ANIL MITRA, PH. D., COPYRIGHT
© 1988
2ND EDITION 2002 AND REVISED July 2007
note—2007
THERE IS A plan to introduce a section TITLED ‘Twenty first century trends’
Review the Sources for this Document
CONTENTS
OUTLINE
Bulleted links, 
,
point to the topic in the longer table of
contents below. Descriptive links point
to the head of the corresponding section in the text
Chapter
1—The Periods and Main Influences…
Chapter 3—Medieval
Philosophy…
Chapter 5—The Recent
Period: Late 19th to 21st Century…
Chapter 6—The Future: A Concept Of Philosophy… Journey in Being… True Philosophy…
Chapter
7—Transcendental and Real Logic…
The restriction to Western philosophy
Possibilities for a third edition
1 THE PERIODS AND MAIN INFLUENCES
2.1 RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
2.2.3 Socrates and the Socratic schools
2.3 GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE AGE OF GREAT SYSTEMS
2.4 ETHICAL PERIOD (ABOUT 350—200 BCE)
2.4.1 Epicureanism and stoicism
2.4.2 Skepticism and eclecticism
2.5 GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD (150 BCE—500 AD)
2.6 THE DECLINE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
2.6.1 The closing of the school at Athens
2.6.2 The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
3.2 The periods of medieval philosophy
3.3 The patristic period: establishment of the Christian Church and dogma
3.4.1 Formative Period—the Schoolmen
4.2 THE BEGINNING OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 1550—1670
4.2.1 Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
4.2.2 Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679)
4.2.3 Blaise Pascal (1632—1662)
4.3 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM
4.3.1 René Descartes (1598—1650)
4.3.2 Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (1632—1677)
4.4 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH EMPIRICISM
4.4.2 George Berkeley (1685—1753)
4.5 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: RATIONALISM IN GERMANY
4.5.2 Christian Wolff (1679—1754)
4.6 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: THE ENLIGHTENMENT
4.6.2 Materialism and evolutionism
4.6.3 Progress of the sciences
4.6.4 Charles—Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1685—1754)
4.6.5 Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712—1778)
4.7 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: IMMANUEL KANT (1724—1804)
4.7.3 The problem of knowledge
4.7.4 The first transcendental method
4.7.5 Preliminary analysis of experience
4.7.6 The theory of sense perception
4.7.7 The theory of the understanding
4.7.8 Kant’s forms of understanding
4.7.10 Knowledge of things-in-themselves
4.7.11 Impossibility of metaphysics
4.7.13 Use of metaphysics in experience
4.7.14 Use of teleology in nature
4.7.16 Some comments on the successors of Kant
4.8 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY AFTER KANT
4.8.1 A brief review of Kant’s progression of thought or presentation:
4.9 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN IDEALISM
4.9.1 Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762—1814)
4.9.2 Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775—1854)
4.9.3 Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768—1834)
4.9.4 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770—1831): the culmination of rational idealism
4.10 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AFTER HEGEL
4.10.1 Johann Friedrich Hebart (1776—1841)
4.10.2 A return to idealism: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860)
4.10.3 Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801—1887)
4.10.4 Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817—1881)
4.10.5 Friedrich Albert Lange (1828—1875)
4.10.6 Wilhelm Wundt (1832—1920)
4.10.7 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900)
4.10.8 Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1846—1926)
4.10.9 Wilhelm Windelbland (1848—1915)
4.10.10 Ernst Cassirer (1874—1945)
4.11 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FRENCH AND BRITISH NINETEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
4.11.1 Claude Henri de Saint—Simon (1760—1825): a new science of society
4.11.2 August Comte (1798—1857)
4.12 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH UTILITARIANISM
4.12.1 Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832):
4.12.2 John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
4.12.3 Herbert Spencer (1820—1903)
5 THE RECENT PERIOD: LATE 19TH TO 21ST CENTURY
5.1.1 Influences on recent philosophy
5.1.2 The effect on philosophy
5.2 THE RECENT PERIOD: SCHOOLS AND TRENDS OF PHILOSOPHY
5.2.1 20th Century Schools and Trends of Philosophy
5.2.2 Specialized Disciplines or Activities Within Philosophy
5.2.3 20TH Century Philosophers
5.3 THE RECENT PERIOD: INFLUENTIAL PHILOSOPHERS
5.3.4 Bertrand Arthur William Russell
5.3.5 Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
6.2 The obligations and needs of philosophy
6.3 The possibilities of philosophy
6.3.1 Ways of Philosophical Understanding
6.3.2 Ways that are unique to philosophy
6.5 The education of the philosopher
7 TRANSCENDENTAL AND REAL LOGIC
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. Chapter 2—The Recent Period: Late 19th To 21st Century. Chapter 6—The Future. Chapter 7—Transcendental and Real Logic
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 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’)
1 THE PERIODS AND MAIN INFLUENCES
In the following table, a philosopher, school or temperament—e.g. rationalism—is directly influenced by the ones above it
|
PERIOD |
RATIONALIST |
EMPIRICIST |
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|
700 BC |
Pre Socratic Philosophy |
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|
600 BC |
Parmenides (philosopher of permanence) |
Democritus (atomism) |
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|
400 BC |
Socrates |
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|
Plato |
Aristotle |
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|
300 BC |
|
Epicurus: Materialism |
Cynicism |
Skepticism (to 200 AD); Stoicism |
|
Christ |
|
|
||
|
300 AD |
|
|
||
|
500 AD |
Neo-Platonism; St. Augustine, Boethius |
|
||
|
800 AD |
Medieval Philosophy; Johannes Scotus Erigena |
|
||
|
1100 AD |
Scholasticism |
|
||
|
1200 AD |
Aquinas; Duns Scotus |
|
||
|
1400 AD |
William of Occam; Renaissance Platonism |
|
||
|
1600 AD |
Rationalism; Descartes; Spinoza |
Empiricism; Bacon; Hobbes; Locke |
||
|
1700 AD |
Leibniz |
Berkeley; Hume |
||
|
1800 AD |
Kant; Hegel |
J.S. Mill |
||
|
Late 19th, 20th and 21st centuries |
Neo-Kantianism; Neo-Hegelianism; Marxism; Existentialism; Neo-Thomism; Post-modernism… |
Analytic and Linguistic Philosophy |
||
2 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
2.1 RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Two aspects of Greek religion are selected for their significance:
Anthropomorphic religion of the gods of Olympus—made familiar by the Homeric epics…Gods exhibit, on a most majestic scale, human passions and concern for the affairs of human beings. The Homeric conception of the Gods as subject to fate may have contributed to the attitude of mind that produced the first Greek philosophy: the Milesian natural philosophy of the sixth century BCE
Religious revival of sixth century BCE—associated with mystery cults. Mystery cults—local forms of gods: symbolizing individualism…the Dionysian cults join with the Orphic: doctrine of the immortal soul and its transmigration…perhaps incline toward philosophy—especially metaphysics—and especially to religiously oriented philosophies of Pythagoreans, of Parmenides and of Heraclitus
2.2 GREEK PHILOSOPHY: ORIGINS
2.2.1 Early Greek philosophy
2.2.1.1 Problem of Substance (Metaphysics)—and The Philosophy of Nature
Thales c. (624—550 BCE): water is original stuff (possible observation: nourishment, heat, seed, contain moisture), out of water everything comes –but Thales does not indicate how
Anaximander c. (611—547 BCE): the essence or principle of things is the infinite—a mixture, intermediate between observable elements, from which things arise by separation; moisture leads to living things…All animals and humans were originally a fish. All return to the primal mass to be produced anew
Cosmology: physical: sphere of fire leads to eternal motion: separation: hot, cold leads to hot, surrounds cold on a sphere of flame: heat: cold leads to moisture leads to air: fire leads to rings with holes: heavenly bodies: sun (farthest), moon, planets
Anaximines (588—524 BCE): first principle is definite: air; it is infinite. From air all things arise by rarefaction and condensation—a scientific observation
These three philosophers—Thales, Anaximander and Anaximines, of Miletus, represent advance from qualitative-subjective to quantitative-scientific explanation of modes of emergence of being from a primary substance
Pythagorean School: Pythagoras of Samos (c. 575—500 BCE). The Pythagorean School was concerned less with substance than with the form and relation of things. Numbers are the principles of things—number mysticism. Origin, in astronomy, of the dual: systematic, fixed stellar system and chaotic, dynamic—terrestrial—world. Ethics, too, rooted in number-mysticism
2.2.1.2 Problem of change
…arises from the intuition that something from nothing is impossible
Problem of Change:
Qualitative Theories of Change: Empedocles (495—435 BCE) and Anaxogoras (500—428 BCE). Quantitative theories: Atomism: transition from teleology to mechanism: Leucippus and Democritus (460—370 BCE). Metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, theory of knowledge, theology and ethics
Heraclitus (535—475 BCE) born Ephesus: (1) Fire and universal flux, (2) opposites and their union, (3) harmony and the law
Eleatic School: Xenophanes (570—480 BCE) Colophon, precursor, first basis of skepticism in Greek thought, Parmenides—founder of philosophy of permanence—change is relative: combination and separation (becoming)…paradoxes of being and nonbeing, Zeno (of the paradoxes) (490—430 BCE) and Melisus of Samos are defenders of the doctrine
Democritus: same concept in atomic form. Metaphysics, ontology: space: nonbeing exists; motion in space: atomic. Psychology, theory of knowledge: information from object to sentient: propagation of actions through toms in air, soul atoms: the finest in-between body atoms
2.2.2 Age of sophists
The development of Greek thought led to a spirit of free inquiry in poetry: Aeschylus (525—456 BCE), Sophocles (490=405 BCE), Euripedes (480—406 BCE); history: Thucydides (b. 471 BCE); medicine: Hippocrates (b. 460 BCE). The construction of philosophical systems ceases temporarily; the existing schools continue to be taught and some turn attention to natural-scientific investigation… The resulting individualism made an invaluable contribution to Greek thought but led, finally, to an exaggerated intellectual and ethical subjectivism. The Sophists who were originally well-regarded came gradually to be a term of reproach partly owing to the radicalism of the later schools: their subjectivism, relativism and nihilism. For Protagoras, all opinions are true (though some ‘better’); for Gorgias none are true (there is nothing; even if there were something we could not know it; if we could know it we could not communicate it). ‘Sophists exaggerated the differences in human judgments and ignored the common elements; laid too much stress on the illusoriness of the senses… Nevertheless, their criticisms of knowledge made necessary a profounder study of the nature of knowledge.’
2.2.3 Socrates and the Socratic schools
Socrates (469—399 BCE), Xenophon: ‘The Socratic problem was to meet the challenge of sophistry, which, in undermining knowledge, threatened the foundations of morality and state.’ Socratic method: includes the elements: (1) skeptical, (2) conventional, (3) conceptual or definitional, (4) empirical or inductive, (5) deductive… a ‘dialectical’ process for improving understanding of a subject
The treatment to this point has been more detailed since (1) I am relatively ignorant of it, and (2) a detailed study of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle—a natural study of the tree supreme Greek philosophers—is left for later
Ethics: knowledge is the highest good. Knowledge is virtue
2.3 GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE AGE OF GREAT SYSTEMS
2.3.1 Plato (427—347 BCE)
The method of Socrates suggested: a system of thought to be worked out. Plato’s system incorporates and transforms the doctrines of his predecessors…The problems suggested are the intimate ones: meaning of human life, human knowledge, human conduct, human institutions which depend for an adequate answer upon the study, also, of their interrelations and their place as parts of the larger Ontological Question (and indeed are not comprehensible without an ontology—at least ‘an implicit’ one). Plato developed such a system
The division of philosophy into (1) logic or dialectic (including theory of knowledge), (2) metaphysics (including physics and psychology), and (3)ethics…is implied in Plato’s work
Dialectic and Theory of Knowledge: Plato recognizes the importance of the problem of knowledge
Sense perception, opinion cannot lead to genuine knowledge
Eros, the love of truth, is necessary for advance…it arouses the contemplation of beautiful ideas…dialectic is the art of thinking in concepts: the essential object of thought
Ideas do not have origin in experience…we approach the world with ideals: truth, beauty, the good; in addition to the value-concepts. Plato also came to regard mathematical concepts and certain logical notions, or categories, such as being and nonbeing, identity and difference, unity and plurality, as inborn, or a priori
Therefore, conceptual knowledge is the only genuine knowledge
What guarantee, then, is there of the truth of conceptual knowledge? (Plato’s answer is based on the metaphysics of certain of his predecessors, especially Parmenides: thought and being are identical; Parmenides speaks of or indicates the world of logical thought as true, and the world of sense perception as illusion.)
For Plato, knowledge is correspondence of thought and reality (or being)—knowledge must have an object. If the concept is to have value as knowledge, something real must correspond to it—realities must exist corresponding to all our universal ideas: there must be, for instance, pure absolute beauty corresponding to the concept of beauty…conceptual knowledge presupposes the reality of a corresponding ideal or abstract objects…Or, in contrast to the transient world of the senses, which is mere appearance, illusion: true being is unchangeable, eternal. Conceptual thought alone can grasp eternal and changeless being: it knows that which is, that which persists, that which remains one and the same in all diversity, namely the essential forms of things
2.3.1.1 Plato’s theory of knowledge:
Conjecture Mere sense impression Guess (opinion)
Belief Sensible objects Sense perception (opinion)
Understanding Mathematical and other Hypothesis (and education)
Rational (insight) Forms or ideas Dialectic
Hierarchy of the Sciences: Arithmetic; geometry; astronomy; harmonies; dialectic—the coping stone of the sciences
Dialectic knowledge considers forms as constituting a systematic unity—as related to the form of the Good; rests on categorical first principles—not hypothesis
2.3.1.2 Doctrine of ideas: (Plato’s most original philosophical achievement.)
According to Plato, universals exist. Corresponding to the concept of horse, as example, there is a universal or ideal entity; it is the idea that is known in conceptual knowledge, reason
The variety of ideas or forms is endless: there are ideas of things, relations, qualities, actions and values…(these are some classes of ideas): of tables and chairs; of smallness, greatness, likeness; of colors and tones; of health, rest and motion; of beauty, truth and goodness…The ideas or archetypes constitute a well-ordered world or rational cosmos; arranged in a connected, organic unity, a logical order subsumed under the highest idea: the Good
The Good, the supreme idea, the logos or cosmic purpose, the unity of pluralities, the source of all ideas…is also the truly real. The function of philosophy, by exercise of reason, is to understand this inner, interconnected order of the universe and to conceive its essence by logical thought
Outline of the doctrine: (1) The forms, or ideas defined as objects corresponding to abstract concepts are real entities. The Platonic form is the reification or entificiation of the Socratic concept; (2) there are a variety of forms; (3) they belong to a realm of abstract entities, a ‘heaven of ideas’, separate from their concrete exemplification in time and space (the Platonic dualism); (4) form is archetype, particular: copy; form is superior: forms are real, particulars mere appearances; (5) the forms are neither mental—they exist independently of any knowing mind, even God’s—nor physical: yet real; (forms are non-temporal and non-spatial: eternal and immutable); (7) they are logically connected in a ‘communicative’ hierarchy in which the supreme form is the Good; (8) forms are apprehended by reason, not sense; (9) the relation between a particular and a form which it exemplifies is ‘participation’; all particulars with a common predicate participate in the corresponding form; a particular may participate simultaneously in a plurality of forms or successively (in change) in a succession of forms
2.3.1.3 Philosophy of nature
Matter (the second principle, diametrically opposed to the idea) is the raw material upon which the idea is impressed. Dualism. Matter is perishable, imperfect, unreal, nonbeing
2.3.1.4 Cosmology
The Demiurge or Creator (more an architect than a creator) fashions the world out of matter in the patterns of the ideal world…The four factors in creation enumerated in Timmaeus are (1) the Demiurge or God: the active principle or dynamic cause of the world; (2) the pattern as archetype of the world; (3) the receptacle: the locus and matrix of creation; matter; brute fact; source of indeterminacy and evil; and (4) the form of the Good
Plato’s cosmology, garbed in myth: an attempt to identify the causes in (and creation of) the actual world (interpretation)
The influence of Plato’s doctrine of ideas, and cosmology is enormous—upon Aristotle: the four causes of Aristotle are the four factors in Plato’s cosmology… and in Christian (medieval) thought…(argument from design)
2.3.1.5 Psychology
‘Faculty’ psychology: (1) rational faculty (mind), (2) spirited faculty (emotions…it is doubtful that Plato considered will and free choice), (3) appetitive faculty: desire, motivation
2.3.1.6 Doctrine of immortality
(From psychology: the part of the individual, which ‘knows’ sense impression and opinion, is the body; the soul knows or has genuine knowledge or science. Because the soul possesses apprehension of ideas prior to its contact with the world: all knowledge is reminiscence and all learning is awakening.)
Arguments for Immortality: Epistemological: (1) The soul has contemplated eternal ideas and only like can know like: (2) from the doctrine of reminiscences. Metaphysical: (1) From the simplicity of the soul: it cannot be produced by composition or destroyed by disintegration, (2) from vitality: as the source of its own motion, the soul is eternal (a survival of atomistic conceptions) (first cause argument, perhaps)…and various other metaphysical arguments. Moral and Valuational: from the superiority and dignity of the soul: it must survive the body; a variation: everything is destroyed by its ‘connatural’ evil; the evils of the soul (its worst vices: injustice, etc.) do not destroy the soul—hence its indestructibility. (There are hardly any arguments advanced in the literature on immortality which are not foreshadowed by Plato.)
