philosophical career as a student of Socrates. When the master
died, Plato travelled to Egypt and Italy, studied with students
of Pythagoras, and spent several years advising the ruling
family of Syracuse. Eventually, he returned to Athens and
established his own school of philosophy at the Academy. For
students enrolled there, Plato tried both to pass on the
heritage of a Socratic style of thinking and to guide
their progress through mathematical learning to the achievement
of abstract philosophical truth. The written dialogues on which
his enduring reputation rests also serve both of these aims.
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Plato and Aristotle - The School of Athens - Raphael
In his earliest
literary efforts, Plato tried to convey the spirit of Socrates's
teaching by presenting accurate reports of the master's
conversational interactions, for which these dialogues are our
primary source of information. Early dialogues are typically
devoted to investigation of a single issue, about which a
conclusive result is rarely achieved. Thus, the Euqufrwn
(Euthyphro) raises a significant doubt about
whether morally right action can be defined in terms of divine
approval by pointing out a significant dilemma about any appeal
to authority in defence of moral judgments. The Apologhma
(Apology) offers a description of the philosophical
life as Socrates presented it in his own defense before the
Athenian jury. The Kritwn (Crito) uses
the circumstances of Socrates's imprisonment to ask whether an
individual citizen is ever justified in refusing to obey the
state.
Although they
continue to use the talkative Socrates as a fictional
character, the middle dialogues of Plato develop, express,
and defend his own, more firmly established, conclusions about
central philosophical issues. Beginning with the Menwn
(Meno), for example, Plato not only reports the
Socratic notion that no one knowingly does wrong, but also
introduces the doctrine of recollection in an attempt to
discover whether or not virtue can be taught. The Faidwn
(Phaedo) continues development of Platonic notions
by presenting the doctrine of the Forms in support of a series
of arguments that claim to demonstrate the immortality of the
human soul.
Plato's later
writings often modify or completely abandon the formal structure
of dialogue. They include a critical examination of the theory
of forms in ParmenidhV (Parmenides),
an extended discussion of the problem of knowledge in QeaithtoV
(Theaetetus), cosmological speculations in TimaioV
(Timaeus), and an interminable treatment of government in the
unfinished LegeiV (Laws).
jean-jacques rousseau
As a brilliant, undisciplined, and
unconventional thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent most of his
life being driven by controversy back and forth between Paris
and his native Geneva. Orphaned at an early age, he left home at
sixteen, working as a tutor and musician before undertaking a
literary career while in his forties. Rousseau sired but refused
to support several illegitimate children and frequently
initiated bitter quarrels with even the most supportive of his
colleagues. His autobiographical Les Confessions (Confessions)
(1783) offer a thorough (if somewhat self-serving) account of
his turbulent life.
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Rousseau first
attracted wide-spread attention with his prize-winning essay Discours
sur les Sciences et les Arts (Discourse on the
Sciences and the Arts) (1750), in which he decried
the harmful effects of modern civilization. Pursuit of the arts
and sciences, Rousseau argued, merely promotes idleness, and the
resulting political inequality encourages alienation. He
continued to explore these themes throughout his career,
proposing in Émile, ou l'education (1762) a method
of education that would minimize the damage by noticing,
encouraging, and following the natural proclivities of the
student instead of striving to eliminate them.
Rousseau began
to apply these principles to political issues specifically in
his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité
parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality) (1755), which maintains that every variety of
injustice found in human society is an artificial result of the
control exercised by defective political and intellectual
influences over the healthy natural impulses of otherwise noble
savages. The alternative he proposed in Du contrat
social (On the Social Contract) (1762) is a
civil society voluntarily formed by its citizens and wholly
governed by reference to the general will [Fr. volonté générale]
expressed in their unanimous consent to authority.
Rousseau also
wrote Discourse on Political Economy (1755), Constitutional
Program for Corsica (1765), and Considerations on
the Government of Poland (1772). Although the authorities
made every effort to suppress Rousseau's writings, the ideas
they expressed, along with those of Locke, were of great
influence during the French Revolution. The religious views
expressed in the 'Faith of a Savoyard Vicar' section of Émile
made a more modest impact.
socrates
In his use
of critical reasoning, by his unwavering commitment to truth,
and through the vivid example of his own life, fifth-century
Athenian Socrates set the standard for all subsequent Western
philosophy. Since he left no literary legacy of his own, we are
dependent upon contemporary writers like Aristophanes and
Xenophon for our information about his life and work. As a pupil
of Archelaus during his youth, Socrates showed a great deal of
interest in the scientific theories of Anaxagoras, but he later
abandoned inquiries into the physical world for a dedicated
investigation of the development of moral character. Having
served with some distinction as a soldier at Delium and
Amphipolis during the Peloponnesian War, Socrates dabbled in the
political turmoil that consumed Athens after the War, then
retired from active life to work as a stonemason and to raise
his children with his wife, Xanthippe. After inheriting a modest
fortune from his father, the sculptor Sophroniscus, Socrates
used his marginal financial independence as an opportunity to
give full-time attention to inventing the practice of
philosophical dialogue.
