Introduction to Western Philosophy

Introduction to Western Philosophy The ideas about life and the universe that we refer to as "philosophical" originate from two sources: first, ingrained ethical and religious beliefs; second, the kind of research that, in the broadest sense of the word, may be referred to as "scientific." The relative contributions of these two elements to each philosopher's system have varied greatly, yet philosophy is defined by the existence of both, at least to some extent. The word "philosophy" has been employed in a variety of contexts, some more general than others. I want to use it in a broad meaning, which I shall attempt to clarify in a moment. According to my interpretation of the term, philosophy lies in the middle between theological and scientific disciplines. Similar to theology, it is composed of conjectures on subjects about which conclusive knowledge has not yet been ascertained; yet, like science, it relies on human reason as opposed to authority, whether it tradition or revelation. I would argue that science is the exclusive possessor of definite knowledge, whereas religion is the owner of all dogmas regarding knowledge that is beyond definite. However, there is a sensitive area that exists between theology and science and is known as philosophy. It is vulnerable to criticism from both directions. The majority of problems that pique the curiosity of speculative minds are ones that science is unable to address, and the theologians' certain responses no longer appear to have as much weight as they did in earlier times. Does the world consist of matter and mind, and if so, what exactly does matter and mind consist of? Does the mind have free will or is it controlled by matter? Is there a purpose or unity in the universe? Is it changing in order to achieve a goal? Do we genuinely believe in the rules of nature, or is it just that we are naturally drawn to order? Is humanity just a little ball of unclean carbon and water impotently crawling around on a small, insignificant planet, as the astronomer perceives him to be? Or does he look like what Hamlet sees? Could he be both at once? Do certain lifestyles have a noble quality and others a base quality, or are all lifestyles pointless? If a noble way of living exists, what does it include and how can we get there? Does the good have to last forever to be valuable, or is it still worthwhile to pursue even as the cosmos inevitably approaches its end? Is what appears to be knowledge the pinnacle of foolishness, or is there really a thing as wisdom? There isn't a laboratory response for such queries. Theologies have claimed to provide solutions that are far too specific, yet because of this clarity, contemporary thought regards them with mistrust. Philosophy is concerned with the study of these issues, if not their resolution. You would wonder therefore, why devote time to such unsolvable issues? One might respond to this as a historian or as a person experiencing the fear of being alone in the universe. Throughout this book, I shall provide the historian's response, to the extent that I am able. Ever since humans acquired the ability to freely conjecture, their behaviors have relied heavily on their beliefs about the nature of the universe, human existence, and right and wrong. This holds true now just as it has always done. Understanding a nation's or an era's philosophy requires understanding it ourselves, which requires some level of philosophical knowledge. This is an example of reciprocal causation: men's philosophy is greatly influenced by their circumstances, but their circumstances are also greatly influenced by their philosophy. The next few pages will focus on this relationship across the centuries. But there's also a more private response. Science reveals just a small portion of what is possible for us to know, and when we lose sight of this, we lose awareness of many really significant issues. Theology, on the other hand, breeds a type of impertinent insolence towards the cosmos by inducing a dogmatic notion that we have knowledge while in reality we are ignorant. Even while uncertainty hurts when there are strong hopes and anxieties present, it is necessary if we want to live without the consolation of reassuring fairy tales. It is not a good idea to ignore the problems posed by philosophy or to convince ourselves that we know the solutions. The main thing philosophy can still offer people in our day and age is probably how to live without certainty without becoming immobilized by doubt. In contrast to religion, philosophy was first developed in Greece in the sixth century B.C. Once antiquity had run its course, theology once more overshadowed everything as Christianity grew and Rome collapsed. With the exception of a few notable rebels like Emperor Frederick II (1195–1250), the Catholic Church ruled the country during its second great period, which spanned the eleventh to the fourteenth century. The misunderstandings that led to the Reformation ended this time period. The third era, which spans from the seventeenth century to the present, is more controlled by science than the previous two. While traditional religious beliefs are still significant, they are seen to require justification and are