2.3.1.7 Ethics
Ethical being is one in which the superior principles dominate: rationality. Wisdom: reason over other impulses of the soul; bravery: reason over emotion (fear, pain); temperance: reason over desire…Justice: wisdom with bravery and temperance
2.3.1.8 Politics
Plato’s theory of the state (in The Republic) is based on his ethics. Social life is a means to perfection of individuals. Laws result from imperfection of individuals which leads to the state. Classes in society result from functions of the soul; harmony among the classes results from functional relations of the healthy soul:
Ruling class: those embodying reason (philosophers)
Warriors: the spirited. Their function: defense
Agriculturists, workers, merchants, artisans: lower appetites. Their function: production
Justice in state: each class functions according to its character
The ideal society is a family: Plato opposes monogamy, private property, recommends for the two upper castes—who are to be supported by workers—communism and common possession of wives and children…Plato recommends: eugenic supervision of marriages and births, exposure of weak children, compulsory state education, education of women for war and government, and censorship
The state is an educational institution, the instrument of civilization; its foundation must be the highest kind of knowledge which is philosophy. The education of the children of higher classes will follow a definite plan: identical for the sexes during the first twenty years: myths selected for ethicality, gymnastics for body and spirit; poetry, music –harmony, beauty, proportion and philosophical thought; reading, writing; mathematics which tends to draw the mind from the concrete and sensuous to the abstract and real. At 20, superior young men will be selected and shall integrate their learning. At 30, those who show greatest ability in studies, military officers, etc., will study dialectic for five years. Then they will be put to test as soldiers, militias and in subordinate civic offices. Starting at the age of fifty, the demonstrably worthy will study philosophy until their turns come to administer the offices for their country’s sake
2.3.2 Aristotle (384—322 BCE)
Aristotle’s Problems: Plato’s system had difficulties and inconsistencies to be overcome; it was left to Aristotle to reconstruct it in a more consistent and scientific manner. First, the problem of transcendent ideas and the degradation of the world of experience to mere appearance and, second, the concept of the secondary Platonic element matter and the gulf between form and matter provided difficulties. Other difficulties: changing forms, immortal souls in human bodies, makeshift nature of the Demiurge
Aristotle claims the changeless eternal forms but as inherent, immanent in things: form and matter are eternally together…Because of his realism, Aristotle studied science sympathetically, his theories always in close touch with it and he encouraged the natural sciences
2.3.2.1 Extant writings
1. Logic: Organon includes: Categories, De Interpretationae, Prior and Posterior Analytics (includes induction and the syllogism), Topics, Sophistic Fallacies (Topics are largely concerned with dialectic reasoning)
2. Natural sciences: Physics (8 books); On the Heavens (4); Origin and Decay (2); Meteorology (4); Cosmology (spurious), Botany (spurious); History of Animals (10); On the Parts of Animals (4); On the Progression of Animals; On the Origin of Animals (5); On the Locomotion of Animals (spurious)
3. Psychology: On the Soul (3, treating sensation, memory, imagination, thought); Parva Naturalia (including De Memoria et Reminiscentia, On Dreams…)
4. Metaphysics: (14) ‘First Philosophy’
5. Ethics: Nicomachean Ethics (10) Eudaemian Ethics (revision of Nicomachean by Eudaemas); Magna Moralia, the Greater Ethics (compilation of the two proceeding)
6. Politics: (8, apparently incomplete); On the Constitution of Athens (discovered 1890) (the work on economics attributed to Aristotle is not authentic)
7. Rhetoric: Rhetoric to Theodectes (based on Aristotle’s teachings); Rhetoric to Alexander (spurious); Rhetoric (3, the third is of doubtful authenticity), Poetics (part of 2 books extant; concerned with principle forms of literature: epic, tragic, comic)
2.3.2.2 Philosophy and the sciences
The universe is an ideal world, an organic whole of interrelated parts, a system of eternal, unchangeable ideas or forms: these are the ultimate essences and causes…ideas are, in contrast to Plato, immanent in the world giving it form and life…experience is real—the basis of knowledge; starting from experience we rise to the science of ultimate principles
Genuine knowledge is not merely factual but consists in knowing the reasons and causes of things. Philosophy or science in the broad sense is reasoned knowledge. Metaphysics is concerned with being qua being
Aristotle’s classification of sciences: (1) Logic, the method of inquiry, (2) theoretical sciences (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology and first philosophy or metaphysics), (3) practical sciences in which knowledge is a means to conduct (ethics, politics), (4) productive sciences in which knowledge is subordinate to artistic creation (poetics)
2.3.2.3 Logic
The creation of the science of logic is in a certain sense Aristotle’s most amazing achievement (there is no parallel case in intellectual history where a single thinker has brought to completion a new science). (There have been only two revolts against the Logic in recent times—Francis Bacon’s advocacy of inductive method and the nineteenth-twentieth century revolution in mathematical logic.)
Function: method of obtaining logic: the science of sciences
Theme: analysis of form and content of thought. Scientific truth is characterized by strict necessity: to establish a scientific proposition it must be proved that it could not possibly be otherwise
Demonstration: the form of thought: propositions from propositions: the syllogism
Intuition or induction: establishment of primary propositions. Intuition is the apprehension of the universal element in the particular: or induction
Content: the doctrine of the categories (also part of his metaphysics): categories are the fundamental, indivisible concepts of thought: the most fundamental and universal predicates that can be affirmed of anything, not mere forms of thought or language but also predicates of reality…the ten categories (1) what (e.g., man: substance), (2) how it is constituted (e.g., white: quality), (3) how large (quantity), (4) relation (double, greater…), (5) where (space), (6) when (time), (7) posture, (8) condition (e.g., armed: state), (9) activity (what it does), (10) what it suffers (what is done to it)
2.3.2.4 Metaphysics
Substance (that which exists), abstractly defined in metaphysics, is a key concept…and is in sharp contrast to the Platonic notion. In rejecting the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle offers two broad criticisms (seven actual items): (1) ideas, though intended to explain the nature of things, are not adequate to do so, and (1) the relation between things and ideas is inexplicable (and even somewhat contradictory leading to a regress: the idea of the relation, the idea of the idea of…)
In contrast to Plato who held that things were incomplete copies of universals (the form is the substance) and in contradiction to the atomism of Democritus, Aristotle regards particular objects as real substances, but the essence of a thing is its form: the class to which it belongs
There is plurality of substances, hierarchically arranged: indeterminate matter…physical objects…plants…animals…man…God
The process of becoming, or change: the substratum (matter) persists and changes, governed by forms (qualities) which are responsible for diversity and change
Related to the relationship of form to matter is the relationship of potentiality to actuality: the stages in development: (acorn / oak : materials / building corresponds to potential / actual)…the series from potential to actual is, progressively, realization of form over matter…Form realizes itself in the thing: it causes the thing to move and to realize an end or purpose
(Aristotle has been called the ‘father of Biology’…Plato of ‘Physics’.)
2.3.2.5 Four causes
(1) Material (constituents), (2) formal (structure), (3) efficient or moving (the producer’, (4) the final cause (end or purpose)
Everything is explicable, at the same time, by all four causes. In nature causes 2 and 4 coincide as do 2 and 3, so the only causes are form and matter
2.3.2.6 Theology
Eternal motion on the part of matter presupposes an eternal unmoved mover: God: the cosmological argument…God is pure form, unadulterated by mater, complete actuality, substance par excellence, thought-thinking-thought (which has been ridiculed on account of its inadequacies)
2.3.2.7 Physics
Science of bodies and motion: motion is change: matter is dynamic, atomism rejected (empty space is rejected)…four kinds of motion: (1) substantial (origin and decay), (2) qualitative, (3) quantitative, (4) local (place). Qualities are things: there are, therefore, absolute qualitative changes in matter…nature is teleological and qualitative
2.3.2.8 Biology
Aristotle may be called the founder of systematic and comparative zoology which he subordinates to the teleologic, dynamic, qualitative interpretation. Aristotle’s biology may be described as vitalism: it posits an animating and directing vital principle in organisms
2.3.2.9 Psychology
Man is the microcosm and the final goal of nature, distinguished from all other living beings by the possession of reason…Man’s soul is like the plant soul: lower vital function, and animal soul: perception, common sense, imagination, memory, pleasure, pain. (Pleasure arises when functions are furthered, pain when they are impeded; these feelings arouse desire and aversion which alone cause the body the move.) Desire with deliberation is called rational will
Besides the foregoing function the human soul possesses the power of conceptual thought, or thinking the universal and necessary essences of things. Reason comes to think concepts as follows: creative reason is pure actuality, the essences are directly cognized: thought and object are here one (in passive reason concepts are merely potential), passive reason is the mater on which creative reason, the form, acts…thee is a distinction –formal and material phases of reason
Perception, imagination, memory are connected with the body and perish with it: creative reason is absolutely imperishable, absolutely immaterial
2.3.2.10 Ethics
(Aristotle’s ethics are based in his metaphysics and psychology and is the first comprehensive scientific theory of morality…it attempts to give a define answer to the Socratic question of the highest good.)
All human action has some end in view…what is the highest end or good? For man this must be his essence: the life of reason, the complete and habitual exercise of the functions which make him human: eudaemonia (happiness is a substitute provided it does not mean pleasure)
A virtuous soul is a well-ordered soul…and since the soul does not consist of reason alone, it is one in which the right relation exists between reason, feeling and desire…
The highest good for man is self-realization (:not selfish individualism)—he realizes his true self when he loves the supreme part of his being: the rational part…when he is moved by a motive of nobleness, promotes the interests of others and of country…’The virtuous man will act often in the interest of friends, country and if need be die for them…surrender money, honour and all the goods for which the world contends, reserving only nobleness for himself…’
Justice is a virtue implying a relation to others, for it promotes the interest of others…it is taken in two senses: lawfulness and fairness…Nor is the happiness-theory understood in the hedonistic sense—a pleasure theory: therefore, all things which are honorable and pleasant to the virtuous man are honorable and pleasant
Aristotle rejects the Socratic maxim that knowledge is virtue: we must in addition to a knowledge of virtue, endeavor to possess and exercise it…Moral action is fostered by a moral society…Laws are required to teach us the duties of life…The state should seek to provide a social environs conducive to the morality of its citizens…Anyone who wishes to elevate the people must acquaint himself with the principles of legislation…therefore: ethics and politics are never divorced by Aristotle: the moral ends of man are promoted by legal and political means
2.3.2.11 Politics
Man is a social being who can realize his true self only in society and the state…the state as the goal of evolution of human life is prior in worth and significance to its component societies…Social life is the goal or end of human existence…the aim of the state is to produce good citizens…Aristotle was perhaps even more successful than Plato in steering a middle course between ‘statism’ and individual
The constitution of the state must be adapted to the character and requirements of its people. It is just when it confers equal rights on the people in so far as they are equal, and unequal rights in so far as they are unequal
There are good constitutions: the monarchy, the aristocracy and the polity—a norm in which the citizens are nearly equal—and bad forms: the tyranny, oligarchy and democracy…As the best state for his own time Aristotle advocates a city-state in which only those citizens who are qualified by education and by position in life participate actively in government—that is, an aristocracy. He justifies slavery on the grounds that it is a rational institution: it is just that the inferior foreigners should not enjoy the same rights as the Greeks
Aristotle’s Genius and Influence: Aristotle’s claim to the title ‘master of those who know’ can easily be substantiated. He occupies a unique position in philosophy by whatever standard we judge him, breadth of learning, originality, or influence…Aristotle’s philosophy is perhaps the most comprehensive synthesis of knowledge ever achieved by the mind of a human being—with the possible exception of Hegel
His genius is his ability to use an enormous amount of knowledge into a unified whole: which he achieves by means of certain integrating concepts: substance, matter, form, actuality, potentiality, etc
His influence was greatest during the Middle Ages but it is also apparent in the greatest systems of the modern period including those of Descartes, Leibniz and Hegel
2.4 ETHICAL PERIOD (ABOUT 350—200 BCE)
2.4.1 Epicureanism and stoicism
The following on Epicureanism and Stoicism is a brief complement to the longer discussion on Stoicism, which is taken up again, below
The Epicureans and Stoics. These thinkers were concerned primarily with ethics—however the ethics needed a metaphysics and cosmology and a theory of knowledge and truth in terms of sense experience—they were pioneers of the empirical tradition in epistemology. They were nominalists—a universal is not a reality but a mark or sign: the only realities are particulars. They were also forerunners of medieval nominalism. Opinions and hypotheses must be confirmed by sense experience or at least suggested by perception and not contradicted by them
Epicurean metaphysics is, in its essentials, a restatement of the atomistic and materialistic mechanism of Democritus. Psychology—also derives from the emanationism of Democritus—likewise soul—the nimble fiery soul atom—is material; soul has a rational part, is mortal—there is no afterlife to be feared
Epicurean ethics is hedonism—based on pleasure—but not a basis for debauchery: some pleasures are followed by pains and many pains are followed by pleasures; therefore not all pleasures are to be chosen and not all pains avoided. Mental pleasures are greater than pleasures of the body, mental pains worse than physical pains—therefore a life of prudence and wisdom is good and this has a naturalistic basis in the caprice of the world. In truth, Epicureanism is an ethics of enlightened self-interest: Epicurus extolled the same virtues as did Plato, Aristotle and the stoics—wisdom, courage, temperance and justice—but for different reasons. (However, although the pleasure-theory of Epicurus is not a doctrine of sensuality, it came to be so interpreted by many.)
Epicurean 341—270 BCE social and political philosophy: the enlightened self-interest of the individual is the highest good; from here follows justice and right, laws and institutions, practical rules of action—but only as means
2.4.2 Skepticism and eclecticism
Skepticism was contemporary with Stoicism and Epicureanism. After Socrates and the great system of Plato and Aristotle, time was right for a new period of movement of doubt. The Skeptics filled this function: the thought common to this school is that we cannot know the nature of things: Pyrrho (365—270 BCE) may be called the founder but wrote nothing: his views were set down by Timon of Phlius (320—230 BCE). After Timon, the Skeptical school was absorbed by the Platonic Academy and did not emerge as an independent school until the Academy—called the Middle Academy during the Skeptical period—purged itself of Skepticism under Philo of Larina and Anticus: Skepticism again became an independent movement at the beginning of the Christian era and was later represented by Sextus Empircus. Eclecticism was encouraged by the growing intercourse between Greek scholars and the Romans. The Romans had no genius for philosophy; it was only after Rome conquered Macedonian 168 BCE and Greece became a Roman Province (146 BCE) that interest arose in philosophical speculation. The Romans produced no independent system: they selected and modified according to their practical needs: ‘They sought and found in Philosophy, nothing but a rule of conduct and a means of government.’ Subsequently, Eclecticism made its way into nearly all the schools, into the Academy (Plate), the Lyceum (Aristotle) and the Stoa; the Epicureans alone remained true to their creed
2.4.3 Stoicism—continued
Zeno (336—264 BCE) b Citium, Cyprus, came to Athens in 314, and in 294 opened his school in the Stoa Poikile (painted corridor or porch, from which ‘Stoicism’) and was founder of the school. Zeno was esteemed for his upright character, the simplicity of his life, his affability and moral earnestness…He was followed by his pupil Cleanthes (264—232 BCE) who lacked the qualities needed to defend the school against the Skeptics and the Epicureans…Next came Chrysippus of Soli, Cilicia (232—204 BCE), a man of great ability who clearly defined the teachings of the school, gave unity to the system, and defended it against the Skeptics. His pupils included Zeno of Tarsis, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus…Stoicism as developed by Chrysippus found favor in Rome during the Republic: Panaetius (180—110 BCE) being one of the first Roman adherents of note. During the Empire it divided into two schools: one popular, represented by Musonius Rufus (first century CE), Seneca (3—65 CE), Epictitus (first century CE) and Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121—180): the other scientific, whose sole aim was to preserve intact and interpret the old doctrine
2.4.3.1 Logic and the theory of knowledge
The goal of Stoic philosophy is to find a rational basis for ethics: they start with logic, the science of thoughts and discourses. Stoic logic included grammar, and thus Stoics are founders of the traditional science of grammar…the dialectical part of logic deals with the theory of knowledge: of which there are two problems: (1) what is the origin (source) of knowledge, and (2)what is the criterion of knowledge
Sources: Knowledge is gained through perception. The mind has the faculty of forming general ideas and concepts of a large number of cases which are alike and of forming universal judgments. This faculty, reason, is a faculty of thought and speech identical with the universal reason which pervades the world…the Stoics posited objected rationality in the world and yet opposed the Platonic doctrine of ideas: only particular objects have real existence and universals are subjective abstractions
Criterion: A sense image is true when it is an exact copy of the object. A concept is true when it agrees with the qualities pervading similar things. How shall we distinguish true from false? Man is entitled to his conviction when he has satisfied himself that his sense organ is in normal condition, that the percept is clear and distinct and that repeated observations by him and others verify his first impression. Since true premises are deduced logically from true premises, the faculty of drawing correct inferences is accordingly another means of reaching the truth—and dialectic an essential qualification of the Stoic sage. Consequently, the stoics gave considerable attention to formal logic, particularly the syllogism, which they regarded as its most important phase (they made minor additions to Aristotle’s scheme of syllogism and revised his table of categories)
2.4.3.2 Metaphysics
Stoic metaphysics—a materialistic version of Aristotelian metaphysics: force (or form) and matter are both corporeal…but force consists of a finer kind of stuff, while matter as such is coarse, formless and immovable…Only forces have causality—the effect which results, however, is not a cause or a force—nor is it a body—but a mere accidental state of the body…The forces in the universe form one all-pervasive force or fire: the rational active soul of the world. The universe is a cosmos—a beautiful, well-ordered, perfect whole. The rational principle is related to the world as the human soul is to its body (the pervasion of the cosmos by a rational principle is pure pantheism)…but just as the governing part of the soul is situated in a particular part of the body, so the ruling part of the world soul, the Deity, or Zeus, is seated at the outermost circle of the world: pantheism and theism dwell together in the Stoic system (as in many modern systems), however in Stoicism the pantheistic aspect clearly prevails
2.4.3.3 Cosmology
The Stoics offer a detailed description of the evolution of the world from the original divine fire: every recurring world will resemble its predecessors in every detail—the theory of cyclic recurrence—for each world is produced by the same law…Man is free in the sense that he can assent to what fate decrees, but, whether he assents or not, he must obey…Now, if everything is a manifestation of God, how shall we explain evil in the world? (1) The negative solution denies the existence of evil—what we call evils are only relative evils; (2)the positive solution regards evil, such as disease, as the necessary and inevitable consequence of natural processes or as a necessary means of realizing the good
2.4.3.4 Psychology
A man is free when he acts in accordance with reason; that is, obedience to the eternal laws of nature. The Stoic conception of freedom is one of rational self-determination…
The Stoic doctrine of cyclic recurrence implies that all souls necessarily reappear with the recreation of the universe
2.4.3.5 Ethics
Man is part of the universal order, a spark of the divine fire, a small universe (microcosm) reflecting the greater universe (macrocosm). Hence it behooves man to act in harmony with the purpose of the universe…to reach the highest possible3 measure of perfection. To do this he must put his own soul in order: reason should rule him as reason rules the world…to live according to nature for a human being is to act in conformity with reason, the logos…to live thus is to realize one’s self and to realize one’s true self is to serve the purposes of universal reason and to work for universal ends. The Stoic ethical ideal implies a universal society of rational beings with the same rights—for reason is the same in all and all are part of the same world soul
A truly virtuous act is one which is consciously directed toward the highest purpose or end, and is performed with conscious knowledge of moral principle. Thus, virtuous conduct implies complete and certain knowledge of the good and a conscious purpose, on the part of the doer, to realize the supreme good. To act unconsciously and without knowledge is not virtue. Virtue is one, a unity, for everything depends on disposition, on the good will: a man either has it or he has it not: there is no middle ground: he is either a wise man or a fool…Virtue is the only good, vice the only evil—all else is indifferent
Evil conduct is the result of wrong judgment, or false opinion: the Stoics sometimes regard evil as the cause, sometimes the effect of the passions or immoderate impulses. The four such passions are pleasure, desire, grief and fear. These passions and their many variations are diseases of the soul which it is our business, not merely to moderate, but to eradicate, since they are irrational…Apathy or freedom from passion is, accordingly, the Stoic ideal
2.4.3.6 Religion
True religion and philosophy are one, according to the Stoics. (Little wonder that Stoic philosophy should appeal to the Jesuits.)
