PmU̗@7 @"Data.app;@O&)@ .12 7AAction for the sake of others; the opposite of egoism. In somecontexts (for example, sociobiology) altruism has come to be used for other-regarding action of all types, whether ultimately arising from a genuine concern for others or from more selfish motives. @@ 3AA Greek word originally meaning love. Among the early Christians, it came to be applied to the love feast, a ritual where the faithful commemorated the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. From this, it took on connotations of brotherly love (for fellow Christians), filial love (for God), and charity.AAction for the sake of others; the opposite of egoism. In some contexts (for example, sociobiology) altruism has come to be used for other-regarding action of all types, whether ultimately arising from a genuine concern for others or from more selfish motives.LBIslamic philosopher of Turkish origin. He studied with Christian Aristotelians in Baghdad. Following their teachings, his system asserted a unity between Platonic and Aristotelian writings. He introduced Aristotelian logic to the Islamic world, distinguished philosophy from theology, attempted proofs of the existence of God using Aristotle'sMetaphysics, based his political philosophy on Plato's Republic and Laws, explained creation as a process of emanation along Neoplatonic lines, and subordinated revelation to reason. Such was his fame that he was called the "second Aristotle".CHegel, Feuerbach, and Marx were the first thinkers to discuss alienation explicitly and shaped current discussions. According to them, the things man produces become alien to him, they are other than him, thus every act of production is an instance of alienation. Since for these thinkers man is what he does, by being alienated from what he produces, man is also alienated from his producing and thus from himself. In coming to know himself as what he does, however, man overcomes his alienation from himself andcomes to recognize himself in his products. Today alienation is often used in psychology to refer to a state of mind in which one feels like an alien in the world. Some say that alienation is more than just a feeling -- that it is anobjective fact. See also Psychology Index.WBFrench structuralist or analytical Marxist of the 1960s. Rejected Marx's early writings as humanistic, ideological, and Hegelian. Also rejected Hegelian readings of Marx. He focused instead on Marx's later work, especially Capital, which he saw as very different from the early work and from which he believed he could develop a truly scientific Marxism, one untainted by the ideological conceptions that he believed characterized theearly Marx. In rejecting Marx's humanism, he saw the human individual as no more than a location and function within the structure of the relations of production.AThe dominant tradition of philosophy in England, America, and parts of Europe. Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W. V. O. Quine, and Saul Kripke are prominent representatives. Although historically the tradition has emphasized linguistic or conceptual analysis, it is best characterized in terms of a general concern with clarity and precision rather than by anyspecific methods or theses that all analytic philosophers are bound to accept.@4-Contrary0 Two statements are contraries if both cannot be true but both can be false. All people are likeable and No people are likeable are contraries.@@P @AVHPCȓSVClfish motives.AA political philosophy that holds that freedom is the highest political value and that hierarchy is anathema. More narrowly, anarchism is identified with the position that all government is tyrannical and that people can arrange their lives cooperatively. Some anarchists have been individualists (e.g., Max Stirner), some socialists (e.g., Michael Bakunin), some communists (e.g., Emma Goldman).AScholastic philosopher, born at Aosta in Italy. A Benedictine monk, he was abbot at Le Bec in Normandy, and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. Anselm is most famous for his formulation of the ontological argument for the existence of God. In his wider theological interests, he followed Augustine in asserting the harmony of revelation and reason. His works include the Proslogion and the Monologion. See Ontological argument, The.:AIn German Idealism, the second moment of the dialectic. The antithesis appears in opposition to the thesis. Out of this opposition emerges the synthesis, which is to be the supersession of the thesis and antithesis and of their opposition, but which, at the same time, is to contain this oppositionwithin itself.)AOne of the two spirits distinguished by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, the other being the Dionysian. The Apollonian is the spirit of rationality, intelligence, harmoniousness, restraint and moderation. It harnesses and tries to keep control of the irrational Dionysian spirit. See Nietzsche.BGerman political and social theorist. Studied with Heidegger and Jaspers. Fled from the Nazis first to Paris and then to the United States, where she settled in New York. She lectured at a number of universities, finally taking a permanent position as a professor of political philosophy at the New School for Social Research in 1948. Author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Violence, and The HumanCondition, she theorized about public versus private space, totalitarianism,and the "banality of evil".mEGreek philosopher, born at Stagira in Macedon. The son of a physician, he came to Athens to study with Plato. In 342 B.C., he joined the court of Phillip II of Macedon, where he taught Phillip's heir, later known as Alexander the Great. He returned to Athens in 335 B.C. and founded his own school in a peripatos (covered walk) at the Lyceum in