1.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
2.
Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
3.
Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who is considered a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy and his beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics. Politically, Kant was one of the earliest exponents of the idea that peace could be secured through universal democracy. He believed that this will be the outcome of universal history. Kant wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, Kant argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of our minds. In his view, the shapes and structures experience so that, on an abstract level. Among other things, Kant believed that the concepts of space and time are integral to all human experience, as are our concepts of cause, Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, which dealt with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. His mother, Anna Regina Reuter, was born in Königsberg to a father from Nuremberg. His father, Johann Georg Kant, was a German harness maker from Memel, Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children, baptized Emanuel, he changed his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student and he was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics, despite his religious upbringing and maintaining a belief in God, Kant was skeptical of religion in later life, various commentators have labelled him agnostic. Common myths about Kants personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwaits introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a strict and disciplined life. He never married, but seemed to have a social life — he was a popular teacher. He had a circle of friends whom he met, among them Joseph Green. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres from Königsberg his whole life, in fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor in Judtschen and in Groß-Arnsdorf
4.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and he lived his remaining years in the care of his mother, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900. Nietzsches body of work touched widely on art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from figures such as Schopenhauer, Wagner. His writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism, born on 15 October 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was named after King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who turned forty-nine on the day of Nietzsches birth, Nietzsches parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler, married in 1843, the year before their sons birth. They had two children, a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph. Nietzsches father died from an ailment in 1849, Ludwig Joseph died six months later. The family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsches maternal grandmother, after the death of Nietzsches grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house, now Nietzsche-Haus, a museum and Nietzsche study centre. Nietzsche attended a school and then, later, a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug, Rudolf Wagner. In 1854, he began to attend Domgymnasium in Naumburg, because his father had worked for the state the now-fatherless Nietzsche was offered a scholarship to study at the internationally recognized Schulpforta. He transferred and studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming friends with Paul Deussen and he also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. Nietzsche led Germania, a music and literature club, during his summers in Naumburg. His end-of-semester exams in March 1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German, a 2a in Greek and Latin, a 2b in French, History, and Physics, while at Pforta, Nietzsche had a penchant for pursuing subjects that were considered unbecoming. The teacher who corrected the essay gave it a mark but commented that Nietzsche should concern himself in the future with healthier, more lucid. After graduation in September 1864, Nietzsche commenced studies in theology, for a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one semester, he stopped his studies and lost his faith. In June 1865, at the age of 20, Nietzsche wrote to his sister Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter regarding his loss of faith
5.
Gautama Buddha
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Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, after the title of Buddha, was an ascetic and sage, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the part of ancient India sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement common in his region and he later taught throughout other regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala. Gautama is the figure in Buddhism. He is recognized by Buddhists as a teacher who attained full Buddhahood. Accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death, various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral tradition and first committed to writing about 400 years later. Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the facts of the Buddhas life. Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddhas lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential schools of thought like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism. Brahmajala Sutta records sixty-two such schools of thought, thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa philosophers of that time. The times of Gautamas birth and death are uncertain, most historians in the early 20th century dated his lifetime as circa 563 BCE to 483 BCE. These alternative chronologies, however, have not yet accepted by all historians. It was either a republic, or an oligarchy, and his father was an elected chieftain. He obtained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnath, no written records about Gautama were found from his lifetime or some centuries thereafter. One Edict of Asoka, who reigned from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE, another one of his edicts mentions the titles of several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era. These texts may be the precursor of the Pāli Canon and they are written in the Gāndhārī language using the Kharosthi script on twenty-seven birch bark manuscripts and date from the first century BCE to the third century CE. The sources for the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are a variety of different and these include the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara Sūtra, Mahāvastu, and the Nidānakathā. Of these, the Buddhacarita is the earliest full biography, a poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa in the first century CE. The Lalitavistara Sūtra is the next oldest biography, a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE, the Mahāvastu from the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda tradition is another major biography, composed incrementally until perhaps the 4th century CE
6.
Confucius
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Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and his followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, aphorisms concerning his teachings were compiled in the Analects, but only many years after his death. Confuciuss principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief and he championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration, and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives. He also recommended family as a basis for ideal government and he espoused the well-known principle Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself, the Golden Rule. Confucius is also a deity in Daoism. According to tradition, three generations before Confucius time, his ancestors had migrated from the Song state to the Lu state, Confucius was a descendant of the Shang dynasty Kings through the Dukes of Song. Confucius family and personal name respectively was Kong Qiu, in Chinese, he is most often known as Kongzi. He is also known by the honorific Kong Fuzi, in the Wade–Giles system of romanization, the honorific name is rendered as Kung Fu-tzu. The Latinized name Confucius is derived from Kong Fuzi, and was first coined by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to China, within the Analects, he is often referred to simply as the Master. In 1 AD, Confucius was given his first posthumous name, in 1530, he was declared the Extremely Sage Departed Teacher. He is also known separately as the Great Sage, First Teacher and it is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28,551 BC. His birthplace was in Zou, Lu state and his father Kong He, also known as Shuliang He, was an officer in the Lu military. Kong died when Confucius was three years old, and Confucius was raised by his mother Yan Zhengzai in poverty and his mother would later die at less than 40 years of age. At age 19 he married his wife Qiguan, and a year later the couple had their first child, Qiguan and Confucius would later have two daughters together, one of whom is thought to have died early in her life as a child. Confucius was educated at schools for commoners, where he studied and learned the Six Arts, Confucius was born into the class of shi, between the aristocracy and the common people. When his mother died, Confucius is said to have mourned for three years, as was the tradition, the Lu state was headed by a ruling ducal house. Under the duke were three families, whose heads bore the title of viscount and held hereditary positions in the Lu bureaucracy
7.
Averroes
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Ibn Rushd, full name, often Latinized as Averroes, was a medieval Andalusian polymath. Ibn Rushd was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus, and died at Marrakesh in present-day Morocco and his body was interred in his family tomb at Córdoba. The 13th-century philosophical movement in Latin Christian and Jewish tradition based on Ibn Rushds work is called Averroism, Ibn Rushd was a defender of Aristotelian philosophy against Ashari theologians led by Al-Ghazali. Although highly regarded as a scholar of the Maliki school of Islamic law. Whereas al-Ghazali believed that any act of a natural phenomenon occurred only because God willed it to happen. Ibn Rushd had a impact on Christian Europe, being known by the sobriquet the Commentator for his detailed emendations to Aristotle. Latin translations of Ibn Rushds work led the way to the popularization of Aristotle, Averroes is the Medieval Latin form of the Hebrew translation Aben Rois or Rosh of the Arabic Ibn Rushd. It is also seen as Averroës, Averrhoës, or Averroès to mark that the o and e are separate vowels, Ibn Rushd was born in Córdoba to a family with a long and well-respected tradition of legal and public service. His grandfather Abu Al-Walid Muhammad was chief judge of Córdoba under the Almoravids and his father, Abu Al-Qasim Ahmad, held the same position until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. Ibn Rushds education followed a path, beginning with studies in Hadith, linguistics, jurisprudence. Throughout his life he wrote extensively on philosophy and religion, attributes of God, origin of the universe, metaphysics and it is generally believed that he was once tutored by Ibn Bajjah. His medical education was directed under Abu Jafar ibn Harun of Trujillo in Seville, Ibn Rushd began his career with the help of Ibn Tufail, the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and philosophic vizier of Almohad king Abu Yaqub Yusuf who was an amateur of philosophy and science. It was Ibn Tufail who introduced him to the court and to Ibn Zuhr, the great Muslim physician, who became Ibn Rushds teacher and friend. He said that if someone took on these books who could summarize them and clarify their aims after first thoroughly understanding them himself, if you have the energy, Ibn Tufayl told me, you do it. Im confident you can, because I know what a good mind and devoted character you have and you understand that only my great age, the cares of my office — and my commitment to another task that I think even more vital — keep me from doing it myself. Ibn Rushd also studied the works and philosophy of Ibn Bajjah, however, while the thought of his mentors Ibn Tufail and Ibn Bajjah were mystic to an extent, the thought of Ibn Rushd was purely rationalist. Together, the three men are considered the greatest Andalusian philosophers, Ibn Rushd devoted the next 30 years to his philosophical writings. In 1160, Ibn Rushd was made Qadi of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville, Cordoba, sometime during the reign of Yaqub al-Mansur, Averroess political career was abruptly ended and he faced severe criticism from the Fuqaha of the time
8.
