Philosophy Essay, Research Paper
Philosophy is the oldest form of systematic, scholarly inquiry. The name comes
from the Greek philosophos, “lover of wisdom.” The term, however, has acquired
several related meanings: (1) the study of the truths or principles underlying
all knowledge, being, and reality; (2) a particular system of philosophical
doctrine; (3) the critical evaluation of such fundamental doctrines; (4) the
study of the principles of a particular branch of knowledge; (5) a system of
principles for guidance in practical affairs; and (6) a philosophical spirit or
attitude.
All of these meanings of philosophy are recognizable in the intellectual
traditions of ancient Greece. The pre-Socratics (see PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY)
sought to find fundamental, natural principles that could explain what
individuals know and experience about the world around them. The pre-Socratics
and, later, PLATO and ARISTOTLE tried to develop a comprehensive set of
principles that would account for their knowledge of both the natural and the
human world. In developing philosophies, these early thinkers saw that their
reflections could be used as a means of criticizing and often refuting
popularly accepted mythological views as well as the thoughts of their
predecessors and contemporaries. SOCRATES, at his trial, proclaimed a basic
philosophical premise, that “the unexamined life was not worth living.” By this
he meant that if people do not examine and critically evaluate the principles
by which they live, they cannot be sure that worthwhile principles exist. As
the Greek thinkers codified their pictures of the world, they saw that for each
science or study of some aspect of the world there could be a corresponding
philosophy of this science or study, such as the philosophies of science, art,
history, and so on. Each of these involves examining the fundamental
principles of a discipline to see if they are logical, consistent, and–most
important–true. Because ancient philosophers questioned the various ways of
life by which people live and sought the most satisfactory one, they developed
their philosophical attitudes and theories as guides to practical living. From
Socrates down to 20th-century thinkers like Bertrand RUSSELL and Jean Paul
SARTRE, a major element of the philosophical enterprise has been devoted to
trying to designate what constitutes the good life for humans both as
individuals and as social and political beings.
This kind of concern has contributed to the image of the philosopher as
standing aside from and impervious to all the ups and downs of everyday
existence. Michel de MONTAIGNE declared that “to philosophize is to learn to
die,” indicating that the philosopher can be philosophical even in the face of
death. The Stoic thinkers (see STOICISM) are usually seen as the epitome of
this sense of philosophy. They maintained their philosophical attitude of calm
reflection in the face of all sorts of temporary disasters.
philosophical questions
Because the term philosophy has various meanings, the nature of the field can
be most easily grasped by examining the kinds of problems and questions the
field deals with. In the beginnings of Western philosophy, the pre-Socratic
thinkers dealt primarily with a metaphysical question: What is the nature of
ultimate reality as contrasted to the apparent reality of ordinary experience?
They tried to determine whether some ultimate constituents of the world would
be the real and basic elements, whereas everything else would be ephemeral and
merely a surface appearance. If such a reality existed, would it be permanent
and unalterable, or would it be subject to change or alteration like everything
else? The pre-Socratics generated some of the basic problems involved in
defining reality, that is, in finding something so basic that it cannot be
explained by anything else. They found their attempts to present logical
explanations of their metaphysical theories ran into paradoxical results.
Could a permanent, unchanging reality account for a changing world? ZENO OF
ELEA became famous for working out his paradoxes, which claimed nothing could
really change or move. Some of his paradoxes and some of those connected with
the Greek ATOMISM still play a role in modern theoretical physics.
Over time, some aspects of the attempt to delineate reality became separated
from the metaphysical quest and became the subject matter of the various
natural sciences. This development has accelerated since the 17th century.
