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Philosophy Essay Research Paper Philosophy is the (стр. 2 из 2)

students, ANAXIMANDER and ANAXIMENES. Present-day knowledge of this MILESIAN

SCHOOL is based on fragments attributed to them by later writers. These first

philosophers were metaphysicians, seeking for an element or force behind

appearance that explained everything. Thales said that all was ultimately

water, Anaximander that it was boundless or the infinite, and Anaximenes that

it was air. Subsequent Greek philosophers, such as HERACLITUS and PARMENIDES,

argued about whether change or permanence was the basic feature of the world

and about whether one or more than one element was the fundamental constituent

of reality (see MONISM; PLURALISM). Greek philosophy before Socrates was

principally concerned with these metaphysical questions.

Socrates.

Socrates, an Athenian, was primarily interested in value questions that

affected what a person should do. At the time in Athens, the paid teachers,

the SOPHISTS, taught people how to live successfully; they did not raise the

Socratic question of what was the right way of life, however. Socrates did not

write anything, but he is vividly portrayed by his pupil Plato in the Dialogues

as being the “gadfly” of Athens, forever asking people why they are doing what

they are doing and making people realize that general principles were necessary

to justify their conduct. Socrates was finally arrested and accused of heresy

and corrupting the young of Athens. Socrates used his trial, described in

Plato’s Apology, as a final opportunity to make his general point. His

accusers, he showed, did not know what the charges actually meant and had no

evidence for them. He reported that the Delphic oracle had said that he,

Socrates, was the wisest of all of the Athenians. Socrates said he was the

wisest because he alone knew nothing and knew that he knew nothing, whereas

everybody else thought they knew something. In spite of his eloquence and

wisdom, Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death.

Plato.

After Socrates’ execution, his disciple Plato developed the first comprehensive

philosophical system and founded the Academy, the first formal philosophical

school. Plato contended that knowledge must be of universals (that is, of

general types or kinds) and not of particulars. To know a particular cat,

Miranda, the individual must first know what it is to be feline in general.

Otherwise he or she will not be able to recognize the particular feline

characteristics in Miranda. These universals, Plato claimed, were the basic

elements from which the world was formed. They are called the Forms, or

Platonic Ideas. Mathematics provides the most obvious cases of these Forms.

They are known not by sense perception but by reasoning. They are known by the

mind, not by the bodily organs. The world of Platonic Ideas is the unchanging

Forms of things. The philosopher should turn away from this world of

appearance and concentrate on the world of Forms. Plato, in his most famous

work, The Republic, said that the world would be perfect when philosophers are

kings and kings are philosophers. He believed that the philosopher-kings would

know what justice really is, and, based on their knowledge of the Forms, they

could then achieve justice in all societies.

For Plato the ultimate Idea, which illuminated the rest of the pure ideas, was

the Idea of the Good. As Plato grew older he became more mystical about this

idea. The school of NEOPLATONISM, which began a few centuries after his death,

stressed these otherworldly and mystical elements, identifying the idea of the

Good with God.

Aristotle.

Plato’s leading student, Aristotle, developed the most comprehensive

philosophical system of ancient times. Aristotle broke with Plato, stressing

the importance of explaining the changing world that humankind lives in as

opposed to the Platonic Ideas. Aristotle spent years studying the natural

sciences and collecting specimens, and about 90 percent of his writings are on

scientific subjects, mostly on biological ones. Aristotle believed he could

account for the changes and alterations in this world without either having to

deny their reality or having to appeal to another world. For Aristotle all

natural objects were composed of form and matter, and the changes that take

place in matter are the substitution of one form for another. This

substitution takes place because every natural object has a goal, or telos,

which it is its nature to achieve. Thus stones, because they are essentially

material, seek the lowest point, which is why they fall down. Each species is

ultimately trying to achieve a state of perfection which for Aristotle was a

state of perfect rest. The cosmos, as Aristotle saw it, is an ordered striving

for this perfection. The pinnacle of the order is the Unmoved Mover, the

ultimate cosmic agent, which fully and perfectly realizes its essence of

eternal thought. The heavenly spheres imitate the Unmoved Mover and by so

doing set the heavens in an eternal spherical motion; this process is repeated

by individual souls, and so on. Aristotle’s vision of the Cosmos remained

central to Western thought until the time of Nicolaus Copernicus.

Hellenistic and Roman Periods.

In the period from about 300 BC to AD 200 the central philosophical concerns

shifted to how an individual should conduct his or her life. The Stoics, the

Skeptics (see SKEPTICISM), and the Epicureans (see EPICUREANISM), although they

dealt with the classical epistemological and metaphysical issues, emphasized

the question of how humans should conduct themselves in a miserable world. All

these theories stressed withdrawal, whether physical, emotional, or

intellectual, from the turmoils of the day.

Medieval Period.

Greek philosophy was the major formative influence on the later philosophical

traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. In all three, the theories of

the Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle, were employed to clarify and

develop the basic beliefs of the religious traditions.

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA introduced Platonic ideas and methods into Jewish thought,

particularly into the interpretation of Scripture about the beginning of the

Christian era. He exerted little influence on later Jewish thought, however,

and the Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages seems to have developed as a

movement parallel to those in Islam. Important figures in early medieval

Jewish thought include Isaac Israeli, SAADIA BEN JOSEPH GAON, and the

Neoplatonist Solomon IBN GABIROL. The most important Jewish thinker of the

Middle Ages, however, was MAIMONIDES. Maimonides developed a comprehensive

interpretation of religion and understanding based on Aristotelian principles

that was influential in the Christian West as well as among Jewish thinkers.

