A SHORT HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Paul Gerard Horrigan
CONTENTS
1. Ancient Philosophy
2. Medieval Philosophy
3. Renaissance Humanism to Kant
4. Fichte to Gadamer
Bibliography
CHAPTER 1
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
A number of social, political and economic conditions permitted the rise of philosophical speculation in the Grecian colonies of Ionia. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., the Greek colonies along the Ionian coastline, through contact with the civilizations of the East, managed to establish a veritable commercial trading empire. The Ionian seamen and traders brought in a steady flow of goods and riches from the East and, in time, the colonies became so well-off that many of her citizens were endowed with that essential leisure time needed for philosophical contemplation and speculation. The Greek colonies were also in contact with the other ancient civilizations of the Orient (which had, at that time, a superior scientific knowledge and where the arts and sciences were flourishing), and because of this constant interaction the Greeks developed a natural love for observation, speculation, and research. The republican spirit of the Grecian city-states also encouraged free debate in various fields, something which the older, blood-thirsty and warlike tyrannical regimes had sought to stamp out. Thus, we find the first philosophical schools developing in the Greek colonies. Though many of the early Greek philosophers were scientists, mathematicians, astronomers and doctors, they also sought to investigate the first principles and ultimate causes of all things by means of human reasoning (the characteristic mark of the true philosophical spirit). We also see a passage from the anthropomorphic, mythological solutions of old concerning God, cosmos, and man, to philosophical ones based on reasoning and argumentation.[1][1]
Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (spanning over a millennium, from the 6th century B.C. to Justinian’s decree closing the pagan-oriented philosophical schools in 529 A.D.) can be divided into five distinct periods: 1. The Pre-Socratic period (which was centered upon the cosmological problem). The Pre-Socratics include the Ionians (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus), Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics (Parmenides and Zeno), and the Pluralists (Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus) ; 2. The Sophists (where we find a shift from an objectivist cosmocentrism to a relativistic and subjectivistic anthropocentrism. Sophism’s main exponents include Protagoras and Gorgias) versus Socrates (who, though focusing his philosophical musings almost wholely on man, was, nevertheless, an ardent seeker of objective truth) ; 3. Plato and Aristotle (where Greek philosophy, without a doubt, reaches its highest systematic development) ; 4. The Hellenistic period (which includes Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and the later diffusion of Eclecticism) ; and 5. Neo-Platonism (whose most famous exponent is Plotinus).
The Ionian School
The very first philosophical school in Greece was called the Ionian or Ionic school[2][2] because her principal exponents, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, had come from Ionia, which was then the name of the Western coast of Asia Minor (now part of Turkey).[3][3] The first Ionian philosopher is Thales (c. 624–c. 562 B.C.) who sustained that the principle or ultimate cause of all things was water. It is the ultimate constitutive material principle of everything, remaining as a permanent substratum throughout the different changes of things. Aristotle conjectures that the observation of nature may have led Thales to such a conclusion: “Thales got this notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it (and that from which they come to be is a principle of all things). He got his notion from this fact, and from the fact that the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things.”[4][4]
Anaximander[5][5] (c. 610–c. 540 B.C.) instead held that the first principle of all things was the “indeterminate” or “infinite” (ápeiron), which is a compound of all contrary elements. All things originate from it and return to it. The Stagirite understood the apeiron to mean unlimited extension in space and qualitative indetermination. It is wholely indeterminate, that is, it is without any formal determination. Anaximander also believed that the apeiron was a divine principle, encompassing and governing all things as an immortal and indestructible principle.
Anaximenes (c. 585–c. 528 B.C.), considered air to be the primordial principle of all reality. Air, for this Ionian thinker, is infinite, encompassing all things, and is in constant motion. Anaximenes probably chose air because all living things need air for respiration.