The areas of study that have been peeled off from philosophy and assigned to
the natural sciences include astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, biology,
psychology, and others. An example of this process may be seen in the
consideration of a major metaphysical question, the relationship of mind and
body. Originally, Platonic metaphysics claimed that the body and the mind were
two separate and distinct entities. Plato, in fact, claimed the body was the
prison house of the soul or mind. In the 17th century, Rene DESCARTES
contended that mind and body were two separate and distinct substances that had
nothing in common although they interact. Several Indian schools of philosophy
hold a similar view. In the West this problem was gradually taken over by
psychologists and neurophysiologists. The present tendency is to reduce mental
phenomena to brain phenomena and thereby reduce the problem from a mind-body
problem to a body problem.
Another constant philosophical question, from Greek times up to the present,
has been to try to establish the difference between appearance and reality.
Once people learned about sense illusions, the question arose of how to tell
what seems to be from what really is. Skeptical thinkers have pressed the
claim that no satisfactory standard can be found that will actually work for
distinguishing the real from the apparent in all cases. On the other hand,
various philosophers have proposed many such criteria, none of which has been
universally accepted. Another type of question raised by philosophers is:
What is truth? Various statements about aspects of the world seem to be true,
at least at certain times. Yet experience teaches that statements that have
seemed to be true have later had to be qualified or denied. Skeptics have
suggested that no evidence would be able to tell, beyond any show of doubt,
that a given statement is in reality true. In the face of such a challenge,
philosophers have sought to find a criterion of truth, especially a criterion
of truth that would not be open to skeptical challenge.
Philosophers have also traditionally raised questions about values: What is
good? How can good be distinguished from bad or evil? What is justice? What
would a just society be like? What is beauty? How can the beautiful be
distinguished from the ugly? These questions all deal with matters of
evaluation rather than fact. Scientific investigation is of only slight help
in determining if abortion is bad or if Vermeer’s Milkmaid is a beautiful
picture. The values that are at issue are not perceived in the same way as
facts. If they were, much more agreement would exist about the specific
answers to value questions. The philosopher seeks to find some means of
answering these sorts of questions, which are often the most important ones
that a person can ask and which will exhibit the basis of a theory of values.
Philosophical methods
In view of the kinds of questions that philosophers deal with, what methods
does the philosopher use to seek the answers? The philosopher’s tools are
basically logical and speculative reasoning. In the Western tradition the
development of LOGIC is usually traced to Aristotle, who aimed at constructing
valid arguments and also true arguments if true premises could be uncovered.
Logic has played an important role in ancient and modern philosophy–that of
providing a clarification of the reasoning process and standards by which valid
reasoning can be recognized. It has also provided a means of analyzing basic
concepts to determine if they are consistent or not.
Logic alone, however, is not enough to answer philosophers’ questions. It can
show when philosophers are being consistent and when their concepts are clear
and unambiguous, but it cannot ascertain if the first principles or the
premises are correct. Here philosophers sometimes rely on what they call
intuition and sometimes on a speculative reasoning process. From their initial
premises, philosophers then try to work out a consistent development of their
answers to basic philosophical questions, following the rules of logic.
Irrationalist philosophers, however, such as the Danish thinker Soren
KIERKEGAARD, have contended that the less logical the solution to philosophical
problems, the better. Philosophers such as these sometimes argue that the most
important elements of existence and experience cannot be contained by logic,
which is, after all, an element of experience itself. The part, they argue,
cannot explain the whole.
Philosophy’s relation to other disciplines
Philosophy is both related to most disciplines and yet different from them.
Almost from the beginning of both mathematics and philosophy in ancient Greece,
relations were seen between them. On the one hand, the philosophers were
strongly impressed by the degree of certainty and rigor that appeared to exist
in mathematics as compared to any other subject. Some, like the
philosopher-mathematician PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS, felt that mathematics must be
the key to understanding reality. Plato claimed that mathematics provided the
forms out of which everything was made. Aristotle, on the other hand, held
that mathematics was about ideal objects rather than real ones; he held that
mathematics could be certain without telling us anything about reality. In
more modern times, Descartes and Baruch SPINOZA used mathematics as their model
and inspiration for formulating new methods to discover the truth about
reality. The philosopher-mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von LEIBNIZ, the
co-discoverer (with Isaac Newton) of calculus, theorized about constructing an
ideal mathematical language in which to state, and mathematically solve, all
philosophical problems. Similar views have been advanced in the 20th century
as ways of resolving age-old philosophical difficulties. Attempts to
accomplish this have found far from unanimous approval, however.