In Judaism, as in Islam and Christianity, religious speculation and philosophy

developed in close connection. This development is particularly evident in the

Jewish mystical tradition, the KABBALAH. The esoteric teachings of these

schools have influenced much later Jewish thought, including that of Spinoza,

the most important Jewish philosopher of the early modern period. Drawing both

on his religious background and on the geometric method of Descartes, Spinoza

developed a philosophical PANTHEISM of great depth.

In the Islamic tradition as well the starting point was the work of Plato and

Aristotle. The 9th-century Neoplatonist al-KINDI was followed by al-FARABI,

who drew on both Plato and Aristotle to create a universal Islamic philosophy.

The most important of the medieval Muslim philosophers, however, was Avicenna

(ibn Sina). Starting from the distinction between essence and existence,

Avicenna developed a metaphysics in which God, the necessary being, is the

source of created nature through emanation. Both his metaphysics and his

intuitionist theory of knowledge were influential in the later Middle Ages as

well as in the later history of Islamic thought.

The philosophical tradition did not go unchallenged, however. The 11th-century

theologian and mystic al-GHAZALI mounted a critique of philosophy, specifically

Avicenna’s, that is rich in argument and insight. Al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of

the Philosophers provoked a response by AVERROES ibn Rushd entitled the

Incoherence of the Incoherence, in which al-Ghazali’s arguments are countered

point for point. Averroes was best known, however, as an interpreter of

Aristotle and excited great influence on all subsequent thinkers in the

Aristotelian tradition. In the later Middle Ages the historian and philosopher

IBN KHALDUN produced a trenchant critique of culture, and the elaboration of

metaphysics and epistemology was carried on in the theosophical schools of

Islamic mysticism.

The first systematic Christian philosophy was that of ORIGEN, but for the

European Middle Ages no authority could rival Saint Augustine. Augustine

elaborated a Neoplatonist vision combining the metaphysics of PLOTINUS with an

elaboration of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. To this he added an

epistemology in which knowledge is achieved through illumination by grace. No

substantial movement arose beyond Augustine until the 12th century, when new

interest arose in logic and theory of knowledge. In this connection the most

important figures are Saint ANSELM and Peter ABELARD.

In the late 12th and early 13th centuries the writings of Aristotle were

reintroduced into the West, first in translations from the Arabic and later in

direct translation. After some initial resistance Aristotle became the

dominant philosophical authority and remained so until the Renaissance. First

Saint ALBERTUS MAGNUS and then Saint Thomas AQUINAS combined Aristotle’s

philosophy with the tradition of Augustinian theology to produce a synthesis

holding that Aristotle was right about those things that are within the grasp

of reason, while what was beyond reason could only be known by faith. Thus

reason could prove that God exists, but his nature could be known only by

faith. More extreme Aristotelian schools developed and came into conflict with

the church, which, in 1277, issued condemnations of many positions held by

Aristotle and Aquinas, among others. In the 14th century two figures dominated

the scene: DUNS SCOTUS and WILLIAM OF OCCAM. Scotus developed an extemely

complex philosophy based on a number of earlier positions, and Occam’s

critiques of metaphysics and epistemology remain paradigms of philosophical

argument.

Rationalism.

The synthesis of Christianity and Aristotelianism was a major form of

SCHOLASTICISM, which dominated European philosophy into the 17th century.

During the Renaissance other forms of ancient philosophy began to be revived

and used as ammunition against the scholastics. This involved the Renaissance

Platonists and the Skeptics, as well as others interested in esoteric doctrines

like that of the Kabbalah. In terms of the future development of philosophy,

the revival of ancient skepticism played the greatest role. This view,

popularized by Montaigne in the late 16th century, raised the fundamental

epistemological problem of what can be known. The methods of the new

scientific schools conflicted with, and thus brought into question, the

principles inherited from the Middle Ages. Rene Descartes proposed a method

for guaranteeing knowledge. He argued that in order to provide a secure

foundation for knowledge it was necessary to discover “clear and distinct

ideas” that could not be doubted and could serve as a basis for deriving

further truths. He found such an idea in the proposition “I think, therefore I

am.” Using this as a paradigm, Descartes drew a distinction between thinking

substance and extended substance, or mind and matter. He went on to draw

conclusions about God, nature, and mind that continue to be influential. For

this reason Descartes is often considered the founder of modern philosophy.

A few years after Descartes’s death, Baruch de Spinoza offered his theory to

improve on that of Descartes. Spinoza insisted that only one substance, God,

exists, and that two of his attributes are thought and extension. Everything

that is and that can be known about is an aspect of God. Spinoza’s God,

however, was the antithesis of the God of traditional religion. God, or Nature

(as Spinoza put it), was the laws from which everything followed. In Spinoza’s

pantheistic world everything had to be what it was, and everything was to be

understood rationally. The mind and body were two aspects of the same thing,

which was to be understood either logically or in terms of natural science. A

third great 17th-century rationalist was Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. The

basic unit of his metaphysics, equivalent to a substance, was the monad, a

center of force or energy. Each monad was internally determined by its

definition. Monads could not interact, but, due to a “preestablished harmony,”

the action in one monad coincided with that in another. God chose the monads

in the world s