Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

ANIL MITRA, PH. D., COPYRIGHT © 1988

2ND EDITION 2002 AND REVISED OCTOBER 2016

NOTE – 2016

THERE IS A PLAN TO INTRODUCE A SECTION TITLED ‘TWENTY FIRST CENTURY TRENDS’

REVIEW THE SOURCES FOR THIS DOCUMENT6

www.alhassanain.org/english

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 9

Sources 9

The temperamentalist thesis 10

The restriction to Western philosophy 11

The second edition 11

CHAPTER 1: THE PERIODS AND MAIN INFLUENCES 13

CHAPTER 2: GREEK PHILOSOPHY 14

RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 14

GREEK PHILOSOPHY: ORIGINS 14

Early Greek philosophy 14

Problem of Substance (Metaphysics) - and The Philosophy of Nature 14

Problem of change 14

Problem of Change: 15

Age of sophists 15

Socrates and the Socratic schools 15

GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE AGE OF GREAT SYSTEMS 16

Plato (427 - 347 BCE) 16

Rational (insight) Forms or ideas Dialectic 16

Doctrine of ideas: (Plato’s most original philosophical achievement.) 17

Philosophy of nature 17

Cosmology 17

Psychology 18

Doctrine of immortality 18

Ethics 18

Politics 18

Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE) 19

Extant writings 19

Philosophy and the sciences 20

Logic 20

Metaphysics 20

Theology 21

Physics 21

Biology 21

Psychology 21

Ethics 22

Politics 22

ETHICAL PERIOD (ABOUT 350 - 200 BCE) 23

Epicureanism and stoicism 23

Skepticism and eclecticism 24

Stoicism - continued 24

Logic and the theory of knowledge 25

Metaphysics 25

Cosmology 25

Psychology 26

Ethics 26

GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD (150 BCE - 500 AD) 26

Jewish Greek philosophy 27

Neo-Pythagoreanism 27

Neoplatonism 27

THE DECLINE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 28

The closing of the school at Athens 28

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius 28

CHAPTER 3: MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 29

Doctrine and dogma 29

The periods of medieval philosophy 29

Scholastic period 30

Formative Period - the Schoolmen 31

School of Chartres. Cathedral at Chartres 31

Culmination 31

Decline 31

CHAPTER 4: THE MODERN PERIOD 32

BACKGROUND 32

The Renaissance 32

THE BEGINNING OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 1550 - 1670 32

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) 32

Inductive methods 32

Programs of philosophy 32

Philosophy of man 33

Bacon as an empiricist 33

Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) 33

Theory of knowledge 33

Metaphysics 33

Psychology 33

Politics 34

Blaise Pascal (1632 - 1662) 34

Mathematician, Jansenist, anti-Jesuit 34

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM 34

René Descartes (1598 - 1650) 34

Descartes problem 34

Classification of the sciences 35

Method and criterion of knowledge 35

Proofs of the existence of God 35

Truth and error 35

Existence of the external world 35

Relation of mind and body 35

Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (1632 - 1677) 36

Rationalism 36

Method 36

The universal substance 37

Attributes of god 37

Theory of knowledge 37

Ethics and politics 37

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH EMPIRICISM 37

John Locke (1632 - 1704) 37

Locke’s problem 37

Origin of knowledge 37

Nature and validity of knowledge 38

Limits of knowledge 39

Metaphysics 39

Ethics 39

Free will 39

Political philosophy 39

Theory of education 40

Economic theory 40

Locke’s influence 41

George Berkeley (1685 - 1753) 41

David Hume (1711 - 1776) 42

Hume’s problem 42

Science and human nature 42

Origins of knowledge 42

Relation of cause and effect 42

Validity of knowledge 43

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: RATIONALISM IN GERMANY 43

Leibniz (1646 - 1716) 43

Christian Wolff (1679 - 1754) 43

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: THE ENLIGHTENMENT 44

Voltaire (1694 - 1778) 44

Materialism and evolutionism 44

Progress of the sciences 44

Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1685 - 1754) 45

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) 45

Human nature 45

Political philosophy 45

Educational philosophy 45

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: IMMANUEL KANT (1724 - 1804) 45