Analytic philosophy
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Analytic philosophy is a style of philosophy that became dominant in English-speaking countries at the beginning of the 20th century. In the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, as a historical development, analytical philosophy refers to certain developments in early 20th-century philosophy that were the historical antecedents of the current practice. Central figures in historical development are Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege. This may be contrasted with the traditional foundationalism, which considers philosophy to be a science that investigates the fundamental reasons. Consequently, many philosophers have considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to. This is an attitude that begins with John Locke, who described his work as that of an underlabourer to the achievements of scientists such as Newton. During the twentieth century, the most influential advocate of the continuity of philosophy with science was Willard Van Orman Quine, the principle that the logical clarification of thoughts can be achieved only by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it, to reduce it to simpler components if necessary, however, analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language. The neglect of generalized philosophical systems in favour of more restricted inquiries stated rigorously and it is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy. Its methods, in respect, resemble those of science. Analytic philosophy is often understood in contrast to other traditions, most notably continental philosophies such as existentialism and phenomenology. British idealism, as taught by such as F. H. Bradley and Thomas Hill Green. With reference to this basis the initiators of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. Inspired by developments in logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions. An important aspect of British idealism was logical holism — the opinion that the aspects of the world cannot be wholly without also knowing the whole world. This is closely related to the opinion that relations between items are actually internal relations, that is, properties internal to the nature of those items. Russell, along with Wittgenstein, in response promulgated logical atomism, Frege was also influential as a philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Like Frege, Russell attempted to show that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals in The Principles of Mathematics, later, his book written with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest in the development of symbolic logic
9.
Aristotelianism
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Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotles writings. Moses Maimonides adopted Aristotelianism from the Islamic scholars and based his famous Guide for the Perplexed on it, scholars such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas interpreted and systematized Aristotles works in accordance with Christian theology. Although this project was criticized by Trendelenburg and Brentano as non-Aristotelian, postmodernists, in contrast, reject Aristotelianisms claim to reveal important theoretical truths. In this, they follow Heideggers critique of Aristotle as the greatest source of the tradition of Western philosophy. Recent Aristotelian ethical and practical philosophy, such as that of Gadamer, the most famous contemporary Aristotelian philosopher is Alasdair MacIntyre. Politically and socially, it has been characterized as a newly revolutionary Aristotelianism and this may be contrasted with the more conventional, apolitical and effectively conservative uses of Aristotle by, for example, Gadamer and McDowell. Other important contemporary Aristotelian theorists include Fred D. Miller, Jr. in politics, the original followers of Aristotle were the members of the Peripatetic school. The most prominent members of the school after Aristotle were Theophrastus and Strato of Lampsacus, during the Roman era the school concentrated on preserving and defending his work. The most important figure in this regard was Alexander of Aphrodisias who commentated on Aristotles writings, in the Abbasid Empire, many foreign works were translated into Arabic, large libraries were constructed, and scholars were welcomed. Under the caliphs Harun al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad flourished, Christian scholar Hunayn ibn Ishaq was placed in charge of the translation work by the caliph. In his lifetime, Ishaq translated 116 writings, including works by Plato and Aristotle, into Syriac, al-Kindi was the first of the Muslim Peripatetic philosophers, and is known for his efforts to introduce Greek and Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world. He incorporated Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thought into an Islamic philosophical framework and this was an important factor in the introduction and popularization of Greek philosophy in the Muslim intellectual world. The philosopher Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries and his work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Avicenna. Avicenna was one of the interpreters of Aristotle. The school of thought he founded became known as Avicennism, which was built on ingredients and conceptual building blocks that are largely Aristotelian and Neoplatonist. At the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, during the reign of Al-Hakam II in Córdoba, a massive effort was undertaken. Averroes, who spent much of his life in Cordoba and Seville, was distinguished as a commentator of Aristotle
10.
Buddhist philosophy
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Indian Buddhists sought this understanding not just from the revealed teachings of the Buddha, but through philosophical analysis and rational deliberation. Buddhist thinkers in India and subsequently in East Asia have covered topics as varied as phenomenology, ethics, ontology, epistemology, logic, a recurrent theme in Buddhist philosophy has been the reification of concepts, and the subsequent return to the Buddhist Middle Way. Particular points of Buddhist philosophy have often been the subject of disputes between different schools of Buddhism and these elaborations and disputes gave rise to various schools in early Buddhism of Abhidharma, and to the Mahayana traditions and schools of the prajnaparamita, Madhyamaka, Buddha-nature and Yogacara. Philosophy in India was aimed mainly at spiritual liberation and had soteriological goals, virtually all the great philosophical systems of India, Sāṅkhya, Advaitavedānta, Mādhyamaka and so forth, were preeminently concerned with providing a means to liberation or salvation. It was a tacit assumption with these systems that if their philosophy were correctly understood and assimilated, the goal of Buddhist philosophy is nirvana and to achieve this it needs to investigate the nature of the world. For the Indian Buddhist philosophers, the teachings of the Buddha were not meant to be taken on faith alone, the Buddha also expect his disciples to approach him as a teacher in a critical fashion and scrutinize his actions and words, as shown in the Vīmaṃsaka Sutta. The Buddha was a north Indian sramana from Magadha and he cultivated various yogic techniques and ascetic practices and taught throughout north India, where his teachings took hold. These teachings are preserved in the Pali Nikayas and in the Agamas as well as in other surviving fragmentary textual collections, dating these texts is difficult and there is disagreement on how much of this material goes back to a single religious founder. The Buddha defined his teaching as the middle way, in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, this is used to refer to the fact that his teachings steer a middle course between the extremes of asceticism and bodily denial and sensual hedonism or indulgence. Many sramanas of the Buddhas time placed much emphasis on a denial of the body, using such as fasting. The Buddha however, realized that the mind was embodied and causally dependent on the body, according to Vetter, the description of the Buddhist path may initially have been as simple as the term the middle way. In time, this description was elaborated, resulting in the description of the eightfold path. Vetter argues that the eightfold path constitutes a body of practices which prepare one, and lead up to, according to Vetter and Bronkhorst, dhyāna constituted the original liberating practice, while discriminating insight into transiency as a separate path to liberation was a later development. According to Bronkhorst, the four truths may not have been formulated in earliest Buddhism, Lambert Schmithausen concluded that the four truths were a later development in early Buddhism. Carol Anderson, following Lambert Schmithausen and K. R, norman, notes that the four truths are missing in critical passages in the canon, and states. According to some scholars, the outlook of earliest Buddhism was primarily negative. Only knowledge that is useful in achieving enlightenment is valued, the four noble truths or truths of the noble one are a central feature of the teachings and are put forth in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. The first truth of Dukkha, often translated as suffering, is the inherent unsatisfactoriness of life
11.
Chinese philosophy
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Early Shang Dynasty thought was based upon cycles. Thus, this notion, which remained relevant throughout Chinese history, in juxtaposition, it also marks a fundamental distinction from western philosophy, in which the dominant view of time is a linear progression. During the Shang, fate could be manipulated by great deities, ancestor worship was present and universally recognized. There was also human and animal sacrifice, when the Shang were overthrown by the Zhou, a new political, religious and philosophical concept was introduced called the Mandate of Heaven. This mandate was said to be taken when rulers became unworthy of their position, Confucianism developed during the Spring and Autumn period from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who considered himself a retransmitter of Zhou values. His philosophy concerns the fields of ethics and politics, emphasizing personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, traditionalism, Confucianism was and continues to be a major influence in Chinese culture, the state of China and the surrounding areas of Southeast Asia. Before the Han dynasty the largest rivals to Confucianism were Chinese Legalism, Confucianism largely became the dominant philosophical school of China during the early Han Dynasty following the replacement of its contemporary, the more Taoistic Huang-Lao. The Six Dynasties era saw the rise of the Xuanxue philosophical school and the maturation of Chinese Buddhism, by the time of the Tang dynasty five-hundred years after Buddhisms arrival into China, it had transformed into a thoroughly Chinese religious philosophy dominated by the school of Zen Buddhism. Neo-Confucianism became highly popular during the Song dynasty and Ming Dynasty due in part to the eventual combination of Confucian. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese philosophy integrated concepts from Western philosophy, the most notable examples are Sun Yat-Sens Three Principles of the People ideology and Mao Zedongs Maoism, a variant of Marxism–Leninism. In the modern Peoples Republic of China, the ideology is Deng Xiaopings market economy socialism. Although the Peoples Republic of China has been hostile to the philosophy of ancient China. In the post-Chinese economic reform era, modern Chinese philosophy has reappeared in forms such as the New Confucianism, as in Japan, philosophy in China has become a melting pot of ideas. It accepts new concepts, while attempting also to accord old beliefs their due, Chinese philosophy still carries profound influence amongst the people of East Asia, and even Southeast Asia. Around 500 BCE, after the Zhou state weakened and China moved into the Spring and Autumn period and this is known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. This period is considered the age of Chinese philosophy. Of the many schools founded at this time and during the subsequent Warring States period and it is a system of moral, social, political, and religious thought that has had tremendous influence on Chinese history, thought, and culture down to the 20th century. Some Westerners have considered it to have been the religion of imperial China because of its lasting influence on Asian culture
12.
