Philosophy

Philosophy is difficult to define because of philosophers. How can you pin down philosophers who love nothing more than debating the trifles? For broad purposes we will use this definition:

The pursuit of wisdom and understanding through systematic study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge and value.

Philosophers in ancient Greece populated the marketplace daily to debate the “minutiae” or the smallest points on any subject; in academia this tradition continues. Even old men gathering together around the morning coffee table ponder the infinitesimal. The word ‘philosophy’ literally in Greek meant love of wisdom but we can take anything to ludicrous extremes. Philosophy is not only a Western discipline but also is found in the cultures of Middle East, India and China with well-developed schools of thought about the nature of life, the essence of being.

In the Western world, Philosophy comes to us in language as related to logic (from the root, logos, meaning speech or explanation) and reason (from the root, ratio, as in perspective to other elements). While the teachings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle set the tone for philosophy in the West, they each had different interpretations of Prime Nature.

Socrates (c. 470-399 BC) was the founder of Western philosophy and taught a dialectic of questions and answers to probe the thought process of his students and force them to reason through the flaws or gaps in their suppositions. The Socratic method was a discussion of refutation until nothing contradictory remained. No writings from Socrates remain but rather the record is what his students recorded from his teachings. Late in Socrates’ life he was tried for impiety in the corrupting of his followers, found guilty and drank the hemlock poison according to the sentence of his judges.

Plato (c. 425-347 BC) was a student of Socrates but did not follow his reasoning precisely. Plato taught that Socrates had said, “I know that I know nothing” which was the outflow of refutation – that nothing was knowable, only supposed. He built upon the view that Reason was a prime element in the makeup of humans and that Reason should rule over all other elements such as spirit and passion. Plato taught that it was possible to develop hypotheses in science and morals which were as reasoned as in mathematics and science. He also postulated that humans had a soul which was or became immortal and that the soul was located in specific parts of the human body – reason in the head, spirit in the upper torso and appetite and passion behind the navel. Plato’s reasoning led to “knowledge is justified true belief” which would of course follow that ethics is what has convinced our rationale. He also made applications of reason to the structure of society and the roles of citizenry.

His student Aristotle (c. 384-322 BC) used the Rational idea that by reason humans are able to live with a sense of well-being and consistency and applied his philosophy to the breadth of life. Possibly the most profound influence of Aristotle during his life was when at the age of 20 he was requested by Phillip II of Macedon to tutor his thirteen-year-old son Alexander which was responsible for the depth of Alexander the Great’s understanding of the world. When Alexander went off on his conquest of the ancient world, Aristotle remained in Athens and made his lasting contributions to Greek and Western cultures. His purpose in philosophy was to find the prime elements of life.

A more comfortable philosophy for many came following the age of Plato and was rooted in the thought of Epicurus (c. 341-270 BC) who was a materialist and taught a religious skepticism which opposed superstition and divine intervention. The Epicurean school of thought was the forerunner of hedonism where pleasure was to be the chief aim but it also ventured into science of the cosmos. Epicurus believed that what exists has always existed and will always exist, that the cosmos consists of matter and void, that matter is immutable, does not change in basic nature. The famous Epicurean appetite was centered in the belief that the senses were what perceived what was true and only through experience could truth be known and that pleasure, pleasing of the senses, was the chief good in life. But, Epicurus differentiated pleasure and wantonness of sensuality; pleasure was simply allowing the senses to experience what is and not creating cravings that go beyond simple fulfillment.

A different tact was espoused by Zeno in Athens circa 300 BC and became known as Stoicism. The Stoics believed that the practice of the virtuous is all that is necessary for the well-lived life; this school sought to practice Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance and Justice while living in harmony with the world around them. Their creed was that “Virtue is the Only Good” and that the state of any life is not intrinsically good or bad apart from Virtue which is all that is required for happiness – contentment in Virtue goes beyond circumstances. Its foundations were in Logic, Naturalistic and Deterministic resolution of all elements of life.

The next major change in philosophical thought would come on the heels of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason and would begin to coalesce into the two schools of Rationalism and Empiricism. The Rationalists (such as Descartes and Spinoza) held that all knowledge must begin with a base in innate ideas while the Empiricists (such as Locke and Hume) held that knowledge must begin with sensory perception. Modernism is thought to have begun with Descartes (1596-1650) basic truth, “I think, therefore I am” which was somewhat of a summary of his deist view that god exists but without revelation, that it was for humans to use their ability to reason and logically determine any truth, natural or supernatural. His positioned that all philosophers before him would not influence his perception and that he would fully be his own being by his intuitive thought and through it build his own genuine knowledge. Out of this course came his Cartesian dualism which saw the human as a two-part existence of soul and body or mind and body. Descartes also applied his rationale to science and is a forerunner of Newton in mathematics, calculus and physics and applied sciences.

Ultimately, post-Modernism would arise directions unseen by the ancients. In the 19^th Century, philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche would challenge the Platonic “ideas of the good itself”, that nothing has inherent moral value but can only be interpreted by the existential relevance of the circumstance in which it occurs. This movement became expressed as Existentialism which emphasizes the individual existence and the human struggle to have an authentic life, freedom and choice as the definition of each life’s meaning and that there are no predefined purposes of life. The most influential proponents of Existentialism were Soren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Many of the current personal philosophy lifestyles are dependent upon this reasoning which emphasizes the unique individual existence, freedom and choice, absurdity of meaning beyond self, authenticity of self, values, dread and anxiety in the existential reality of individual’s life.

Absurdism, first proposed by Soren Kierkegaard, was the philosophy most closely connected to Albert Camus (1913-1960) who thought himself closely allied with Nietzsche. This philosophy believes that the universe and all content is irrational and meaningless and trying to give it rationality is what leads to chaos and conflict. If it is irrational and without meaning it would only follow that a meaningful pursuit of knowledge about the nature of life would also be by definition irrational and meaningless. One of Camus’ quotes reflects his belief:

“Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”

Philosophy in the Twentieth and early Twenty-first Centuries is thought of as Contemporary and tends to see itself as a professional and analytical discipline accommodating all truths of earlier ages without the diversions into the unknowable. It rejects pop culture postulations lacking the discipline of scholarly consensus. It first was driven by the Germanic approach to educational discipline but which spread throughout the Western world. Professionalizing has brought peer review of ideas through multiple publications and regular conferences to further the study of western philosophies.

Philosophy

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