Philosophy

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Philosophy, both the field and the concept, is notoriously hard to define. One approach is to give examples of philosophy. G.E. Moore is said to have answered the question "what is philosophy?" by gesturing at his bookshelves and saying: "It is what these are all about."[1] Similarly, a good start at defining "philosophy" would be to explain that it is the main subject of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and P.F. Strawson. Any such list, though, would be of necessity partial, and would raise further questions (in the case of most of those mentioned above, for example, some of their published works are not philosophical, so that the list is only really of use if one already understands what is and what is not philosophy).

Another approach is to list the main topics discussed by philosophers: any such list would include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. This has the advantage of emphasising the general and abstract nature of most of the subjects of philosophising, but again, any such list will raise further questions; any item in the list either explictitly relies upon understanding of the term "philosophy", or does so implicitly by raising the question as to what is a philosophical treatment as opposed to a non-philosophical treatment of, for example, ethics.

Another way to understand philosophy is to examine its historical development. The Greek word was philosophia (φιλοσοφία), meaning "love of wisdom". ("Philo-" comes from the Greek word philein, meaning to love, and "-sophy" comes from the sophia, or wisdom.) The word philosophos (φιλόσοφος) was first used by Pythagoras to distinguish himself as a seeker of wisdom from those who thought of themselves as the wise (sophos; σοφός). By the time of Socrates the word had come to mean something more like "scientific man" or "learned man". However, the problem with this approach is that the subject itself has changed through history. Originally its scope included all fields of study, other than history; as recently as the nineteenth century, what we now call "science" was called "natural philosophy" (this usage is still to be found in the names of departments, courses, and chairs in some Universities[2]). In the last two centuries in particular, however, "philosophy" has come to mean an especially abstract, nonexperimental intellectual endeavour.

A fourth approach offers more promise. Instead of a list of practitioners and their works, or of the topics that they discuss, we can describe the distinctive techniques of philosophy: what is it that Plato, Descartes, et al. do in their discussions of metaphysics, ethics, etc., which is distinctively philosophical? Very roughly, we might say it is the study of, or wise reflection about, very general things. To elaborate, we might say that philosophy is the study of the meaning and justification of beliefs about the most general, or universal, aspects of things — a study which is carried out not by experimentation or careful observation, but instead typically by formulating problems carefully, offering solutions to them, giving arguments for the solutions, and engaging in dialectic about all of the above. Philosophy studies a huge range of general concepts, such as existence, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. It asks questions such as "What is the good life?" and "Is knowledge even possible?"

Popularly, the word "philosophy" is often used to mean any form of wisdom, or any person's perspective on life (as in "philosophy of life") or basic principles behind or method of achieving something (as in "my philosophy about driving on highways"). That is different from the academic meaning, and it is the academic meaning which is used here.


A brief historical introduction to some leading problems of philosophy

The history of philosophy is vast. There is no way to make sense of it in a few paragraphs. But it is possible to give an abbreviated narrative of a few important strands in the history of philosophy. This will perhaps give the reader some sense of who some major thinkers were, and what some important philosophical problems were like.

Western philosophy is generally said to have begun with Thales (sixth century B.C.), the first thinker on record to offer a secular answer to a very general question, "What is the first principle, or essential nature, of all things?" We might find Thales' answer, Water, to be strange or amusing, but his achievement lies in asking a general question, and offering a secular answer. This began a debate--a strand of what is known as pre-Socratic philosophy, because it predates Socrates--about the ultimate nature (Gk. phusis, φυσις) of things. For instance, Anaximander held this ultimate nature to be The Indefinite; Anaximenes held it to be Air. Such one-word answers are useless as summaries of their views, but what they indicate is that thinkers did have competing notions of what everything is, ultimately, or in other words, what the ultimate origin and substance of things is. This tradition marked the beginnings of what we call physics and of philosophy.

Many philosophers accord Socrates (469–399 B.C.) pride of place as the first great Western philosopher. His great achievement, like that of the pre-Socratics, lay not in any particular doctrine, but instead a type of question, and a method of answering it. Socrates reportedly made a habit of questioning the leading Athenian intellects of the day, asking them for a definition or account (the logos) of what they purportedly knew about. For example, he asked a famous general, Laches, "What is courage?" Laches offered up a definition, to which Socrates would offer a counterexample; the process would repeat until the expert gave up. Socrates, then, would conclude that the person lacked the knowledge that he claimed to have, because genuine knowledge of a thing required the ability to give an account of it. Thus began the central concern of philosophers with the analysis, or offering definitions, of "big" concepts such as virtue and knowledge. The idea is that if we could limn our basic concepts, we might gain a deep understanding of the way the world really is.