adjusted whenever science seems to require them. From a Catholic perspective, few of the thinkers of this era are orthodox, and in their conjectures, the secular State is given greater weight than the Church. Like religion and science, social cohesiveness and individual liberty are always at odds with one another or in an awkward balance. Loyalty to the City State guaranteed social cohesiveness in ancient Greece; even Aristotle, whose own time Alexander was rendering the City State obsolete, could not conceive of any other sort of governance as desirable. The extent to which a person's obligation to the City restricted their freedom differed greatly. He was as free in Sparta as he would have been in contemporary Germany or Russia; at Athens, residents enjoyed, at best, an unparalleled degree of freedom from state restraints, notwithstanding sporadic persecutions. Greek philosophy up to Aristotle is characterized by a strong religious and nationalistic love of the city; its moral codes are heavily influenced by politics and are tailored to the needs of the common people. The ideas were relevant when the Greeks were subjugated by the Macedonians and subsequently the Romans. were out of date in reference to their period of independence. This resulted in a more individualistic and less socially conscious ethic on the one hand, and a loss of vitality due to the violation of tradition on the other. Rather than viewing virtue as a citizen's relationship with the state, the Stoics understood virtue as a relationship between the soul and God. They therefore paved the way for Christianity, which, like Stoicism, was initially unpolitical since its followers had no say in politics during the first three centuries of their practice. Throughout the six and a half centuries between Alexander and Constantine, social cohesiveness was maintained by force—first by the use of armies, then by civil administration—rather than by philosophy or links to the past. First a strong centralized State was founded and then maintained by Roman soldiers, roads, legislation, and bureaucrats. As there was no Roman philosophy, nothing could be attributed to it. The Greek concepts that were carried over from the era of freedom gradually changed during this extended span of time. Certain antiquated concepts—most notably, those that we ought to consider particularly religious—became more significant than others, while more rationalistic concepts were abandoned because they were out of step with the times. The Greek tradition was therefore pruned by subsequent pagans until it was ready to be incorporated into Christian teaching. The idea that a man's duty to God is more important than his responsibility to the State is one of the fundamental beliefs that Christianity promoted. This belief was previously implied in the teachings of the Stoics but was beyond the common ancient mindset. The belief that "we should obey God rather than Man," as expressed by Socrates and the Apostles, endured notwithstanding Constantine's conversion because the early Christian rulers were either Arians or had a tendency toward Arianism. It was abandoned when the emperors adopted an Orthodox lifestyle. It remained dormant under the Byzantine Empire and the later Russian Empire, which took its Christian faith from Constantinople. * However, in the West, where heretical barbarian conquerors nearly quickly replaced the Catholic emperors (except from some regions of Gaul), the preference for religious loyalty over political devotion persisted and, to some degree, continues to this day. The western European civilization came to a halt for six centuries due to the barbarian invasion. Before it was wiped out by the Danes in the ninth century, it flourished in Ireland and gave rise to one famous person, Scotus Erigena. Greek civilization endured in the Eastern Empire in a dried-out state, akin to a museum, until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. However, other than an artistic legacy and Justinian's Codes of Roman law, nothing of global significance emerged from Constantinople. The western Roman world had some highly significant developments between the end of the fifth and the middle of the eleventh century, known as the Dark Ages. Christianity created a battle between the Church and the King, which represented the struggle between the State and God. The Pope had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Great Britain and Ireland, France, and Spain. His power over bishops and abbots was quite weak at first, especially outside of Italy and southern France, but it became genuine and effective about the time of Gregory VII in the late eleventh century. From that point on, the clergy in western Europe united under a unified structure headed by Rome, vying for power in a clever, persistent, and typically successful manner up until the year 1300 in their struggles against secular authorities. In addition to being a struggle between clergy and laity, the battle between Church and State was also a resurgence of the Mediterranean world's conflict with the northern barbarians. The Latin liturgy and the predominately Italian, Spanish, or southern French males in the Church mirrored the unity of the Roman Empire. When education was restored, it