Athens; thus, his followers were called Peripatetics. His work encompasses not only areas we would associate with philosophy, such as logic, metaphysics, andethics, but also physics, astronomy, biology, and psychology. Aristotle dividesknowledge into the theoretical (knowledge for its own sake), the practical (knowledge for the sake of action), and the productive (knowledge for the sakeof producing something). The theoretical includes such knowledge as metaphysics(the study of being) and physics (the study of motion). The practical includes ethics and politics, which describe happiness and how to attain it. Analytics,or logic, is a preliminary to all knowledge; Aristotle's major contribution to logic is the syllogism. Aristotle's influence on these and other matters wasimmense among the ancients and especially among medieval Islamic and Christian philosophers. See also Categories; Cause; Essence and existence; Faculty; Form;Metaphysics; Prime Mover; Substance and attribute; Summum bonum; Syllogism; Teleology; Universals.kAThe practice of self-denial for spiritual good. Such practices are common to many of the world's religions; in Buddhism and Christianity, they are connected to a monastic tradition. Among philosophers, the Cynics argued that asceticism was the means to a virtuous life, and Schopenhauer held that asceticism was a means of quieting the will and thus ending pain.-AThe view that nature is composed of simple units, or atoms. The Pre-Socratic philosophers Leucippus and Democritus (5th century B.C.) held that atoms differ only in size and shape, are indivisible, and are so small as to be imperceptible. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Epicurus hold similar positions.CChristian theologian, born at Tagaste in what is now Tunisia. Augustine's life was characterized by the Roman world's finaltransition from paganism to Christianity. Although raised a Christian, he became first a Manichaean and later a Sceptic. He returned to Christianity in386 and became bishop of Hippo in 396. Augustine's philosophy was a Platonism in the service of Christianity. His Platonism manifests itself in various ways:His belief that understanding can lead us to faith, and that faith can lead us to understand, recalls Plato's dialectic; his argument that we can discover the nature of the Trinity through examination of our own nature recalls the theoryof forms. His works include his autobiographical Confessions, The City of God, and On the Trinity.CI9-Q]iAnalytic Proposition0A proposition or statement necessarily true by virtue of the meaning of its terms. All bachelors are unmarried is the common example. Anarchism0  Anselm (ca. 1033-1109)0 Antecedent0  Antecedent The if clause in a conditional or if-then statement. Symbolically expressed, P is the antecedent of the conditional if P then Q. Antirealism0  The view that science or other bodies of belief do not represent or correspond to an independent reality -- the world -- or that there is no such reality to which science or other bodies of belief can correspond. Antithesis0  :Apodictic Knowledge0Knowledge of matters of necessity, as opposed to matters of contingency; knowledge of what must be the case, as opposed to what simply happens to be the case. Apollonian0  )Apology0A spoken or written defense. Plato's Apology is written as a presentation of Socrates' defense of himself against charges of corrupting the youth of Athens and believing in gods other than those recognized by the state.Appeal to Authority0A fallacy in which one attempts to support a claim not by rational argument in its behalf but merely by citing some expert or renowned text as holding it.oArendt, Hannah (1906-1975)0DMAristotle (384-322 B.C.)0m Asceticism0  kAtomism0- Attribute0  rA property. The attributes of a thing are the properties it has. For example, sweetness is an attribute of sugar.Augustine of Hippo (354-430)0ASelf-determination in choice and action, independent of externalcoercion or constraint. In ethics, the principle of autonomy is that people's own choices regarding their own lives should take priority. As such, a principle of autonomy is opposed to paternalism.AIslamic commentator onAristotle, born at Cordoba. He came from a family of judges and lawyers; tradition holds that he studied law, theology, medicine, and philosophy. He became associated with the caliphate in Marrakesh, which commissioned his commentaries. His own philosophy was largely Aristotelian. Averroes'commentaries had tremedous influence on later medieval Christian Aristotelianism.zBFrench existentialist and feminist philosopher. Founded the review Les Temps Modernes with Jean-Paul Sartre, her life-long companion, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Best known for her seminal work in feminist philosophy, The Second Sex (1949), which discusses the facts and myths of women's lives, examining both the problems they face and the possibilities open to them. She argued that women's subjectivity has been conceived as the other of male subjectivity, which has been taken to besubjectivity in general. De Beauvoir's work has been influential on several generations of feminists and continues to shape feminist thought today.k@Table1*Name/Sub.:  dNotes:d$AIn psychology, behaviorism is the view that psychology as a science need deal only with behavior, as opposed, for example, to the data of introspection. In philosophy, analytical behaviorism is the view that mental terms (think, believe, imagine, remember) refer ultimately only to behavior.NDFor the Greeks, something that is, or has Being, is permanent and unchanging; something that becomes is impermanent and changes. Sometimes Being is contrasted with Not-Being, and change is seen as an effect of Not-Being. Reconciling Being and Becoming or Not-Being was a problem for Greek philosophy. For Parmenides, Being is real and Not-Being an illusion; for Heraclitus, Becoming is regulated by a permanent principle; for Plato, Becoming is a pale reflection of Being; for Aristotle, Becoming is real and manifestsitself in the change from potentiality to actuality.Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832) English thinker best known as a utilitarian. Hisfollowers, known as Benthamites, became a powerful political force in Englandand included James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill. Bentham saw British lawas chaotic and illogical and hoped to introduce legal reforms based onutilitarian principles. He considered the existing penal code and civil laws tobe based on moral laws that did not take the consequences of actions into account. His most famous contribution to utilitarian theory was the9CEnglish thinker best known as a utilitarian. His followers, known as Benthamites, became a powerful political force in Englandand included James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill. Bentham saw British law as chaotic and illogical and hoped to introduce legal reforms based on utilitarian principles. He considered the existing penal code and civil laws to be based on moral laws that did not take the consequences of actions into account. His most famous contribution to utilitarian theory was the hedoniccalculus which gave a way to judge between courses of action based on their consequences for the pleasure and pain of all the people affected. Every painand pleasure is assigned a certain number of units, allowing one to judge which is the better action -- which produces the lowest pain and/or the highest pleasure.BFrench philosopher of science, especially of biological evolution. His most famous work is Creative Evolution, in which heputs forth a theory that there was an original impetus of life that pervades the whole evolutionary process. This elan vital, or vital impetus, is a current of consciousness that has penetrated matter, thus giving rise to living bodies, and that is carried from one generation to the next through reproduction. For Bergson, man (or beings of the same essence as man) is thegoal of evolution. He considers creative evolution to be a cosmic process, occurring on many planets besides Earth. Bergson also considered intuition toprovide knowledge of the real while the intellect only provides knowledge of appearance.ABorn and educated in Germany, Carnap became an active member of the Vienna Circle but emigrated to the United States with therise of Naziism. A prominent logical positivist and later logical empiricist, Carnap is known particularly for work in logic and his attempts to outline thelogical framework of a scientific understanding of the world. His major works include Logische Aufbau der Welt and Logische Syntax der Sprache.p@OOOO*assive ideas and active minds or spirits.@Roman statesman and philosopher, born at Rome. In 510, Boethius rose to the post of consul under Theodoric. He was imprisoned for treason in 523, a charge he denied. He was executed in 524. His most famouswork is the Consolation of Philosophy, in which the imprisoned Boethius is visited by Philosophy personified, who argues that temporal pleasure isfleeting and true happiness is found in God. The text contains Neoplatonic, Stoic, and Aristotelian elements. Boethius, who was a Christian, is sometimescalled the first _Scholastic; he was also a translator of Greek texts into Latin, a commentator, and a logician.CA philosophy originating in the teachings of the Gautama Buddha(India, ca. 563-ca. 483 B.C.). Buddha means enlightened one; Buddhism is thus the seeking of enlightenment. According to Buddhism, life is characterizedby suffering, which has its origin in desire; desire can be quenched, suffering ended, and enlightenment achieved through the Buddha's teaching. This release from suffering, and ultimately from the cycle of rebirth, is called nirvana.Various Buddhist schools advocate different paths to enlightenment. The Theravada school, located in Sri Lanka and southeast Asia, teaches thatenlightenment is achieved through solitary meditation. The Mahayana school, found in China, Korea, and Japan, emphasizes good works and compassion forothers. Vajrayana Buddhism, centered in Tibet, has a highly developed metaphysic and accompanying rituals that are necessary for the good progress of the soul. See also Religion Index.{BThe moral law that admits of no exceptions, proposed by Kant. It is formulated in Kant's work in a number of different ways that are supposed to be equivalent, but the simplest is, Act only in such a way that the maxim of your act should become a universal law. In other words, do not do anything that you cannot, without contradiction, will everyone to do. For example, it would be a violation of the categorical imperative to tell a lie because if everyone lied, truth would have no meaning and no one would believe anyone. The whole point of a lie is that everyone think that you are telling the truth, thus lying is contradictory.CIn contemporary contexts, a cause is that event which produces another as its effect. Much philosophical work has made it clear that whether an event causes an event e is not to be identified either with mere correlation or with the simple question of whether e would not have occurred had not occurred. For Aristotle, a cause is a principle of explanation. Hedistinguishes between four causes: the efficient cause, that which makes, orbegins, or moves a thing; the material cause, its physical substrate; theformal cause, that which gives a thing its structure or essence; and the finalcause, the end to which it strives or the purpose for which it is made. Thus,the efficient cause of a statue is the sculptor; the material cause, the bronzefrom which it is made; the formal cause, the shape it has; and the final cause,the happiness a thing of beauty brings. The contemporary sense of cause wouldthus belong among Aristotle's efficient causes.LBRoman orator, statesman,and philosopher, born at Arpinum. He was educated in philosophy and law at Rome, Athens, and Rhodes; he then entered upon a public life. He opposed bothJulius Caesar and Marc Antony; he was executed at Antony's request when Octavian, later Augustus, took Rome. He is the most renowned of the Romanorators. In philosophy, Cicero was openly eclectic; believing that the Greeks had explored all philosophical possibilities, he presented them to a Romanaudience. He inclined variously to Scepticism, Stoicism, and Peripatetic teachings, but rejected Epicureanism.