Philosophy has both influenced and been influenced by practically all of the
sciences. The physical sciences have provided the accepted body of information
about the world at any given time. Philosophers have then tried to arrange
this information into a meaningful pattern and interpret it, describing what
reality might be like. Western philosophers over much of the last 2,500 years
have provided basic metaphysical theories for the scientists to fit their data
into and as the data changed, their metaphysical interpretations have had to be
adjusted. Thus the scientific revolution of the 17th century, encompassing the
scientific work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, was accompanied by a
metaphysical revolution led by such thinkers as Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the prevailing philosophers in
England and France came to the conclusion that the sciences are, and ought to
be, completely independent of traditional metaphysical interpretations.
Instead, the sciences should just try to describe and codify observations and
experiences. This approach has led in the last two centuries to a divorce of
philosophy from the sciences. What has developed in response is a new branch
of philosophy, the philosophy of science, which examines the methods of
science, the types of scientific evidence, and the ways the sciences progress.
A third intellectual area that has been intimately involved with philosophy is
religion. In ancient Greece some philosophers like ANAXAGORAS and Socrates
scandalized their contemporaries by criticizing aspects of Greek religion.
Others offered more theoretical approaches about the evidence for the existence
and nature of God or the gods. Some denied the existence of a deity. When
Christianity entered the Greek world, attempts were made to develop a
philosophical understanding of Christianity. Finally, toward the end of the
4th and beginning of the 5th century, Saint AUGUSTINE achieved a synthesis of
some of the elements of Platonic philosophy with the essentials of
Christianity. Throughout the Middle Ages, philosopher-theologians among the
Jews, Muslims, and Christians sought to explain their religions in rational
terms. They were opposed by antirational theologians who insisted that
religion is a matter of faith and belief and not of reasons and arguments.
After the Reformation, philosophers like Spinoza and David HUME began
criticizing the traditional philosophical arguments used by theologians. Hume
and Immanuel KANT sought to show that all of the arguments purporting to prove
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul were fallacious.
Philosophers sought to explain why people were religious on nonrational
grounds, such as psychological, economic, or cultural ones. The defenders of
religion found themselves estranged from the philosophers, who kept using the
latest results of science and historical research to criticize religion. Some,
like Kierkegaard, made a virtue of this estrangement, insisting that religious
belief is a matter of faith, and therefore not a matter of reason. More
recently, since World War II, a group of theologians who are interested in
recent philosophical developments and in the relationship between religion and
contemporary culture have attempted to discover what religious statements can
be intellectually meaningful. The history of the relation between philosophy
and theology is thus a long and mixed affair, running the gamut from clarifying
religion and providing a justification for it to tearing apart its intellectual
underpinnings and trying to see what is left that a 20th-century scientifically
oriented person can believe or take seriously.
branches of philosophy
The several different branches of philosophy correspond to the different
problems being dealt with. One of the most basic is EPISTEMOLOGY, the theory
of knowledge (episteme is Greek for knowledge). It deals with what can be
known, how it can be known, and how certain the individual can be about it. It
has special branches like the philosophy of science. The kinds of answers that
emerge from a particular epistemology usually structure its METAPHYSICS.
Metaphysics is the study of nature of reality, the study of what features of
experience are real and which are apparent. Aristotle called metaphysics the
study of being as such; the term ontology is often used to describe this branch
of philosophy today. How a person gets to know about pure being (an
epistemological problem) colors what it is that is known. The reverse is also
the case. What the individual thinks the world is really like colors what he
or she thinks can be known about it. How the individual reasons about the
world and how he or she can certify knowledge belongs to the branch of
philosophy called logic. Logic provides the rational framework for all
philosophical discussion, but is also itself open to metaphysical
interpretations about what sort of world it is explaining.