Kant’s heritage 45

Kant’s problem 45

The problem of knowledge 46

Knowledge presupposes a mind 47

The first transcendental method 47

Preliminary analysis of experience 48

The theory of sense perception 49

The theory of the understanding 50

Kant’s forms of understanding 50

Validity of judgment 51

Knowledge of things-in-themselves 52

Impossibility of metaphysics 53

Rational cosmology 53

Use of metaphysics in experience 54

Use of teleology in nature 55

Ethics 55

Some comments on the successors of Kant 55

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY AFTER KANT 56

The legacy of Kant 56

Idealism 56

Realism 57

Empiricism 57

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN IDEALISM 57

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 - 1814) 57

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775 - 1854) 57

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834) 57

Dialectic method 58

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AFTER HEGEL 58

Johann Friedrich Hebart (1776 - 1841) 58

A return to idealism: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) 58

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 - 1887) 58

Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817 - 1881) 58

Friedrich Albert Lange (1828 - 1875) 58

Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920) 58

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) 58

Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1846 - 1926) 58

Wilhelm Windelbland (1848 - 1915) 59

Ernst Cassirer (1874 - 1945) 59

Noted for his analysis of cultural values 59

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FRENCH AND BRITISH NINETEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY 59

Beginnings of Positivism, And its Interaction with Empiricism 59

August Comte (1798 - 1857) 59

Stages of knowledge 59

Comte’s scheme of sciences 59

A theory of history 60

Progress to the ideal 60

Ethics 60

Subjective method 60

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH UTILITARIANISM 60

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) 60

Ethics 61

Liberalism 61

Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903) 61

CHAPTER 5: THE RECENT PERIOD: LATE 19TH TO 21ST CENTURY 63

INTRODUCTION 63

Influences on recent philosophy 63

Paradigms 63

Critical commentary 66

Other cultures 67

The effect on philosophy 67

THE RECENT PERIOD: SCHOOLS AND TRENDS OF PHILOSOPHY 69

20th Century Schools and Trends of Philosophy 69

Introduction 69

Absolute Idealism 70

Analytic Philosophy 70

Notes 70

Scientific conventionalism and fictionalism 71

Pragmatism 71

Positivism and Logical Empiricism 71

Positivism and ethics 71

Analytic and linguistic philosophy 71

Empiricism 72

Utilitarianism 72

Rationalism 72

Comtean Positivism 72

From phenomenology to Hermeneutics 72

From Marxism to Critical Theory 72

From Structuralism to Deconstruction 72

Critical Realism 72

Empiricism 73

Existentialism 73

Hegelianism 74

Hermeneutics 74

Idealism 75

Immanuel Kant 75

Intuitionism 75

Legal Positivism 75

Linguistic Philosophy 75

Logical Positivism 76

Lenin, Stalin 76

Materialism 76

Naturalism 77

Neo-Kantians 78

Neo-Scholasticism 78

New Realism 78

Personalism 79

Phenomenology 79

Realist Phenomenology 79

An idealism 80

Hermeneutic Phenomenology 80

Existential Phenomenology 80

Postmodernism 81

Began 1970s in philosophy, culture, arts 81

Post-Structuralism 82

Pragmatism 82

Process Philosophy 83

Realism 83

Derived from the structuralism inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure 84