2.5 GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD (150 BCE—500 AD)
Greek philosophy began in Greek religion; and after its formative phase, described earlier, reached an apex in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. The subsequent ethical theories of the Epicurean and Stoic schools, the nihilism of the Skeptics and the piece-meal practicality of the Eclectics did not satisfy all types of mind…’We come now to a period in History when Philosophy seeks refuge in Religion’…The new attitude sought to know and see God, brought about by and expresses consciousness of the decline of the classical peoples and their culture, ‘gave rise to a philosophy strongly tinctured with religious mysticism,’ ‘brought to life not only Christianity, but, before its advent, pagan and Jewish Alexandrianism and its kindred phenomena’…’We may distinguish three currents to this religious philosophy: (1) an attempt to combine an Oriental religion, Judaism, with Greek speculation: Jewish Greek Philosophy, (2) an attempt to construct a world-religion upon Pythagorean doctrines: Neophythaore4anism;(3) an attempt to make a religious philosophy of the Platonic teaching: Neoplatonism’…Here are some comments on the main tendencies:
2.5.1 Jewish Greek philosophy
The main exponent is Philo (30 BCE-50 CE). Philo read Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and Stoicism, into the Scriptures by the allegorical method which was common in Alexandria (founded by Alexander the Great in 333 BCE, which had become under the descendents of his general Ptolemy (328—181 BCE) the leading commercial and intellectual center of the world and the chief meeting place of Hellenic and Oriental civilization. Here a great scientific museum with its celebrated library of 700,000 volumes was established under Ptolemy—which attracted poets, men of science, philosophers from every region of the classical world). The fundamental concept in the system of Philo is God and his powers are the Logos, the Divine reason or Wisdom, which we recognize through the logos in ourselves…Man, the most important piece of creation, is a microcosm which, like the universe, is composed of both soul and matter (the source of defects and evils in the world)
2.5.2 Neo-Pythagoreanism
…has its sources in Platonism. Plato in his old age absorbed the number-theory and the religious mysticism of the Pythagoreans: his immediate successors in his school emphasized these latter day teachings. With the rise of Aristotelianism, the Academy abandoned Pythagoreanism. The Pythagorean secret societies with their mysteries, continued to lead a precarious existence until they were revitalized by the religious upsurge which took possession of the Roman world in the first century CE and the spirit of the times encouraged them to devote themselves once more to philosophy. The leaders in the movement, however, did not go back to early Pythagoreanism but to the doctrine as it appeared in Platonism and combined it eclectically with other elements of Greek philosophy, including Aristotelianism and Stoicism. All this they naively ascribed to Pythagoras
2.5.3 Neoplatonism
Generally regarded to have been founded by Plotinus (204—169 BCE.)
…derives from Pythagoreanism. Plato’s system becomes the framework for a religious worldview. The main figure is Plotinus (204—269 BCE). His philosophy is briefly summarized: (1) God is the source of all being (the One whose infinity contains all, the first causeless cause, the unity prior to all being and beyond all being), (2) the stages of being are (I) pure thought or mind, (ii) soul and (iii) matter; (3) the human soul is part of the world soul and its freedom consists in turning away from sensuality towards its higher nature. If it fails to do this it becomes attached after death to another human, animal or plant body according to the degree of its guilt. The ideal in life is return to God—this occurs only on rare occasions, (4) ordinary virtues do not suffice to return to God; first purification—from the sense, the body—then contemplation, and finally the mystical union with God in which the soul transcends its own thought
Common to all these theologies, or theosophies, are: the concept of God as a transcendent being, the dualism of God and world, the idea of revealed and mystical knowledge of God, asceticism and world denial, the belief in intermediary beings, demons and angels
2.6 THE DECLINE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
2.6.1 The closing of the school at Athens
The period from Aristotle on is a decline in quality and originality…Neoplatonism was revived by Procleus (410—485) the head of the Academy at Athens. He was succeeded by Marius, Isidorius, and Damascius. In 529 the School at Athens was closed by an edict of the Emperor Justinian. After this time some good commentaries on the writings of Plato and Aristotle were published by Simplicus, the younger Olympiodorus, and by Boethius (c. 470 / 475—524) and Philoponnus. The works of Boethius as well as his translations of Aristotelian writings and of Porphyry (Porphyry’s Introduction to the Categories—of Aristotle: Porphyry of Tyre (232—304) was a pupil of Plotinus) contributed largely to the knowledge of Greek philosophy in the early Middle Ages
2.6.2 The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
…written while imprisoned (he came to high political office under Theodoric but was accused of conspiracy against Theodoric), takes its place along with Marcus Aurelius’ Meditation (Stoic philosopher, Emperor 121—180) and Thomas á Kempis Imitation of Christ (fourteenth century mystic: 1380—1471) as the great documents in which religious, philosophical and ethical ideas are applied in the personal life of their authors
In the sixth century, Greek Platonism was making its final desperate attempt to maintain itself in competition with the new Christian worldview but Greek philosophy at this period had lost its vitality, had outlived its usefulness. The future belonged to Christianity; and by a strange irony of fate, the Christian religion, in it attempt to conquer the intellectual world, made an ally of the philosophy of the Greeks
3 MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
3.1 Doctrine and dogma
While medieval philosophy is philosophy, it is dominated by Christian themes—including the formation of the fundamental doctrines and the influence of dogma. Transition from Greek to Medieval philosophy as a decline in Hellenism and ascent of Christianity including incorporation of Greek philosophical and theological ideas has been discussed in the previous pages and in the outline of periods, names and dates
Doctrine in theology refers to theoretical component of religious experience. Dogma refers to the first principles at the core of doctrine, professed as true and essential by those of the faith
3.2 The periods of medieval philosophy
The Patristic Period: from the origins of Christianity: the time of Christ to the formation of the major and fundamental doctrines and the triumph of Christianity as an organized Church (ending, philosophically, with Augustine)
The Scholastic Period: of philosophical construction devoted to the elaboration of a philosophy in which the subject matter and guiding principles were determined by ‘dogma’
3.3 The patristic period: establishment of the Christian Church and dogma
The Patristic Period was, at least in things of the spirit, an age of richness and promise extending from the time of Christ to the death of Augustine in 430—or, interpreted most widely, until the Council of Trullo in 692. Concern is with the development of dogma in this period
Early theology. The Acts of St. Paul. The Gnostics. The Apologists—the Logos doctrine (logos, reason, the first cause, in God); free will and original sin
The period, which results from the fusion of early Christian religion with Hellenistic philosophy, is much richer in theology than in philosophy. St. Augustine (353—430)—the greatest representative of the age, the only figure who fully deserves the title: philosopher, has no immediate philosophic descendents, and comes into his own much later in an age clearly medieval
Earliest Christian communities varied greatly in type but can be classified as (a) Gentile, and as (b) a type still oriented largely to Jewish religion. Very early, there emerged from these two sources: Hellenistic Christianity, exemplified by St. Paul, in whose writing—two significant natures: (1) exaltation of Christ, (2) interpretation of his person in then dominant Hellenistic concepts…contains only the germ of the later doctrine of Trinity, and union of human and divine natures in Christ
The doctrine of the Trinity on which the whole theology of Western Christianity is ultimately based, was not given definite form until the Council of Niacea in 325, and was established as a secure and accepted basis of the new Church until the Trinitarian disputes in controversy between Arians and Athanasius’ followers were settled by the Council of Constantinople, 381, and further disputes on the relation between the human and divine in Christ were ended—in the West at least—by the Council of Chacedon, 451. Prior to these developments there was considerable controversy employing Hellenistic philosophical terminology—largely Platonic
Council of Niacea 325 turned away from Neoplatonism, and devised a formula for the Christian conception of Jesus Christ: the son of God and at the same time truly God incarnate. The Nicene definition established the meaning of faith which Christians were to hold and its defenders had recourse less to philosophical or theological speculation than to the Scripture as they understood it
Athanasius completed the Nicene definition in such a way as to include the third member of the Trinity—the Holy Spirit—and achieved a definition which became the starting point of a genuinely philosophical doctrine. By doing this he set the stage for St. Augustine’s formulation of a truly Christian philosophy which made use of Hellenistic classical Greek phraseology without being subservient to it
Patristic philosophy provided the materials of the medieval synthesis achieved during the Scholastic Period and thereby determined the complexion of Western European Civilization of the Middle Ages
Augustine’s ethics: The supreme goal of human conduct is a religious, mystical one—the mind’s union with God in the vision of God (to take place in a future, true life)…Rich and poor alike were capable of salvation—but possession of private property is a hindrance to the soul: Augustine places emphasis on poverty…though the highest good is the transcendent good, a relative perfection may be obtained by performance of external works: venial sins may be wiped out by prayer, fasting, alms…Man was free to sin or not to sin…but this was corrupted by Adam, and the entire human race is corrupted: now it is not possible for man not to sin…God alone can change him
His philosophy of history: In the City of God: a universal philosophy of history (considers temporal and historical processes in the context of external nature and the purpose of God): it became the prototype of such modern—though radically different—philosophical interpretations of history such as those offered by Rousseau, Hegel, Comte, Nietzsche, Marx, Spengler, and Frobenius. The essential features: (1) historical process is a purposive teleological whole, (2) the process is predestined by God to bring about the redemption of some men and the destruction of others (but this does not preclude free will…)
3.4 Scholastic period
The free roaming of the human mind within the framework of dogma—in time leading to the freeing of human reason, intellect from its theological bondage. The agenda of scholasticism: o elaborate a system of thought which will square with dogmas
Stages: (1) Formative: ninth-twelfth centuries: Platonism, Neoplatonism and Augustinianism are the dominant philosophical tendencies. Universals are real essences and prior to things; (2) culmination: Aristotle’s philosophy is dominant: universals are real but immanent (and not transcendent)…the period of great, comprehensive systems: Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. (3) Decline: fourteenth century. Universals are not real but mere concepts, particulars alone are real, universals are real only in the mind, hence after things: the Nominalism of John Duns Scotus and William of Occam
Problems of Scholasticism: (1) Relation between faith and reason, (2) relation between will and intellect, (3) distinction between nature and grace, (4) status of universals
3.4.1 Formative Period—the Schoolmen
John Scotus Erigena b. (Ireland 810—d. 877): Neoplatonism
Anselm of Canterbury (1033—1109): first Scholastic Synthesis—proofs for the existence of God based on Platonic conception of universals existing independently of particulars
Peter Abelard (1079 Pallet—1142 Paris)
School of Chartres. Cathedral at Chartres
John of Salisbury (1115—1180)
3.4.2 Culmination
Albertus Magnus (1193—1280)
St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225—1274)
At the same time as this culmination (thirteenth century), Anti-Scholastic tendencies are developing: mysticism, pantheism, natural science:
John Fidanza (1221—1274), called St. Bonaventura, a mystic
Roger Bacon (1214—1294): science
3.4.3 Decline
John Duns Scotus (b. c. 1274—1310), opposition to St. Thomas
William of Occam (1280—1347), the great leader of this nominalist revival. Occam’s razor refers to superfluous universals
Scholasticism declines after the thirteenth century along with the rise of nationalism, mysticism, tolerance of natural science and the spirit of free inquiry by the Church (as being not relevant to the province of God)…including the elevation by the Church of Aristotle’s value (originally as a conservative device)
Fourteenth Century Mysticism: the greatest figure in this movement is Meister Eckhart, a Dominican teacher who died in the prison of his order
…Leading to the modern period which begins with the renaissance and the (religious) reformation
4 THE MODERN PERIOD
4.1 BACKGROUND
The modern period has been characterized by an awakening of reflection, a revolt against authority and tradition, a dual concern with empiricism and rationalism—where, by rational we mean the use of reason over revelation for in the other predominant use of rationalism all modern systems are rational in their ideal. The other use of rationalism is the view that genuine knowledge consists of universal and necessary judgments—considered by most modern thinkers as ideal—whether realized, realizable or not. A further concern in the modern era is the origin of knowledge and this concern has received considerable impetus from the modern biology starting around the intellectual trends characterized by the publications c. 1855 by Alfred Russell Wallace and of Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859
The approach here will be to briefly consider selected seminal and typical modern philosophers
4.1.1 The Renaissance
The Renaissance has been characterized as a period of revolt against authority, a new humanism, a serious start to study of Plato and Aristotle, the pantheism of Nicolas of Cusa (1401—1464), reform of science, philosophy and logic, social and political philosophy of Campanella and Machiavelli 1469—1527… the Renaissance is commonly used as a label for the multifaceted period between medieval universalism, and sweeping transformations of 17th century Europe
This sets the Spirit of modern philosophy ‘as an awakening of the reflective spirit, a quickening of criticism, a revolt against authority and tradition, a protest against absolutism and collectivism, and a demand for freedom in thought, feeling and action’
4.2 THE BEGINNING OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 1550—1670
4.2.1 Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
The Reform of Science: Bacon is, in many ways, typical of the modern spirit: He is opposed to ancient authorities…he understood and emphasized the importance of systematic and methodical observation and experimentation in natural science; (the other and most important phase, mathematics, he mentions and considers essential)
4.2.1.1 Inductive methods
…a ‘novum organum’: the old syllogism (syllogistic logic is useless for scientific discovery)…the only hope—in knowing nature—is genuine induction: we must ascend gradually in an orderly and methodical way from experience to propositions of higher and higher generality until we finally come to the most general and best defines axioms
4.2.1.2 Programs of philosophy
Primary philosophy busies itself with the concepts and axioms common to several sciences, with what we now call basic scientific categories and presuppositions of science
4.2.1.3 Philosophy of man
Man is a human and political (or civil) philosophy. Human philosophy studies body and soul and their relation…in envisioning a comprehensive science of man, Bacon founded scientific humanism…the faculties of the soul (psychology) were understanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, will, and all those with which logic and ethics are concerned: logic treats of the understanding and reason; and ethics of the will, appetite and affections: the one produces resolutions, the other actions; ethics describes the nature of the good and prescribes rules for conforming to it (right, perhaps)…Man is prompted by selfish and by social impulses. The social good is called duty, and it is the business of the science of government to discover the fountains of justice and public good and to reinforce their claims even when they conflict with the interests of the individual…philosophy in the broad sense is at the apex of knowledge
4.2.1.4 Bacon as an empiricist
(Although his empiricism is not fully worked out, he can be called an empiricist.) Teleology is banished from physics and becomes a part of metaphysics
4.2.2 Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679)
‘One of the boldest and most typical representations of the modern spirit.’
4.2.2.1 Theory of knowledge
Philosophy, according to Hobbes, is a knowledge of effects (sense perception) from their causes (principles) and of causes from their effects…Hobbes is a nominalist, regards logic as a kind of calculation…The problem, therefore, is to find a first principle -–a starting point for our reasoning: this is motion: everything can be explained by motion: the nature of man, the mental world, the physical world
The origin of all our thoughts are from the senses…but the picture of the world obtained through the senses is not the real world…so how do we know the nature of the world (e.g., motion is the primary principle)? Hobbes is not troubled by the question
4.2.2.2 Metaphysics
A real world of bodies in space exists…substance and body are identical
4.2.2.3 Psychology
Mind is motion in the brain…Hobbes subscribes to what modern writers call epiphenomenalism: consciousness is an after appearance…there is also a motive power: pleasure and pain arouse appetite (or desire) and aversion: appetite is an endeavor toward something, aversion is an endeavor away from something
That which pleases a man he calls good, what displeases him he calls evil
The imagination is the first beginning of all voluntary motion. Will in man is not different from will in other animals. A man is free to act but not free to will as he wills, he cannot will to will
4.2.2.4 Politics
Man is a ferocious anima (Homo homini lupus)…competition for riches, honor and power inclines man to contention, enmity, war because only in this way can one competitor fulfill his desire to kill, subdue, supplant or repel his rivals
(But) reason dictates that there should be a state of peace and that every man should seek after peace. The first precept of reason, or law of nature, commands self-preservation: the second, that man lay down his natural right and be content with as much liberty for himself as he is prepared to allow others in the interests of peace and security…no man can be expected to transfer certain rights such as the right to self-dense (since he transfers his rights for the very purpose of securing defense)…The third law of nature is that men keep the covenants they have made: this is the fountain and origin of justice…these laws are immutable, eternal…they are (called) natural because they are the dictates of reason; they are moral because they concern men’s manners towards one another: they are also, according to Hobbes, divine
The only way to erect a commonwealth and insure peace is to confer the total power and strength of men upon one man or assembly of men, whereby all their wills, by a majority vote, coalesce into one will
4.2.3 Blaise Pascal (1632—1662)
Mathematician, Jansenist, anti-Jesuit
Man has certain immediate insights—space, time, movement, number, and truth. Sense and reason deceive each other; then feeling functions, bringing satisfaction. Religious feeling, in which alone there is peace, is independent of understanding. Belief in God is a wager on which one can lose nothing
4.3 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM
Together, Continental rationalism and British empiricism may be said to mark the beginning of the ‘true period of modern philosophy.’