For the rest of
his life, Socrates devoted himself to free-wheeling discussion
with the aristocratic young citizens of Athens, insistently
questioning their unwarranted confidence in the truth of popular
opinions, even though he often offered them no clear alternative
teaching. Unlike the professional Sophists of the time, Socrates
pointedly declined to accept payment for his work with students,
but despite (or, perhaps, because) of this lofty disdain for
material success, many of them were fanatically loyal to him.
Their parents, however, were often displeased with his influence
on their offspring, and his earlier association with opponents
of the democratic regime had already made him a controversial
political figure. Although the amnesty of 405 forestalled
direct prosecution for his political activities, an Athenian
jury found other charges, corrupting the youth and interfering
with the religion of the city, upon which to convict Socrates,
and they sentenced him to death in 399 B.C.E. Accepting this
outcome with remarkable grace, Socrates drank hemlock and died
in the company of his friends and disciples.
Our best
sources of information about Socrates's philosophical views are
the early dialogues of his student Plato, who attempted there to
provide a faithful picture of the methods and teachings of the
master. (Although Socrates also appears as a character in the
later dialogues of Plato, these writings more often express
philosophical positions Plato himself developed long after
Socrates's death). In the Socratic dialogues, his extended
conversations with students, statesmen, and friends invariably
aim at understanding and achieving virtue {Gk. areth
[aretê]} through the careful application of a dialectical
method that employs critical inquiry to undermine the
plausibility of widely-held doctrines. Destroying the illusion
that we already comprehend the world perfectly and honestly
accepting the fact of our own ignorance, Socrates believed, are
vital steps toward our acquisition of genuine knowledge, by
discovering universal definitions of the key concepts governing
human life.
- ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
- The
Pre-Socratics:
- Ionian: Thales,
Anaximander, Diogenes of Apollonia, Anaximenes,
Heraclitus
- Pythagoras
- Eleatic:
Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno
- Pluralists:
Empedocles, Anaxagoras
- Atomists:
Leucippus, Democritus
- Sophists:
Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus
- Socrates
and Followers
- Megarians:
Euclides, Stilpo
- Cynics:
Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Menippus, Demonax
- Cyrenaics:
Aristippus
- Plato
and followers
- Academy:
Plato, Arcesilaus, Carneades
- Aristotle
and followers
- Aristotle
- Peripatetics:
Theophrastus
- Hellenistic
Philosophy
- Epicureanism:
Epicurus, Lucretius
- Stoicism:
Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius
- Skepticism:
Pyrrho, Timon, Arcesilaus, Carneades, Cicero,
Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus
- Late
Hellenistic: Eclecticism, Roman Philosophy, Diogenes
Laertius, Polyhistor, Philo, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius,
Galen Neo-Platonism, Plotinus
- MEDIEVAL
PHILOSOPHY
- Early
Middle Ages: Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine
- High
Middle Ages: Anselm, Lombard, Aquinas,
- Late
Middle Ages: Eckhart, Ockham
- RENAISSANCE
PHILOSOPHY:
- Humanism:
Erasmus
- Reformation:
Luther
- Scientific
Revolution: Bacon, Galileo
- Neostoicism:
Justus Lipsius
- 17TH AND
18TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
- Continental
Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz
- British
Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, Hume
- French:
French Deism, Encyclopedists, Rousseau, Diderot,
Helvetius
- German:
Kant, Hamann
- British:
Hobbes, English Deism, Herbert of Cherbury, Butler,
Bolingbroke, Paley
- American:
Pain
- Moral
and Political Philosophy: Machiavelli, Pufendorf,
Beccaria, Cudworth, Cumberland, Shaftesbury
- 19TH
CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
- German:
German Idealism, Hegel, Jacobi, Von Hartmann, J.G.
Fichte, I.H. Fichte, Lotze
- British:
Hamilton, Caird, Sterling, Hodgson, Ferrier, Stephen
Huxley
- American:
St. Louis Hegelians
- Moral
and Political Philosophy: Bentham, Donoso Cortés,
J.S. Mill
- 20TH
CENTURY AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
- Pragmatism:
Dewey, Mead
- Early
Analytic Philosophy: Poincaré, Frege, Wittgenstein,
Reichenbach, Carnap, Hempel, Logical Positivism,
Berlin Circle, Vienna Circle
- Russian
Philosophy: Bakhtin, Solovyov, Shpet
- Continental
Philosophy: Husserl, Freud, Heidegger, Blondel, Kojève,
Merleau-Ponty
- Moral
and Political Philosophy: Arendt
- Religious
Philosophy: Bonhoeffer
- Metaphysics
and Epistemology: Davidson