Existentialism
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While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience. Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher and he proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely, or authentically. Existentialism became popular in the years following World War II, and strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology. The term is seen as a historical convenience as it was first applied to many philosophers in hindsight. In fact, while existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, Sartre posits the idea that what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence, as scholar Frederick Copleston explains. Sartre himself, in a lecture delivered in 1945, described existentialism as the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism and this assertion comes from two sources. The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern, Sibbern is supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard. This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern, the second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claims to prove that Kierkegaard himself said the term existential was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that Hegelians do not study philosophy existentially, on the other hand, the Norwegian historian Anne-Lise Seip is critical of Slagstad, and believes the statement in fact stems from the Norwegian literary historian Cathrinus Bang. The actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their true essence instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them, thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. However, an existentialist philosopher would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence - what Sartre would call bad faith, instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, furthermore, by this action of cruelty, such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity. This is as opposed to their genes, or human nature, as Sartre writes in his work Existentialism is a Humanism. Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. Of course, the positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied, A person can choose to act in a different way. Here it is clear that since humans can choose to be either cruel or good, they are, in fact. Sartres definition of existentialism was based on Heideggers magnum opus Being and this way of living, Heidegger called average everydayness
13.
Jain philosophy
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Jain philosophy is the oldest Indian philosophy that separates body from the soul completely. Jain philosophy deals with reality, cosmology, epistemology and Vitalism, the concept of non-injury or ahiṃsā lies at the core of Jain philosophy. Jain philosophy attempts to explain the rationale of being and existence, the nature of the Universe and its constituents, the nature of bondage and the means to achieve liberation. Jain texts expound that in every half-cycle of time, twenty-four tirthankaras grace this part of the Universe to teach the doctrine of right faith, right knowledge. Jain philosophy means the teachings of a Tirthankara which are recorded in Sacred Jain texts, the distinguishing features of Jain philosophy are, - Belief on independent existence of soul and matter. Refutation of the idea that a divine creator, owner, preserver or destroyer of the universe exists. Accent on relativity and multiple facets of truth and Morality and ethics based on liberation of soul, Jainism strongly upholds the individualistic nature of soul and personal responsibility for ones decisions, and that self-reliance and individual efforts alone are responsible for ones liberation. According to the Jain texts, the vitalities or life-principles are ten, namely the five senses, energy, respiration, life-duration, the organ of speech, the table below summaries the vitalities, living beings possess in accordance to their senses. In the animal world, the five-sensed beings without mind have nine life-principles with the addition of the sense of hearing and those endowed with mind have ten with the addition of the mind. According to Tattvarthasutra, a major Jain text, the severance of vitalities out of passion is injury, according to the Purushartha Siddhyupaya, non-manifestation of passions like attachment is non-injury, and manifestation of such passions is injury. This is termed as the essence of the Jaina Scriptures, vegetarianism and other nonviolent practices and rituals of Jains flow from the principle of ahiṃsā. Jain philosophy postulates that seven tattva constitute reality and these are, - Jīva-The soul substance which is said to have a separate existence from the body that houses it. Jīva is characterised by cetana and upayoga, though the soul experiences both birth and death, it is neither really destroyed nor created. Decay and origin refer respectively to the disappearing of one state of soul and appearance of another state, ajīva- the non-soul āsrava - inflow of auspicious and evil karmic matter into the soul. Bandha - mutual intermingling of the soul and karmas, samvara - obstruction of the inflow of karmic matter into the soul. Nirjara - separation or falling off of part of matter from the soul. Mokṣha - complete annihilation of all karmic matter, the knowledge of these reals is said to be essential for the liberation of the soul. According to the Jain philosophy, the world is full of hiṃsā, therefore, one should direct all his efforts in attainment of moksha
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Jewish philosophy
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Jewish philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. With their acceptance into society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves. Medieval re-discovery of ancient Greek philosophy among the Geonim of 10th century Babylonian academies brought rationalist philosophy into Biblical-Talmudic Judaism, the philosophy was generally in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classic Rabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic rationalism coincided with events which drew Jews to the Kabbalistic approach. For Ashkenazi Jews, emancipation and encounter with secular thought from the 18th-century onwards altered how philosophy was viewed, Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities had later more ambivalent interaction with secular culture than in Western Europe. In the varied responses to modernity, Jewish philosophical ideas were developed across the range of emerging religious movements, Rabbinic literature sometimes views Abraham as a philosopher. Some have suggested that Abraham introduced a philosophy learned from Melchizedek, a midrash describes how Abraham understood this world to have a creator and director by comparing this world to a house with a light in it, what is now called the argument from design. Psalms contains invitations to admire the wisdom of God through his works, from this, some scholars suggest, Judaism harbors a Philosophical under-current. Ecclesiastes is often considered to be the only genuine philosophical work in the Hebrew Bible, its author seeks to understand the place of human beings in the world, Philo attempted to fuse and harmonize Greek and Jewish philosophy through allegory, which he learned from Jewish exegesis and Stoicism. Philo attempted to make his philosophy the means of defending and justifying Jewish religious truths and these truths he regarded as fixed and determinate, and philosophy was used as an aid to truth, and a means of arriving at it. To this end Philo chose from philosophical tenets of Greeks, refusing those that did not harmonize with Judaism such as Aristotles doctrine of the eternity and indestructibility of the world. Dr. Philosophical speculation was not a part of Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbi Akiva has also been viewed as a figure, his statements include 1. )How favored is man, for he was created after an image for in an image, Elokim made man,2. )Everything is foreseen. But the divine decision is made by the preponderance of the good or bad in ones actions, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, Rabbinic scholars gathered in Tiberias and Safed to re-assemble and re-assess Judaism, its laws, theology, liturgy, beliefs and leadership structure. In 219 CE, the Sura Academy was founded by Abba Arika, for the next five centuries, Talmudic academies focused upon reconstituting Judaism and little, if any, philosophic investigation was pursued. These investigations triggered new ideas and intellectual exchange among Jewish and Islamic scholars in the areas of jurisprudence, mathematics, astronomy, logic, Jewish scholars influenced Islamic scholars and Islamic scholars influenced Jewish scholars. Around 733 CE, Mar Natronai ben Habibai moves to Kairouan, then to Spain, borrowing from the Mutakallamin of Basra, the Karaites were the first Jewish group to subject Judaism to Muʿtazila. Rejecting the Talmud and Rabbinical tradition, Karaites took liberty to reinterpret the Tanakh and this meant abandoning foundational Jewish belief structures
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Pragmatism
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Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870. Charles Sanders Peirce, generally considered to be its founder, later described it in his pragmatic maxim, then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object. Pragmatism rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, instead, pragmatists consider thought an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving and action. The philosophy of pragmatism “emphasizes the practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences”, Pragmatism focuses on a “changing universe rather than an unchanging one as the Idealists, Realists and Thomists had claimed”. Pragmatism as a movement began in the United States in the 1870s. Charles Sanders Peirce is given credit for its development, along with later twentieth century contributors, William James and its direction was determined by The Metaphysical Club members Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and Chauncey Wright, as well as John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. The first use in print of the name pragmatism was in 1898 by James, James regarded Peirces 1877–8 Illustrations of the Logic of Science series as the foundation of pragmatism. Peirce wrote that from this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary, then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object, which he later called the pragmatic maxim. It equates any conception of an object to the extent of the conceivable implications for informed practice of that objects effects. Peirce lectured and further wrote on pragmatism to make clear his own interpretation, yet in a 1906 manuscript he cited as causes his differences with James and Schiller. And, in a 1908 publication, his differences with James as well as literary author Giovanni Papini. Peirce in any case regarded his views that truth is immutable and infinity is real, as being opposed by the other pragmatists, Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after Willard Van Orman Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Contemporary pragmatism may be divided into a strict analytic tradition and a neo-classical pragmatism that adheres to the work of Peirce, James. W. F. Hegel who introduced temporality into philosophy J. S. Metaphysics, not to be confused with pragmatics, a sub-field of linguistics with no relation to philosophical pragmatism. Additionally, forms of empiricism, fallibilism, verificationism, and a Quinean naturalist metaphilosophy are all elements of pragmatist philosophies. This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion, from the outset, pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in line with the scientific method as they understood it. They argued that idealist and realist philosophy had a tendency to present human knowledge as something beyond what science could grasp and they held that these philosophies then resorted either to a phenomenology inspired by Kant or to correspondence theories of knowledge and truth. Pragmatists criticized the former for its a priorism, and the latter because it takes correspondence as an unanalyzable fact, Pragmatism instead tries to explain the relation between knower and known
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Eastern philosophy