4.3.1 René Descartes (1598—1650)
4.3.1.1 Descartes problem
(Like Bacon) Descartes sets his face against old authorities and emphasized the practical character of philosophy and (unlike Bacon) he took mathematics as the model of his philosophical method…he offers a program of human knowledge and sought to construct a system of thought which would possess the certainty of mathematics. He was in agreement with the great natural scientists of the new era: everything in (external) nature must be explained mechanically—without forms or essences, but he also accepted the fundamental principles of the time-honored idealistic philosophy and attempted to adapt them to the demands of the new science: his problem was to reconcile the mechanism of nature with the freedom of the human soul
4.3.1.2 Classification of the sciences
(1) The first part of true philosophy is metaphysics, which contains principles of knowledge—what came to be called epistemology, such as the definition and principle attributes of God, immortality of the soul, and of all the clear and simple ideas that we possess; (2) physics, true principles of material things, structure and origin of the universe, nature of the earth, of plants, animals and man
4.3.1.3 Method and criterion of knowledge
Aim: to find a body of certain and self-evident truths. The method of mathematics is a key: begin with axioms which are self-evident, then deduce logical consequences…This method must be extended to philosophy. Descartes combs through the elements and levels of knowledge, examines and discards all those claims which are uncertain and arrives at…one thing is certain: that I doubt or think—It is a contradiction to suppose (think) that that which thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks. (Perhaps Descartes’ analysis proves only: thought occurs)
4.3.1.4 Proofs of the existence of God
Descartes provided a detailed proof according to the recipe: I, a finite being, cannot conceive a greater being through my own lesser intellect. I conceive the perfect being God—this concept can only have been placed thereby God—who, therefore, exists. Descartes gives a detailed construction of the proof and a refutation of certain counter-arguments. The interest in such arguments—to me—is the idea of construction of metaphysics (whether or not the specific construction is valid)
4.3.1.5 Truth and error
The source of (human) error is the disparity between the finitude of human intellect and the infinitude of the human will
4.3.1.6 Existence of the external world
God induced in us a deeply rooted conviction of the existence of an external world; if no such world existed he could not be defended against the charge of being a deceiver (similar to the evolutionary argument). The existence in my mind of dreams and hallucinations is not a counter argument since God has endowed me with the power of intellect to dispel and correct such delusions. This God is not a deceiver, but a truthful being, and our sensations must therefore by caused by real bodies…Descartes, strictly speaking, affirms one absolute substance—God and two relative substances—mind and body, which exist independently of each other but depend on God…Descartes holds that God has given the world a certain amount of motion: motion is constant: the germ of the principle of conservation of energy
4.3.1.7 Relation of mind and body
We cannot conceive of mind or soul without thought: the soul is res cogitans: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far as I am only a thinking and un-extended thing. Hence it is certain that I (my mind) through which I am what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my body and may exist without it…What attracted Descartes to this extreme dualism was that it left nature free for the mechanical explanation of natural science (and the mind to idealism, etc., or to the Church)…These two substances exclude each other: mind cannot cause changes in the body and body cannot cause changes in the mind…However there are facts which point to the intimate union of matter and mind (appetites, emotions, sensations…)…God has put them together, but they are so separate in their nature that either could be conserved by God apart from the other. Descartes’ vacillation is due to his desire to explain the corporeal world mechanically but retain a spiritual principle…yet at times he accepts the theory of causal interaction without hesitation
4.3.2 Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (1632—1677)
Spinoza is a pantheistic (a probable interpretation: God is the universe conceived as eternal and necessary unity; Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God) and a rationalist (Descartes had given an example of the application of the geometric method—deduction from necessary and self-evident axioms to conclusions—in the appendix to his mediations; Spinoza follows the same method in Cogitata Metaphysica, an exposition of Descartes’ philosophy, and in Ethics, his chief work)…He is successor to Descartes (in aim to construct a universal theory on rationalist principles and method: mathematical-geometric); even though Spinoza is a monist (God is the one absolute from which all else is derived) whereas Descartes was a dualist (mind and body…) Spinoza’s monism is derived from Descartes’ notion of God as the absolute substance (…this implies in fact that Descartes’ philosophy is not perfectly defines as to monism and dualism and though predominantly dualist has, also, elements of monism)
The origin of Spinozism has also been sought in Averroism (Averroës (1126—1198), of the Spanish-Arabian school flourishing in the Moorish Caliphate of Spain, particularly at Cordova, derived from Arabian –Mohammedan philosophy, conceived of the universal active mind), in the cabalist and pantheistic literature of the Middle Ages, in the writings of the Jewish scholars Moses Maimonides and Creskas (Maimonides holds that to conceive God as the bearer of any attributes would destroy his unity, while Creskas defends this view), and in the speculations of Giordano Bruno (1548—1600) (with Nicolas of Cusa, Bruno conceived God as immanent in the active universe, the active principle as the unity of all opposites, as the unity without opposites, as the one and the many whom the finite mind cannot grasp)
4.3.2.1 Rationalism
Like Descartes, Spinoza is a rationalist: the goal of philosophy is complete knowledge of things, and this can be reached by clear and distinct thinking
4.3.2.2 Method
The problem of the nature of the world is handled by Spinoza like a problem in geometry
4.3.2.3 The universal substance
God is in the world and the world is in him, he is the source of everything that is (Pantheism); God and the world are one
4.3.2.4 Attributes of god
The infinitude of God is of the second order—he possesses an infinite number of attributes each of which is infinite in extent; of these the mind of man can grasp but two: the attribute dimensions of man himself: physical and mental
4.3.2.5 Theory of knowledge
Three levels of cognition: (1) Obscure and inadequate ideas have their source in sensation and imagination: (2) adequate knowledge—clear and distinct ideas, rational knowledge; (3) intuitive knowledge—the highest kind of knowledge
4.3.2.6 Ethics and politics
‘The Mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God and the mind’s highest virtue is to know God.’
In the state of nature every man has the right to do what he can; might makes right. But conflict would rise in such a situation, for men would overshoot their powers; hence it is necessary that men relinquish their natural rights in order that all may live in peace (social contract)
4.4 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH EMPIRICISM
4.4.1 John Locke (1632—1704)
(From the Continental rationalists Descartes, Spinoza…we now turn to the British Empiricists. John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume are the exponents of British Empiricism in the early phase.)
4.4.1.1 Locke’s problem
(Hobbes held, with Descartes, the rationalist ideal: mere experience will not give us certain knowledge; and with Bacon, that sensation is the source of knowledge)…to Locke the sensationalist origin of knowledge appeared to undermine its validity and destroy its certainty. Locke, along these lines, undertakes to examine the nature, origin and validity of knowledge
4.4.1.2 Origin of knowledge
Philosophy, according to Locke, is true knowledge of things, including the nature of things (physics), that which man ought to do as a rational voluntary agent (practica, or ethics), and the ways and means of obtaining and communicating such knowledge (semiotics, logic). The most important of these three is the problem of knowledge…But we must first study the origin of our ideas…for if it is true (as Descartes and others held) that we have innate knowledge of principles, there would seem to be no reason to question its validity. The problem of innate ideas is therefore taken up in the first book (written last) of Locke’s main work: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. …In short, ideas and principles are just as little innate as the arts and sciences, concludes Locke by examining different classes of humanity (children, savages, tribes) and relativism and moral decay. Then: whence does the mind derive all the materials of reason and knowledge? Locke’s Answer: Experience: the two sources: sensation and reflection (internal sense—Locke), such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing: these are the primary capacity of the human mind…By idea Locke means whatsoever the mind directly apprehends: the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding…These are simple ideas which mind has the power to repeat, compare, combine in endless variety resulting in complex ideas. Some ideas are received by one sense only, some by reflection only and some by combinations of senses and reflection
The power which objects have to produce definite ideas in us we call qualities; original or primary qualities belong to the object, secondary qualities are (nothing in the object themselves but) powers to produce various sensations by primary qualities. Examples: primary: solidity, extension, motion, rest…secondary: colors, sounds, tastes…
Complex ideas—three types: modes, substances, relations: (1) ideas of modes are complex ideas which…are (although Locke does not seem to use the word) forms: dependencies on or affections of substances: e.g., triangle, gratitude… (2) ideas of substances are complex ideas: combinations of ideas of qualities, supposed to represent a distinct particular thing and the confused idea of a support or bearer of these qualities (modes lack this aspect: the idea of a bearer)…(3) ideas of relation are obtained by comparing things; the most comprehensive idea of relation is cause and effect: that which produces a(simple or complex) idea is cause, that which is produced: effect
4.4.1.3 Nature and validity of knowledge
Ideas should be clear and distinct, real (having foundation in nature and being in conformity with the real existent things)…Simple ideas are all real not because they are representations of what exists—only primary qualities of bodies are that, but because they are effect of powers outside of our minds…(simple modes are variations of the same simple idea and therefore real: mixed modes are compounded of simple ideas of several kinds; e.g., beauty—a combination of color, figure, causing delight in the beholder). Mixed modes are real only in that they are so framed that there is a possibility of something existing conformable to them. They are archetypes and so cannot be chimerical unless inconsistent ideas are jumbled together in them…complex ideas of substances are real only insofar as they are such combinations of simple ideas as are not really united in things outside us…Ideas are adequate which perfectly represent the archetypes from which the mind supposes them to have been taken while inadequate ideas are a partial or incomplete representation of these archetypes. Whenever mind refers any of its ideas to things extraneous to them, the ideas are then capable of being called true or false; i.e., it is the tacit supposition of their conformity to these things which may be true or false
There are different degrees of evidence in knowledge…intuition or intuitive knowledge is perception of agreement or disagreement of these ideas by direct inspection, without the intervention of any other ideas; demonstrative knowledge results from the comparison of two ideas by comparing them with one or more other ideas—i.e., indirectly. Both intuitive and demonstrative knowledge provide certainty; whatever falls short of one of these is faith or opinion but is not knowledge in the strict sense…But: is there anything more than the ideas…is there a real world? Sometimes, as in dreams, we have ideas to which nothing corresponds at the time. Yet, ordinary perception (when we hare aware and presumably subject to neither hallucination nor illusion) affords a kind of evidence which is beyond any reasonable doubt; Locke calls it sensitive knowledge
4.4.1.4 Limits of knowledge
Since knowledge is a perception of agreement or disagreement of our ideas, it follows that our knowledge cannot reach further than our ideas…the only knowledge that really satisfies one is knowledge of universal self-evident truths; but there are large areas of experience in which such knowledge seems unobtainable…Absolute certainty of a general sort is never to be found except in the agreement and disagreement of our ideas. We have no self-evident propositions as to real existence—except in the case of God and ourselves…Faith is a settled and certain principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no room for doubt or hesitation. But we must be sure that it is a divine revelation. Consequently our assent can be rationally no higher than the evidence of its being a relation
4.4.1.5 Metaphysics
(Due to lack of present interest in Locke’s metaphysics—I omit)
4.4.1.6 Ethics
In harmony with his philosophical empiricism, Locke offers an empirical theory of ethics which ends by being an egoistic hedonism. Men attain knowledge of moral rules and are convinced of their obligation to conform to them through experience (the source of all knowledge, according to Locke)…Moral laws originally came to be established through pleasure and pain: the great teachers of morality…it would be useless for one intelligent being to prescribe rules for actions of another if he did not have the power to reward obedience and to punish disobedience…There are three sorts of law: divine law, civil law and the law of opinion or private censure: by which the great majority of men govern themselves chiefly
4.4.1.7 Free will
Is an idea pertaining not to volition but to the person having the power of doing or forbearing to do as the mind shall choose or direct. The free will problem is, in Locke’s opinion, meaningless; for the concept of freedom has significant power of application to man’s power of action but not his will
4.4.1.8 Political philosophy
Locke’s theory of the State is presented in his two Treatises on Government…He opposes the view that the best government is absolute monarchy, that kings have a divine right to absolute power, that mankind has no right to natural freedom and equality. Men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom…also, in a state of equality of nature, no man having more power and jurisdiction than another. The law of nature teaches all mankind that, all being equal and independent no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty and possessions. The basis of Locke’s philosophy is egoistic (i.e., self-preservation is the motive fore preservation of the state)…The state of nature is not, as Hobbes had supposed, a state of war, but a state of peace, good will, and mutual assistance…When men, by consent, have formed a community they have made that community one body with power to act as such according to the will and determination of the majority. After such a society has been formed, every man puts himself under an obligation to everyone of that society to submit to the rule of the majority…but, by considering the formative principle of society, the power of society can never be supposed to extend further than is required by the common good
The first and fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative authority itself, is the preservation of society and—so far as it consonant with the public good—of every person in it. The first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealth is the establishing of the legislative power
It is not desirable that those who have the powers of making laws should also have the power to execute them…The federative power and executive pow4r are best placed in one hand. (The federative powers are the power of war, peace, to enter leagues and alliances, to engage in all transactions with all persons and communities outside the commonwealth; to the executive is delegated the supreme execution of the laws. The legislative power may, when it finds cause, take both the executive and federative powers out of the hands in which it has placed them, and punish any maladministration.)
The people have supreme power to remove and alter the legislative when they find it acting contrary to the trust reposed in it. But while the government exists, the legislative is the supreme power. The power of choosing it rests with the people
4.4.1.9 Theory of education
Like all great philosophers of the modern era, Locke finds fault with the method of instruction which had come down as a heritage from Scholasticism, and presents a new program of education based on his empirical psychology of ethics…The individuality of the child is to be developed in a natural manner; hence private instruction is preferable…social education should not be lost sight of: the youth is to be trained to become a useful member of society
4.4.1.10 Economic theory
In opposition to (Lord) Shaftesbury (Characteristics 1711: man possesses self-affections and social affections; virtue consists in the proper balance between the two, and the moral sense tells us whether they are in harmony or not), Bernard Mandeville (The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turned Honest 1705, The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices Public Benefits 1714) tries to show that selfishness (private vices) contributes more to the public good than does benevolence. The Frenchman Helvetius (De L’esprit 1758m De L’homme 1772) follows Hobbes and Mandeville in making egoism the sole motive of human action, and enlightened self-interest the criterion of morals. The only way to make a man moral is to make him see his welfare in the public welfare, and this can be done by legislation only; i.e., by proper rewards and punishments. The science of morals is nothing but the science of legislation…This individualistic view, which is found in Locke and Pauley, and which also appears in Butler’s theory, is reflected in the economic theories of the French physiocrats (Françoise Quernay (1694—1774); A. Turgo (1727—1781)) and in Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith 1723—1790; all of these oppose the old mercantile system which sprang up in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages…The new economic philosophy is based in the idea that the individual has a natural right to exercise his activity in the economic sphere with the least possible interference from society (laissez faire). The assumption is that the unrestricted competition and with the removal of unnatural restraints—such as monopolies or privileges—the freedom of exchange, the security of contract and property, enlightened self-interest will promote not only the good of the individual, but also public welfare. The conception of laissez faire is an expression of the general theory of natural rights…The theory rendered service in helping to discredit and overthrow the old economic system and to deliver the individual from harmful restraints. The origin of economic liberalism of the laissez-faire type may be traced to the ethical and political individualism of Locke’s philosophy
4.4.1.11 Locke’s influence
General: His Essay was the first attempt at a comprehensive theory of knowledge in modern philosophy and inaugurated the movement which produced Berkeley and Hume and culminated in Kant…His empirical psychology and ethical philosophy started modern lines of development…His theory of education influenced Rousseau and thence the entire world…His political ideas found brilliant elaboration in Voltaire’s writings, in Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, and a radical reformulation in Rousseau’s Contrat social…He represents the spirit of the modern era, spirit of independence and criticism, of individualism, of democracy, the spirit which had sought utterance in the Reformation and the revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which reached its climax in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. No modern philosopher has been more successful than Locke in impressing his thought on the minds and institutions of men
4.4.2 George Berkeley (1685—1753)
In An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), Berkeley examined visual distance, magnitude, position, and problems of sight and touch, and concluded that ‘the proper (or real) objects of sight’ are not without the mind, though ‘the contrary be supposed true of tangible objects.’ In Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), he brought all objects of sense, including tangibles, within the mind; he rejected material substance, material causes, and abstract general ideas; he affirmed spiritual substance. Thus Berkeley is an empiricist; he may be regarded as an idealist if he is interpreted as say that what is real is in the mind or agnostic on the issue of the real if interpreted as being non-committal as to the true nature of things. In the latter case he would be saying that we do not know the true nature of things or whether such a nature exists; rather things or their signs are presented in mind. Thus, Berkeley is an empiricist with regard to both perceptions and ideas
4.4.3 David Hume (1711—1776)
4.4.3.1 Hume’s problem
David Hume accepts the empirical theory of the origin of knowledge (Locke) and the Berkeleyan view that esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived…there is no such thing as an unperceived body…All our knowledge is confined to the facts of experience; we have a direct knowledge only of our ideas. We also know that there is an external world, but this knowledge is not as self-evident as the knowledge of our own ideas…the chief reason for the opinion that external objects—houses, mountains—have a real existence, distinct from being perceived, is the doctrine that the mind can frame abstract ideas. But the mind is, in fact, incapable of framing abstract ideas…George Berkeley (1685—1753)) and Hume draws what seem to him to be the logical conclusions…
Hume’s view is empirical: our knowledge has its source in experience; it is positivistic: our knowledge is limited to the world of phenomena; it is agnostic: we know nothing of ultimates, substances, causes, soul, ego, external world, universe; it is humanistic: the human mental world is the only legitimate sphere of science and inquiry
4.4.3.2 Science and human nature
The most important task is to inquire into the nature of the human understanding…to show3 that it is not fitted for the abstruse and remote subjects which traditional philosophy has set before it…
4.4.3.3 Origins of knowledge
The chief problems which occupy Hume are those of the origin and nature of knowledge…All the materials of our thinking are derived from outward and inward impressions. All our thoughts and ideas are copies of such impressions…Knowledge results from compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials furnished us by the senses and experience…Our thoughts or ideas, however, are not entirely loose and unconnected, or joined by chance…one calls up another: a picture naturally leads our thought to the original (resemblance), the mention of a room in an apartment suggests an adjoining one (contiguity), the thought of a wound calls up the idea of pain (cause and effect). This phenomenon is called: association of ideas
4.4.3.4 Relation of cause and effect
All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are based on the relation of cause and effect (which I subsume under explanation); that is, we always seek a connection between a present fact and another…the mind cannot deduce the effect from the cause…for the effect is totally different from the cause and can never be discovered in it. We cannot demonstrate that a certain cause must have a certain effect…(but) having found, in many instances, that any two kinds of objects have always been conjoined, we infer that the objects are causally related, that one is the cause of the other…the mind is led by habit or custom to believe that the two objects in question are related…we are determined by custom to believe that the two objects in question are connected…this belief is an operation of the mind, a species of natural instinct…In the Treatise on Human Nature 1739—1740, Hume is still uncertain as to the psychology of belief: he connects it with imagination, but the matter remains obscure and unsatisfactory to him
To sum up: we can never discover any power (‘effective or moving cause’) at all, all we see is one event following another…objects are not necessarily connected, but the ideas are connected in our mind by association
4.4.3.5 Validity of knowledge
All objects of human knowledge may be divided into two kinds; relations of ideas and matters of fact. Of the first kind are the truths of geometry, arithmetic, algebra—in short, every affirmation which is intuitively or demonstratively certain…All evidence of matters of fact which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory is derived entirely from the relation of cause and effect…Of substances we have no idea whatever, and they have no place in knowledge…Thus we have no absolute, self-evident or certain knowledge or matters of fact…Regarding knowledge of the external world, Hume if the final skeptic: we can never hope to attain any satisfactory knowledge with regard to the origin of our impressions or the ultimate constitution of a universe behind our impressions and ideas
4.5 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: RATIONALISM IN GERMANY
4.5.1 Leibniz (1646—1716)
Leibniz is regarded as one of the great minds of Europe. As a scientist he made contributions to dynamics substituting the concept of kinetic energy over Descartes’ conservation of motion. Leibniz is one of the founders of the differential and integral calculi
Leibniz’ noted Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas) was published c. 1684—it expounded his theory of knowledge: things are not seen in God but rather there is a strict relation, between God’s ideas and man’s, between God’s logic and man’s; this clearly has a Platonic interpretation. In February 1686, Leibniz published Discours de métaphysique (Discourse on Metaphysics). Leibniz held that for every true proposition—necessary or contingent—the predicate is contained in the notion of the subject. At this time, excepting the word monad (appearing in 1695), his philosophy of monadology was defined
In Leibniz’ monadology, monads are basic atomic substances that make up the universe but lack spatial extension and hence are immaterial. Each monad is a unique, indestructible, dynamic, entity whose properties are a function of its perceptions and motivations. There is no true causal relations among monads, but all are mutually perfectly synchronized by God in a pre-established harmony. The objects of the world are appearances of collections of monads
4.5.2 Christian Wolff (1679—1754)
His series of essays all beginning under the title Vernünftige Gedanken (‘Rational Ideas’) covered many subjects and expounded Leibniz’s theories in popular form. For Wolff, that every event must have a cause or there arises the impossible possibility that something might come out of nothing. Rationalism and mathematical methodology formed the essence of this system, which was an important force in the development of German philosophical thought
4.6 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Some comments on The Enlightenment and its main representatives will be appropriate here, even though detailed consideration is not necessary for the present purpose
The main issues of present relevance are (1) generally, the enlightenment glorified knowledge, the sciences and the arts, civilization and progress, and boasted of the achievements of the human race. This is useful as a negative example. While it is interesting to review and understand the nature of this pride, and while I may use elements of it, it is in some ways a false pride and this I wish to avoid; (2) the social philosophy of the enlightenment, especially that of Jean Jacques Rousseau, is significant in its influence on later philosophers and on advances in political theory and practice. (It is Rousseau, incidentally, by whom the pride of the Enlightenment was rudely shaken: he characterized the arts and sciences as fruit of luxury and indolence and the sources of moral decay.)