Other branches of philosophy such as ETHICS, AESTHETICS, and political
philosophy deal with evaluative aspects of the world such as what is good
conduct, what is beautiful, and what is socially and politically just. The
proposed answers to these questions are much involved with the philosopher’s
epistemological and metaphysical theories, and the values the philosopher
espouses color his or her epistemology and metaphysics. Sometimes the pursuit
of particular aspects of experience (such as sensations) or the use of
particular tools (such as the analysis of language) will reorient philosophical
inquiry or give birth to new branches of philosophy. Thus philosophy is never
reasoned in a vacuum. It is concerned not only with abstract questions; it is
also conditioned by history.
history of western philosophy
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The Pre-Socratics.
Western philosophy began in Greece, in the Greek settlement of Miletus in
Anatolia. The first known philosophers were THALES OF MILETUS and his
students, ANAXIMANDER and ANAXIMENES. Present-day knowledge of this MILESIAN
SCHOOL is based on fragments attributed to them by later writers. These first
philosophers were metaphysicians, seeking for an element or force behind
appearance that explained everything. Thales said that all was ultimately
water, Anaximander that it was boundless or the infinite, and Anaximenes that
it was air. Subsequent Greek philosophers, such as HERACLITUS and PARMENIDES,
argued about whether change or permanence was the basic feature of the world
and about whether one or more than one element was the fundamental constituent
of reality (see MONISM; PLURALISM). Greek philosophy before Socrates was
principally concerned with these metaphysical questions.
Socrates.
Socrates, an Athenian, was primarily interested in value questions that
affected what a person should do. At the time in Athens, the paid teachers,
the SOPHISTS, taught people how to live successfully; they did not raise the
Socratic question of what was the right way of life, however. Socrates did not
write anything, but he is vividly portrayed by his pupil Plato in the Dialogues
as being the “gadfly” of Athens, forever asking people why they are doing what
they are doing and making people realize that general principles were necessary
to justify their conduct. Socrates was finally arrested and accused of heresy
and corrupting the young of Athens. Socrates used his trial, described in
Plato’s Apology, as a final opportunity to make his general point. His
accusers, he showed, did not know what the charges actually meant and had no
evidence for them. He reported that the Delphic oracle had said that he,
Socrates, was the wisest of all of the Athenians. Socrates said he was the
wisest because he alone knew nothing and knew that he knew nothing, whereas
everybody else thought they knew something. In spite of his eloquence and
wisdom, Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death.
Plato.
After Socrates’ execution, his disciple Plato developed the first comprehensive
philosophical system and founded the Academy, the first formal philosophical
school. Plato contended that knowledge must be of universals (that is, of
general types or kinds) and not of particulars. To know a particular cat,
Miranda, the individual must first know what it is to be feline in general.
Otherwise he or she will not be able to recognize the particular feline
characteristics in Miranda. These universals, Plato claimed, were the basic
elements from which the world was formed. They are called the Forms, or
Platonic Ideas. Mathematics provides the most obvious cases of these Forms.
They are known not by sense perception but by reasoning. They are known by the
mind, not by the bodily organs. The world of Platonic Ideas is the unchanging
Forms of things. The philosopher should turn away from this world of
appearance and concentrate on the world of Forms. Plato, in his most famous
work, The Republic, said that the world would be perfect when philosophers are
kings and kings are philosophers. He believed that the philosopher-kings would
know what justice really is, and, based on their knowledge of the Forms, they
could then achieve justice in all societies.
For Plato the ultimate Idea, which illuminated the rest of the pure ideas, was
the Idea of the Good. As Plato grew older he became more mystical about this
idea. The school of NEOPLATONISM, which began a few centuries after his death,
stressed these otherworldly and mystical elements, identifying the idea of the
Good with God.