Socrates was most exercised with the nature of the good life and of the virtues, such as justice, piety, temperance, and wisdom. His student Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) took up these ethical concerns. Plato's master work, The Republic, is an elaborate answer to the question, "What is justice?" In answering this question, Plato develops a theory about what goodness itself is. We cannot say that goodness is any particular good thing, nor is it a collection of all the good things. It seemed to Plato that goodness is something apart from all of its instances. Furthermore, when we have knowledge of goodness--the knowledge of the account or definition of goodness, which Socrates sought--we need not know any particular instance of goodness, but instead something that exists independently of the various instances. What we know is, therefore, the Form of the Good.

The Problem of Change

The ancient philosophers were greatly preoccupied with the problem of change. Parmenides thought that all change must be impossible, for it results in some thing coming into existence (for example, my becoming a musician) that did not exist before. But 'being cannot come from non-being'. His disciple Zeno went even further and denied the possibility of motion.

Plato and Aristotle gave quite different solutions to the problem. Plato followed Parmenides in arguing that knowledge was of eternal, unchangeable truths, embodied in universal concepts that he called the Forms. These forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding. Mere opinion was of ephemeral, contingent truths. This approach, which emphasises the role of reason in discovering the truth, was later called Rationalism.

Aristotle rejected the Parmenidean dilemma of something coming either from what exists, or what does not exist (191a30). We must not treat terms as as if they were simple: 'nonbeing' and 'being', for they are both compound. We start with an unmusical man, which is one way a being (a man) and in another way a non-being (since it is not a musical-man). This led Aristotle to the idea of substance. A substance (in this case the man who changes from not being a musician, to being a musician) is the subject of change: that which remains the same throughout the change, such as being a man. Accidental characteristics, by contrast, qualify a substance at one time, and not another. [something about 'essence'? …]


Aristotle's empiricism and rejection of idealism; his account of definitions and his definition of virtue

The Hellenistic philosophers (focus on the development of schools/moral doctrine)

Anselm and Aquinas on God

Aquinas and Bonaventura on the beginning of the world

The medieval problem of universals

Descartes: skepticism and innate knowledge

Locke: empiricism as a rejection of innatism

Hume: skeptical consequences of the theory of ideas

Reid and the Scottish School reject the theory of ideas

Kant and later philosophers mostly embrace it and move toward 19th century idealism

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and later existentialists

Frege and Russell: the rise of formal logic

Moore and Wittgenstein: back to common sense and the constraints of our language games

The great divide: analytic vs. continental

Philosophical subdisciplines

As with any field of academic study, philosophy has a number of subdisciplines. Philosophy in fact seems to have a huge number of subdisciplines, in no small part due to the fact that there tends to be a "philosophy of" nearly everything else that is studied. The beginner is invited particularly to pay attention to logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and political philosophy as--arguably, of course--the "central disciplines" of philosophy.

There are quite a few others; feel free to complete the list.

How to get started in philosophy

It is a platitude (at least among people who write introductions to philosophy) that everybody has a philosophy, though they might not all realize it or be able to defend it. If you're already interested in studying philosophy, your reason might be to improve the way you live or think somehow, or you simply wish to get acquainted with one of the most ancient areas of human thought. On the other hand, if you don't see what all the fuss is about, it might help to read the motivation to philosophize, which explains what motivates many people to "do philosophy," and get an introduction to philosophical method, which is important to understanding how philosophers think. It might also help to acquaint yourself with some considerations about just what philosophy is.

Applied philosophy

Philosophy has applications. The most obvious applications are those in ethics--applied ethics in particular--and in political philosophy. The political philosophies of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill have shaped and been used to justify governments and their actions. Philosophy of education deserves special mention, as well; progressive education as championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the twentieth century.

Other important, but less immediate applications can be found in epistemology, which might help one to regulate one's notions of what knowledge, evidence, and justified belief are. Philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method, among other topics sometimes useful to scientists. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of art. Even ontology, surely the most abstract and least practical-seeming branch of philosophy, has had important consequences for logic and computer science. In general, the various "philosophies of," such as philosophy of law, can provide workers in their respective fields with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their fields.

Moreover, recently, there has been developing a burgeoning profession devoted to applying philosophy to the problems of ordinary life: philosophical counseling.

Philosophical theories

altruism -- anti-realism -- Buddhist philosophy -- coherentism -- Confucianism -- consequentialism -- constructivism -- deconstructionism -- egoism -- eudaimonism -- foundationalism -- hedonism -- historical materialism -- irrealism -- justified true belief -- nominalism -- Objectivism -- psychological egoism -- Platonism -- realism -- reliabilism -- Taoism -- Transcendentalism utilitarianism -- Populism and Nationalism -- Irrationalism and Aestheticism -- Stoicism -- [etc. continue the list please]

Notes

  1. ↑ quoted by Antony Flew in his preface to the first edition of A Dictionary of Philosophy (1979)
  2. ↑ e.g., the University of Cambridge and the University of Glasgow


This article was taken from a very early version of the Wikipedia article about philosophy. Current version.

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