[AThe study of human intelligence from perception to languageand reasoning. The field has grown enormously in recent years due to Chomsky's theoretical innovations in linguistics and to computer science. Cognitivescience brings together people from disciplines as diverse as neurophysiology, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and anthropology.BA social system in which property is held by the community ratherthan the individual. Modern Communists advocate the abolition of the state,which they consider, as Lenin put it, the means by which one class oppressesanother. (State and Revolution) Lenin considered communism to be the finalgoal of revolution and characterized it with the slogan, From each accordingto his ability, to each according to his needs. (Ibid.) Marx, considered by many to be the father of communism, said that communism is not a state ofaffairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself, but rather is the real movement that abolishes the present state of things. (German Ideology)BFrench positivist philosopher and mathematician. Comte did a historical study of the progress of the human mind, by which he meant the progress of the sciences. For Comte, the history of the sciences could be seen to pass through three stages: the theological, the metaphysical,and the positive, which is characterized by the study of laws of relations of succession and resemblance. This final stage is one that we are always approaching but that we can never reach. Comte also attempted to show that eachscience is dependent on a previous one -- physics on astronomy, biology on chemistry. Comte believed that the mind can only be understood in terms of what it has done -- a position fundamentally different from that of Descartes and his followers.AAn ethical and political philosophy originating in the teachings of the Chinese thinker K'ung Fu-tzu, or Confucius (551-479 B.C.). Confucianism proper, as set forth in the aphoristic Analects, describes the path to a harmonious society through good government and ultimately through the virtuous character of the individual. Neo-Confucianism (960-1912) broadened themovement's traditional realm to include metaphysics and cosmogony.0AUsed in a number of different ways, it can mean self-knowledge, self-awareness, or introspection. Consciousness is, then, an awareness of thinking, believing, doubting, perceiving, etc. The term consciousness can also be used to refer to any mental state regardless of whether or not one is awareof it.APhilosophy based on traditions coming from continentalEurope, particularly France and Germany, in the 19th and 20th centuries, including phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism,hermeneutics, critical theory, deconstruction, and post-modernism. The termcontinental philosophy is usually opposed to Anglo-American or analyticphilosophy. It is usually considered to have begun with Kant and Hegel.TAPossible but not necessary. A contingent event is one that could occur but could also fail to occur. A contingent proposition is one that is possibly true but not necessarily true. In the work of Leibniz, and in contemporary semantics for modal logic, a contingent proposition is one true in some possible world and not true in some other.GBAustro-English philosopher. The two major periods of Wittgenstein's philosophical life are marked by the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. The Tractatus is an attempt tolay out the structure of any language that mirrors the world, with implications drawn regarding what can be said and what can only be shown. The Philosophical Investigations is a posthumously published and much looser collection of ideas centering on the social nature and function of language, with attention to implications for both the content and proper practice of philosophy.CA Sanskrit word meaning yoking, given both to a set of Indian practices and to a school of Hindu philoso-phy. Broadly, Yoga is an ascetic and contemplative discipline whose goal is enlightenment. In this sense, it is current in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. More narrowly, Yoga is one of thesix schools of Hindu philosophy. It was first elaborated in Patanjali's Yoga-s-utras, perhaps in the 2nd century B.C. It argues that liberation from suffering comes about through yogic discipline, which includes regularizedbreathing and physical postures; liberation itself, unlike that of Buddhism, consists in the pure isolation of the eternal self. The physical forms of Yogaare considered preliminaries to the mental discipline of meditation, the goal of which is to reach a state in which not only awareness of one's surroundings but the awareness of being in that state is removed. Reaching this state consists in a progression of stages of emptying the mind.O@iTable1ColA1 ColB1ColA3ColB3 Index1ColA1 < necessarily true. In the work of Leibniz, and in contemporary semantics for modal logic, a contingent proposition is one true in some possible world and not true in some other.H5}%Q yCategorical Imperative0*{ Categories0  For Aristotle, the various ways a thing can be named or described.He posits 10 categories. For Kant, the various ways a thing can be thought or conceived a priori. Kant postulates 12 such pure concepts of the understanding.Cause0+2Cicero (Latin Marcus Tullius Cicero) (106-43 B.C.)032,LCircular Argument0A fallacious pattern of reasoning in which one argues in a circle by arguing for a position only by assuming or presupposing that veryposition. Begging the question is form of circular argument.Cognitive Science0-[Coherence Theory of Truth0zThe theory that the truth of a claim or belief consists merely in its coherence with an entire body of claims or beliefs. Communism0  .Comte, Auguste (1798-1857)0/ Conditional0  UAny if-then statement. For example, If this is copper, then it conducts electricity. Confucianism0  0 Consciousness0 10 Consequent0  The then clause in a conditional or if-then statement. Symbolically expressed, Q is the consequent of the conditional if P then Q.Continental Philosophy02 Contingent0  3T Contradiction0 An explicit contradiction is a proposition of the form P and not-P, which involves both the assertion and denial of the same proposition P.The Law of Non-Contradiction is the principle that no contradiction can be true.APre-Socratic philosopher. A student of Parmenides, he is most famous for a series of paradoxes of motion. In one, Zeno argues that a runner cannot traverse the length of a stadium: In order to reach the finish line, a runner must pass over an infinite number of points; it isimpossible to pass over an infinite number of points in a finite time; thus, the runner cannot reach the finish line. He is not to be confused with Zeno ofCitium, founder of Stoicism.OAA term meaning contemplation, given to a Japanese form of Mahayana Buddhism. It was introduced to Japan from China in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Zen emphasizes meditation and discipline, often as a means to sudden enlightenment. The object of meditation is the koan, a question meant to transcend intellectual distinctions.AClassical utilitarianism (as in the work of Jeremy Bentham) is the view that an act is right if it produces the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people. In other forms of utilitarianism (including John Stuart Mill, G. E. Moore, and contemporary authors), it may be rules or institutions that are evaluated rather than acts, and happiness or pleasure may be replaced by more complicated notions of the good.AA neologism from Greek that means either good place (eutopia) or no place (outopia). It was coined by Thomas More for his book Utopia (1516), which purported to chronicle a visit to an ideal republic. The term has come to mean any ideal social structure. Utopian literature became a powerful tool for social criticism in the Renaissance and modern periods; the term is sometimes applied to certain ancient arguments as well (e.g., Plato's Republic)."AA deductively valid argument is one in which it is impossible for all of its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false; if its premises are true, its conclusion must be true. More generally, an argument is said to be valid if its conclusion legitimately follows from its premises. APre-Socratic philosopher, from Ephesus in what is now Turkey. Heraclitus held that the world is in constant flux, that this flux takes place through a unity and interchange of opposites, and that it is regulated by a principle alternately identified as reason or fire.C*~M ? A Explanation & Notes Philosophy0! 7Description of Philosophy Notes on Philosophy  @Agape0 3Agent0In ethics, a term used to designate a person who is acting in a certainsituation or who is contemplating action in a certain situation.Al-Farabi (ca. 873-950)0 LAlienation (estrangement)0 Althusser, Louis (1918-1986)0WAltruism0 Analytic Philosophy0oAltruism0 .{;EEducator and first major philosophical feminist. Born and raised in a poor farming family in rural England, she was self-educated and worked as a governess and then as a freelance writer and translator. She was condemned by many for her Bohemian lifestyle, whichincluded being independent, living with a man, and giving birth to a child out of wedlock. She married William Godwin only a few months before her death from complications following childbirth. The child she had with William Godwin was her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who eventually married thepoet Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein. MaryWollstonecraft was concerned with women's education and with the fact that middle class and aristocratic women are expected and trained to be useless,feeble, and weak-minded. Wollstonecraft's arguments for women's emancipation,put forth most famously in her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), earned her the admiration of some and the hostility of many, who called hersuch things as a hyena in petticoats and a philosophizing serpent. Wollstonecraft was also a supporter of the French Revolution and was highlycritical of social systems based on the assumption that some people are born better than others. Mary Wollstonecraft's life and work continue to inspire feminists today.pAGerman sociologist. Against Karl Marx, Weber denied that any form of social activity could be purely economic, though he did think that all activities have an economic aspect. His most famous work was The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he argued that capitalism is largely the result of the ascetic secular morality associated with Calvinism.CGreek theories of virtue are based on the term arete, which means goodness, excellence, and virtue. The goodness or virtue of a thing is that by which it performs its function well. Thus, the function of a knife is to cut; a good, or virtuous, knife cuts well. Plato argues in the Republic that when reason rules the soul, as is its function, the soul is virtuous; assuch, it possesses wisdom, bravery, temperance, and justice. For Aristotle, the ethically virtuous soul habitually chooses its path of action according to arational mean between two vices. Thus, when faced with a fearful situation, it chooses the mean, which is courage, rather than wallow in an excess of fear,which is a vice called cowardice, or proceed heedlessly and fearlessly, which is rashness.