Aristotle.
Plato’s leading student, Aristotle, developed the most comprehensive
philosophical system of ancient times. Aristotle broke with Plato, stressing
the importance of explaining the changing world that humankind lives in as
opposed to the Platonic Ideas. Aristotle spent years studying the natural
sciences and collecting specimens, and about 90 percent of his writings are on
scientific subjects, mostly on biological ones. Aristotle believed he could
account for the changes and alterations in this world without either having to
deny their reality or having to appeal to another world. For Aristotle all
natural objects were composed of form and matter, and the changes that take
place in matter are the substitution of one form for another. This
substitution takes place because every natural object has a goal, or telos,
which it is its nature to achieve. Thus stones, because they are essentially
material, seek the lowest point, which is why they fall down. Each species is
ultimately trying to achieve a state of perfection which for Aristotle was a
state of perfect rest. The cosmos, as Aristotle saw it, is an ordered striving
for this perfection. The pinnacle of the order is the Unmoved Mover, the
ultimate cosmic agent, which fully and perfectly realizes its essence of
eternal thought. The heavenly spheres imitate the Unmoved Mover and by so
doing set the heavens in an eternal spherical motion; this process is repeated
by individual souls, and so on. Aristotle’s vision of the Cosmos remained
central to Western thought until the time of Nicolaus Copernicus.
Hellenistic and Roman Periods.
In the period from about 300 BC to AD 200 the central philosophical concerns
shifted to how an individual should conduct his or her life. The Stoics, the
Skeptics (see SKEPTICISM), and the Epicureans (see EPICUREANISM), although they
dealt with the classical epistemological and metaphysical issues, emphasized
the question of how humans should conduct themselves in a miserable world. All
these theories stressed withdrawal, whether physical, emotional, or
intellectual, from the turmoils of the day.
Medieval Period.
Greek philosophy was the major formative influence on the later philosophical
traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. In all three, the theories of
the Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle, were employed to clarify and
develop the basic beliefs of the religious traditions.
PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA introduced Platonic ideas and methods into Jewish thought,
particularly into the interpretation of Scripture about the beginning of the
Christian era. He exerted little influence on later Jewish thought, however,
and the Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages seems to have developed as a
movement parallel to those in Islam. Important figures in early medieval
Jewish thought include Isaac Israeli, SAADIA BEN JOSEPH GAON, and the
Neoplatonist Solomon IBN GABIROL. The most important Jewish thinker of the
Middle Ages, however, was MAIMONIDES. Maimonides developed a comprehensive
interpretation of religion and understanding based on Aristotelian principles
that was influential in the Christian West as well as among Jewish thinkers.
In Judaism, as in Islam and Christianity, religious speculation and philosophy
developed in close connection. This development is particularly evident in the
Jewish mystical tradition, the KABBALAH. The esoteric teachings of these
schools have influenced much later Jewish thought, including that of Spinoza,
the most important Jewish philosopher of the early modern period. Drawing both
on his religious background and on the geometric method of Descartes, Spinoza
developed a philosophical PANTHEISM of great depth.
In the Islamic tradition as well the starting point was the work of Plato and
Aristotle. The 9th-century Neoplatonist al-KINDI was followed by al-FARABI,
who drew on both Plato and Aristotle to create a universal Islamic philosophy.
The most important of the medieval Muslim philosophers, however, was Avicenna
(ibn Sina). Starting from the distinction between essence and existence,
Avicenna developed a metaphysics in which God, the necessary being, is the
source of created nature through emanation. Both his metaphysics and his
intuitionist theory of knowledge were influential in the later Middle Ages as
well as in the later history of Islamic thought.
