Text b. Philosophy and its history

1. Read the quote below. How do you understand it? Give your reasons and examples to support your answers.

* Appendix 3 p. 153

• “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, thesis 11)

2. Practise reading these terms and proper names. How do you understand them?

ancient /ˈeɪnʃ(ə)nt/

quasiscientific roots /ˈkwɑːzisʌɪənˈtɪfɪk ruːts/

perception /pəˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/

pagan culture /ˈpeɪg(ə)n ˈkʌltʃə/

Stoicism /ˈstəʊɪsɪz(ə)m/

Epicureanism /ˌɛpɪkjʊəˈriːəˌnɪz(ə)m/

Skepticism /ˈskɛptɪsɪz(ə)m/

Parmenides /pɑːˈmɛnɪdiːz/

Zeno of Elea /ˈziːnəʊ (ə)v ˈiːlɪə/

Protagoras /prɒˈtɑːɡərəs/

Lucretius /luːˈkriːʃəs/

Epictetus /ˌɛpɪkˈtiːtəs/

Sextus Empiricus /ˈsekstəs ɛmpɪrɪkəs/

Pyrrhonean /pɪˈrɒnɪən/

Averroes /əˈvɛrəʊiːz/

St. Thomas Aquinas /s(ə)nt ˈtɒməs əˈkwʌɪnəs/

Leonardo da Vinci /lɪəˌnɑːdəʊ də ˈvɪntʃi/

Michelangelo /ˌmɪk(ə)ˈlandʒələʊ/

Galileo /ˌgalɪˈleɪəʊ/

3. Read the text and answer the questions.

1. When did everything start?

2. What was the aim of the first thinkers?

3. What was Plato’s contribution as Socrates’ pupil?

4. What were Aristotle’s advanced ideas?

5. How did philosophy change within the political sphere?

6. What were the new views on philosophy after the collapse of the Roman Empire?

7. What was the Renaissance marked by in human history?

Since the time of Socrates there have been many great philosophers. The history of philosophy is a fascinating and important subject in its own right, and many of the classic philosophical texts are also great works of literature: Plato’s Socratic dialogues, René Descarte’s Meditations, David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, to take just a few examples, all stand out as compelling pieces of writing by any standards. Philosophical issues are not just of interest to philosophers: they arise naturally out of the human situation and many people who have never opened a philosophy book spontaneously think about them.

Any serious study of philosophy will involve a mixture of historical and topic-based study, since if we don’t know about the arguments and errors of earlier philosophers; we cannot hope to make a substantial contribution to the subject. Without some knowledge of history philosophers would never progress: they would keep making the same mistakes, unaware that they had been made before. And many philosophers develop their own theories by seeing what is wrong with the work of earlier philosophers.

Philosophy began in ancient Greece around the year 580 BC, when thinkers such as Thales (625-547 BC) and Anaximander (610-545 BC) argued that everything must be composed of some basic substance, such as water or air, or what we might call today atoms. The main aim of these first thinkers was to explain in a systematic and principled way natural phenomena such as the formation of mountains and living beings. From these quasiscientific roots, philosophy soon spread in many different directions. For example, thinkers such as Parmenides (515-450 BC) and Zeno of Elea (490-430 BC) questioned the very possibility of this naturalistic enterprise by arguing that the universe had to be an unchanging seamless whole. The pre-Socratics formulated for the first time many fundamental philosophical debates, including the nature of values. When the Sophists, such as Protagoras (490-420 BC), argued that all ethical claims were relative, Socrates (469-399 BC) challenged their views, and in so doing developed a style of argumentation and questioning that many generations of philosophers have seen as a model.

Socrates' most famous pupil, Plato (427-347 BC), immortalised his teacher's distinctive philosophical approach in his early dialogues, some of which also dramatise the trial, imprisonment, and death of Socrates on a charge of impiety. Later, Plato became the first thinker to try to address all the problems raised by the pre-Socratics with a single system­atic theory, which argued for the existence and importance of nonmaterial universals, or the Forms, that define the essence of everything. In his more mature dialogues, Plato tried to demonstrate the relevance of the theory of Forms for areas as diverse as politics, aesthetics, education, knowledge, perception, and ethics, as well as its relevance in transcending the limitations of pre-Socratic thought.

Plato's most famous pupil, Aristotle, tried to combine the insights of pre-Socratic thinking with aspects of the thought of Plato by arguing that reality consists of substances that must have both form and matter. Forms are not nonmaterial universals, as Plato supposed, but instead they are the way matter is organised. From this idea, Aristotle developed a less otherworldly conception of the classification of knowledge, physics, psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and politics, which continued to rival Plato's vision long after both were dead.

Around the time of Aristotle's death, Greek society shifted radically from being a collection of city-states to being part of the huge empire formed by Alexander the Great.

With this political change, philosophy altered too. Broadly speaking, the three main so-called Hellenistic schools of thought, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism, were primarily concerned more with the happiness and tranquility of the individual, and less with lofty metaphysics and lowly politics. In 146 BC, Greece became a protectorate of Rome. The three Hellenistic schools of philosophy found followers and advocates in Roman society. The great Latin poet Lucretius (99-55 BC) popularised Epicurus' ideas; Epictetus (55-135 AD) explicated the basics of Stoicism, which became widely accepted in the Roman Empire; and Sextus Empiricus (175-225 AD) expounded Pyrrhonean Skepticism.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire (around 401 AD) and the eventual spreading of Christianity through Europe, philosophy entered a new period, like Europe itself. Until roughly 1000, much of Europe was unstable with groups such as the Vikings and Huns invading settlements and cities. In philosophy, one of the hallmarks of the early medieval period is the attempt to combine the insights of Plato with the divine revelation of Christianity. Many of the early Church thinkers, such as St. Augustine (354-430), came from a neo-Platonic tradition, which they tried to reconcile with Christian doctrine.

Around 1000, Europe entered into a period of greater stability and relative wealth. At this time, many of the works of Aristotle were largely unknown outside the Arab world. However, the great Moslem thinkers, such as Averroes (1126-1198), had written commentaries on the works of Aristotle, and as their writings become more known in Europe, knowledge of Aristotle spread, generating new heresies and provoking a crisis in the Catholic Church. The work of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) can be regarded as an attempt to adapt the teachings of the Church to those of Aristotle, and in the process Aquinas defined a new Christian doctrine, which in many ways dominated medieval European thought. One of the important metaphysical disputes during this period was the reality of universals, or Forms; one of the dominant epistemological debates was to what extent knowledge of God depended on reason as opposed to divine revelation.

The Renaissance heralds the huge transition from the medieval to modern world. This was the period of the Portuguese navigators; the discovery of the Americas (1492); the great works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; and the Lutheran Reformation, which led to the formation of Protestant churches in northern Europe. The Renaissance was marked by a renewed interest in human life, initiated in part by the rediscovery of the great wealth of the pagan culture of ancient Greece. For example, the materialism of Lucretius inspired generations of scientific philosophers such as Galileo (1564-1642) to challenge the Scholastic orthodoxy of the day.