@B~| Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951)0! 6G Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)0! 7;Yoga08"Zeno of Elea (ca. 490-ca 430 B.C.)0#"9Zen0:OUtilitarianism0;Utopia0@Virtue0A:Begging thBehaviorisBeing and @?Word*  d"Times New RomanN123&Heading 1L"Times New Roman < &Heading 2L"Times New Roman < &Heading 3L h3r h3r \cefd\c ef(d.A;F Philosophy (Greek philosophic, love of wisdom), the rational and critical inquiry into basic principles. Philosophy is often divided into four main branches: metaphysics, the investigation of ultimate reality; epistemology, the study of the origins, validity, and limits of knowledge; ethics, the study of the nature of morality and prudence; and aesthetics, the study of the nature of beauty in the fine arts. The two distinctively philosophical types of inquiry are analytic philosophy, which is the logical study of concepts, and synthetic philosophy, which is the arrangement of concepts into a unified system. As used originally by the ancient Greeks, the term philosophy meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Philosophy comprised all areas of speculative thought and included the arts, sciences, and religion. As special methods and principles were developed in the various areas of knowledge, each area acquired its own philosophical aspect, giving rise to the philosophy of art, of science, and of religion. The term philosophy is often used popularly to mean a set of basic values and attitudes toward life, nature, and societythus the phrase philosophy of life. Because the lines of distinction between the various areas of knowledge are flexible and subject to change, the definition of the term philosophy remains a subject of controversy. Western philosophy from Greek antiquity to modern times is surveyed in the remainder of this article. For information about philosophical thought in the Far and Middle East, see Chinese Philosophy; Islam. Greek PhilosophyWestern philosophy is considered generally to have begun in ancient Greece as speculation about the underlying nature of the physical world. In its earliest form it was indistinguishable from natural science. The writings of the earliest philosophers no longer exist, except for a few fragments cited by Aristotle and by other writers of later times. The Ionian SchoolThe first philosopher of historical record was Thales of the city of Miletus, on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. Thales, who was revered by later generations as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, was interested in astronomical, physical, and meteorological phenomena, and his scientific investigations led him to speculate that all natural phenomena are different forms of one fundamental substance, which he believed to be water, because he thought evaporation and condensation to be universal processes. Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, maintained that the first principle from which all things evolve is an intangible, invisible, infinite substance that he called the boundless. He realized, however, that no observable substance could be found in all things; thus his notion of the boundless anticipated the modern notion of an unbounded universe. This substance, he maintained, is eternal and indestructible. Out of its ceaseless motion the more familiar substances, such as warmth, cold, earth, air, and fire, continuously evolve, generating in turn the various objects and organisms that make up the recognizable world. The third great Ionian philosopher, Anaximenes, returned to Thales' assumption that the primary substance is something familiar and material, but he claimed it to be air rather than water. He believed that the changes things undergo could be explained in terms of rarefaction and condensation of air. Thus Anaximenes was the first philosopher to explain qualitative differences in terms of quantitative differences, a method fundamental to physical science. In general, the Ionian school made the initial radical step from mythological to scientific explanation of natural phenomena; it discovered the important scientific principles of the permanence of substance, the natural evolution of the world, and the reduction of quality to quantity. The Pythagorean SchoolAbout 530 BC the philosopher Pythagoras founded at Croton, in southern Italy, a school of philosophy that was more religious and mystical than the Ionian school. It fused the ancient mythological view of the world with the developing interest in scientific explanation. The system of philosophy that became known as Pythagoreanism combined ethical, supernatural, and mathematical beliefs into a spiritualistic view of life. The Pythagoreans taught and practiced a way of life based on the belief that the soul is a prisoner of the body, is released from it at death, and is reincarnated in a higher or lower form of life, depending on the degree of virtue achieved. The highest purpose of humans should be to purify their souls by cultivating intellectual virtues, refraining from sensual pleasures, and practicing various religious rituals. The Pythagoreans, having discovered the mathematical laws of musical pitch, inferred that planetary motions produce a music of the spheres, and developed a therapy through music to bring humanity