Twentieth Century Realism 85

Uppsala School 85

Utilitarianism 85

Members and Associates 86

Brief History 86

Vitalism 87

Ratio-vitalism 87

Political Philosophy 87

Education and the Philosophy of Education 88

Natural Philosophy 88

Philosophy of Science 88

Philosophies of the disciplines 88

20TH Century Philosophers 89

American Philosophers 89

European Philosophers 91

THE RECENT PERIOD: INFLUENTIAL PHILOSOPHERS 93

Gottlob Frege 94

Alfred North Whitehead 94

Karl Raimund Popper 94

Wittgenstein’s sources of inspiration 96

Wittgenstein: Reflections 97

On Critical-Imaginative Sources 98

The specific importance of Wittgenstein 99

Wittgenstein and privacy 99

Wittgenstein on philosophy 100

The Basic Realism and the Picture Theory of the Tractacus 103

Transition to Wittgenstein’s later account of language 103

Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations 104

False Prisons 104

Wittgenstein and his followers 106

On Meaning 106

Uses of language 106

Sense and reference 106

Analysis of meaning 107

Frege and Wittgenstein 108

An alternative 108

Notes 108

Martin Heidegger 109

Heidegger’s program 109

From Heidegger 110

Ontology must clarify the meaning of Being 111

CHAPTER 6: THE FUTURE 112

Philosophical nihilism 112

The obligations and needs of philosophy 113

The possibilities of philosophyin the Western and other academic traditions 117

Ways of Philosophical Understanding 118

Analysis of language, concepts 118

Ways that are unique to philosophy 119

The third transcendental method or transcendental logic 120

Further considerations 120

A concept of philosophy 120

See History of thought and action 121

The education of the philosopher 122

Journey in Being 124

And continues to synthesize with an appeal to the whole being 124

True Philosophy 124

CHAPTER 7: TRANSCENDENTAL AND REAL LOGIC 125

The foundation of this method is in the propositions 125

Real Logic 126

INTRODUCTION

Sources

A History of Philosophy, Frank Thilly, 1914, 30 revised edition - Ledger Wood, 1957, has the virtues of brevity and impartiality (attempt to understand each system in its integrity; to formulate the tacit and implicit basic assumptions of each system: allowing the primary criticism to be the criticisms made by other - contemporary and later - philosophers. Often, the tacit assumptions are brought out by later philosophers of the same movement or tradition). This history is based in Thilly’s work, re-thought and adapted to my understanding.

Thilly holds the view that the only complete systems of thought are Western. I wish to briefly examine possible bases of the claim. The claim is decomposable into two parts and the first is that the Western tradition contains complete systems of thought. What does that mean? It cannot mean that everything is known. It must mean, then, that there is something about the Western tradition that contains in principle completeness - the establishment of a world view of sufficient breadth and of methods that eliminate false views or aspects of the world view. However, Western thought of the 20th century has cast serious doubt on the completeness or possibility of completing any system. From the psychological point of view, what would convince one that a system of thought is complete? There is a tendency, perhaps tacit, that probably exists within all cultures and individuals - the natural belief in or identification with the paradigms of the culture. Such paradigms present a picture of the world; and the systems of thought of the culture are an elaboration of that picture. The psychological story cannot be whole in itself. It is embedded in a system of relations among attitudes (psychology) and the institutions of society. Together, these must adequately mesh with reality. The role of psychology would then be an over-compensation so that the tentative but otherwise valid common knowledge of society is seen as imbued with a degree of the absolute. To a degree this is functional; and, usually, held with some degree of ambiguity. Thus, with a degree of success of the elaborated picture there is a natural tendency to assume completeness. However, there is truly no way to demonstrate this completeness because such a demonstration would depend on another, larger, picture. Even within the western intellectual traditions (pictures) there is serious doubt - the intrinsic limitations of empiricism (e.g. Hume, Russell) and rationalism (e.g. Kant, Gödel) - regarding completeness. There is, however, a picture that casts doubt that possession of a complete paradigm / picture of the world is an ideal. It is the view of the community of life as an open community in an open universe. Our presence in the universe is an affirmation that an anchor in completeness is unnecessary; the openness affirms that ‘incompleteness’ is not a deficiency but may be properly taken as positive, as an opportunity.

The second part to Thilly’s claim must be that there are no other complete systems of thought. That is true. However, there may well be other systems that have depths unfathomed by the West - see the introduction to Dictionary of Asian Philosophers, St. Elmo Nauman, Jr., 1978 - just as Western science is in some ways far in advance of other systems.

The open picture is a view that disaffirms the completeness of Western thought and presents to the West a place in the universe that is a positive opportunity - it is a view of opportunity and promise rather than gloom. It is not a cultural relativism. It assigns different strengths to different cultures, it validates the different cultures and it allows for cultural ascendance. Such ascendance, however, is not obtained by proclamation.

In Journey in Being, I provide a positive picture where thought is not something that aspires to be complete within itself. Rather, thought and being move in relation to each other. Journey in Being provides an open picture. It also suggests the possibility of completeness of being in the sense of ‘Being = universe’ rather than in the sense of completeness of any given being or thought. That, however, is presented as a necessity rather than as an intrinsically ideal or joyful - or joyless - event or condition. Joy and other states are found in the contemplation and living out of every day life - and that includes the remote and ultimate as much as the present.

There are many other sources - including many that may be implicit or forgotten.

I have referred to the 15th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for many major and minor points.

For recent philosophy, I have referred to Research Guide to Philosophy, by T. N. Tice and T. P. Slavens, 1983, and One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers, by Stuart Brown, Diane Collinson and Robert Wilkinson, 1998

The temperamentalist thesis

(From A History of Philosophy, Thilly)

…is the thesis that personal and cultural factors are important in philosophical thought - in addition to intellectual, logical and philosophical ones.