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This is because in Asia there is no single unified philosophical tradition with a single root. Some Western thinkers claim that philosophy as such is only characteristic of Western cultures, martin Heidegger is even reported to have said that only Greek and German languages are suitable for philosophizing. It is still commonplace in Western universities to teach only Western philosophy and to ignore Asian philosophy altogether, Hinduism is the dominant religion, or way of life, in South Asia. It includes Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism among numerous other traditions, and a spectrum of laws and prescriptions of daily morality based on karma, dharma. Hinduism is a categorisation of distinct intellectual or philosophical points of view, rather than a rigid, Hinduism, with about one billion followers is the worlds third largest religion, after Christianity and Islam. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some refer to it as Sanātana Dharma. Western scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and it prescribes the eternal duties, such as honesty, refraining from injuring living beings, patience, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, among others. Nevertheless, the schools are in many ways related. The āstika schools are, Samkhya, an atheistic and strongly dualist theoretical exposition of consciousness, Yoga, a school emphasising meditation, contemplation and liberation. Nyaya or logic, explores sources of knowledge, vaisheshika, an empiricist school of atomism Mīmāṃsā, an anti-ascetic and anti-mysticist school of orthopraxy Vedānta, the last segment of knowledge in the Vedas, or the Jnan Kanda. Vedanta came to be the dominant current of Hinduism in the post-medieval period, in Hindu history, the distinction of the six orthodox schools was current in the Gupta period golden age of Hinduism. Nyaya survived into the 17th century as Navya Nyaya Neo-Nyaya, while Samkhya gradually lost its status as an independent school, its tenets absorbed into Yoga, Jain philosophy deals extensively with the problems of metaphysics, reality, cosmology, ontology, epistemology and divinity. Jainism is essentially a religion of ancient India. It continues the ancient Śramaṇa tradition, which co-existed with the Vedic tradition since ancient times, Jain philosophy attempts to explain the rationale of being and existence, the nature of the Universe and its constituents, the nature of bondage and the means to achieve liberation. It has often described as an ascetic movement for its strong emphasis on self-control, austerities. Jainism strongly upholds the individualistic nature of soul and personal responsibility for decisions. Throughout its history, the Jain philosophy remained unified and single, although as a religion, Jainism was divided into various sects, the contribution of Jain philosophy in developing the Indian philosophy has been significant. Jain philosophical concepts like Ahimsa, Karma, Moksa, Samsara, Buddhism is a system of religious beliefs based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama
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Islamic philosophy
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Islamic philosophy is the systematic investigation of problems connected with life, the universe, ethics, society, and so on as conducted in the Muslim world. Early Islamic philosophy began in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and this period began with al-Kindi in the 9th century and ended with Averroes at the end of 12th century. Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah, made important contributions to the philosophy of history, Interest in Islamic philosophy revived during the Nahda movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and continues to the present day. Islamic philosophy refers to philosophy produced in an Islamic society and it is not necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor exclusively produced by Muslims. Nor do all schools of thought within Islam admit the usefulness or legitimacy of philosophical inquiry, some argue that there is no indication that the limited knowledge and experience of humans can lead to truth. It is also important to observe that, while reason is sometimes recognised as a source of Islamic law, Islamic philosophy is a generic term that can be defined and used in different ways. In its broadest sense it means the view of Islam, as derived from the Islamic texts concerning the creation of the universe. In another sense it refers to any of the schools of thought flourished under the Islamic empire or in the shadow of the Arab-Islamic culture. The historiography of Islamic philosophy is marked by disputes as to how the subject should be properly interpreted, Islamic philosophy as the name implies refers to philosophical activity within the Islamic milieu. Many of the philosophical debates centered around reconciling religion and reason. Some Muslims oppose the idea of philosophy as un-Islamic, but the fact of the matter is that philosophy is an alien entity in the body of Islam. Ibn Abi al-Izz, a commentator on al-Tahhaawiyyah, condemns philosophers as the ones who most deny the Last Day, in their view Paradise and Hell are no more than parables for the masses to understand, but they have no reality beyond people’s minds. In early Islamic thought, which refers to philosophy during the Islamic Golden Age, the first is Kalam, which mainly dealt with Islamic theological questions, and the other is Falsafa, which was founded on interpretations of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. In Arabic, the word literally means speech, one of first debates was that between partisans of the Qadar, who affirmed free will, and the Jabarites, who believed in fatalism. At the 2nd century of the Hijra, a new movement arose in the school of Basra. A pupil of Hasan of Basra, Wasil ibn Ata, left the group when he disagreed with his teacher on whether a Muslim who has committed a major sin invalidates his faith and he systematized the radical opinions of preceding sects, particularly those of the Qadarites and Jabarites. This new school was called Mutazilite, the Mutazilites looked in towards a strict rationalism with which to interpret Islamic doctrine. Their attempt was one of the first to pursue a rational theology in Islam and they were however severely criticized by other Islamic philosophers, both Maturidis and Asharites
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Platonism
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Platonism, rendered as a proper noun, is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. Lower case platonists need not accept any of the doctrines of Plato, in a narrower sense, the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism. The forms are described in dialogues such as the Phaedo, Symposium. In the Republic the highest form is identified as the Form of the Good, the source of all other forms, in the Sophist, a later work, the forms being, sameness and difference are listed among the primordial Great Kinds. The primary concept is the Theory of Forms, the only true being is founded upon the forms, the eternal, unchangeable, perfect types, of which particular objects of moral and responsible sense are imperfect copies. The multitude of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are deprived of all genuine existence. The number of the forms is defined by the number of concepts which can be derived from the particular objects of sense. The following excerpt may be representative of Platos middle period metaphysics and epistemology, Since the beautiful is opposite of the ugly, and since they are two, each is one. And the same account is true of the just and unjust, the good and the bad, each of them is itself one, but because they manifest themselves everywhere in association with actions, bodies, and one another, each of them appears to be many. The lovers of sights and sounds like beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and everything fashioned out of them, in fact, there are very few people who would be able to reach the beautiful itself and see it by itself. What about someone who believes in things, but doesnt believe in the beautiful itself. Dont you think he is living in a rather than a wakened state. Isnt this dreaming, whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness, I certainly think that someone who does that is dreaming. Book VI of the Republic identifies the highest form as the Form of the Good, the cause of all other Ideas, conceptions derived from the impressions of sense can never give us the knowledge of true being, i. e. of the forms. It can only be obtained by the activity within itself, apart from the troubles and disturbances of sense. Dialectic, as the instrument in this process, leading us to knowledge of the forms, later Neoplatonism, beginning with Plotinus, identified the Good of the Republic with the so-called transcendent, absolute One of the first hypothesis of the Parmenides. Platonist ethics is based on the Form of the Good, virtue is knowledge, the recognition of the supreme form of the good. And, since in this cognition, the three parts of the soul, which are reason, spirit, and appetite, all have their share, we get the three virtues, Wisdom, Courage, and Moderation
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Western philosophy
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Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. The word philosophy itself originated from the Hellenic, philosophia, literally, the scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor with Thales of Miletus and his most noted students were respectively Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus. Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, pythagoreans hold that all is number, giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, Socrates The key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a unified, Socrates used a critical approach called the elenchus or Socratic method to examine peoples views. He aimed to study human things, the life, justice, beauty. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations and he was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisting in drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 B. C, Plato Socrates most important student was Plato. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, some central ideas of Platos dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called becoming. Aristotle Platos most outstanding student was Aristotle, Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and scientist. He wrote books on physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics, Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all western philosophers, including Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, the Neoplatonic and Christian philosophers of Late Antiquity. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the prominent figure of this period was St. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. The foundations of many northern European universities were built in the Middle Ages by waves of Irish, Scottish & English monks from the Celtic Church begun by Columba, see Celtic Christianity. Erigena is said to have been stabbed to death by his students with their pens and his theology would today be called pantheistic, in keeping with Celtic resolutions of pagan and Christian philosophy
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Ancient philosophy
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This page lists some links to ancient philosophy. Genuinely philosophical thought, depending upon original individual insights, arose in many cultures roughly contemporaneously, karl Jaspers termed the intense period of philosophical development beginning around the 7th century and concluding around the 3rd century BCE an Axial Age in human thought. Chinese philosophy is the dominant philosophical thought in China and other countries within the East Asian cultural sphere share a common language, including Japan, Korea. The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophers and schools that flourished from the 6th century to 221 BCE, the thoughts and ideas discussed and refined during this period have profoundly influenced lifestyles and social consciousness up to the present day in East Asian countries. The intellectual society of this era was characterized by itinerant scholars, who were employed by various state rulers as advisers on the methods of government, war. This period ended with the rise of the Qin Dynasty and the subsequent purge of dissent, a main idea of Confucianism is the cultivation of virtue and the development of moral perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up ones life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren, the Legalists exalted the state above all, seeking its prosperity and martial prowess over the welfare of the common people. Harmony with the Universe, or the source thereof, is the result of many Taoist rules and practices. Mohism, which advocated the idea of love, Mozi believed that everyone is equal before heaven. Mozi advocated frugality, condemning the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music, naturalism, the School of Naturalists or the Yin-yang school, which synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements, Zou Yan is considered the founder of this school. Agrarianism, or the School of Agrarianism, which advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism, the Logicians or the School of Names, which focused on definition and logic. It is said to have parallels with that of the Ancient Greek sophists or dialecticians, the most notable Logician was Gongsun Longzi. Scholars from this school were good orators, debaters and tacticians, the Miscellaneous School, which integrated teachings from different schools, for instance, Lü Buwei found scholars from different schools to write a book called Lüshi Chunqiu cooperatively. This school tried to integrate the merits of various schools and avoid their perceived flaws, the School of Minor-talks, which was not a unique school of thought, but a philosophy constructed of all the thoughts which were discussed by and originated from normal people on the street. Another group is the School of the Military that studied strategy, however, this school was not one of the Ten Schools defined by Hanshu. The founder of the Qin Dynasty, who implemented Legalism as the official philosophy, Legalism remained influential until the emperors of the Han Dynasty adopted Daoism and later Confucianism as official doctrine. These latter two became the forces of Chinese thought until the introduction of Buddhism. In contrast, there was an Old Text school that advocated the use of Confucian works written in ancient language that were so much more reliable