in harmony with the celestial spheres. They identified science with mathematics, maintaining that all things are made up of numbers and geometrical figures. They made important contributions to mathematics, musical theory, and astronomy. The Heraclitean SchoolHeraclitus of Ephesus, continuing the search of the Ionians for a primary substance, claimed it to be fire. He noticed that heat produces changes in matter, and thus anticipated the modern theory of energy. Heraclitus maintained that all things are in a state of continuous flux, that stability is an illusion, and that only change and the law of change, or Logos, are real. The Logos doctrine of Heraclitus, which identified the laws of nature with a divine mind, developed into the pantheistic theology of Stoicism. The Eleatic SchoolIn the 5th century BC Parmenides founded a school of philosophy at Elea, a Greek colony on the Italian peninsula. Parmenides took a position opposite from that of Heraclitus on the relation between stability and change, maintaining that the universe, or the state of being, is an indivisible, unchanging, spherical entity and that all reference to change or diversity is self-contradictory. Nothing, he claimed, can be truly asserted except that being is. Zeno of Elea, a disciple of Parmenides, tried to prove the unity of being by arguing that the belief in the reality of change, diversity, and motion leads to logical paradoxes. The paradoxes of Zeno became famous intellectual puzzles that philosophers and logicians of all subsequent ages have tried to solve. The concern of the Eleatics with the problem of logical consistency laid the basis for the development of the science of logic. The PluralistsEmpedocles and Anaxagoras, who developed a philosophy replacing the Ionian assumption of a single primary substance with an assumption of a plurality of such substances, continued the speculation about the physical world begun by the Ionians in the 5th century BC. Empedocles maintained that all things are composed of four irreducible elements, air, water, earth, and fire, which are alternately combined and separated by two opposite forces, love and strife. By that process the world evolves from chaos to form and back to chaos again, in an eternal cycle. Empedocles regarded the eternal cycle as the proper object of religious worship and criticized the popular belief in personal deities, but he failed to explain the way in which the familiar objects of experience could develop out of elements that are totally different from them. Anaxagoras therefore suggested that all things are composed of very small particles, or seeds, which exist in infinite variety. To explain the way in which these particles combine to form the objects that constitute the familiar world, Anaxagoras developed a theory of cosmic evolution. He maintained that the active principle of this evolutionary process is a world mind that separates and combines the particles. His concept of elemental particles led to the development of an atomic theory of matter. The AtomistsIt was a natural step from pluralism to atomism, the theory that all matter is composed of tiny, indivisible particles differing only in simple physical properties such as size, shape, and weight. Leucippus and his more famous associate Democritus, who is generally credited with the first systematic formulation of an atomic theory of matter, took this step. His conception of nature was thoroughly materialistic, explaining all natural phenomena in terms of the number, shape, and size of atoms. He thus reduced the sensory qualities of things, such as warmth, cold, taste, and odour, to quantitative differences among atoms. Democritus explained the higher forms of existence, such as plant and animal life and even human thought, in these purely physical terms. He applied his theory to psychology, physiology, theory of knowledge, ethics, and politics, thus presenting the first comprehensive statement of deterministic materialism, in which all aspects of existence are claimed to be rigidly determined by physical laws. The SophistsToward the end of the 5th century BC a group of travelling teachers called Sophists became famous throughout Greece. The Sophists played an important role in developing the Greek city-states from agrarian monarchies into commercial democracies. As Greek industry and commerce expanded, a class of newly rich, economically powerful merchants began to wield political power. Lacking the education of the aristocrats, they sought to prepare themselves for politics and commerce by paying the Sophists for instruction in public speaking, legal argument, and general culture. Although the best of the Sophists made valuable contributions to Greek thought, the group as a whole acquired a reputation for deceit, insincerity, and demagoguery. Thus the word sophistry has come to signify these moral faults. The famous maxim of Protagoras, one of the leading Sophists, that man is the measure of all things, is typical of the philosophical attitude of the Sophist school. Sophists held that individuals have the right to judge all matters for themselves, denied the existence of an objective knowledge that everyone can be expected to believe, asserted that natural science and theology are of little or no value because they have no impact on daily life, and declared that ethical rules need be followed only when it is to one's practical advantage to do so. Socratic Philosophy Perhaps the greatest philosophical personality in history was Socrates. Unlike the Sophists, Socrates refused to accept payment for his teachings, maintaining that he had no positive knowledge to offer, except the awareness of the need for more knowledge. Socrates left no writings as records of his thought, but his teachings were preserved for later generations in the