The two types of temperament - according to William James:

Rationalist (‘tender-minded’): intellectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious, free-willist, monistic and dogmatic (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Hegel)

Empiricist (‘tough-minded): sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious (deterministic, perhaps), pluralistic and skeptical (Democritus, Hobbes, Bacon, Hume)

Of course: all philosophy is rational in its use of criticism; no philosopher is a pure temperament; some philosophers - Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley - straddle the classification; and, this simple scheme of classification does not exhaust the possibilities for precision, dimensionality or completeness.

The first edition.

This history of Western philosophy began as an endeavor to provide myself with a coherent picture of philosophy. The following brief paragraphs define the aims.

What is significant about the historical approach to philosophy? A good history of philosophy, whatever its shortcomings, will, among other things, give the reader a perspective on philosophy: philosophy as in-process, the relations of philosophy to life and to the other academic disciplines, show how the attempt to understand the world must introduce radical elements of novelty. As a consequence of the radical novelty, systems of metaphysics are relative to one-another. Views that eschew radical metaphysics are, therefore, based in a closed view of knowledge and the world. In the open view, metaphysics is at once serious and play.

A good history of philosophy is a contribution to philosophy. It is a contribution to the understanding of the nature of philosophy - the study, description and demarcation of philosophy is philosophy. And, a good history provides an environment that enhances the quality of action. History of philosophy provides an environment for the conduct of philosophy.

The restriction to Western philosophy

The restriction to Western philosophy is practical. First, is my desire to understand a tradition. To include other thought would have been a diluting influence.

Having obtained an adequate understanding of Western philosophy and thought, the next step is a placement and broadening of that thought. Both these objectives can be accomplished by, as one way, the parallel study of Western and non-western systems. And, as stated above, ‘there may well be other systems that have depths unfathomed by the West.’ Perhaps what has been accomplished in the West by way of empiricism is complemented in other systems by placement in the universal. That statement is of course both polarized and a simplification.

My writing includes, elsewhere, considerations of other systems. When occasion arises and time permits, I will strengthen those other writings and attempt a mesh of the following systems: Western, Eastern and native.

The second edition

The changes in the sections on Greek, Medieval and Modern philosophy have not undergone significant revision but there are numerous minor changes.

The following sections are completely new as of January 2002. The source for a number of these sections was One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers, by Stuart Brown, Diane Collinson and Robert Wilkinson, 1998

Chapter 1 - The Periods And Main Influences 10. Chapter 2 - The Recent Period: Late 19th To 21st Century 57. Chapter 6 - The Future 108. Chapter 7 - Transcendental and Real Logic 120

Chapter 6 - The Future is a discussion of trends and possibilities and is not intended to be predictive; The Future has the following sections.

Philosophical nihilism considers the trend in which it is considered to be problematic to make positive statements in philosophy. Some of the influences or forces that resulted in this trend and the related conceptions of philosophy and the role of philosophy are discussed in Influences on recent philosophy and subsequent sections including The Effect on Philosophy.

The obligations and needs of academic philosophy considers some of the functions that academic philosophy undertakes. It is not suggested that these functions are necessary although there is some degree of obligation that are felt by academic philosophers in virtue of the social and economic environment of the university.

The possibilities of philosophy in the Western and other academic traditions considers the possibilities of philosophy from the point of view of its heritage as an intellectual pursuit. The theme is elaborated in the following sub-sections: Ways of Philosophical Understanding, Ways that are unique to philosophy, Further considerations.

A Concept Of Philosophy 116 synthesizes and broadens previous conceptions of philosophy.

Journey in Being considers an endeavor that results from a synthesis of the possibilities of philosophy and the potential of being. This endeavor is taken up in the author’s website of the same name: Journey in Being.

The final section of Chapter 6 - The Future, True Philosophy, considers an extension of the idea of philosophy, in light of Journey in Being to action and to the ‘forward’ motion of civilization.

The final chapter, Transcendental and Real Logic, was added June 2004

Possibilities for a third edition

Integrate with History

Show the evolution of thought

The latest thought is not always the peak of thought; it may be concerned with some local issue or it may be a peak in some specific direction: identify peaks of thought and action.

Identify and develop the History of Philosophy as progressing toward the Transcendental Logic; what possibilities does that logic have as instructive and as ultimate.

Combine history of philosophy with philosophy as in Journey in Being (Essay | Site.) Note that these references contain significant conceptualizations of philosophy and (its) history.

Incorporate Indian and other philosophies; incorporate ‘ethnographic’ studies of metaphysical systems where ‘metaphysics’ is interpreted informally (‘informal’ does not imply ‘inferior’)