4.6.1 Voltaire (1694—1778)
The brilliant and versatile propagandist of the Enlightenment popularized and applied Lockean ideas…his thoughts, for the most part, express the spirit of Locke’s philosophy. He ruthlessly attacked superstition and ecclesiastical domination all his life…In spite of his liberalism he is not an apostle of democracy: he had no faith in the capacity of the lower classes for self-government
4.6.2 Materialism and evolutionism
The Enlightenment was largely responsible for popularizing materialism: there is no soul—thought is a function of the brain; matter alone is immortal. The human will is strictly determined; there is no design in nature outside nature, no teleology, no God…this was the extreme expression; the general tenor, though materialist, was not as extreme: the phenomena of nature, be they physical or mental, are governed by law, that the mental and moral life of man is a necessary product of nature
Evolutionary conceptions appear in the writings of many thinkers of the time, for example in La Mettrie’s L’homme plante and L’système d’Epicure 1748; in Diderot’s De la nature 1754 and Bonet’s La palingénérie philosophique 1769. These men may be regarded as the forerunners of Lamarck and Darwin
4.6.3 Progress of the sciences
(Beyond the working out of general philosophical ideas), progress of the sciences was significant as exemplified by the great names: in mathematics and mechanics: Euler, Laplace and Lagrange; in astronomy: Herschel and Laplace; in physics: Galvani and Volta; in chemistry: Lavoisier, Priestley, Davy, Harvey and Berzelius; in biology: Linné, Haller, Bichat, and C. F. Wolff; in politics and jurisprudence: Montesquieu; in the new economic theory: Quesnai, Turgot, and Adam Smith 1723—1790; in esthetics: Baumgarten; Alexander von Humboldt who was eminent in many sciences
4.6.4 Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1685—1754)
Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois (The Spirit of Laws, 1750) was a major contribution to political theory. He was thoroughly familiar with all previous European political thought but did not identify himself with any of the previous schools. His major contributions are to the classification of governments, the theory of the separation of powers, and the political influence of geographical climate. L’Esprit des lois is considered one of the great works in the histories of political theory and of jurisprudence and his contributions to all topics is significant
4.6.5 Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712—1778)
4.6.5.1 Human nature
The original state of nature is portrayed as idyllic…the ‘noble savage’ is governed by free impulse, displaying pity and sympathy for his fellows (contrasts with Hobbes’ view of the state of nature: war of all against all)…Rousseau’s state of nature: a social and political fiction to help understand one aspect of human nature which is operative at all times…the primitivism embodied in the injunction ‘return to nature’ is not a demand to return to nature in its naiveté and simplicity: rather, it is an injunction to man, within the framework of civilized society, to remake himself by cultivating those feelings which promote equality and social justice, to remold social institutions to realize a just and democratic government
4.6.5.2 Political philosophy
Rousseau prefers representative to direct government…takes Locke’s democratic ideal seriously…if all men are created free and equal they should have equal political rights (Rousseau’s ideas found their way into The Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 and 1793)
4.6.5.3 Educational philosophy
Rousseau makes a plea for natural education, for the free development of the child’s natural and unspoiled impulses—(although Kant admired Rousseau through whom he was ‘learning to respect mankind’…Bertrand Russell despised him as the source of much confusion of ‘sentiment’ and reason and as the source of the reign of Robespierre and the dictatorships in Russia and Germany)
4.7 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: IMMANUEL KANT (1724—1804)
4.7.1 Kant’s heritage
The spirit of criticism which had undermined authority and tradition and enthroned reason was now (especially in the hands of Berkeley and Hume) bringing reason itself to the bar and denying reason’s authority
4.7.2 Kant’s problem
Philosophy was now compelled to make some answer…Kant’s problem was to ‘limit Hume’s skepticism on the one hand, the old dogmatism on the other, and to refute and destroy materialism, fatalism, atheism, as well as sentimentalism and superstition’ (according to one of Kant’s contemporaries)…Philosophy, Kant thinks has hitherto been dogmatic: it has proceeded without previous criticism of its own powers. It must enter upon an impartial examination of the faculty of reason in general; with this end in view, Kant writes his three critiques: Critique of Pure Reason—an examination of theoretical reason or science; Critique of Practical Reason—an examination of practical reason or morality; and Critique of Judgment—an examination of our esthetic and teleological judgments, or purposiveness in art and nature
Genuine knowledge Kant defines as universal and necessary knowledge. He agrees with the rationalists that there is such knowledge, but only of the basic assumptions of the sciences of physics and mathematics…With the empiricists he agrees that we can know only what begins in, or that which we can experience: the senses furnish the materials of knowledge and the mind arranges them in ways made necessary by its own nature. Hence we have universal and necessary knowledge of the order of ideas, though not of things-in-themselves (refer to later discussion of Ding-an-sich)…Nevertheless things-in-themselves exist; we can think them but not know them
4.7.3 The problem of knowledge
…is fundamental for Kant: What is knowledge and how is it possible? Knowledge always appears in the form of judgments in which something is affirmed or denied…Kant first considers analytic judgments—in which the predicate elucidates what is already contained in the subject; e.g., a tall man is a man. To qualify as knowledge, a judgment must by synthetic: it must extend our knowledge, not merely elucidate it. However, not all synthetic judgments are universal and necessary (a priori). Some are empirical: derived from experience; these inform us, for example, that an object has certain properties—but not that it must have those qualities. Empirical judgments are not genuine knowledge, are not necessary, are after the fact: a posteriori. Again, empirical or a posteriori judgments are not universal (i.e., they cannot be claimed to be universal on the basis of experience); we cannot say that because some objects of a class have certain qualities (no matter how often this is confirmed and even if no exceptions have been observed), that all have them. It would seem that all synthetic judgments must be empirical (at least to ‘scientifically’ minded people). Indeed, before Kant, synthetic and empirical (or a posteriori) were often not distinguished. (My comment: yet it is clear to imagine ways in which synthetic judgments may be universal and necessary: our very formation may be so in attune with the universe that certain facets of our perceptual-cognitive systems may render synthetic (contentful) judgments that are always true (universal) and represent the very nature of the universe (necessary). This argument is plausible on the grounds that the principles of our formation are the principles of the universe; e.g., formation is evolution, or both mind and universe were formed by the same power.) But Kant’s claim is that knowledge consists of synthetic a priori (necessary and universal) judgments—that such judgments are possible…(note: for a class of objects which is necessarily finite, the distinction a priori or a posteriori may disappear for practical purposes.)
That there are synthetic a priori judgments Kant did not doubt for a moment: we find them in the basic principles of physics, and in mathematics; as regards the existence of such knowledge in metaphysics, Kant had serious reservations…Kant accepts synthetic a priori judgments—universal and necessary knowledge as existing; he does not ask whether synthetic a priori judgments are possible, but only how the are possible…: Kant’s critical method is, at lease in one of its phases, dogmatic: the theory of knowledge is, as he himself says, a strictly demonstrable science, an a priori or pure science, one that bases its truth on necessary principles a priori. His method is not psychological but logical or transcendental: he asks, not how did real knowledge—such as the propositions of mathematics or the principles of physics—come about, but what does the existence of such knowledge logically presuppose
The problem then is: How are synthetic judgments a priori possible in mathematics, in the foundations of physics, or, how are pure mathematics and pure physics possible? The parallel question regarding metaphysical knowledge cannot be asked in quite the same way because Kant holds metaphysics suspect
Knowledge presupposes a mind
Sensitivity furnishes us with the sense qualities which are the constituents of perceptual objects. These perceptual objects must also be thought, understood or conceived by the understanding—the concepts of the understanding play their indispensable role in knowledge…’Percepts and concepts constitute the elements of all our knowledge.’ Percepts without concepts are blind, concepts without percepts are empty
4.7.4 The first transcendental method
Kant’s formulation of the transcendental method is perhaps the first attempt in modern philosophy to devise a distinctively philosophical method…The argument from experience to its necessary presuppositions is the crux of the transcendental method… ‘although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises out of experience’…The critical problem is: What are the necessary conditions of the very possibility of an experience, the formal features of which are space, time and the categories? Kant’s reply: Experience is possible only on the assumption that the formal features formed in experience are a priori conditions of existence. (Charles Handel—in the introduction to Ernst Cassirer’s work on symbolic forms—notes that Kant integrates the idealistic and realistic attitudes and capabilities over the range of human experience…but not beyond this experience)
I call Kant’s the first transcendental method because I later identify two others, the second or Heidegger’s and the third transcendental methods. The third transcendental method is transcendental logic i.e. the possibility of derivation of synthetic / empirical proposotions by pure logic. The third method, outlined in Journey in Being may seem to not truly make derivations possible by logic alone because it appears to assume the single fact there ‘is existence.’ However, it is shown in that essay that existence is and must be regarded as given. The possibilities for the third method, contrary to what might be expected, are substantial. As an alternative to derivation from from a single fact, the third method may be regarded as an a way to generate an axiomatic system from a single axiom and the laws of logic. Various systems may result from additional axioms that purport to model the nature of our world; these would include the first and second methods. Also included would be the variety of logics. A question that arises is ‘Do the laws of logic have synthetic foundation?’ or ‘What is the nature of the world such that logic is possible?’ This may be a starting point for the development of theories of logic. By varying both the axioms of the third method and the systems of logic, various axiomatic systems may result
Note that I have not here referred to Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology as a transcendental method
4.7.5 Preliminary analysis of experience
…Kant’s empiricism is a ‘radical empiricism’ precisely in William James’ sense because it finds in experience, relations as well as the base sense qualia (also: Whitehead)…(A phenomenology:) Form, in Kant, embraces everything structural and relational in experience: matter pertains to qualia subsumed under the forms. ‘That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation I term matter; but that which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations, I term the form of appearance’…Any object of experience may be analyzed into three constituents (1) discrete qualia—the ‘impressions’ of Hume’s analysis, (2) the spatial and temporal continua—the so-called forms of intuition, and (3) the pure concepts or categories. Under item 1 are embraced all material ingredients of our experience; external sense qualia: colors, sounds, tastes…as well as qualia of the inner sense: emotional, volitional and hedonic data. Items 2 and 3 together constitute the sole formal ingredients of experience and it is with them that the transcendental method deals…(There is no pretension that this analysis is exhaustive or correct.)…The analysis was devised for extrospective experience but it was equally intended for introspective experience, and presumably to the apprehension of other minds…For introspective analysis of individual minds, there are on the side of ‘matter’ the sense qualia which, as presentations, are members of the conscious series; moreover there are certain hedonic, emotional, and volitional items peculiar to the conscious series (is this distinction valid: regarding validity of inner and outer for, as sense qualia—the ‘internal ones ‘ have ‘origin’ in the external world, so may the inner qualia have origin in the body…further, may external volitions, etc., be ‘other minds’: this would further break down the distinction inner and outer by making inner and outer more completely symmetric). On the formal side, time is the peculiar form of conscious process and the categories are no less applicable to empirical consciousness than to physical objects. Kant’s entire philosophical procedure could have departed either from the introspected self or the perceived object; his preference for the latter is convenience
Kant’s initial analysis of experience—regardless of the success or failure of any subsequent construction resting upon it—is a truly significant contribution to the empirical and phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Kant’s empiricism is more radical than even that of Hume; the latter dissolved experience into discrete and atomistic impressions; Kant discerned the relational and structural features of every genuine experience…saw that atomistic impressions, though real constructs of experience, are mere abstractions when taken out of their structural context. Kant’s analysis of experience thus has the virtues of comprehensiveness and completeness, not as Kant had claimed an absolute and demonstrable completeness—this claim is gratuitous since, in the empirical tradition, no observer, however competent and circumspect, can be certain that some essential ingredient of experience may not have eluded him—but the completeness attained by a reasoning—by discerning and circumspect analyst
4.7.6 The theory of sense perception
First take up the ‘transcendental esthetic’: the logical preconditions of sense perception: Perception can be analyzed into sensations, constituting the matter or content of experience, and space and time constituting the form—for mere sensation would not be knowledge but mere modification of consciousness. The formal and the material together constitute percepts. (What about for the infant?) The mind not only receives sensation but by virtue of its faculty of intuition (intueri: envision) perceives them: it sees the color (hears the color) outside of itself (the mind) in spatio-temporal order. (Comment: (1) Surely the channel of communication must be organized and/or the communication itself coded regarding transfer from sense organs to consciousness, etc.—so that the information pertaining to the intuition be conserved, and (2) time may be –seems to be—more fundamental than space in that a primitive sensor—say a binary one—could perceive a time series containing a minimum of two bits—now and then—without spatial organization)…The functions or forms of arranging sensations in space and time cannot themselves be sensations—are not empirical or a posteriori forms of intuition, are inherent in the very nature of mind—a priori. Time is the form of inner sense (or has both outer and inner aspects in some parallel fashion): psychic states cannot be apprehended otherwise than as one following another in temporal succession; while space is the form of outer sense: we must apprehend spatially that which affects our sense organs. But since everything given or presented to sense is a modification of consciousness and so belongs to the inner sense, time is a necessary condition of all our representations, whether of the inner or outer sense
Space and time are not realities or things—are ways our sensibility has of apprehending objects, are forms or functions of the sense; if there were no beings in the world endowed with intuition or perception of space and time, the world would cease to be spatial and temporal (except for interaction). ‘Take away the thinking subject and the entire corporeal world will vanish, for it is nothing but the appearance in the sensibility of our subject(again, except for interaction). We can never imagine that there is no space (but we can imagine that there is no extension if we are a point sensor of single mode) although we can conceive that it contains no objects. That is, we are compelled to perceive and imagine in terms of space. Space is a necessary precondition of phenomena and hence a necessary a priori idea. This is an example of Kant’s philosophical method—the transcendental method…the same line of argument applies to time
How then, is pure mathematics possible: we have synthetic judgments a priori in mathematics because the mind has space and time forms
We cannot apply the space and time forms beyond the world of our experience. But this restriction need not disturb us since the certainty of our experiential knowledge is left untouched (whether space and time inhere in things-in-themselves or are the necessary forms of our perception of things)…What things-in-themselves are apart from our sensibility, we simply do not know. (And there may be universes of things-in-themselves with new forms not yet communicating through experience, or communicating through the a-conscious.)