was classical, and their ideas about law and administration made more sense to Marcus Aurelius than they did to modern kings. The Church stood for both historical continuity and the pinnacle of modern civilization. In contrast, the secular authority was held by Teutonic kings and barons who made an effort to maintain the institutions they had carried with them from Germany's woodlands. Both absolute power and what these brash conquerors perceived as a soulless and lifeless law were foreign to those organizations. The feudal elite and the monarch had to share authority, but they all agreed that there should be periodic indulgences in violent, murderous, pillaging, or rape acts. Since monarchs were sincere in their piety and repentance was in and of itself a sort of emotion, they could certainly experience regret. However, the Church was never able to instill in them the calm consistency of good behavior that a modern employer expects—and typically gets—from his staff. If they were incapable of drinking, murdering, and falling in love when the spirit drove them, what good was it to rule the world? And why should they, armed only with a lack of weapons and pledged to celibacy, bow to the commands of scholarly men with legions of arrogant knights? They created tournaments and courtly love, and they upheld the duel and trial by combat against opposition from the church. Sometimes they would even kill prominent churchmen in a fit of fury. Despite the fact that the kings had the whole might behind them, the Church prevailed. The monarchs were constantly at conflict with one another, which helped the Church gain some advantage, but the fundamental reason the Church prevailed was the widespread belief held by both the people and the rulers that it held the keys to power. The Church had the authority to determine whether a monarch should spend eternity in paradise or hell, to release subjects from their loyalty obligations, and to incite disobedience. Furthermore, the Church gained the favor of the emerging merchant elite because it stood for order rather than chaos. This final point was particularly important in Italy. In addition to politics, Teutonic efforts to maintain the Church's relative independence were also evident in the arts, romance, chivalry, and warfare. Its expression in the intellectual sphere was quite limited, as education was mostly restricted to the clergy. The explicit philosophy of the Middle Ages simply reflects the views of one group and is not a true reflection of the era. But among the clergy, particularly the Franciscan friars, there were some who disagreed with the Pope for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, culture reached the laity in Italy many centuries earlier than it did in the regions north of the Alps. The extremity of anti-papal culture is embodied by Frederick II, who attempted to start a new religion; on the other hand, Thomas Aquinas, born in the kingdom of Naples, the seat of Frederick II's power, continues to be the archetypal representative of papal philosophy. About half a century later, Dante succeeded in creating a synthesis and provided the sole impartial explanation of the entire medieval cosmos. After Dante, the medieval philosophical synthesis collapsed for intellectual and political reasons. During its existence, the system possessed a certain neatness and small-scale wholeness; everything it considered was arranged precisely in respect to the other elements of its limited universe. However, the Refformation, which undermined both the scholastic system of administration centered upon the Pope and the unity of Christendom, was preceded by the Great Schism, the conciliar movement, and the Renaissance papacy. During the Renaissance, people were weary of systems, which they perceived as mental prisons, as a result of new understanding about antiquity and the surface of the world. The earth and humans were given a lower status in Copernican astronomy than they had in Ptolemaic thinking. Among intellectual men, the pleasure of discovering new facts supplanted the pleasure of reasoning, analysis, and systematization. The Renaissance preferred a vast and productive disarray in mind, even though its art is remained organized. Montaigne is the most typical example of the era in this regard. There was a breakdown of order in politics theory, as in everything but art. Though chaotic in actuality, the Middle Ages were characterized in thought by a strong desire for legality and a highly specific conception of political authority. God is ultimately the source of all power; He has given the Emperor authority over secular affairs and the Pope authority over concerns of sacrament. On the other hand, during the fifteenth century, both the Pope and the Emperor lost significance. The Pope devolved into a simple participant in the exceedingly intricate and deceitful Italian power politics, much like any other ruler. The newly established national monarchs in France, Spain, and England possessed an authority within their own borders that was impervious to intervention from the Pope or the Emperor. Gunpowder gave the national State a degree of control over people's minds and emotions that it had not previously had, and this gradually obliterated the remnants