Heraclitus[6][6] (c. 540–c. 480 B.C.) was the first thinker to delve deeply into the nature of change and becoming in the world. He is the philosopher of change. For him, what exists is not being but becoming ; change is the only reality. The sole material of this universal becoming is fire, since it is at once the most elusive and the most active of elements and is perpetually in movement. Change and becoming have their own cause and law which Heraclitus calls the logos (or universal reason). Maintaining that all reality is pure change or becoming, that nothing is and everything changes, that whatever is, insofar as it is, is not, since it is subject to change, he denied the principle of non-contradiction which states that it is impossible to be and not to be at the same time and in the same respect. Heraclitus’ philosophy of pure flux holds that “we go down, and we do not go down into the same river ; we are, and we are not ; sea water is at once the purest and the most tainted ; good and evil are one and the same thing.”[7][7] He also held that the soul was fire; the drier the soul the more wisdom it will have, and the more humidity it has the lesser its reasoning powers become.
The main importance of these first philosophers, our Ionians, lies in the fact they raised the question as to the ultimate nature of all things, rather than in any particular answer given to the question they raised.
Pythagoras
Pythagoras[8][8] (c. 571–c. 497 B.C.) was a thinker of many talents, occupying himself in such fields as astronomy and music, and, in particular, in arithmetic and geometry. He was also the initiator of a famous school named after him. Pythagoras held that the essential nature of the universe consisted in numbers. Aristotle, writing of the Pythagorean school, explains that “the Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced in this study, but also having been brought up in it, they thought its principles were the principles of all things. Since these principle numbers are by nature the first, and in numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come into being – more than in fire and earth and water…, since, again, they saw that the modifications and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in numbers ; since, then all other things seemed in their whole nature to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number.”[9][9] For Copleston, “it seems clear that the Pythagoreans regarded numbers spatially. One is the point, two is the line, three is the surface, four is the solid. To say then that all things are number, would mean that ‘all bodies consist of points or units in space, which when taken together constitute a number.’[10][10]”[11][11] Pythagoras had a very spiritualistic conception of man and proposed a strict moral and ascetical code for his followers. He also taught the immortality of the soul and the doctrine of transmigration of souls (metempsychosis).
Parmenides
The philosophical genius of Parmenides[12][12] (c. 520–c. 440 B.C.) discovered that betweeen being and non-being there existed a radical distinction: being is and non-being is not ; being is thinkable and non-being cannot be thought of. He was the first formulator of the principle of non-contradiction, holding that being is and non-being is not. Though Parmenides affirmed that being was the object of the intellect, he went to excess, holding that being was the only reality, thus denying all change in the world. Change, motion, and becoming are illusory for him. There exists only being, the one, perfect, complete, immutable and eternal. Thus, he ended up a monist. He laudably wanted to re-establish the truth of being in opposition to the philosophy of pure becoming of Heraclitus. But he understood his principle “Being is, non-being is not” in a rigid, inflexible manner and rejected every non-being, including relative non-being. Thus, he concluded that all limitation, multiplicity and change were impossible and therefore all reality was but a single, homogeneous, immobile being. “Parmenides, reaching the opposite pole to Heraclitus, fixed, as he did, once for all one of the extreme limits of speculation and error, and proved that every philosophy of pure being, for the very reason that it denies that kind of non-being which Aristotle termed potentiality and which necessarily belongs to everything created, is obliged to absorb all being in absolute being, and leads therefore to monism or pantheism no less inevitably than the philosophy of pure becoming.”[13][13] Parmenides’ notion of being was not analogical but univocal. He failed to draw a distinction between the infinite and the finite. A correct solution to the problem of Parmenides lies in the doctrine of act and potency later developed by Aristotle, and in the teaching that being is not univocal but analogical. “Thus all the difficulties raised by Parmenides could easily be solved by dividing Being into two kinds, two realities, two essentially different realizations (rationes simpliciter diversae secundum quid eaedem) of the same analogical idea of Being: 1. Being realized in a supreme and infinite degree, i.e. the essentially existent, the purely actual – ipsum esse subsistens – to which are applicable all Parmenides’ metaphysical inferences, provided all material elements be excluded ; and 2. Being realized in varyingly limited degrees, in things affected more or less with potentiality, the objects of sense experience. In regard to beings of this kind, the Eleatic arguments have no validity.”[14][14]
The Atomist School
Though Leucippus (who flourished sometime during the fifth century B.C.) is the founder of atomism,[15][15] Democritus[16][16] (460–360 B.C.) is undoubtedly its most famous exponent. Atomism is a philosophy which holds that being is constituted by atoms, indivisible and immutable particles, different from each other only in form and dimension. Atoms are constantly in movement, and the diversity of things is caused by the movement of atoms in a vacuum, an existent reality. When atoms unite they bring about generation, and when they separate from one another corruption is brought about. Every corporeal being that exists is composed of atoms that are separated from one another by a vacuum. The cause of movement of the atoms lies in their very instability ; they are by nature in constant motion. Knowledge, according to Democritus, takes place by means of the action of atoms upon the sensitive organs. Atoms constantly flow out of things, and when they reach the senses they affect similar atoms present in the senses.