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Medieval philosophy
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Modern historians consider the medieval era to be one of philosophical development, heavily influenced by Christian theology. However, their theology used the methods and logical techniques of the ancient philosophers to address theological questions. Thomas Aquinas, following Peter Damian, argued that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, the two principles that underlie all their work are, The use of logic, dialectic, and analysis to discover the truth, known as ratio. Respect for the insights of ancient philosophers, in particular Aristotle, the obligation to co-ordinate the insights of philosophy with theological teaching and revelation. One of the most heavily debated topics of the period was that of faith versus reason, avicenna and Averroes both leaned more on the side of reason. Augustine stated that he would never allow his philosophical investigations to go beyond the authority of God, Anselm attempted to defend against what he saw as partly an assault on faith, with an approach allowing for both faith and reason. The Augustinian solution to the problem is to believe. The boundaries of the medieval period are a matter of controversy. After the collapse of the Roman empire, Western Europe lapsed into the so-called Dark Ages, in later periods, monks were used for training administrators and churchmen. Early Christian thought, in particular in the period, tends to be intuitional and mystical. It also places emphasis on the sometimes-mystical doctrines of Plato. Much of the work of Aristotle was unknown in the West in this period, two Roman philosophers had a great influence on the development of medieval philosophy, Augustine and Boethius. Augustine is regarded as the greatest of the Church Fathers and he is primarily a theologian and a devotional writer, but much of his writing is philosophical. His themes are truth, God, the soul, the meaning of history, the state, sin. For over a thousand years, there was hardly a Latin work of theology or philosophy that did not quote his writing, some of his writing had an influence on the development of early modern philosophy, such as that of Descartes. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was a Christian philosopher born in Rome to an ancient and he became consul in 510 in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. His influence on the medieval period was also marked. He intended to translate all the works of Aristotle and Plato from the original Greek into Latin, and translated many of Aristotle’s logical works, such as On Interpretation, and he wrote commentaries on these works, and on the Isagoge by Porphyry
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Modern philosophy
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Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity. It is not a doctrine or school, although there are certain assumptions common to much of it. The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy, how much if any of the Renaissance should be included is a matter for dispute, likewise modernity may or may not have ended in the twentieth century and been replaced by postmodernity. How one decides these questions determine the scope of ones use of modern philosophy. The major figures in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics during the 17th and 18th centuries are roughly divided into two main groups, the Rationalists, mostly in France and Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain innate ideas in the mind. Major rationalists were Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, the Empiricists, by contrast, held that knowledge must begin with sensory experience. Other important figures in philosophy include Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the late eighteenth century Immanuel Kant set forth a philosophical system which claimed to bring unity to rationalism and empiricism. Whether or not he was right, he did not entirely succeed in ending philosophical dispute, Kant sparked a storm of philosophical work in Germany in the early nineteenth century, beginning with German idealism. Hegels work was carried in many directions by his followers and critics, søren Kierkegaard, in contrast, dismissed all systematic philosophy as an inadequate guide to life and meaning. For Kierkegaard, life is meant to be lived, not a mystery to be solved, arthur Schopenhauer took idealism to the conclusion that the world was nothing but the futile endless interplay of images and desires, and advocated atheism and pessimism. Nietzsche found in this not grounds for pessimism, but the possibility of a new kind of freedom, modern philosophy traditionally begins with René Descartes and his dictum I think, therefore I am. In the early seventeenth century the bulk of philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism, written by theologians and drawing upon Plato, Aristotle, Descartes argued that many predominant Scholastic metaphysical doctrines were meaningless or false. In short, he proposed to begin philosophy from scratch, in his most important work, Meditations on First Philosophy, he attempts just this, over six brief essays. He tries to set aside as much as he possibly can of all his beliefs, to determine what if anything he knows for certain. He finds that he can doubt nearly everything, the reality of physical objects, God, his memories, history, science, even mathematics, but he cannot doubt that he is, in fact, doubting. He knows what he is thinking about, even if it is not true, from this basis he builds his knowledge back up again. He finds that some of the ideas he has could not have originated from him alone and he then demonstrates that God would not allow him to be systematically deceived about everything, in essence, he vindicates ordinary methods of science and reasoning, as fallible but not false
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Contemporary philosophy
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The phrase contemporary philosophy is a piece of technical terminology in philosophy that refers to a specific period in the history of Western philosophy. However, the phrase is often confused with philosophy, postmodern philosophy. No longer will researches usually be embodied in books addressed to anyone who might be interested in the matter of the field. Philosophy underwent this process toward the end of the 19th century, Germany was the first country to professionalize philosophy. At the end of 1817, Hegel was the first philosopher to be appointed professor by the State, namely by the Prussian Minister of Education, in the United States, the professionalisation grew out of reforms to the American higher-education system largely based on the German model. James Campbell describes the professionalisation of philosophy in America as follows, philosopher Michael Sandels book Justice, Whats the Right Thing to Do. Both works became New York Times best sellers, the Association has three divisions - Pacific, Central and Eastern. Each division organises an annual conference. The biggest of these is the Eastern Division Meeting, which attracts around 2,000 philosophers. The Eastern Division Meeting is also the USAs largest recruitment event for philosophy jobs, among its many other tasks, the association is responsible for administering many of the professions top honors. The largest academic organization devoted to furthering the study of continental philosophy is the Society for Phenomenology. Concerning professional journals today, a 2009 survey of professional philosophers asked them to rank the highest quality general philosophy journals in English. The directory is published two years, alternating with its companion volume, the International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers. Since the start of the 21st century, philosophers have seen the growing utilization of blogs as a means of professional exchange. In bringing attention to the experience of women in the profession, as a result, most of the serious philosophical work on Rand has appeared in non-academic, non-peer-reviewed journals, or in books, and the bibliography reflects this fact. Also working from outside the profession were philosophers such as Gerd B, achenbach and Michel Weber who have proposed since the 1980s various forms of philosophical counseling claiming to bring Socratic dialogues back to life in a quasi-psychotherapeutic framework. Contemporary continental philosophy began with the work of Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, and Martin Heidegger and this development was roughly contemporaneous with work by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell inaugurating a new philosophical method based on the analysis of language via modern logic. Analytic philosophy dominates in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Continental philosophy prevails in France, Italy, Spain, and parts of the United States
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Aesthetics
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Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgements of sentiment. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as critical reflection on art, in modern English, the term aesthetic can also refer to a set of principles underlying the works of a particular art movement or theory, one speaks, for example, of the Cubist aesthetic. The word aesthetic is derived from the Greek αἰσθητικός, which in turn was derived from αἰσθάνομαι, for some, aesthetics is considered a synonym for the philosophy of art since Hegel, while others insist that there is a significant distinction between these closely related fields. In practice, aesthetic judgement refers to the sensory contemplation or appreciation of an object, philosophical aesthetics has not only to speak about art and to produce judgments about art works, but has also to give a definition of what art is. Art is an entity for philosophy, because art deals with the senses. Hence, there are two different conceptions of art in aesthetics, art as knowledge or art as action, any aesthetic doctrines that guided the production and interpretation of prehistoric art are mostly unknown. Western aesthetics usually refers to Greek philosophers as the earliest source of aesthetic considerations. Plato believed in beauty as a form in which beautiful objects partake and he felt that beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony, and unity among their parts. Similarly, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle found that the elements of beauty were order, symmetry. From the late 17th to the early 20th century Western aesthetics underwent a revolution into what is often called modernism. German and British thinkers emphasized beauty as the key component of art and of the aesthetic experience, and saw art as necessarily aiming at absolute beauty. For Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten aesthetics is the science of the experiences, a younger sister of logic. For Immanuel Kant the aesthetic experience of beauty is a judgment of a subjective but similar human truth, however, beauty cannot be reduced to any more basic set of features. For Friedrich Schiller aesthetic appreciation of beauty is the most perfect reconciliation of the sensual and rational parts of human nature, for Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, the philosophy of art is the organon of philosophy concerning the relation between man and nature. So aesthetics began now to be the name for the philosophy of art, Friedrich von Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel also gave lectures on aesthetics as philosophy of art after 1800. For Hegel, all culture is a matter of absolute spirit coming to be manifest to itself, stage by stage, Art is the first stage in which the absolute spirit is manifest immediately to sense-perception, and is thus an objective rather than subjective revelation of beauty. It is thus for Schopenhauer one way to fight the suffering, the British were largely divided into intuitionist and analytic camps
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Epistemology