The philosophical tradition did not go unchallenged, however. The 11th-century
theologian and mystic al-GHAZALI mounted a critique of philosophy, specifically
Avicenna’s, that is rich in argument and insight. Al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of
the Philosophers provoked a response by AVERROES ibn Rushd entitled the
Incoherence of the Incoherence, in which al-Ghazali’s arguments are countered
point for point. Averroes was best known, however, as an interpreter of
Aristotle and excited great influence on all subsequent thinkers in the
Aristotelian tradition. In the later Middle Ages the historian and philosopher
IBN KHALDUN produced a trenchant critique of culture, and the elaboration of
metaphysics and epistemology was carried on in the theosophical schools of
Islamic mysticism.
The first systematic Christian philosophy was that of ORIGEN, but for the
European Middle Ages no authority could rival Saint Augustine. Augustine
elaborated a Neoplatonist vision combining the metaphysics of PLOTINUS with an
elaboration of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. To this he added an
epistemology in which knowledge is achieved through illumination by grace. No
substantial movement arose beyond Augustine until the 12th century, when new
interest arose in logic and theory of knowledge. In this connection the most
important figures are Saint ANSELM and Peter ABELARD.
In the late 12th and early 13th centuries the writings of Aristotle were
reintroduced into the West, first in translations from the Arabic and later in
direct translation. After some initial resistance Aristotle became the
dominant philosophical authority and remained so until the Renaissance. First
Saint ALBERTUS MAGNUS and then Saint Thomas AQUINAS combined Aristotle’s
philosophy with the tradition of Augustinian theology to produce a synthesis
holding that Aristotle was right about those things that are within the grasp
of reason, while what was beyond reason could only be known by faith. Thus
reason could prove that God exists, but his nature could be known only by
faith. More extreme Aristotelian schools developed and came into conflict with
the church, which, in 1277, issued condemnations of many positions held by
Aristotle and Aquinas, among others. In the 14th century two figures dominated
the scene: DUNS SCOTUS and WILLIAM OF OCCAM. Scotus developed an extemely
complex philosophy based on a number of earlier positions, and Occam’s
critiques of metaphysics and epistemology remain paradigms of philosophical
argument.
Rationalism.
The synthesis of Christianity and Aristotelianism was a major form of
SCHOLASTICISM, which dominated European philosophy into the 17th century.
During the Renaissance other forms of ancient philosophy began to be revived
and used as ammunition against the scholastics. This involved the Renaissance
Platonists and the Skeptics, as well as others interested in esoteric doctrines
like that of the Kabbalah. In terms of the future development of philosophy,
the revival of ancient skepticism played the greatest role. This view,
popularized by Montaigne in the late 16th century, raised the fundamental
epistemological problem of what can be known. The methods of the new
scientific schools conflicted with, and thus brought into question, the
principles inherited from the Middle Ages. Rene Descartes proposed a method
for guaranteeing knowledge. He argued that in order to provide a secure
foundation for knowledge it was necessary to discover “clear and distinct
ideas” that could not be doubted and could serve as a basis for deriving
further truths. He found such an idea in the proposition “I think, therefore I
am.” Using this as a paradigm, Descartes drew a distinction between thinking
substance and extended substance, or mind and matter. He went on to draw
conclusions about God, nature, and mind that continue to be influential. For
this reason Descartes is often considered the founder of modern philosophy.
A few years after Descartes’s death, Baruch de Spinoza offered his theory to
improve on that of Descartes. Spinoza insisted that only one substance, God,
exists, and that two of his attributes are thought and extension. Everything
that is and that can be known about is an aspect of God. Spinoza’s God,
however, was the antithesis of the God of traditional religion. God, or Nature
(as Spinoza put it), was the laws from which everything followed. In Spinoza’s
pantheistic world everything had to be what it was, and everything was to be
understood rationally. The mind and body were two aspects of the same thing,
which was to be understood either logically or in terms of natural science. A
third great 17th-century rationalist was Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. The
basic unit of his metaphysics, equivalent to a substance, was the monad, a
center of force or energy. Each monad was internally determined by its
definition. Monads could not interact, but, due to a “preestablished harmony,”
the action in one monad coincided with that in another. God chose the monads
in the world s
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