Philosophy
On this page I have collected various philosopical references. There is no entirely satisfactory way to organize them: it could be done by topic, or in temporal order. They are here arranged by philosopher's names. These facts are intended to supplement careful and extensive readings in the works of these philosophers. There is no substitute for reading the works of any given philosopher. It will not suffice to merely read about her or his works, nor will it suffice to read only short excerpts. So, have fun with this page, and then, to the books!
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Aquinas
[1] The medieval philosophical community was the product of Plato and Aristotle; the three main groups were Islamic, Jewish, and Christian; these groups carried on a lively dialogue - not working in isolation from each other, but rather reading and discussing each other's works. We must see Aquinas as a child of Aristotle and the sibling of the Islamic and Jewish philosophers. [2] The "proof for the existence of God" was a literary form used by medievals. The numerous proofs constructed during this period were vehicles for each philosopher to demonstrate his particular understanding of metaphysical concepts (necessity and causality). We must see the "five proofs" as an expression of how Thomas viewed the concept of "causation". [3] Thomas is trying to steer between Scylla and Charybdis, between the two illogical alternatives created by the logical axiom that "every event or thing has a cause" - in a strictly Aristotelians sense of "cause". He is trying to answer the question "why is there anything at all?" or "why does the world exist?" or "what is the foundation of Being?" This question, in its various equivalent formulations, has been seen as the basic and central question of philosophy by many, but not all, philosophers. On the one hand, this leads to an infinite regression of A caused B caused C caused D caused E caused F and so on ad infinitum. But this begs the original question. On the other hand, if we propose one original "prime mover," this violates the axiom. Aquinas attempts to posit a prime mover which is outside time (and therefore outside any chain of causation) and thus underlies the world as a whole, rather than being merely a temporal starting point. Thus we cannot "trace back" through time to find the prime mover, but rather it underlies all time and provides the foundation for (conintued) existence ("Being") itself. This can perhaps be visualized if we line up the causal series of events (those caused and causing) horizontally, and envision the "prime mover" as a line underneath the series which supports the series.
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Aristotle
Aristotle is significant in several different ways: first, he was a founder of the natural sciences and their methodologies; second, he was a metaphysician working with concepts of causality and necessity. He introduced the linguistic bent into philosophy, forming meticulous definitions. It is a dis-service to him to charicaturize him by the slogan "man is a social animal", which was, at best, a passing remark and not central or crucial to the main focus of his work.
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Euclid
In addition to being a town in Ohio, Euclid was the founder of the
academic discipline of geometry. So why include him in a list of
philosophers? Why did Plato demand that anyone who wanted to enter his
academy first study Euclid? In general, because Euclidean geometry
features rigorous logical proofs. More particularly, Euclid laid the
groundwork for modern symbolic logic. He explained that any system of
symbols to be used as a logic must be organized in four steps: first, a
clearly defined “alphabet,” i.e., the collection of symbols to be so used;
second, rules describing how to form a well-formed formula, i.e., which
strings of symbols are to be counted as propositions within the system,
and which are to be counted as nonsense; third, a set of axioms, i.e.,
general patterns of formulas and how they may be manipulated; fourth,
rules for the application of axioms to sets of formulas. In this way,
Euclid is central to much of mathematics and philosphy.
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The influences on Hegel's thought were many and varied: Kant, Greco-Roman Classicism, the French Revolution, and a mis-understanding of Protestantism and Lutheranism. Hegel strove to create a philosophical system which would be “concrete” (he criticized some others as too abstract), and yet would begin with an exploration of human consciousness interpreted as God in a process of self-knowledge by means of the cosmos, hardly a topic which the ordinary person would call “concrete”!
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Born in 1588, Hobbes is classified by many as a "materialist", but only if one understands that word in a somewhat different sense than, e.g., the materialism of the Marxist-Leninists, or the strictly physicalist materialism of those who deny substance dualism. An English materialist of the Enlightenment in the period of the middle-class revolution, he has been called the "systematizer of Baconian materialism". Encouraged by the social changes in England and competent in the discoveries of the natural sciences in the 16th and 17th centuries, Hobbes is above all representative of the social-economically strengthened middle class which was striving toward power at that time. His sociological views are based upon the mechanical-materialistic philosophy and methodology which were co-formed by him. Hobbes has been seen by atheists as forming an essentially God-less system, in which religion was tolerated either as a tool of the state or as a necessary veneer on his writings in order to gain popularity. But Hobbes himself wrestled with an internal conflict, being simultaneously attracted to Anglicanism and Puritanism. Never able to side fully with one or the other, he was suspected by both.
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Central to understanding both Kant's physics and his ethics is his theory
of space and time. Space and time are the primary instances of the human
mind's “processing” function; other categories of thought are both
temporally and logically posterior to these. Space and time (according to
Kant) are projected by the mind onto reality, and then used by the mind to
preceived that reality by organizing it. Because the other categories of
thought are equally “un-real” (in the sense that they are mere projections
of the mind onto reality), it become problematic to say what, if anything,
is independently “real” or a “thing unto itself” (Ding an sich in
German). This is the great riddle of Kantian philosophy: how to have some
understanding of an ultimate reality, when most or all of what we perceive
is actually the creation of our minds. Kant thought he solved this riddle;
an entire generation of later philosophers (including Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel, and Schopenhauer) weren't satisfied with Kant's answer, and
attempted to answer on their own terms. In any case, Kant gets credit for
coming up with an insightful question about epistemology, whether or not
his answer was satisfactory. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is doubtless his most important book, but his Prolegomena and his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals are more readable and present his thought well.