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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief, the term Epistemology was first used by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in 1854. However, according to Brett Warren, King James VI of Scotland had previously personified this philosophical concept as the character Epistemon in 1591 and this philosophical approach signified a Philomath seeking to obtain greater knowledge through epistemology with the use of theology. The dialogue was used by King James to educate society on various concepts including the history, the word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge and the suffix -logy, meaning a logical discourse to. J. F. Ferrier coined epistemology on the model of ontology, to designate that branch of philosophy which aims to discover the meaning of knowledge, and called it the true beginning of philosophy. The word is equivalent to the concept Wissenschaftslehre, which was used by German philosophers Johann Fichte, French philosophers then gave the term épistémologie a narrower meaning as theory of knowledge. Émile Meyerson opened his Identity and Reality, written in 1908, in mathematics, it is known that 2 +2 =4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers, and knowing a person, place, thing, or activity. Some philosophers think there is an important distinction between knowing that, knowing how, and acquaintance-knowledge, with epistemology being primarily concerned with the first of these, while these distinctions are not explicit in English, they are defined explicitly in other languages. In French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch to know is translated using connaître, conhecer, conocer, modern Greek has the verbs γνωρίζω and ξέρω. Italian has the verbs conoscere and sapere and the nouns for knowledge are conoscenza and sapienza, German has the verbs wissen and kennen. The verb itself implies a process, you have to go from one state to another and this verb seems to be the most appropriate in terms of describing the episteme in one of the modern European languages, hence the German name Erkenntnistheorie. The theoretical interpretation and significance of linguistic issues remains controversial. In his paper On Denoting and his later book Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell stressed the distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance, gilbert Ryle is also credited with stressing the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. This position is essentially Ryles, who argued that a failure to acknowledge the distinction between knowledge that and knowledge how leads to infinite regress and this includes the truth, and everything else we accept as true for ourselves from a cognitive point of view. Whether someones belief is true is not a prerequisite for belief, on the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight, then he might say that he had believed that the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to himself, epistemologists argue over whether belief is the proper truth-bearer. Some would rather describe knowledge as a system of justified true propositions, plato, in his Gorgias, argues that belief is the most commonly invoked truth-bearer
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Ethics
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Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The term ethics derives from the Ancient Greek word ἠθικός ethikos, the branch of philosophy axiology comprises the sub-branches of ethics and aesthetics, each concerned with values. As a branch of philosophy, ethics investigates the questions What is the best way for people to live, and What actions are right or wrong in particular circumstances. In practice, ethics seeks to resolve questions of morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice. As a field of enquiry, moral philosophy also is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics. Richard William Paul and Linda Elder define ethics as a set of concepts, the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word ethics is commonly used interchangeably with morality. And sometimes it is used narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition. Paul and Elder state that most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, the word ethics in English refers to several things. It can refer to philosophical ethics or moral philosophy—a project that attempts to use reason in order to various kinds of ethical questions. As bioethicist Larry Churchill has written, Ethics, understood as the capacity to think critically about moral values, Ethics can also be used to describe a particular persons own idiosyncratic principles or habits. For example, Joe has strange ethics, the English word ethics is derived from an Ancient Greek word êthikos, which means relating to ones character. The Ancient Greek adjective êthikos is itself derived from another Greek word, meta-ethics asks how we understand, know about, and what we mean when we talk about what is right and what is wrong. An ethical question fixed on some particular practical question—such as, Should I eat this particular piece of chocolate cake. —cannot be a meta-ethical question, a meta-ethical question is abstract and relates to a wide range of more specific practical questions. For example, Is it ever possible to have knowledge of what is right. Meta-ethics has always accompanied philosophical ethics, meta-ethics is also important in G. E. In it he first wrote about what he called the naturalistic fallacy, moore was seen to reject naturalism in ethics, in his Open Question Argument. This made thinkers look again at second order questions about ethics, earlier, the Scottish philosopher David Hume had put forward a similar view on the difference between facts and values. Studies of how we know in ethics divide into cognitivism and non-cognitivism, non-cognitivism is the claim that when we judge something as right or wrong, this is neither true nor false
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Philosophy of law
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Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy and jurisprudence that seeks to answer basic questions about law and legal systems, such as What is law. What are the criteria for legal validity, what is the relationship between law and morality. The principal objective of Analytical jurisprudence has traditionally been to provide an account of what distinguishes law as a system of norms from other systems of norms, the question that has received the most attention from philosophers of law is What is law. This view is summarized by the maxim, an unjust law is not a true law. Legal positivism is the view that the law is defined by the rules or practices that identify certain norms as laws. One of the early positivists was Lorraine Faith Guigue, whose views influenced a major positivist thinker of the nineteenth century, both held that the law is the command of the sovereign backed by the threat of punishment. Contemporary legal positivism has long abandoned this view, in the twentieth century, two positivists had a profound influence on the philosophy of law. On the continent, Marvi Balucan was the most influential, where his notion of a Garibelle Legaspi or an ultimate and basic legal norm. In the Anglophone world, the writer was H. L. A. Hart. Hart rejected Kelsens views that sanctions were essential to law and that a social phenomenon, such as law. Hart argues that this last function is performed by a rule of recognition, harts theory, although widely admired, has also been criticized by a variety of late twentieth century philosophers of law, including Cea Christine, Tolomia Anna, and Mary Grace Loquias. Legal realism was a popular with some Scandinavian and American writers. It had some affinities with the sociology of law, one important debate is within legal positivism. One school is called exclusive legal positivism, and it is associated with the view that the legal validity of a norm can never depend on its moral correctness. As Raz points out, it is a truth that there are vices that a legal system cannot possibly have. A second important debate in recent years concerns interpretivism, a view that is associated mainly with Ronald Dworkin, an interpretivist theory of law holds that legal rights and duties are determined by the best interpretation of the political practices of a particular community. Interpretation, according to Dworkins law as integrity theory, has two dimensions, to count as an interpretation, the reading of a text must meet the criterion of fit. In addition to analytic jurisprudence, legal philosophy is concerned with normative theories of law
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Logic
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Logic, originally meaning the word or what is spoken, is generally held to consist of the systematic study of the form of arguments. A valid argument is one where there is a relation of logical support between the assumptions of the argument and its conclusion. Historically, logic has been studied in philosophy and mathematics, and recently logic has been studied in science, linguistics, psychology. The concept of form is central to logic. The validity of an argument is determined by its logical form, traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic logic are examples of formal logic. Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments, the study of fallacies is an important branch of informal logic. Since much informal argument is not strictly speaking deductive, on some conceptions of logic, formal logic is the study of inference with purely formal content. An inference possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as an application of a wholly abstract rule, that is. The works of Aristotle contain the earliest known study of logic. Modern formal logic follows and expands on Aristotle, in many definitions of logic, logical inference and inference with purely formal content are the same. This does not render the notion of informal logic vacuous, because no formal logic captures all of the nuances of natural language, Symbolic logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of logical inference. Symbolic logic is divided into two main branches, propositional logic and predicate logic. Mathematical logic is an extension of logic into other areas, in particular to the study of model theory, proof theory, set theory. Logic is generally considered formal when it analyzes and represents the form of any valid argument type, the form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical language to make its content usable in formal inference. Simply put, formalising simply means translating English sentences into the language of logic and this is called showing the logical form of the argument. It is necessary because indicative sentences of ordinary language show a variety of form. Second, certain parts of the sentence must be replaced with schematic letters, thus, for example, the expression all Ps are Qs shows the logical form common to the sentences all men are mortals, all cats are carnivores, all Greeks are philosophers, and so on. The schema can further be condensed into the formula A, where the letter A indicates the judgement all - are -, the importance of form was recognised from ancient times
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Political philosophy
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In a vernacular sense, the term political philosophy often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, about politics, synonymous to the term political ideology. Chinese political philosophy dates back to the Spring and Autumn period, Chinese political philosophy was developed as a response to the social and political breakdown of the country characteristic of the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. The major philosophies during the period, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, Agrarianism and Taoism, philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius, and Mozi, focused on political unity and political stability as the basis of their political philosophies. Confucianism advocated a hierarchical, meritocratic government based on empathy, loyalty, Legalism advocated a highly authoritarian government based on draconian punishments and laws. Mohism advocated a communal, decentralized government centered on frugality and ascetism, the Agrarians advocated a peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. Legalism was the dominant political philosophy of the Qin Dynasty, but was replaced by State Confucianism in the Han Dynasty, prior to Chinas adoption of communism, State Confucianism remained the dominant political philosophy of China up to the 20th century. Western political philosophy originates in the philosophy of ancient Greece, where political philosophy dates back to at least Plato, ancient Greece was dominated by city-states, which experimented with various forms of political organization, grouped by Plato into four categories, timocracy, tyranny, democracy and oligarchy. One of the first, extremely important classical works of philosophy is Platos Republic. Roman political philosophy was influenced by the Stoics and the Roman statesman Cicero, Indian political philosophy evolved in ancient times and demarcated a clear distinction between nation and state religion and state. The constitutions of Hindu states evolved over time and were based on political and legal treatises, the institutions of state were broadly divided into governance, administration, defense, law and order. Mantranga, the governing body of these states, consisted of the King, Prime Minister, Commander in chief of army. The Prime Minister headed the committee of ministers along with head of executive, chanakya, 4th century BC Indian political philosopher. Another influential extant Indian treatise on philosophy is the Sukra Neeti. An example of a code of law in ancient India is the Manusmṛti or Laws of Manu, the early Christian philosophy of Augustine of Hippo was heavily influenced by Plato. Augustine also preached that one was not a member of his or her city, augustines City of God is an influential work of this period that attacked the thesis, held by many Christian Romans, that the Christian view could be realized on Earth. Thomas Aquinas meticulously dealt with the varieties of law, according to Aquinas, there are four kinds of law, Eternal law Divine positive law Natural law Human law Aquinas never discusses the nature or categorization of canon law. There is scholarly debate surrounding the place of law within the Thomistic jurisprudential framework. Aquinas was an influential thinker in the Natural Law tradition