4.7.7 The theory of the understanding
The spatio-temporal organization of our experience is, however, not enough…would not yield knowledge…the forms of sensibility are intuitional; the understanding, however, is conceptual: we think in concepts…The understanding by itself cannot intuit or perceive anything; the senses by themselves cannot think anything. Knowledge is possible only in the union of the two. The science of the rules of sensibility: ‘Transcendental Esthetic’: the science of the rules of understanding: ‘Transcendental Analytic’
In addition to the (spatio-temporal) forms of intuition, then, are certain ways of understanding the world or, more correctly, ways of understanding experience, which, themselves, are necessary, not derived from experience but from the innate organizing, relating…ability of the mind. What is sought is a system of forms in which judgments (propositions) appear…again, no such system can be known to be complete. However, forms of propositions or judgments have been set out in common logic; Kant uses these forms of judgment as a basis for the forms of understanding or categories
In classical (common, Aristotelian) logic there are twelve forms of judgment arranged in four groups of three: Group I quantity: (1) the universal judgment (all metals are elements), (2) particular judgment (some animals are four-legged), (3) singular judgment (Napoleon was Emperor of France); II quality: (4) the affirmative judgment (heat is a form of motion), (5) the negative judgment (mind is not extended), (6) the infinite or unlimited judgment (mind is unextended): III relation: (7) the categorical judgment (this body is heavy). (8) the hypothetical judgment (if air is warm, its molecules move fast), (9) the disjunctive judgment (the substance is either fluid or solid), IV modality: (10) the problematical judgment(this may be a poison), (11) the assertory judgment (this is a poison), (12) the apodictic judgment (every effect must have a cause)
4.7.8 Kant’s forms of understanding
The correlation of forms of judgment and categories:
|
JUDGMENTS |
CATEGORIES |
|
I. QUANTITY |
I. OF QUANTITY |
|
1. UNIVERSAL |
1. UNITY |
|
2. PARTICULAR |
2. PLURALITY |
|
3. SINGULAR |
3. TOTALITY |
|
II. QUALITY |
II. OF QUALITY |
|
4. AFFIRMATIVE |
4. REALITY |
|
5. NEGATIVE |
5. NEGATION |
|
6. INFINITE |
6. LIMITATION |
|
III. RELATION |
III. OF RELATION |
|
7. CATEGORICAL |
7. INHERENCE AND SUBSISTENCE |
|
8. HYPOTHETICAL |
8. CAUSALITY AND DEPENDENCE |
|
9. DISJUNCTIVE |
9. COMMUNITY |
|
IV. MODALITY |
IV. OF MODALITY |
|
10. PROBLEMATIC |
10. POSSIBILITY—IMPOSSIBILITY |
|
11. ASSERTIVE |
11. EXISTENCE—NONEXISTENCE |
|
12. APODICTIC |
12. NECESSITY—CONTINGENCY |
4.7.9 Validity of judgment
The problem then arises, what right have we to apply these forms of the mind to things? What we need is a proof: a transcendental deduction of the categories. Kant’s proof consists in showing that without them intelligible experience would be impossible. Understanding is judgment, the act of bringing together in one self-consciousness (unity of apperception) the many perceived objects. Without a rational mind that perceives things in certain ways (space and time) and judges or thinks in certain ways (the categories), that is so constituted that it must perceive and judge as it does, there could be no universal and necessary object of experience…Categories serve to make experience possible: that is their sole justification…This is what Kant meant when he said that understanding prescribes its own laws to nature; this is the ‘Copernican revolution’ which he effected in philosophy
Since, then, mind prescribes its laws to nature, it follows that we can know a priori the universal forms of nature. (But there may be elements and forms of nature, actually, essentially outside of experience—or at least of the human mind.) We cannot, therefore, go wrong in applying the categories to the world of sense. But…they can be legitimately employed only in the field of actual or possible experience, only in the phenomenal world…we cannot transcend experience nor have conceptual knowledge of the super sensuous, of things-in-themselves
But how can categories which are intellectual, be applied to percepts, to sensible phenomena? Pure concepts and sense percepts are absolutely dissimilar or heterogeneous according to Kant; how, then, can we get them together? There must be a third something, a mediating entity (which must be pure: without anything empirical, and, at the same time, sensuous)…This something Kant calls the transcendental schema. The employment of such a schema is the schematism of understanding. The time-form fills the requirements laid down: it is both pure and sensuous. All our ideas are subject to the time form…the time form is at once percept and concept and through this the general system of transcendental schemas relating the forms of perception to the categories of understanding may be constructed…consider, first, quantity: the time form is experience as a linear series and this generates quantity (number of elements in a sub series) and the operations of quantity (addition is the union of disjunct sub series, etc.) One moment in time represents singularity: several moments express particularity; al, totality of moments, universality
(I) Thus the category of quantity is expressed in the schema of time-series: similarly (II) the category or concept of quality is expressed in the schema of time: content: the intellect imagines sensations occurring in a time: a content in time, something in time, or it imagines nothing in time: reality, limitation, negation
(III) The category of relation is expressed in the schema of time-order; the intellect looks upon what is real in the following ways: what remains when all else changes—permanence, substance; or something upon which something else invariably follows in time—causality; qualities of one substance and qualities of another substance invariable appearing together in time: reciprocal action or the category of community
(IV) The category of modality is expressed in the schema of time: comprehension: the intellect thinks of something existing at any time (possibility) (some time), at a definite time (actuality), at all times (necessity)
The Unity of Self-Consciousness: The culmination of Kant’s transcendental procedure is his doctrine of the transcendental unity of apperception. This unity of self-consciousness is presupposed by the categories as the categories are presupposed by experience; or, rather, it is directly presupposed by experience in so far as it is categorized
The transcendental unity of apperception is a sine qua non (essential) of experience because it is presupposed by the categories which in turn are presupposed by experience. Thus, the transcendental unity of apperception occupies the unique position in the sphere of the transcendental, in that it is the final term in the retrogressive series, experience and the categories presuppose it but it presupposes nothing else. The transcendental unity of apperception accordingly occupies a position in Kant’s system analogous to that of substance in systems which define substance as the ultimate…; it is the ultimate a priori…The backward movement from experience to its logical precondition having been carried to its culmination, Kant, in the third and final step of the transcendental argument, reverse the direction of his thought and moves forward from the a priori forms to the a priori truths which they validate
4.7.10 Knowledge of things-in-themselves
(Noumena: German Ding-an-sich)…The concept of the thing-in-itself, or noumenon, as something not knowable by the senses, but as something capable of being known by intellectual intuition, is at least thinkable. It is a limiting concept; it says to the knowing mind: here is your limit, you can go no further, here is where your jurisdiction ceases…Kant insists that the noumenon exists but is compelled by the nature of his system to make it a very elusive and hazy factor…We cannot know the supersensible by means of our senses. We cannot know it—in the Kantian sense of genuine knowledge—for we are not entitled to apply our categories to it: if we do so, then at least within the Kantian framework, the application has no objective validity
4.7.11 Impossibility of metaphysics
We cannot have knowledge of the supersensible in metaphysics (the science of being as being); metaphysics is a pseudoscience. Kant’s rejection of metaphysics is not, however, complete and unqualified. There are several senses in which he regards metaphysics as possible: (1) as a study of theory of knowledge, (2) as absolute knowledge of the laws and forms of nature, (3) as absolute knowledge of the laws and forms of will, (4) as knowledge of the spiritual world, based on moral law, (5) as a hypothesis of the universe having a certain degree of probability…Consider some of the grounds on which Kant rejects ‘dogmatic’ or speculative metaphysics of the kind advanced by his rationalist predecessors. The reason, when it enters the world of the supersensible, confuses percepts with mere thought, and in this way falls into all kinds of ambiguities, equivocation false inferences, and contradictions. Questions which have a meaning when asked with respect to our world of experience have none when we transcend phenomena. Categories like cause and effect, substance and accident have no meaning when applied to the noumenal world. Metaphysics, in making this illegitimate application, falls into error and illusion which as distinguished from ordinary sensory illusion, Kant calls transcendental illusion. Principles applied within the confines of ordinary experience are immanent: those which transcend these limits are transcendent principles or concepts of reason, or ideas. Such higher laws of reason are (merely) subjective laws of economy for the understanding striving to reduce the use of concepts to the smallest number: this speculative enterprise aims at unification of the judgments of understanding. This supreme Reason does not prescribe laws to objects, nor does it explain our knowledge of them; its sole function is to guide and direct our inquiries. Thus reason strives to bring all mental processes under a single head, or Idea of a soul in rational psychology; all physical events under the Idea of nature in rational cosmology; all occurrences in general under the Idea of God in rational theology. The notion of God would, therefore, be the highest Idea, the one absolute Whole comprehending everything…Such Ideas are, however, transcendent, beyond experience: they can never be empirically fulfilled or exemplified: we can never represent the Idea of an absolute totality in the form of an image. It is a problem without a solution. Yet these ideas have value: they are regulative rather than constitutive
4.7.12 Rational cosmology
Kant’s famous antinomies: (1) the world has a beginning and is limited in space; the world is eternal and unlimited, (2) bodies are infinitely divisible; they are not (-are made of atoms), there is freedom in the world; everything takes place according to the (deterministic) laws of nature, (4) there exists an absolutely necessary being either as part of the world or as cause of it; there is no such being…Every right-thinking man prefers, in each case, the thesis if he knows his true interests. (The speculative interest is the counter-dogmatism of the empiricist by denying what goes beyond the sphere of intuitive knowledge.) Kant solves the difficulties by pointing out that for each case the antithesis holds for the phenomenal world…and therefore practical reason requires the existence of the transcendent, noumenal world…There is no paradox because it is true that our sense-perceived world has no beginning in time and no extreme limit in space…nonetheless we cannot genuinely know the noumenon and have no right to search for spiritual beings in space and for spatial beings in the supersensible realm (but this does not rule out unknown or unexpected ‘spirit-like’ phenomena in space…)
By the type of argument above freedom and necessity can be reconciled. The phenomena can be regarded as ‘caused’ by the thing-in-itself, the noumenal cause, which is not perceived, but whose phenomenal appearances are perceived and arranged in an unbroken causal series…(The necessity of freedom and the determinate nature of the sensible world demonstrates the existence of the noumenal world…of course, can we say by quantum physics that the sensible world is not causal? Perhaps! But alternatively we can regard quantum phenomena as supersensible, the non-deterministic world…I know this argument confuses causal and deterministic, but for the present purpose this is not problematic…there are also other subtleties of interpretation as to what aspect or point of contact of quantum phenomena is the sensible but I should go into this at a later time.)
Applying this insight to humans we have the following interpretation of human action and conduct. Looked at through the spectacles of sense and understanding, man is a part of nature; in this aspect he has an empirical character; he is a link in a chain of causes and effects. But in reality man is an intelligible or spiritual being. To such a being some forms do not apply; such a being can originate acts. Human cognizance of this power is attested by the fact that an individual holds himself responsible for his decisions and actions…
4.7.13 Use of metaphysics in experience
As we have seen above, the transcendental Ideas have no constitutive use; that is, they are not concepts productive of objects; they have a regulative use; that is, they direct the understanding in its inquiries: they unify the manifoldness of concepts, just as the categories bring into unity the manifoldness of objects…Nature can be divided into species. Reason demands that no species is the lowest and that between every species and subspecies is an intervening species is always possible—by (a presupposed) transcendental law of nature—the law of continuity in nature…The only purpose of the Idea of a Supreme Being is to preserve the greatest systematic unity in the empirical use of our reason. The idea of a ground or cause of objects in our experience helps us organize our knowledge…The Ideas of the reason are not mere fictions of the mind but are highly useful, indeed necessary methodological ideals…Human knowledge begins with percepts, proceeds to concepts, and ends with ideas. It has a priori sources of knowledge with respect to all three elements
4.7.14 Use of teleology in nature
Included among the ideas which reason applies in the contemplation of nature is the idea of purpose, or the teleological idea (as explanation of function). The understanding conceives every existent whole of nature solely as the effect of the concurrent forces of its moving parts. In the case of organic bodies, however, the parts seem to depend on the whole, to be determined by the form or plan or idea of its whole. Every part is both a means and an end…Here, again, we have an antinomy and a dialectic of which the thesis is: the creation of all material things is possible by mechanical laws; the antithesis: the creation of some is not possible according to mechanical laws. The contradiction is removed when we take these propositions not as constitutive principles but as regulative principles. When so interpreted, the thesis invites us to look for mechanical causes in nature; the antithesis: to search for final causes or purposes in certain cases—even in nature as a whole—when the mechanical explanation does not seem to suffice
4.7.15 Ethics
Kant’s moral philosophy, which he represents in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, and Metaphysics of Morals, may be regarded as an attempt to settle the quarrel between intuitionism and empiricism, idealism and hedonism…moral consciousness implies freedom of will. It also implies the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, notions which the Critique of Pure Reason had shattered as scientifically demonstrable dogmas, but had left as possibilities…There is a moral proof of these dogmas based on the categorical imperative…’The’ categorical imperative, or the moral law: always act so that you can will the maxim or determining principle of your action to become universal law. (The category may be regarded as the determining principle in the form of free action of will.) It is imperative because it is to done out of duty. The categorical imperative is a universal (analytically) and necessary law, a priori, inherent in reason itself…
In Critique of Pure reason Kant rejects all the old arguments for the freedom of the will, the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul. In Critique of Practical Reason, these three notions are reinstated on the basis of the moral law
Kant’s critics and successors include: J. G. Herder (1744—1803) and E. H. Jacobi (1743—1819)
4.7.16 Some comments on the successors of Kant
The first, and perhaps not the least difficult, task consisted in understanding the nature of Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ in philosophy—his contention that mind prescribes laws to nature, and not vice versa…Jena became the home of a new school of philosophy and through the efforts of Schiller, Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel who taught there, philosophy became one of the most honored subjects of study in Germany…Among the other tasks that confronted the successors of Kant were the development of his epistemology, the unification of its principles, the solution of problems following from his dualism between the intelligible and phenomenal worlds, freedom and mechanism, form and matter, knowledge and faith, practical reason and theoretical reason; and in the removal of the inconsistencies introduced by the notion of the thing-in-itself. Another work to be undertaken was the construction of a universal system on the critical foundation laid by Kant; this became the chief occupation of the most famous successors of the great reformer: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel
4.8 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY AFTER KANT
The philosophy of Kant is a focal point in Western philosophy. The problem areas and philosophical areas of his predecessors receive, to a significant degree, a resolution and an integral treatment. The areas are natural science; metaphysics: being as being: the thing-in-itself; alternative concepts of cause and explanation: teleology; and morals. The different approaches to knowledge finding some degree of mutual and integral expression in Kant’s critical philosophy are:
Empiricism: source of knowledge in sense and experience
Idealism: source of knowledge, true being as ideas, mind and/or values founded in ideals
Realism: external reality exists independently of a mind, knower
4.8.1 A brief review of Kant’s progression of thought or presentation:
Starts with empiricism: percepts; sees how far the understanding of percepts can go through concepts—the a priori; forms a transcendental system of relations (schema) between percepts and concepts
Once the limit of this approach is reached, comes back to the given: the existence of moral law: to derive the existence of the thing-in-itself…thus proceeds from elements of realism to idealism
Of course Kant’s system is inadequate (being based on notions of space, time and the mathematics and Newtonian mechanics of the time as absolute), incomplete (Kant was not aware of the process of formation of human beings and the implications for the levels of understanding), and non-unified (Kant does not proceed from a monism but rather takes each approach as far as he can and then, for further understanding, dips again from the well of reality)
His philosophy has multiple starting levels (modes of description) which interact…Relative to his time these are strengths, leaving, for a later day, unification and completeness (or progress in these directions)
Philosophy after Kant owes much to his critical synthesis. While there is some debate over the question of Kant’s rank as a philosopher (some holding him to be the greatest of the modern era) there is no question that he resolved significant questions that had been raised by philosophy before him, that he achieved a high degree of synthesis, that he influenced and, in a sense, made possible much subsequent philosophy. Irrespective of his rank, he stands at a focal point in the history of modern philosophy…The rays emanating from Kant are three:
4.8.2 The legacy of Kant
4.8.2.1 Idealism
The fundamental principle is mind, idea, will, ego…and the fundamental goods are the products of the mind (idea, will, ego, spirit…). Related to rationalism: emphasizes the mind in constructing reality. There are numerous variants to idealism in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, psychology…and in non-Western thought. Derivatives are: intuitionism, existentialism
4.8.2.2 Realism
The object of knowledge is perception, memory, abstract logical, mathematical thought. In science is a reality which exists independently of the knowing mind. Derivatives are German phenomenology, naïve realism (G. E. Moore); objectivism, perspectivism, neutral monism; representative realism, new-realism (monistic), dualistic realism (including critical realism)
4.8.2.3 Empiricism
Which tends to be anti-realistic and leads into logical empiricism. Derivatives are conventionalism (anti-realistic); pragmatism; positivism; and analytical philosophy
4.9 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN IDEALISM
4.9.1 Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762—1814)
Basal insight, keystone of the critical philosophy: freedom leads to will, ego: not part of the causal link, but free, self-determining
The will, ego is derived from moral law
The pure ego: objective idealism
Nature is the incentive to will
4.9.2 Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775—1854)
Rejects the idea of nature as the incentive to will
Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature
Evolution of self-consciousness: primary sensation leads to creative imagination
4.9.3 Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768—1834)
Deeply religious, marked intellectual capability
His problem
To develop a conception of reality to satisfy the intellect as well as the heart: included romanticism
Object
Construction of a great system of Protestant Theology
Knowledge and faith
Human intelligence analyzes and is thus limited in its knowledge of the unity of the divine nature: the identity of thought and being…the ideal is achieved only in religious feeling or divine intuition
4.9.4 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770—1831): the culmination of rational idealism
Nature, mind are one: being and reason are identical
Processes at work in reason are at work everywhere…the universe is logical
Dialectic method
Abstract concepts cannot absorb reality…thought therefore proceeds by the dialectic process; truth is a living logical process
In a sense, philosophy culminates in Hegel: history is logic; philosophy is logic…the logic of history and the logic of mind meet in philosophy
Hegelian philosophy: the final synthesis in which Absolute Mind becomes conscious of itself
4.10 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AFTER HEGEL
4.10.1 Johann Friedrich Hebart (1776—1841)
At first, after Hegel, there is a realistic reaction, due to the influence (1840—1860) of science: Meyer, Darwin are expressed in Hebart and others interlaced through this period
Realism of Hebart:
Reality is absolutely self-consistent
Realistic philosophy, metaphysics and psychology, science of values (not dealing with reality, but with values)
His greatest influence was in education: ends are ethics: instruction, apperception, interest are important in education
4.10.2 A return to idealism: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860)
Thing-in-itself is will
4.10.3 Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801—1887)
Pan psychism: the entire universe and its strata of various scales (micro to macro) contain minds
4.10.4 Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817—1881)
Bridged the gap between classical German philosophy and 20th-century idealism
Reconciled: monism—pluralism: mechanism—teleology; realism—idealism; pantheism—theism
‘Theistic idealism’…included in his objective: to do justice to the ethical-religious idealism of Fichte and the scientific interpretation of natural phenomena (‘A thinker well-fitted by training and temperament to re-establish philosophy’ after the realistic reaction to Hegelian idealism.)
4.10.5 Friedrich Albert Lange (1828—1875)
German Neo-Kantian and Socialist, wrote Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (1866; History of Materialism) in which he refuted materialism
4.10.6 Wilhelm Wundt (1832—1920)
Knowledge flows from the facts of consciousness
4.10.7 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900)
Will to power: the active principle
4.10.8 Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1846—1926)
German Idealist philosopher, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1908), interpreter of Aristotle, and author of works in ethics and religion
Universal spirited process forms the ground of all being
4.10.9 Wilhelm Windelbland (1848—1915)
A historian of philosophy who did not systematically expound his views but expressed them in unconnected essays. He regarded himself as in the tradition of German idealism but did not see himself as Neo-Kantian, Neo-Fichtean or Neo-Hegelian. His main position was that whereas science determines facts, philosophy determines values—a system of philosophy in which value has a central role
4.10.10Ernst Cassirer (1874—1945)
Noted for his analysis of cultural values
Cassirer felt it necessary to revise Kantianianism to include a wider range of human experience. Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 vol. (1923–29; The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms), is an examination of mental images and functions of the mind that underlie every manifestation of human culture. Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910; Substance and Function), treats concept formation to which he brought a Kantian slant—a concept is already pre-existent before any task involving the classification of particulars can even be performed; humankind is essentially characterized by a unique ability to use the ‘symbolic forms’ of myth, language, and science in structuring or imaging experience and in understanding
4.11 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FRENCH AND BRITISH NINETEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
Beginnings of Positivism, And its Interaction with Empiricism
After the French Enlightenment, there was a positivist reaction against sensationalism and materialism in France, but the various movements do not possess the vigor to satisfy an age which still held the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity
4.11.1 Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760—1825): a new science of society
To reform society—with a basis in Christian love—we need to turn away from the (then) period of skepticism—negation and criticism—we need a positive philosophy
4.11.2 August Comte (1798—1857)
His motive: social reform requires social science. Science is natural laws which are facts and relations which are positive knowledge
4.11.2.1 Stages of knowledge
According to Comte: The theological precedes the metaphysical which precedes the positive which is real, useful (origins: utilitarianism), exact (not mere negative, that is, criticism)
4.11.2.2 Comte’s scheme of sciences
Builds to the last and most complex science which, according to the early Comte, is social science. Social science includes:
An ideal of humanity (definitive stage is positive)
Antidote to misgovernment is public opinion (he was against representative government)
4.11.2.3 A theory of history
Progress to the ideal
4.11.2.4 Ethics
Later in his career Comte adds ethics as the seventh and highest science:
Feelings and practice paramount
Subjective method
(A progression in his view over his positivism.)
