From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems
concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice,
beauty, validity, mind and language.[1][2] Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument.[3] The word philosophy is of Ancient Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning "love of knowledge", "love of wisdom".[4][5][6]
Branches of philosophy
To give an exhaustive list of the main branches of philosophy is
difficult, because there have been different, equally acceptable
divisions at different times, and the divisions are often relative to
the concerns of a particular period. However, the following branches
are usually accepted as the main ones.
- Metaphysics investigates the nature of being and the world. Traditional branches are cosmology and ontology.
- Epistemology
is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether
knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the
challenge posed by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief and justification.
- Ethics, or 'moral
philosophy', is concerned with questions of how persons ought to act or
if such questions are answerable. The main branches of ethics are meta-ethics (sometimes called "analytic ethics"), normative ethics and applied ethics. Metaethics
concerns the nature of ethical thought, comparison of various ethical
systems, whether there are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths
could be known. Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality. Plato's early dialogues include a search for definitions of virtue.
- Political Philosophy
is the study of government and the relationship of individuals and
communities to the state. It includes questions about law, property,
and the rights and obligations of the citizen.
- Aesthetics deals with beauty, art, enjoyment, sensory-emotional values, perception, and matters of taste and sentiment.
- Logic deals with patterns of thinking that lead from true premises to true conclusions. Beginning in the late 19th century, mathematicians such as Frege began a mathematical treatment of logic, and today the subject of logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic.
- Philosophy of Mind deals with the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism. In recent years there is an increasing connection between this branch of philosophy and cognitive science
- Philosophy of language: is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language.
Most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of history.
In addition, a range of academic subjects have emerged to deal with
areas which would have historically been the subject of philosophy.
These include Psychology, Anthropology and Science.
Western philosophy
History
The introduction of the terms "philosopher" and "philosophy" has been ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (see Diogenes Laertius: "De vita et moribus philosophorum", I, 12; Cicero: "Tusculanae disputationes", V, 8-9). The ascription is based on a passage in a lost work of Herakleides Pontikos, a disciple of Aristotle. It is considered to be part of the widespread legends of Pythagoras of this time. "Philosopher" replaced the word "sophist" (from sophoi), which was used to describe "wise men," teachers of rhetoric, who were important in Athenian democracy.
The history of philosophy is customarily divided into three periods: Ancient philosophy, Medieval philosophy, and Modern philosophy. For a map with the dates and places of birth of most western philosophers see here.
Ancient philosophy
-
Ancient philosophy is the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world from
the sixth century [circa 585] B.C. to the fourth century A.D. It is
usually divided into four periods: the pre-Socratic period, the periods of Plato and Aristotle, and the post-Aristotelian (or Hellenistic) period. Sometimes a fifth period is added that includes the Christian and Neo-Platonist philosophers. The most important of the ancient philosophers (in terms of subsequent influence) are Plato and Aristotle[7].
The themes of ancient philosophy are: understanding the fundamental causes and principles of the universe;
explaining it in an economical and uniform way; the epistemological
problem of reconciling the diversity and change of the natural
universe, with the possibility of obtaining fixed and certain knowledge
about it; questions about things which cannot be perceived by the
senses, such as numbers, elements, universals, and gods; the analysis of patterns of reasoning and argument; the nature of the good life and the importance of understanding and knowledge in order to pursue it; the explication of the concept of justice, and its relation to various political systems[8].
In this period the crucial features of the philosophical method were established: a critical approach to received or established views, and the appeal to reason and argumentation.
Medieval philosophy
-
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during what is now known as the medieval era or the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine (in Islam, Judaism and Christianity) with secular learning.
Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.
Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhacen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Christian philosophers Anselm, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan.
Early modern philosophy (c. 1600 – c. 1800)
-
The early modern period begins with the revival of skepticism
and with the growth of modern physical science. The main themes of this
era are: the problem of how we can know anything about the world
outside our own minds; the dispute between rationalists and empiricists,
rationalists holding that the ultimate source of knowledge is reason,
empiricists, that any genuine knowledge must be justified by
experience; the nature of the mind or self, and its relation to the body, and the closely related problem of reconciling our belief in free will with the emerging scientific picture of the physical universe as deterministic; attempts to explain the relationship between God and science, and the rebirth of political philosophy.
Canonical figures include Montaigne, Descartes, Francis Bacon, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.[9] Chronologically, this era spans the 17th and 18th centuries, and is generally considered to end with Kant's systematic attempt to reconcile Newtonian physics with traditional metaphysical topics.[10]
Nineteenth century philosophy
Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th-century.[11] German idealists, such as Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling,
expanded on the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is
constituted by a rational mind-like process, and as such is entirely
knowable.[12]
Rejecting idealism, other philosophers, many working from outside
the university, initiated lines of thought that would occupy academic
philosophy in the early and mid-20th century:
Contemporary philosophy (c. 1900 – present)
In the last hundred years, philosophy has increasingly become an
activity practiced within the university, and accordingly it has grown
more specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of
philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation
between the theories of the natural sciences and the ideas of the
humanities or common sense.
In the Anglophone world, analytic philosophy became the dominant school. In the first half of the century, it was a cohesive school, more or less identical to logical positivism,
united by the notion that philosophical problems could and should be
solved by attention to logic and language. In the latter half of the
twentieth century, analytic philosophy
diffused into a wide variety of disparate philosophical views, only
loosely united by historical lines of influence and a self-identified
commitment to clarity and rigor. Since roughly 1960, analytic
philosophy has shown a revival of interest in the history of
philosophy, as well as attempts to integrate philosophical work with
scientific results, especially in psychology and cognitive science.
On continental Europe, no single school or temperament enjoyed
dominance. The flight of the logical positivists from central Europe
during the 1930s and 1940s, however, diminished philosophical interest
in natural science, and an emphasis on the humanities, broadly
construed, figures prominently in what is usually called "continental philosophy". Twentieth century movements such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, and poststructuralism are included within this loose category.
Main Doctrines
Realism and nominalism
-
Main articles: Realism and Nominalism
Realism sometimes
means the position opposed to the 18th-century Idealism, namely that
some things have real existence outside the mind. Classically, however,
realism is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to
universal terms like 'man' have a real existence. It is opposed to nominalism,
the view that abstract or universal terms are words only, or denote
mental states such as ideas, beliefs, or intentions. The latter
position, famously held by William of Ockham, is conceptualism.
Rationalism and empiricism
-
Rationalism is any view emphasizing the role or importance of
human reason. Extreme rationalism tries to base all knowledge on reason
alone. Rationalism typically starts from premises that cannot
coherently be denied, then attempts by logical steps to deduce every
possible object of knowledge.
The first rationalist, in this broad sense, is often held to be Parmenides
(fl. 480 BCE), who argued that it is impossible to doubt that thinking
actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore something beyond
thinking really exists. Parmenides deduced that what really exists must
have certain properties – for example, that it cannot come into
existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it
remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time). Zeno of Elea
(born c. 489 BCE) was a disciple of Parmenides, and argued that motion
is impossible, since the assertion that it exists implies a
contradiction.
Plato (427–347 BCE) was also influenced by Parmenides, but combined rationalism with a form of realism.
The philosopher's work is to consider being, and the essence of things.
But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The
nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles,
all trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind-independent
'forms', that humans (but particularly philosophers) can come to know
by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense-perception.
Modern rationalism begins with
Classical
from 