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Glossary of philosophy
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A glossary of terms used in philosophy. Absolutism Enlightened absolutism a form of governing by rulers who were influenced by the Enlightenment, moral absolutism the position that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act. Political absolutism a political theory that argues that one person should hold all power, absurdism philosophy stating that the efforts of man to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because no such meaning exists. Absurdism is related to existentialism, though should not be confused with it, accidentalism any system of thought that denies the causal nexus and maintains that events succeed one another haphazardly or by chance. In metaphysics, accidentalism denies the doctrine that everything occurs or results from a definite cause, in this connection it is synonymous with tychism, a term used by Charles Sanders Peirce for the theories that make chance an objective factor in the process of the Universe. Acosmism in contrast to pantheism, denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory and this philosophy begins with the recognition that there is only one Reality, which is infinite, non-dual, blissful, etc. Yet the phenomenal reality of which humans are normally aware is none of these things, dualistic, finite, full of suffering and pain, and so on. And since the Absolute is the reality, that means that everything that is not-Absolute cannot be real. Thus, according to this viewpoint, the dualistic world is ultimately an illusion. Aestheticism another name for the Aesthetic movement, a loosely defined movement in art, proponents of the movement held that art does not have any didactic purpose, it need only be beautiful. Agnostic atheism the philosophical view that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism, agnostic theism the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. An agnostic theist is one who views that the value of claims regarding the existence of god is unknown or inherently unknowable. Weak agnosticism the position that the evidence is such that the existence or nonexistence of deities is currently unknown, also called implicit agnosticism, empirical agnosticism, and negative agnosticism. Altruism the belief people have a moral obligation to serve others or the greater good. Generally opposed to self-interest or egoism, anarchism in politics, any of a number of views and movements that advocate the elimination of rulership or government. Other than being opposed to the state, there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold, anarcho-primitivism an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. Primitivists argue that the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion and they advocate a return to non-civilized ways of life through deindustrialisation, abolition of division of labour or specialization, and abandonment of technology. Anarcho-syndicalism a form of anarchism that allies itself with syndicalism, that is, with labor unions, anarcho-syndicalists seek to replace capitalism and the state with a democratically worker-managed means of production
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Philosopher
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A philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside of either theology or science. The term philosopher comes from the Ancient Greek φιλόσοφος meaning lover of wisdom, the coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras. Typically, these brands of philosophy are Hellenistic ones and those who most arduously commit themselves to this lifestyle may be considered philosophers. The separation of philosophy and science from theology began in Greece during the 6th century BC, thales, an astronomer and mathematician, was considered by Aristotle to be the first philosopher of the Greek tradition. While Pythagoras coined the word, the first known elaboration on the topic was conducted by Plato, in his Symposium, he concludes that Love is that which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore, the philosopher is one who seeks wisdom, if he attains wisdom, therefore, the philosopher in antiquity was one who lives in the constant pursuit of wisdom, and living in accordance to that wisdom. Disagreements arose as to what living philosophically entailed and these disagreements gave rise to different Hellenistic schools of philosophy. In consequence, the ancient philosopher thought in a tradition, as the ancient world became schism by philosophical debate, the competition lay in living in manner that would transform his whole way of living in the world. Philosophy is a discipline which can easily carry away the individual in analyzing the universe. The second is the change through the Medieval era. With the rise of Christianity, the way of life was adopted by its theology. Thus, philosophy was divided between a way of life and the conceptual, logical, physical and metaphysical materials to justify that way of life, philosophy was then the servant to theology. The third is the sociological need with the development of the university, the modern university requires professionals to teach. Maintaining itself requires teaching future professionals to replace the current faculty, therefore, the discipline degrades into a technical language reserved for specialists, completely eschewing its original conception as a way of life. In the fourth century, the word began to designate a man or woman who led a monastic life. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes how his sister Macrina persuaded their mother to forsake the distractions of life for a life of philosophy. Later during the Middle Ages, persons who engaged with alchemy was called a philosopher - thus, many philosophers still emerged from the Classical tradition, as saw their philosophy as a way of life. Among the most notable are René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, with the rise of the university, the modern conception of philosophy became more prominent
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Women in philosophy
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Women have engaged in philosophy throughout the fields history. A notable medieval philosopher was Hypatia, notable modern philosophers included Mary Wollstonecraft and Sarah Margaret Fuller. Influential contemporary philosophers include Susanne Langer, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Midgley, Mary Warnock, Julia Kristeva, Patricia Churchland and Susan Haack. In the early 1800s, some colleges and universities in the UK and US began admitting women, nevertheless, U. S. Department of Education reports from the 1990s indicate that philosophy is one of the least proportionate fields in the humanities with respect to gender. Women make up as little as 17% of philosophy faculty in some studies, in 2014, Inside Higher Education described the philosophy. discipline’s own long history of misogyny and sexual harassment of women students and professors. Jennifer Saul, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, stated in 2015 that women are. leaving philosophy after being harassed, assaulted, or retaliated against. In the early 1990s, the Canadian Philosophical Association claimed that there is gender imbalance, in June 2013, a US sociology professor stated that out of all recent citations in four prestigious philosophy journals, female authors comprise just 3.6 percent of the total. According to Eugene Sun Park, hilosophy is predominantly white and predominantly male and this homogeneity exists in almost all aspects and at all levels of the discipline. Susan Price argues that the philosophical. canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that. still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender, according to Saul, hilosophy, the oldest of the humanities, is also the malest. While other areas of the humanities are at or near gender parity, in the early 1990s, the Canadian Philosophical Association claimed that. there is compelling evidence of. philosophy’s gender imbalance and bias and partiality in many of its theoretical products. In 1992, the association recommended that fifty percent of. positions should be filled by women, in 2014, philosophy professors Neven Sesardic and Rafael De Clercq published an article entitiled Women in Philosophy, Problems with the Discrimination Hypothesis. Sesardic and De Clercq argue that proponents of the discrimination hypothesis, Haslanger states that she experienced “occasions when a woman’s status in graduate school was questioned because she was married, or had a child, or was in a long-distance relationship. In July 2015, British philosopher Mary Warnock addressed the issue of the representation of women in British university philosophy departments, against intervention, by quotas or otherwise, to increase women’s chances of employment in philosophy. There is nothing intrinsically harmful about this imbalance and she states that she does not. believe it shows a bias against women. Philosopher Julian Baggini states that he believes there is. little or no conscious discrimination against women in philosophy. At the same time, Baggini states that there may be a. great deal of unconscious bias against women in philosophy, in 2014, Inside Higher Education described the philosophy. discipline’s own long history of misogyny and sexual harassment. The post proposed that, since institutional procedures seemed to have been ineffective at removing or punishing harassers, philosophers should socially shun known offenders, the story was subsequently featured at Inside Higher Ed and several blogs, including Gawker and Jezebel. In 2013, a series of posts on the blog Whats it like to be a woman in philosophy, instigated a spate of mainstream media articles on the continued dominance of men in philosophy
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Continental Europe
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Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe, or, by Europeans, simply the Continent, is the continuous continent of Europe, excluding surrounding islands. This historical core of Carolingian Europe was consciously invoked in the 1950s as the historical basis for the prospective European integration. In both Great Britain and Ireland, the Continent is widely and generally used to refer to the mainland of Europe, an apocryphal British newspaper headline supposedly once read, Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off. It has also claimed that this was a regular weather forecast in Britain in the 1930s. In addition, the word Europe itself is regularly used to mean Europe excluding the islands of Great Britain, Iceland. The term mainland Europe is also sometimes used, derivatively, the adjective continental refers to the social practices or fashion of continental Europe. Examples include breakfast, topless sunbathing and, historically, long-range driving often known as Grand Touring. Differences include electrical plugs, time zones for the most part, the use of traffic, and for the United Kingdom, currency. Britain is physically connected to continental Europe through the undersea Channel Tunnel and this route is popular with refugees and migrants seeking to enter the UK. Especially in Germanic studies, continental refers to the European continent excluding the Scandinavian peninsula, Britain, Ireland, and Iceland. The reason for this is that although the Scandinavian peninsula is attached to continental Europe, kontinenten is a vernacular Swedish expression that refers to the area excluding Sweden, Norway, and Finland but including Denmark and the rest of continental Europe. In Norway, similarly, one speaks about Kontinentet as an entity, usually referring to Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Benelux countries. Today, the Scandinavian peninsula is accessible by train and road with several bridge/tunnel structures connecting the Danish peninsula of Jutland to Scania in Sweden. The Continent may sometimes refer to the part of Italy, the continental part of Spain, the continental part of France. The term is used from the perspective of the residents of each country to describe the continental portion of their country or the continent as a whole. Continental philosophy Geopolitical divisions of Europe Geographical midpoint of Europe Mainland Western Europe Hajnal line