4.12 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH UTILITARIANISM
We have seen the origin of utilitarianism in Comte’s ideas—utilitarianism must share with positivism the idea of a positive calculation: that a positive calculation of utility is possible and meaningful
4.12.1 Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832):
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789. The utility principle based on pleasure and pain (sources of pleasure and pain: physical, political, social, religious)
The Hedonistic Calculus: a quantitative measure of pleasures and pains is to be used in determining actions. Factors or dimension are:
1. Intensity, 2. Duration, 3. Degree of certainty, 4. Remoteness, 5. Fecundity (chance of being followed by a similar sensation), 6. Purity (opposite of fecundity), 7. Extent (number of persons affected)
Precursor of utility theory, optimization theory as a tool
4.12.2 John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
Mill threads together empiricism and positivism (Mill’s philosophy is significantly positivist even when it is not overtly so): Later day British Empiricism (this includes Mill) has much in common with positivism (and herein lies the weakness of Mill’s method of empirical logic and inductive inference, his law of causation, and rejection of a priori truths…despite his great prolificacy and practical influence)
Mill’s interest in science, like Saint-Simon’s and Comte’s, is motivated by his interest in social reform
4.12.2.1 The external world and the self
Mill holds that we can know only phenomena (though he admits the thing-in-itself)…Mill’s metaphysics is too limited to hold present interest
4.12.2.2 Mental and moral sciences
For social reform Mill calls for a reform of the mental and moral sciences
4.12.2.3 Psychological determinism
(1) cause and effect, (2) humans are free regarding inner desires, (3) the will is not always hedonistic
4.12.2.4 Ethology
Science of formation of character
4.12.2.5 Social science
Mill’s method would be complex: more like that of the complex physical sciences than of geometry: predictions are tendencies rather than positive statements
Science of government is part of the science of society
History when judiciously examined illustrates the empirical laws of society…which can be checked—verified—by psychological and ethological laws…
Social stasis and stability result from consensus…dynamics is progression
4.12.2.6 Ethics
The greatest good of the greatest number…unlike Bentham: the quality of pleasure is important. Mill vacillates between (1) the empirical—hedonistic—egoistic –deterministic, and (2) the intuitionistic—perfectionistic—altruistic—free-willistic. This accommodating feature of Mill’s theories made them attractive to many and useful in practice: his utilitarianism instituted a critical and intelligent conformity to conventional morality for a blind one
4.12.2.7 Liberalism
Mill fought intellectual battles for democracy and the rights of women…pointed out the ‘importance to man and society, of a large variety of types in character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting dimensions.’
4.12.3 Herbert Spencer (1820—1903)
Subscribed to a synthetic unity of knowledge whose evolution is a compromise between intuitionism (the a priori) and empiricism… His major work is First Principles 1860—1862. Spencer is sometimes regarded as the originator of Darwinism as the idea that Darwin’s principles of evolution by natural selection is of universal application. Spencer published ideas on the evolution of the species before the publication of the works of Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin on the same topic but his theory of evolution was originally Lamarckian. He later accepted the theory of natural selection and in Principles of Biology, 1864, coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.’
His evolutionary philosophy was Lamarckian, passive, mechanistic and noninteractive. Absolute uniformities of experience generate absolute uniformities of thought…external uniformities over generations lead over generations (by evolution) to fixed association of ideas and necessary forms of thought. He does not tell ‘how it was possible for connections to be made at the dawn of knowledge which today are (or seem) impossible without an a priori synthetic mind.’
4.12.3.1 Laws of evolution
Concentration –differentiation—formation
4.12.3.2 Biology
Adaptation of internal to external relations
4.12.3.3 Psychology
Consciousness is adaptation of serially ranged inner states to outer states
4.12.3.4 External world
Idealism is a disease of language…’realism forced on us by the basal law of consciousness, the universal law of reason.’ ‘Ontological order and relation are the source of the phenomenal.’
4.12.3.5 Ethics
Welfare of units and groups, not society, is the end (target) of morality:
4.12.3.6 Justice
The limit of evolution in which all humans achieve ends in harmony
Beneficence: mutual aid
4.12.3.7 Optimism
Life brings more happiness than misery
4.12.3.8 Hedonism
Good is the pleasurable
4.12.3.9 Politics
Spencer is against socialism and state interference; he is for competition and laissez faire in social, economic and political spheres
5 THE RECENT PERIOD: LATE 19TH TO 21ST CENTURY
I think of the recent period as the 20th and 21st centuries but not to the exclusion of the 19th century. The recent period can be seen—this will be given an intrinsic refinement below—as that period in which we are immersed to the point that it is difficult to have the objectivity that comes from distance and un-involvement. This is not to imply that objectivity is otherwise impossible or that there is an absolute value to distance and un-involvement
Recent tendencies grow out of the developments to this point and the cultural influences—these include the cultural trends of the West including such main influences as Cartesianism, science and, within philosophy, the dualism of rationalism vs. empiricism and all its twists, turns and divisions. Philosophy starts from realism but by criticism (the conflict of) realism is found to be not absolute but depends upon the common culture—the common paradigms, pictures, symbols and stories or myths. Cultural influences also include those from other modern, ancient and native societies and civilizations
These influences are detailed below
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.1.1 Influences on recent philosophy
First, I outline some influences on recent philosophy. The ‘internal’ influences are the trends arising in the history of philosophy until the recent period. ‘External’ influences are the ascent of science and analysis, cultural influences, and the culture of the individual. This system of complex influences are the sources of influence upon recent philosophy. The development of a discipline is not deterministic—recent philosophy may be better understood by an inclusion of the influences in the understanding; however the development of philosophy is not determined by the influences and contains its own elements of novelty. In order to continue as a vibrant discipline, philosophy must contain its own elements of novelty
5.1.1.1 The history and nature of philosophy: Thales to the modern period
What is accepted as philosophy in any age may be subject to the Kuhnian concept of the paradigm: the paradigm that defines acceptable practice includes implicit elements that are not fully spelled out—that is not to say that they could not (or could) be spelled out
5.1.1.1.1 Paradigms
There is also an explicit reflection upon practice and ideals that interact with the implicit attitudes in constituting the paradigm. However, it is not in the nature of philosophy to approach some delimitation or definiteness of subject matter in the way that science does
The concept of paradigm is also somewhat paradigmatic. Kuhn held that different paradigms are incommensurable meaning that, while the words might be the same, the actual differences among alternate paradigms are so great as to constitute an insurmountable barrier to communication and understanding. Kuhn also held that the truth of each paradigm was relative to the culture and that paradigms contained no absolute truth; this point was emphasized by Paul Feyerabend. Given that each culture negotiates a world that is not entirely of their own creation and that different cultures live in worlds that are not completely alien, it follows that the different paradigms have some measure of truth and that they may share enough truth for there to be common truth and sharing of understanding
Further, paradigms are not flat but multi-layered with elements of but not full hierarchy. For example, paradigmatic attitudes to truth in philosophy which are not the same as but not completely different from truth in philosophy are affected by and affect attitudes to the possibility of truth in general
The possibility and nature of disciplines is thus complex and attitudes to this possibility are affected by realism, the pendulum (pendulums) of opinion, happenstance and fashion
5.1.1.1.2 What is philosophy?
There is a limitation on defining or specifying the nature of any discipline. First, that such fields of activity are paradigmatic in the sense of Thomas Kuhn, i.e., that the definition is through practice and unwritten or unspoken or, in part, through at most partially explicit and definite norms. A second difficulty is that a purpose of definition is not only the understanding of the past but to understand and navigate the future. What is science? A difficulty of definition is that science adapts, within a broad framework, to the needs of the discipline or problem… Subsequent paragraphs consider some further, generic problems associated with specifying what philosophy may be. The problems include the issue of distinguishing the activity, the methods and the accumulated narrative. What is philosophical activity and what are its methods—are there any? The answers to these questions lie in the historical process but any specific answer may depend on the orientation of the individual or groups of individuals—schools. Is philosophy purely rational—an exercise of the mind… is it descriptive… is it empirical? These thoughts are informed by a concept of knowledge that is foundational: an independent foundation of knowledge may be found. But when we consider our immersion in the flow of the world, it would seem that there are only specialized realms in which foundations are possible; outside those realms lie vast areas of being. What becomes philosophy in the adventure into the unknown? I consider this below; however, I may assert: the answer to this will be one that generalizes given concepts of philosophy, takes them out of the fields of activity and places philosophy in its ultimate realm
The various influences on philosophy, outlined here and below, also affect what is and what is considered to be philosophy. Since philosophy is in part the creation of humanity—in part because the creation is in the interaction between humanity and the world—the distinction between what is and what is considered to be philosophy is not absolute. We may use ‘what is’ to stand for ‘what is and or what is considered to be.’ The various considerations may also influence reflections on what is philosophy. There is an additional significant consideration: the various fields of human activity stand in intra and interaction; it is then not only that the various fields taken together constitute the entire realm of activity but, also, the entire realm may be divided or classified into the fields. The classification would not be unique: the posited fields may be different in number, concept—and name; and the distribution of various activities may be different even when the fields are the same. What is at one time and place considered to be philosophy may at another time and place be science, or political theory or economics
These comments notwithstanding, there is some degree of cohesion among the various activities that may be considered to be philosophy and there are threads of continuity in the history of philosophy
The crisis of recent philosophy has much to do with postmodern issues. The origin and influence of postmodern issues significantly predate the Postmodern and related movements. The existence of a crisis is not the equivalent of the existence of substantial issues. This means, especially, that even while a crisis may exist its nature may not be what it is commonly held to be
The period of recent philosophy is roughly identical with the crisis of philosophy; the era of philosophy in search of identity. This is true of recent philosophy today; it is not true that at any point in the history of philosophy there is a recent period that can be equated with a current crisis
What is the crisis in philosophy and what are the factors that precipitated it? The period of enlightenment was a ‘grand’ time for philosophy. It was a time when all the human disciplines of knowledge could be seen as subsumed under one ‘grand narrative’ in which philosophy had a major role. What led up to this and what led away from it?
The positive factors leading up to enlightenment philosophy were the freeing of the European mind from the shackles of religion, the beginning of the maturation of science—the subsumption of (seemingly) vast territories under the umbrella of science and reason, the possibility of a world view founded in but not limited to these foundational elements. What is the concept of foundational—something simple, secure—rationality or thought, perception and the senses, practice and so on: something that is simple, seemingly firm and given… something that is less than, a part of, being itself. There was also an excess in the form of confidence and system building; this excess no doubt had sources in ‘youthful exuberance’ but also in hubris
What are the forces that led to the collapse of the grand vision? They include the continuation of the factors leading to the grand vision itself, the attempt to find a (e.g. purely rational) foundation to philosophy—one that, in retrospect, applied to philosophy standards actually more stringent than those of science. For, the ‘methods’ of science are formulated in retrospect, in an attempt to found what is already known in methods more secure than the actual ways in which science was discovered. And, while the search for method is not without value there is no guarantee of its success or of its absolute value and application. Other forces are listed below
Can philosophy free itself of the limitations imposed by the crisis—philosophy as an inferior or adjunct (why should there even be a comparison of different kinds) if wide ranging partner in the academic (or, more generally, the intellectual) enterprise, philosophy as possibly edifying instead of certainly instructing? I take this up in A concept of philosophy, below
5.1.1.2 The separation of philosophy into the disciplines; the ascent of science and analysis
The influence of and reaction to science and ‘scientific methods…’ and to the scientific—and other—disciplines
The influence of and reaction to analysis, focus on language and symbolic systems and methods
5.1.1.3 Cultural influences—internal and the influence of other ‘non-western’ cultures
5.1.1.3.1 The West
The nature of modern society, political idealisms; the split between the English speaking world and Continental philosophy
Pluralism, the concept of democracy applied in the realm of truth; cultural relativism
Critical commentary
Every individual has a picture of the world and its parts that informs his or her activities in the world. ‘Picture’ is not to be taken in any literal or iconic sense. The picture may be fragmentary; and it may be dynamic—changing in response to learning and experience. What forms a culture is a sort of template that informs the individual pictures. The disparity of cultural templates—traditional or otherwise—makes for difficulty in communication. The sources of the difficulties are not univalent; they include, of course, the ‘unique’ adaptations of the particular culture. But to say that the variety of templates and pictures are incommensurable assumes that the system of meanings—the templates and pictures—are strictly adaptations. The alternative is not necessarily a fictional theory of meaning and truth. Cultures are not static entities—they come into being, they adapt. The meanings are created; and as such there needs only to be a sufficient degree of adaptation and, subject to this constraint, there may be play in the meanings and beliefs. That play may be called fictional if the beliefs are truly held as such; alternatively, they may be serious but understood as being provisional or they may be true play. In either case there is room for intercultural adaptation and merging of meaning. The barriers to this are, then, the forces of tradition, the identification of the individual with the belief… We may say that the belief in absolute cultural relativism is the defense of a particular culture. The mesh an merging of cultures, this includes the import of belief systems to whatever degree, is part of the transformation and change of a culture. It is possible for cultural transformation and identity to co-exist just as this is possible for the individual, the ‘self.’
There is a survival aspect associated with the pluralism that is extant in the modern academic (or, more generally, the intellectual) community. If one does not accept one’s place as an equal among equals then one is shunned or may feel shunned as boorish and so on—although philosophy may abandon its role as gatekeeper on the grounds that such a thing is impossible there is in effect a gatekeeper that says that there is no gatekeeper. It should be necessary to distinguish between persons and professions—where profession is understood in an active sense and not as a predefined role that one fulfils. The communal activity of finding truth—universal, complete, critical—there is a role for that—regardless of whether we call it philosophy, science, religion… or whether we coin a new phrase, formulate a new concept. The reply immediately comes—or may come, ‘ But there is no truth or, at least, there is no universal, complete, critical truth!’ As far as there being no instances of truth—all meanings and assertions are thereby rendered meaningless and valueless. As far as there being no universal, complete, critical truth: what shall we call the endeavor that may labor under that ideal? In the political sphere, every liberator becomes a tyrant. In the intellectual sphere those who decry truth are setting up there own or else everything is so much babble. These hypo-critical would be iconoclasts are, in fact, a sometimes useful sometimes destructive part of the process that they profess to abhor. These comments are not intended to imply that those who endeavor or profess to labor under the ideal of truth are always constructive, always sufficiently critical, never destructive. It is to say that that endeavor, the labor—the adventure under truth, is possible, meaningful and realistic
Professionalism and specialization
Professionalism and specialization, especially within the academic—or, more generally, the intellectual—enterprise
Thinking to accelerate evolution: the dialectic; without actually having something to say. This tendency arises from the pressures of the modern academic and intellectual environment as well as the culture of the individual, below. Of course, the pressures in question and the culture of the individual are not independent and they interact and have common roots
5.1.1.3.2 Other cultures
Influence / mesh with the philosophies and systems of other advanced and indigenous cultures
5.1.1.4 The culture of the individual: the 19th and 20th centuries
I do believe that argument against those who come from merely fashion, vanity, ego (see Metaphysics and Power) is almost a waste of time. Ignore; but if the arguments are sufficiently destructive there is a problem. And despite the cult of the individual, the product may have value
5.1.2 The effect on philosophy
The massive loss of nerve in the face of the above
Despair of construction—there are, however, some systematic thinkers and system builders (there is a serious and renewed interest in the nature, problems and scope of metaphysics)
The relative isolation of the schools and trends: continental philosophy and the inheritance of rationalism vs. Anglo-American philosophy and the inheritance of empiricism. Scientific materialism dominates idealist tendencies
The surreality of post-modernism and related schools
Philosophy as an adjunct, merely edifying as providing a clarifying commentary—if that
Theoretical understanding primary, ‘philosophy of life’ as secondary
Relation to the disciplines philosophy as (wide-ranging) participant—not as cultural gatekeeper
Historical orientation to philosophy: philosophy of history of philosophy: hermeneutics
There is, in addition to material factors, a psychology of the tidal flow in the conception of philosophy: both the idea of philosophy as instructor / cultural gatekeeper and merely edifying / merely participating are based in the same elements of the ego. First and primitively, in search for identity, separation and opposition: the disciplines. And only secondarily in the culture of the individual, in the various cultural influences, in the aggrandizement of the self or the special group over the whole. Here, too, is the origin of philosophy as merely something—merely analysis of concepts, language, ordinary language… and the idea of language games as mere games, of the incommensurability of paradigms, of speech communities isolated by their own conventions…
5.1.2.1 Maturation: Philosophy as a discipline with distinct content and methods
There always has been, since the origins of Greek philosophy, a distinction between what might be called the philosophical or reflective and the scientific or instrumental temperaments. Both temperaments are found within philosophy and science and this makes the distinction somewhat subtle. Thus, within philosophy, there are rationalists and empiricists; and, within science, there are theoreticians and experimenters
In the beginnings, the distinction between philosophy and the disciplines, though present was not formal or clear cut—the disciplines are modern but the distinctions are not
It is in the early modern period that physics began to mature as an independent discipline. This was followed by biology, then psychology and, in the 19th and 20th centuries by the social sciences and aesthetics
This process brought about a self-consciousness within philosophy—what is philosophy, what subjects may be properly said to be the province of philosophy, and does philosophy have its own distinct methods—and, if so, what are those methods?