of the Roman belief in the unity of civilization. Machiavelli's Prince is one work that expresses this political chaos. Politics becomes a crude power battle in the absence of any guiding principles; The Prince offers astute counsel on how to win in this game. Similar to the events of the Greek Golden Age, traditional moral restraints vanished in Renaissance Italy because they were perceived as superstitious; individuals became more creative and energetic after being freed from constraints, leading to an uncommon burst of genius; however, the chaos and betrayal that inevitably followed the moral decline rendered the Italian people as a whole impotent, and they, like the Greeks, fell prey to countries less civilized than themselves but not as devoid of social cohesiveness. Nevertheless, the outcome was not as catastrophic as it was in Greece since the newly dominant countries—aside from Spain—exhibited the same capacity for remarkable accomplishments as the Italians had. The Reformation took center stage in the history of European thinking starting in the sixteenth century. The Reformation was a multifaceted, intricate movement that owed its triumph to a multitude of factors. Essentially, it was an uprising by the northern countries against Rome's resurgent dominance. The force of religion had brought subjugation to the North, but religion had deteriorated in Italy. The papacy persisted as an institution and continued to demand large tributes from Germany and England, but these pious nations could not feel respect for the Borgias and Medicis, who claimed to be able to save souls from purgatory in exchange for money that they lavished on extravagance and immorality. A combination of national, economic, and moral motivations fortified the uprising against Rome. Furthermore, the Princes quickly realized that they would be able to control the Church in their domains if it became purely national, which would make them far more powerful at home than they had been when they shared authority with the Pope. For all these reasons, throughout the majority of northern Europe, rulers and populace alike embraced Luther's doctrinal reforms. Three sources served as the foundation for the Catholic Church. Its theology was Greek, its governance was at least loosely Roman, its holy history was Jewish, and its canon law was Greek. The Reformation weakened the Greek and Roman components while fortifying the Jewish elements and rejecting the Roman ones. As a result, it collaborated with the nationalist forces that were tearing apart the social cohesiveness that the Roman Church and the Roman Empire had initially established. According to Catholic dogma, divine revelation continued through the ages via the Church, to which each person was obligated to submit his or her own personal beliefs. This means that divine revelation did not stop with the Bible. Protestants, on the other hand, denied that the Church could bring about revelation; they believed that the sole source of truth was the Bible, which each individual could understand for himself. Should men have different interpretations, there was no divinely designated arbiter to settle the disagreement. Practically speaking, the State usurped the right that had previously belonged to the Church. Protestant theology holds that the soul and God should not communicate through an earthly medium. This alteration has significant impacts. Truth was now to be found via introspection rather than by seeking advice from authorities. A rapid inclination toward anarchist in politics and mysticism in religion existed, both of which had long been difficult to accommodate within the confines of Catholic orthodoxy. Instead of a single Protestantism, there were several sects; as many intellectuals opposed scholasticism as there were philosophers; and, unlike in the thirteenth century, there were numerous heretical rulers instead of a single Emperor who resisted the pope. The end effect was a continuously growing subjectivism in both thinking and literature, which began as a healthy release from spiritual servitude but gradually moved toward a kind of personal seclusion that was detrimental to societal order. Descartes is the starting point of modern philosophy because of his fundamental belief that there is an outside universe only because of himself and his thoughts. This was only the beginning of a progression that led to Fichte, who believes that everything is really an ego emission, via Berkeley and Kant. This was madness, and philosophy has been trying to pull itself back from this extreme into the realm of ordinary common sense ever since. Anarchism in politics and subjectivism in philosophy go hand in together. The theology of Anabaptism had already been created during Luther's lifetime by unwelcome and unrecognized adherents, and it briefly ruled Münster. The Anabaptists rejected all laws because they believed that the Holy Spirit, who is unconstrained by rules, would always lead a decent man. They derive communism and sexual promiscuity from this premise; as a result, they were eliminated following a valiant uprising. However, their doctrine— which is historically the origin of Quakerism—spread to Holland, England, and America in milder versions. In the 19th century, anarchism