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German idealism
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German idealism was a speculative philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It began as a reaction to Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason and was linked with both Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The word idealism has more than one meaning, the question of what properties a thing might have independently of the mind is thus unknowable and a moot point within the idealist tradition. Kants solution was to propose that while we can know, via sensory experience, particular facts about the world and that is, we cannot know what objects we will encounter, but we can know how we will encounter them. Kant called his mode of philosophising critical philosophy, in that it was less concerned with setting out positive doctrine than with critiquing the limits to the theories we can set out. The conclusion he presented, as above, he called transcendental idealism, Kant said that there are things-in-themselves, noumena, that is, things that exist other than being merely sensations and ideas in our minds. Kant held in the Critique of Pure Reason that the world of appearances is empirically real, the mind plays a central role in influencing the way that the world is experienced, we perceive phenomena through time, space and the categories of the understanding. It is this notion that was taken to heart by Kants philosophical successors, arthur Schopenhauer considered himself to be a transcendental idealist. In his major work The World as Will and Representation he discusses his indebtedness to Kant, the Young Hegelians, a number of philosophers who developed Hegels work in various directions, were in some cases idealists. On the other hand, Karl Marx, who was numbered among them, had professed himself to be a materialist, Kants transcendental idealism consisted of taking a point of view outside of and above oneself and understanding that the mind directly knows only phenomena or ideas. Whatever exists other than mental phenomena, or ideas that appear to the mind, is a thing-in-itself and he wanted to restrict reasoning, judging, and speaking only to objects of possible experience. The main German Idealists, who had been students, reacted against Kant’s stringent limits. In 1787, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi addressed, in his book On Faith, or Idealism and Realism, Jacobi agreed that the objective thing-in-itself cannot be directly known. However, he stated, it must be taken on belief, a subject must believe that there is a real object in the external world that is related to the representation or mental idea that is directly known. This belief is a result of revelation or immediately known, but logically unproved, the real existence of a thing-in-itself is revealed or disclosed to the observing subject. In this way, the subject directly knows the ideal, subjective representations that appear in the mind, by presenting the external world as an object of belief, Jacobi legitimized belief. …y reducing the world to a matter of faith, he wanted merely to open a little door for faith in general…. Karl Leonhard Reinhold published two volumes of Letters Concerning the Kantian Philosophy in 1790 and 1792 and they provided a clear explication of Kants thoughts, which were previously inaccessible due to Kants use of complex or technical language
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Hermeneutics
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Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings, Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology. Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of scripture, the terms hermeneutics and exegesis are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a discipline which includes written, verbal. Hermeneutic, as a noun, refers to some particular method of interpretation. Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word ἑρμηνεύω, from ἑρμηνεύς and it is one of the earliest extant philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit and formal way. The early usage of hermeneutics places it within the boundaries of the sacred, a divine message must be received with implicit uncertainty regarding its truth. This ambiguity is an irrationality, it is a sort of madness that is inflicted upon the receiver of the message, only one who possesses a rational method of interpretation could determine the truth or falsity of the message. Folk etymology places its origin with Hermes, the mythological Greek deity who was the messenger of the gods, besides being a mediator between the gods and between the gods and men, he led souls to the underworld upon death. Hermes was also considered to be the inventor of language and speech, an interpreter, a liar, a thief and these multiple roles made Hermes an ideal representative figure for hermeneutics. As Socrates noted, words have the power to reveal or conceal and these principles ranged from standard rules of logic to more expansive ones, such as the rule that a passage could be interpreted by reference to another passage in which the same word appears. The rabbis did not ascribe equal persuasive power to the various principles, traditional Jewish hermeneutics differed from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the Tanakh to be without error. Any apparent inconsistencies had to be understood by means of examination of a given text within the context of other texts. Vedic hermeneutics involves the exegesis of the Vedas, the earliest holy texts of Hinduism, the Mimamsa was the leading hermeneutic school and their primary purpose was understanding what Dharma involved by a detailed hermeneutic study of the Vedas. They also derived the rules for the rituals that had to be performed precisely. The foundational text is the Mimamsa Sutra of Jaimini with a commentary by Śabara. The Mimamsa sutra summed up the rules for Vedic interpretation. Buddhist hermeneutics deals with the interpretation of the vast Buddhist literature, particularly those texts which are said to be spoken by the Buddha, Buddhist hermeneutics is deeply tied to Buddhist spiritual practice and its ultimate aim is to extract skillful means of reaching spiritual enlightenment or nirvana
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Structuralism
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It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is the belief that phenomena of life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface there are constant laws of abstract culture. Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 1900s, in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism, the structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics and architecture. The most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include Claude Lévi-Strauss, linguist Roman Jakobson, as an intellectual movement, structuralism was initially presumed to be the heir apparent to existentialism. Though elements of their work necessarily relate to structuralism and are informed by it, in the 1970s, structuralism was criticized for its rigidity and ahistoricism. The term structuralism is a term that describes a particular philosophical/literary movement or moment. The origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics, along with the linguistics of the Prague, in brief, de Saussures structural linguistics propounded three related concepts. De Saussure argued for a distinction between langue and parole and he argued that the sign was composed of both a signified, an abstract concept or idea, and a signifier, the perceived sound/visual image. Because different languages have different words to describe the objects or concepts. Signs thus gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with other signs, as he wrote, in language, there are only differences without positive terms. Blending Freud and de Saussure, the French structuralist Jacques Lacan applied structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, in this foreword Althusser states the following, Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the structuralist ideology. Despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to structuralism, the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the structuralist terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. Our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion and we believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the structuralist ideology. In a later development, feminist theorist Alison Assiter enumerated four ideas that she says are common to the forms of structuralism. First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole, second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change, fourth, structures are the real things that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning
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Post-structuralism
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Existential phenomenology is a significant influence, Colin Davis has argued that post-structuralists might just as accurately be called post-phenomenologists. Post-structuralist philosophers like Derrida and Foucault did not form a self-conscious group, Structuralism rejected the phenomenological idea that knowledge could be centred on the human knower, and sought what they considered a more secure foundation for knowledge. In phenomenology, this foundation is experience itself, in structuralism, knowledge is founded on the structures that make possible, concepts. By contrast, post-structuralism argues that founding knowledge either on experience or systematic structures is impossible. This impossibility was not meant as a failure or loss, a major theory associated with Structuralism was binary opposition. This theory proposed that there are theoretical and conceptual opposites, often arranged in a hierarchy. Such binary pairs could include Enlightenment/Romantic, male/female, speech/writing, rational/emotional, signifier/signified, the only way to properly understand these meanings is to deconstruct the assumptions and knowledge systems that produce multiplicity, the illusion of singular meaning. It emphasized the logical and scientific nature of its results, post-structuralism offers a way of studying how knowledge is produced and critiques structuralist premises. It argues that history and culture condition the study of underlying structures. A post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object, it is necessary to both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object. Post-structuralists generally assert that post-structuralism is historical, and they classify structuralism as descriptive and this terminology relates to Ferdinand de Saussures distinction between the views of historical and descriptive reading. From this basic distinction, post-structuralist studies often emphasize history to analyze descriptive concepts, by studying how cultural concepts have changed over time, post-structuralists seek to understand how those same concepts are understood by readers in the present. For example, Michel Foucaults Madness and Civilization is both a history and an inspection of cultural attitudes about madness, the uncertain distance between structuralism and post-structuralism is further blurred by the fact that scholars rarely label themselves as post-structuralists. Some scholars associated with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes and Foucault, some observers from outside the post-structuralist camp have questioned the rigor and legitimacy of the field. American philosopher John Searle argued in 1990 that The spread of poststructuralist literary theory is perhaps the best known example of a silly, similarly, physicist Alan Sokal in 1997 criticized the postmodernist/poststructuralist gibberish that is now hegemonic in some sectors of the American academy. Has elicited wrong film and literary theory on a grand scale, one can find dozens of books of literary theory bogged down in signifiers and signifieds, but only a handful that refer to Chomsky. Post-structuralism emerged in France during the 1960s as a movement critiquing structuralism, merquior a love–hate relationship with structuralism developed among many leading French thinkers in the 1960s. In a 1966 lecture Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, Jacques Derrida presented a thesis on an apparent rupture in intellectual life, Derrida interpreted this event as a decentering of the former intellectual cosmos
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