The questions are not fully but are accentuated and given new meaning in the modern period; the emphasis on these questions has accelerated in recent philosophy
There are two broad approaches to delineating the subject matter of philosophy. We may specify the content: e.g. philosophy is analysis. This, of course, specifies method and content. The content, under analysis, is language and concepts; and the method is the analysis of structure and meaning. This is simple in the interest of being brief. Alternatively, we may specify what philosophy is not. E.g., philosophy is not science. But, one would not want to ban ‘scientific method’ in the doing of philosophy. One would then say, perhaps, that philosophy is not the special disciplines. It is not that the special disciplines could not be done under the umbrella of philosophy—rather that would be inefficient; the disciplines are best studied by specialists with specialist tools; to study, say geomorphology, under philosophy would be an encumbrance to philosophy and unenlightening to geomorphology
Still the distinctions, though useful and valid—both practically and theoretically, are likely not absolute; and any assumption that they are absolute is a sign of times rather than a feature inherent in the pursuit of knowledge
Maturation brings both confidence and doubt
5.2 THE RECENT PERIOD: SCHOOLS AND TRENDS OF PHILOSOPHY
These speculations are exemplified, informed and confirmed by the recent schools of philosophy
5.2.1 20th Century Schools and Trends of Philosophy
5.2.1.1 Introduction
What is a school of philosophy, and how are schools defined, described or identified? The boundaries are not absolute and there are lateral and vertical (historical) connections. For example, the empiricist tradition has origins in the atomism of Greek philosophy, was influenced by Aristotle, William of Occam and took hold in the modern period in Britain and this subsequently influenced the entire history of philosophy in the English speaking world. Thus, analytic philosophy has strong ties with British empiricism. Such developments are not monolithic; America, particularly, is pluralistic—especially in the 19th century when pragmatism with ties to holism, Darwinism and empiricism originated… and in the latter 20th century when many thinkers, often under the influence of the continent, undertook criticism of the concept of philosophy and the deconstruction of paradigms and texts. A second major strain of philosophical thought, rationalism, has origins in the Greek philosophies of substance and change, the idealism of Plato, and continued on in scholasticism, in the rationalism of the continental philosophers—Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel; in the idealistic philosophies of Marxism (which has a dual roots in rationalism and empiricism), in neo-Kantianism, neo-Hegelianism, and existentialism. As noted above, such developments are not monolithic: Marxism, and existentialism have dual roots; there were significant schools of idealism and realism in 19th and early 20th century Britain and America. The identification of schools is a general guide; and, once a school is recognized, philosophers may identify with this or that school—or be so identified by others. Such influences show that the real definitions of schools are only rough and indicate family resemblances with rather porous boundaries. This is, in part, in the nature of philosophy with its indefinite, self-defining and self-transforming nature
When we review the literature on the descriptions of the schools we find that each identified school is specified, at most, by family resemblance. Beyond this, there is the curious phenomenon of different writers identifying the schools according to somewhat different characteristics, different time periods, different boundaries—yet each writer presents his description as though it presents simple factual information stated, often, in dogmatic form. The conclusion is that while schools of philosophy exist, they are, of course, interactive—despite the contrary idea contained in the ‘incommensurability of speech communities’—with boundaries, epochs and adherents that are, however, not at all definite in their specification
The definitions of the following schools are from One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers, by Stuart Brown, Diane Collinson and Robert Wilkinson, 1998. The purpose to the inclusion here is to have available the philosophy of an era as an object that, despite internal complexity, may be seen as a simple item that is part of the stream of thought—that eras of philosophical thought as objects. This contributes to the intuitive understanding of history that may transcend formal theories; and lends itself to the formulation of explicit understanding
5.2.1.2 Absolute Idealism
‘Whatever is real is an aspect of the eternal consciousness or absolute spirit.’
Origins: Hegel and Schelling
England: Thomas Hill Green (1836—1882), FH Bradley Appearance and Reality 1893, HH Joachim, Bernard Bosanquet, John Ellis McTaggart
France: A. Fouillée (1838—1912), Emile Betroux (1845—1922)
America: Josiah Royce, Brand Blanshard
Italy: Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile
5.2.1.3 Analytic Philosophy
‘Philosophy is the analysis of concepts. It should not attempt to make statements about the nature of reality or should do so only in a limited way.’
Notes
Analytic philosophy is sometimes considered to be the same as linguistic philosophy
Analytic philosophy includes the movement known as ‘Oxford philosophy’
Analytic philosophy is perhaps too broad to be called a school—it is in some senses a trend, a movement, or a paradigm of how to do philosophy
Analytic philosophy is the paradigm or trend that informs the dominant strains of philosophy in the English speaking countries and Scandinavia in the 20th century. It may be thought of as continuing the empiricist tradition that found its main home in Britain. This tradition may be seen as going back to Aristotle and standing in contrast to the other main paradigm of philosophy—that of rationalism that can be seen as beginning with Plato, continuing on the continent with Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and into recent times—the 20th and 21st centuries—with the various neo-rationalisms and modern Continental philosophy
Places: Cambridge, Vienna Circle, Uppsala Sweden, Lyov-Warsaw Scholl
Origins: Socrates
Modern: Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Quine, Strawson, Hare, Davidson
Sub-developments: Logical positivism, linguistic philosophy. Wittgenstein rejected the practice of reductive analysis and focused on use or practice as the source of stable meanings
5.2.1.3.1 Analytic Philosophy—Phase 1: Logical Positivism
A. J. Ayer (the problem of knowledge)
5.2.1.3.2 Analytic Philosophy—Phase 2: Linguistic Analysis
Gilbert Ryle, J. C. Austin, Peter Strawson, Iris Murdoch, John Searle in the U.S
5.2.1.3.3 Analytic Philosophy—Phase 3: Philosophy of Mind
In the later phase analytic philosophy has become broader than strictly linguistic philosophy; analysis of concepts, however, remains important
5.2.1.4 Anti-Realist Trends and Tendencies in 20th Century Philosophy: Pragmatism, Positivism, Analytic Philosophy
Anti-realism is a descendant of empiricism but does not represent a single school; a number of schools may be subsumed under anti-realism. The following paragraphs, therefore, contain repetition
The focus on sense data and experience of empiricism becomes a focus on conventionalism and fictionalism in the hands of Mach, Avenarius, and Vaihinger; in pragmatism: a focus on experimentalism and instrumentalism—the consequences and uses of knowledge over representation as truth criteria; an attack on metaphysics and a scientific reductionism in positivism; and a focus on language in analytic philosophy: facts and descriptions of facts form the content of knowledge
5.2.1.4.1 Scientific conventionalism and fictionalism
Ernst Mach (1838—1936), R. Avenarius (1843—1896), Hans Vaihinger (1852—1933), Henri Poincare (1854—1912): conventionalism
5.2.1.4.2 Pragmatism
Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, C. I. Lewis (1883—1964), F. S. C. Northrop
5.2.1.4.3 Positivism and Logical Empiricism
John Dewey, C. I. Lewis, P. W. Bridgman, Rudolf Carnap, Ernest Nagel, Charles W. Morris
A. J. Ayer, Logical Positivism 1959, P. Achinstein and S. F. Barker, eds. Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1969
5.2.1.4.4 Positivism and ethics
There are two approaches: (1) (Schlick) psychological value, good are mere abstractions, but valuation, approbation are actual psychic occurrences; (2) (Ayer) one class of ‘ethical statements are not propositions at all but ejaculations or commands which are designed to provoke the reader to action of a certain sort’…The statement ‘stealing is wrong’ expresses nothing but my disapproval of theft. (Clearly a pragmatist interpretation of ethics.)
5.2.1.4.5 Analytic and linguistic philosophy
England: Wittgensteinians: Intention G. E. M. Anscombe, Norman Campbell, and extension into the United States: investigated knowledge, certainty, memory; Oxford Philosophers: Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind 1949; John Austin How To Do Things with Words 1962: the total speech act and its environment
United States: W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object 1960; Noam Chomsky Syntactic Structures 1957
5.2.1.4.6 Empiricism
W. K. Clifford (1845—1879), Karl Pearson (1857—1936), Bertrand Russell (1872—1970)…Challenges to Empiricism H. Morick ed., 1980
5.2.1.4.7 Utilitarianism
See the section on Utilitarianism for details
5.2.1.4.8 Rationalism
Reason as the chief source of knowledge: H. J. Patton, In Defense of Reason 1951; W. H. Walsh, Reason and Experience 1947; A. N. Whitehead Process and Reality 1929; J. M. W. McTaggart The Nature of Existence, 2 volumes, 1921—1927; Brian Ellis Rational Belief System 1979
5.2.1.5 Comtean Positivism
...or scientific positivism—the stage of the history of sciences after theology and metaphysics
‘A positive sociology will lead to a better society’
5.2.1.6 Continental Philosophy: Trends
In the 20th century continental philosophy was influenced by phenomenology and existentialism. Neo-Kantianism and political philosophy were also among the important movements. Of course, ‘continental philosophy’ is not a single school but is largely influenced by idealism, Kantianism and systematic metaphysics
Note that the following classification and assignments are from Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater, eds., The Continental Philosophy Reader, Routledge: London and New York, 1996
5.2.1.6.1 From phenomenology to Hermeneutics
Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Others: Simone de Beauvoir, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur
5.2.1.6.2 From Marxism to Critical Theory
Rosa Luxemberg, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt
Others: Gyorgy Lukàcs, Antonio Gramsci, Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, Louis Althusser
5.2.1.6.3 From Structuralism to Deconstruction
Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida
Others: Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Jean-François Lyotard
Deconstructionism includes a challenge to the notion that philosophy criticizes texts in fundamental and distinct ways
5.2.1.7 Critical Realism
The critical realists were a group of American realists in the 1920s who distinguished themselves from the New Realists of the previous decade. They objected to the ‘naïve’ realism of the new realists who held that physical objects were perceived directly. According to the critical realists, the mind directly perceives only ideas and sense data: (1) Mind is directly confronted with some data, the vehicle of knowledge; (2) physical objects exist independently of mind and are known through sense data, (3) material objects are distinct from the data by which they are known
D. Drake, A.O. Lovejoy, J. Pratt, A.K. Rogers, George Santayana, Wilfrid Sellars, C.A. Armstrong, in their cooperative volume Essays in Critical Realism, attacked the monistic tenets of the New Realism
5.2.1.8 Empiricism
‘All knowledge of the world is based upon sense-experience.’ ‘Experience—sensation and perception rather than ideas, concepts and thought—is the source of knowledge.’
Radical empiricism is a theory of knowledge in which ideas are reducible to sensations
Scientific empiricism is another name for logical positivism
Favored in the 20th century by pragmatists and logical positivists
William James—radical empiricism
A.J. Ayer, Herbert Feigl—logical empiricism
Criticized: Quine, Wittgenstein, Feyerabend
5.2.1.9 Evolutionary Philosophers
Philosopher’s whose accounts of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics give central importance to evolution, particularly Darwin’s theory of evolution
C. Lloyd Morgan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Popper
Roots: Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Herbert Spencer
5.2.1.10 Existentialism
The nature the experience of existence as a human being in the world. What are the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical entailments of that existence?
A school or movement dominated by thinkers in Germany and France
Philosophy of irrationalism—actuality over reason: ‘existence precedes essence’ (a-rationalism)
Gives prominence to human passionate and esthetic nature and to human feelings of anguish, love, guilt, sense of inner freedom…has romanticist origins
Literature as philosophy…life issues: death, sex, religion, politics and meaning; the idea of literature as philosophy is a theme within existentialism. This idea and the more general idea of art, even life, as philosophy is not limited to existentialism
Truth is free commitment by the individual which leads to ‘faith—philosophy’…choice of individual as total being (not free-willistic)
German existentialism owes many insights to traditional idealism
Claimed roots: St. Augustine, Pascal
Roots: Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche
Main: Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre
Others: Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Martin Buber, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merlau-Ponty
Mary Warnock Existentialism 1970, Robert D. Cumming, Starting Point 1979
5.2.1.11 Frankfurt School: Critical Theory
The Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), Frankfurt; founded: Felix J. Weil, 1923, for interdisciplinary Marxist research, provided a base for many brilliant Marxist thinkers of the 20th century. Max Horkheimer established the concept of a Critical Theory when he took over directorship from the historian Carl Grünberg as director in 1930. Due to the rise of Nazism, the institute moved first to Geneva and Paris and then, in 1934, to New York. The Institute was re-established in Frankfurt after WW II
The distinctive Frankfurt perspective is a flexible post WW II neo-Marxism due to Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse... a desperate opposition in the face of fascism, Stalinism and managerial capitalism
Others of the school are: Walter Benjamin; historian Franz Borkenau; economists Friedrich Pollock, Henryk Grossman, Arkady Gurland; psychologists Bruno Bettelheim and Erik Fromm; political theorists Otto Kircheimer and Franz Neumann; and literary theorist Leo Lowenthal
Later postwar critical theorists, more academic in orientation, include Jürgen Habermas, Karl Otto Apel, Albrecht Wellmer and Alfred Schmidt. Critical theory is continued into the 1990s by philosophers and sociologists such as Claus Offe, Axel Honneth and Klaus Eder
5.2.1.12 Hegelianism
A form of Absolute Idealism (see Absolute Idealism, above, for names) associated with Hegel’s influence. Hegelianism is both a method—the dialectic—and a doctrine, the doctrine of what is real—the final category of dialectical analysis—the Absolute idea. The method and doctrine are inseparable, the method is precisely the formulation of the doctrine and the doctrine is precisely the detailed expression of the method
Though Hegel was despised by analytical philosophers in the middle decades of the 20th century, the study of his work has flowered since the 1970s
5.2.1.13 Hermeneutics
‘The art and methodology of interpretation’
Hermeneutics is usually applied across time to texts. This concept could fruitfully be applied, also, across geographical and cultural borders to cultural, political and other activities. It could be applied within a given culture as the hermeneutics of the media and politics: what is the real message behind the rhetoric?
Related to rhetoric and the philosophy of rhetoric. Philosophy as rhetoric
Originated in ancient Greece, hermeneutics became an adjunct to theology under Christianity and achieved prominence in the 19th century as a methodology of the human studies which challenged positivism
Recently fashionable among Western intellectuals particularly because it figured in the philosophies of Heidegger and Gadamer
Also Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey
Common presuppositions: there are common, basic features of humanity; and (Giambattista) Vico’s principle that man can understand what man has made
5.2.1.14 Idealism
Various meanings; a generic meaning one associated with Leibniz in the 17th century gives priority to the human mind. Leibniz called Plato the greatest of idealists. That form of monism which holds that the substance of all being is mental—idea, will…—could be labeled ‘metaphysical idealism.’
Imannuel Kant
Has been contrasted with realism and opposed by pragmatism and personalism from the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th century. 19th century in England and America philosophy was strongly idealistic. The influence of idealism waned in the 20th century but there has been some revival in the 1980s and 90s
The idealists distinguish between (1) intellect (verstand: understanding): the function of thought which mechanizes experience, and (2) rational insight (vernunft: reason), and though the idealists—especially Hegel and his followers –tend to be intellectual, they emphasize reason. They tend to be opponents of extreme intellectualism and have this in common with (1) pragmatists, positivists, conventionalists and fictionalists, and especially analytical philosophers who hold that knowledge is limited to study and description of the facts of experience; and (2) intuitionists and romanticists
Related to idealism are intuitionism and existentialism
Godfrey Vesey ed., Idealism Past and Present 1982, the central role of the ideal or spiritual
5.2.1.15 Intuitionism
The intuitionism of Henri Bergson is anti-rationalistic. The opposition between static and dynamic aspects is important.
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Static |
Dynamic |
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Morality |
Obligation Morality |
Morality of Creativity |
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Religion |
Static Myth Religion |
True Mystical Thought |
In mathematics, LEJ Brouwer ‘Truth is what is known to be true’... mathematics is not reducible to logic
In ethics ( GE Moore)—moral truths are known by intuition
5.2.1.16 Legal Positivism
There are no natural rights except the positive laws of countries. Derives from logical positivism in so far as natural rights are metaphysical
Jeremy Bentham; in the 20th century Hans Kelsen and, of the Uppsala school, Axel Hägerström
5.2.1.17 Linguistic Philosophy
Influenced by and ‘can be seen as a development within analytical philosophy.’ ‘The problems of philosophy can be solved or dissolved by careful attention to the details of language—especially ordinary language.’ Speech acts (J. L. Austin, John Searle)—uses of language other than to state facts
In Oxford and Cambridge, under the influence of the later Wittgenstein—the Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations... and picked up by Ryle, Austin, and Wisdom.
America: Bouwsma, Searle
Scandinavia: von Wright, Justus Hartnack
5.2.1.18 Logical Positivism
A form of positivism influenced by the ascent of science—the only meaningful propositions, i.e. those that are certainly true or false about the world, are the ones that are verifiable by the methods of science. Philosophy should not be concerned with the synthetic but its business is analysis—and analysis is the way that the truth of the propositions of logic and mathematics are discovered. The propositions of ethics and metaphysics are not verifiable and, so, not meaningful. Properly derives from the Vienna Circle (Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap—‘the brightest’) and associated groups in Berlin (Carl Gustav Hempel, Richard von Mises), Lyov and Uppsala. Emphasis on logic and language, presaged in Wittgenstein’s Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
A problem of Logical Positivism was the status of observation statements. The program included the reduction of everything to observation statements... regarding which there was no unanimous agreement. Schlick equated observation statements to sensation statements; Neurath and Carnap wanted to stop at statements describing physical objects
5.2.1.19 Lyov-Warsaw School—the ‘Warsaw Circle’
Similar to and had contact with Vienna... though less extreme in its positivistic outlook and less programmatically adventurous
Preoccupied with logic and language. Distrusted ‘abstract speculation of an illusive and deceptive clarity’. Some, like Ajdukiewicz was closer to Logical Positivism, others like Kotabiski, Lukasiewicz and Tarski, though they favored logic without metaphysics, were less extreme
5.2.1.20 Marxism
Best known as a socio-political theory rooted in Hegelian idealism and its notion of dialectic... but firmly located at the material level resulting in dialectical materialism. When dialectical materialism is applied to history it implies a class struggle within each society (thesis) generating its own contradiction (antithesis) until there is a new synthesis
According to Marx, society consists of a dominant economic base with a cultural superstructure that depends on the economic base and the means of production. In Das Kapital, the primary impact of capitalist economics is to alienate workers from their labor—or reification, the transformation of labor and worker into economic commodities. Marxism is a philosophy with a definite socio-political agenda—to change the world rather than just interpret it
Lenin, Stalin
Gyorgy Lukàcs, Frankfurt school
‘Late 20th century decline of communism eroded Marxism’s philosophical and aesthetic authority’...we don’t know that the story is over... and, besides, who is writing that story?
For post-modernists Marxism is a paradigm of an outmoded grand narrative or universal theory
5.2.1.21 Materialism
T