took on a more brutal form and lost its religious connotations. It was quite successful in Russia, Spain, and to a lesser extent in Italy; it is still a source of frustration for US immigration officials. Though antireligious, this contemporary version yet bears much of the spirit of early Protestantism; Luther's animosity at popes is mostly aimed against secular governments. Once unleashed, subjectivity could not be contained until it had served its purpose. Protestant reliance on the individual conscience was fundamentally anarchic when it came to morals. Because of habit and tradition, individualists in ethics continued to conduct in a customarily virtuous manner, with the exception of rare outbursts like the one at Münster. However, this was an unstable balance. The eighteenth-century cult of "sensibility" started to undermine it: a net was admired not for its morality or for its positive outcomes, but rather for the emotion that inspired it. This mindset gave rise to the Byronic cult of violent passion of any kind and the cult of the hero as articulated by Carlyle and Nietzsche. This subjective assessment of men as aesthetically pleasing objects of observation rather than as members of a society is closely linked to the romantic movement in literature, art, and politics. Sheep are not as lovely as tigers, yet we would rather see them in chains. The stereotypical romantic takes down the bars and revels in the tiger's amazing jumps that decimate the sheep. He challenges men to see themselves as tigers, and when he is successful, the outcomes are not entirely pleasing. There have been a variety of responses to the more absurd manifestations of subjectivism in modern times. First, a philosophy of moderate compromise known as liberalism aimed to allocate the various domains of the person and the government. In its current incarnation, this starts with Locke, who is equally hostile to the Anabaptist individuality known as "enthusiasm" as he is to total authority and obedient traditionalism. The doctrine of State worship, which gives the State the same status that Catholicism granted to the Church or, occasionally, to God, is the result of a more extensive uprising. Different phases of this philosophy are represented by Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hegel; Cromwell, Napoleon, and contemporary Germany are examples of how their ideas are realistically put into practice. While communism is theoretically quite different from these kinds of ideas, in reality it leads to a community that is very similar to that which arises from worshiping the state. During this protracted evolution, which began about 600 B.C. Philosophers to this day have been split between those who wanted social ties to become more rigid and those who wanted them to become more flexible. This distinction has been linked to others. Since the disciplinarians' systems of dogma, whether new or ancient, could not be objectively supported, they were forced to be, to a greater or lesser extent, antagonistic toward science. They have nearly always preached that "nobility" or "heroism" is preferable to happiness and that happiness is not the good. They feel empathy for the illogical aspects of human nature because they believe reason to be antagonistic to social cohesiveness. Conversely, libertarians have generally been rationalistic, scientific, utilitarian, adverse to violent passion, and antagonistic to any more profound kinds of religion—with the possible exception of radical anarchists. This tension is present in the oldest Greek ideas and existed in Greece prior to the development of what is now known as philosophy. It has endured to this day in various guises and most likely will for a very long time to come. It is evident that each side in this disagreement—like all those that last for an extended length of time—is partially correct and partially incorrect. It is imperative that society maintain social cohesiveness, and humankind has never been able to do it using logical reasoning alone. Every community faces two opposing threats: on the one hand, ossification due to excessive discipline and respect for tradition; on the other hand, dissolution or submission to foreign conquest due to the rise of individualism and personal independence that prevents cooperation. Important civilizations typically begin with a strict and superstitious structure that progressively relaxes and eventually leads to a time of dazzling brilliance, during which the positive aspects of the old traditions persist and the bad that would result from their breakdown has not yet materialized. However, when the evil spreads, it causes anarchy, which eventually leads to a new dictatorship and creates a new synthesis protected by a new set of dogmas. The liberal philosophy is an attempt to break free from this never-ending cycle. The goal of liberalism is to provide stability in society without imposing more restrictions than are required to maintain the community. It aims to establish a social order that is not founded on illogical dogma. It will remain to be seen in the future whether this approach is successful. * For this reason, contemporary Russians do not believe that we should follow dialectical materialism instead of Stalin.