The Pluralistic Physical School
The main philosophers of this school are Empedocles and Anaxagoras. The school is described as pluralistic because they chose a plurality of elements for their first principle. Empedocles[17][17] (c. 483–c. 423 B.C.) held that the ultimate cause of all things resided in the four original and immutable elements of earth, fire, air, and water. These elements are the ungenerated, incorruptible, and immutable substances that constitute the origin of all things. “From these things all other beings have proceeded – those that existed in the past, those that exist at present, and those that will exist in the future – trees, men and women, animals, birds, the fish that live in the water, and also the gods who live long lives and who enjoy special prerogatives. For only these elements exist ; and by combining themselves in different ways, they take on a variety of forms, each particular combination giving rise to a particular kind of change.”[18][18] The four elements never change; it is through their different combinations that other things are brought into existence. He also sustained that the change and becoming that we experience in the world are a result of the conflict between the two primordial forces of love and hate. Hate and love make the four elements unite with or separate themselves from one another. Love brings things together and brings about generation, while hate is divisive and brings about corruption. Love and hate are in constant opposition with each other, and the predominance of one over the other is in perpetual alternation, giving rise to the cosmic cycles of generation and corruption. Empedocles’ theory of knowledge is materialist ; knowledge is the result of the contact between the elements of things and the elements of the senses.
Anaxagoras[19][19] (c. 500–c. 428 B.C.) sustained that the first principle of all things consists in a great indeterminate mixture composed of an infinite number of qualitatively diverse substances, infinitely small in size. Aristotle called Anaxagoras’ first principle the homeomeries. They are the “seeds” all things. The homeomeries in a way embody all things in itself. All beings are made up of a mixture of homeomeries, and different mixtures give rise to different things, depending on the element which has the biggest proportion in the mixture. Movement in the world is caused by the Supreme Intelligence or Mind (Nous). The Nous, it should be noted, did not create the world but rather sets the world in motion whereby things begin to differentiate themselves from one another and take on particular characteristics. The motion initiated by the Nous is what determines the diverse proportions of homeomeries in things. Anaxagoras describes his Nous: “While all other things are composed of a mixture of all things, the Intelligence is infinite and independent, not mixed with other things, but is by itself alone. Otherwise, if it were mixed with something else and were not alone by itself, it would participate in all other things, for everything is in everything as I said earlier. The things mixed with it would prevent it from governing any of them in the manner rendered possible only by its independence from all other things. The intelligence is the most subtle and pure of beings. It knows everything completely and has maximum power….The Intelligence ordains everything that is brought into being – those things that existed in the past and exist no longer, those that exist at present and those that will exist in the future. It also causes the rotation of the stars, the sun and the moon, the air and the ether that are separating from one another. It is this rotation that causes their separation.”[20][20]