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Locke
[1] Locke's primary contribution to philosophy is judged to be his theories of perception and knowledge. Locke laid the foundations for much of modern philosophy by stating that all of which we are aware is ideas. I cannot sense that this paper is white, I can merely sense that my idea of this paper is white. [2] Yet Locke is no mere café skeptic. He leads us beyond our ideas to the world of real things, and in the process dissects the nature of human knowledge in all its variety.
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Trained as a Greco-Roman philologist, Nietzsche wrote carefully: his works demand to be read carefully. So much nonsense has been written about him that it is best to avoid reading about him until one has read his own books. Nietzsche often wrote with irony, but the greatest irony is perhaps that during his life he defended Jews against anti-Semites, but after his death, his words were often twisted and used by the anti-Semites to justify their actions. Central to Nietzsche's thought was morality: where did it come from? how shall we revise it? Nietzsche also acted as a seer: one of his books “tells the history of the next two centuries” and does so with remarkable accuracy. Following the poet Heine, Nietzsche saw that the loss of morals (combined with meaningful religion) would result in widespread crime, societal and cultural chaos, and mass murder (as in the Holocaust). Nietzsche was very critical of institutionalized Christianity as it existed in his day: he saw that it had lost touch with its Founder.
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Sartre's earliest phases were characterized by the theme of “despair”, best known from his La Nausée and Le Mur works. His imprisonment in a German camp, Stalag 12D, ironically provided the catalyst for a turning point in his intellectual development toward “hope” in his famous play Bariona. Released from prison, his remaining career was a search for the path to “authentic” living in the tension between hope and despair. Sartre is often unfairly characterized as the philosopher of despair; that aspect of his thought often seems to dominate the others because it has found more dramatic expression. He sought to find a harmony between his belief in transcendent moral absolutes and his atheism.
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Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer can only be characterized in reference to Kant; this is true of several other post-Kantian philosophers, like Fichte and Schelling. Schopenhauer accepted most of what Kant said, but gave it a different “spin”. If indeed all that we know and perceive are representations, then we are not justified in posting any kind of Ding an sich. Therefore all we know - and all there is - is our own ming. Hence, the title of Schopenhauer's book The World as Will and Representation: the world is my representation of it, and ultimately there is some element of volition in that representation, so the world is my will. This makes Schopenhauer an “idealist”, but the word “idealist” is used in different ways by different philosophers, so we need to be careful how we interpret that term. Another phrase which leads to confusion is that in which Schopenhauer characterizes himself as a “pessimist”: this does not mean that Schopenhauer was gloomy and depressed all day - he was a generally a cheerful man, who enjoyed music, wine, and dancing. Rather, he re-defined “pessimist” in a quasi-religious sense: he defined Islam and Judaism as essentially optimistic religions, meaning that they would hope to establish some better condition on this world; whereas he characterized Christianity, Buddhism, and several Sanskrit religions as pessimistic, meaning that they accepted that this world is non-perfectable, and encouraged an attitude of acceptance toward this non-perfectability, and attitude of helpfulness toward one's fellow man, and an attitude of hope for a better future world in the next life. Schopenhauer's work on causation is worth reading, as is his exploration of many different bodies of knowledge in two large books, one entitled Parerga and Paralipomena, and the other called The Will in Nature.
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Discovering the “real” Socrates requires us to analyze the dialogues in which he appears, and remove both that which is actually Plato's views (placed into the mouth of Socrates) and that which was merely added to the dialogues for dramatic effect. What remains is a man with a passion for intellectual integrity. He contributed to following generations the necessity of clearly defining the words used in discussion, and - once defined - of keeping with those definitions. The result is the ability to analyze and synthesize concepts salve veritas - if the whole is true, its parts are true; and if the parts are true, then the whole is true.
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Wittgenstein
So much has been written and said about Wittgenstein that it is best to consider him and his work by themselves, rather than in the confusing light of what has been interpreted about them. Raised in a typically odd Viennese mixture of Judaism and Christianity, his wealthy industrial family had a deep interest in the arts, which drew him into mystical and ethical philosophy. He was an excellent student of engineering and physics; his interest in mathematics drew him into the world of academic philosophy, especially the philosophies of logic and language. Thus his philosophy has two distinct but intertwined aspects. It also has at least two major temporal periods (early, until about 1920, and late, from about 1930 onwards), as well as minor chronological gradations in and between the two major periods. The early period focused on creating with mathematical precision the exact boundary between the logical world of cognition (“that which can be said”) and the world of mysticism (“that which cannot be said but can be shown”). One thesis from his later period is that community is essential to the concept of language. Many of Wittgenstein's “books” are actually collections of his notes, put together after his death by his friends and editors; they have titles like “Philosophical Grammar” and “Philosophical Investigations”. Wittgenstein wrote a great deal about psychology, but what a philosopher means by the word “psychology” is perhaps not the everyday meaning of the word.
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