dialogues of his famous pupil Plato. Socrates taught that every person has full knowledge of ultimate truth contained within the soul and needs only to be spurred to conscious reflection in order to become aware of it. In Plato's dialogue Meno, for example, Socrates guides an untutored slave to the formulation of the Pythagorean theorem, thus demonstrating that such knowledge is innate in the soul, rather than learned from experience. The philosopher's task, Socrates believed, was to provoke people into thinking for themselves, rather than to teach them anything they did not already know. His contribution to the history of thought was not a systematic doctrine but a method of thinking and a way of life. He stressed the need of analytical examination of the grounds of one's beliefs, for clear definitions of basic concepts, and the need for a rational and critical approach to ethical problems. Platonic Philosophy Plato was a more systematic and positive thinker than Socrates, but his writings, particularly the earlier dialogues, may be regarded as a continuation and elaboration of Socratic insights. Like Socrates, Plato regarded ethics as the highest branch of knowledge; he stressed the intellectual basis of virtue, identifying virtue with wisdom. This view led to the so-called Socratic paradox that, as Socrates asserts in the Protagoras, no man does evil voluntarily. Aristotle later noticed that such a conclusion allows no place for moral responsibility. Plato also explored the fundamental problems of natural science, political theory, metaphysics, theology, and theory of knowledge and developed ideas that became permanent elements in Western thought. The basis of Plato's philosophy is his theory of Ideas, or doctrine of Forms. The theory of Ideas, which is expressed in many of his dialogues, particularly the Republic and the Parmenides, divides existence into two realms, an intelligible realm of perfect, eternal, and invisible Ideas, or Forms, and a sensible realm of concrete, familiar objects. Trees, stones, human bodies, and other objects that can be known through the senses are for Plato unreal, shadowy, and imperfect copies of the Ideas. He was led to this apparently bizarre conclusion by his high standard of knowledge, which required that all genuine objects of knowledge be described without contradiction. Because all objects perceived by the senses undergo change, an assertion made about such objects at one time will not be true at a later time. According to Plato, these objects are not completely real. Beliefs derived from experience of such objects are therefore vague and unreliable, whereas the principles of mathematics and philosophy, discovered by inner meditation on the Ideas, constitute the only knowledge worthy of the name. In the Republic Plato described humanity as imprisoned in a cave and as mistaking shadows on the wall for reality; he regarded the philosopher as the person who penetrates the world outside the cave of ignorance and achieves a vision of the true reality, the realm of Ideas. Plato's concept of the Absolute Idea of the Good, which is the highest Form and includes all others, has been a main source of pantheistic and mystical religious doctrines in Western culture. Plato's theory of Ideas and his rationalistic view of knowledge formed the foundation for his ethical and social idealism. The realm of eternal Ideas provides the standards or ideals according to which all objects and actions should be judged. The philosophical person, who refrains from sensual pleasures and searches instead for knowledge of abstract principles, finds in these ideals the modes for personal behaviour and social institutions. Personal virtue consists in a harmonious relation among the faculties of the soul. Social justice consists in harmony among the classes of society. The ideal state of a sound mind in a sound body requires that the intellect control the desires and passions, as the ideal state of society requires that the wisest individuals rule the pleasure-seeking masses. Truth, beauty, and justice coincide in the Idea of the Good, according to Plato, so that art, which expresses moral values, is the best art. In his rather conservative social program, Plato supported the censorship of art, regarding art as an instrument for the moral education of youth. Aristotelian Philosophy Aristotle, the most illustrious pupil of Plato, ranks with his teacher among the most profound and influential thinkers of the Western world. After studying for many years at Plato's Academy, Aristotle became the tutor of Alexander the Great. He later returned to Athens to found the Lyceum, a school that, like Plato's Academy, remained for centuries one of the great centres of learning in Greece. In his lectures at the Lyceum, Aristotle defined the basic concepts and principles of many of the theoretical sciences, such as logic, biology, physics, and psychology. In founding the science of logic, he developed the theory of deductive inference, represented by the syllogism, and a set of rules for scientific method. In his metaphysical theory, Aristotle criticized Plato's separation of form from matter and maintained that the Forms, or essences, are contained within the concrete objects that exemplify them. Everything real, for Aristotle, is a combination of potentiality and actuality; in other words, everything is a combination of that which a thing may be, but is not yet, and that which it already is (also distinguished as matter and form), because all things change and become other than they were, except the human and divine active intellects, which are pure forms. Nature, for Aristotle, is an organic system of things whose common forms make it possible to arrange them into classes comprising species and genera, each species having a form, purpose, and mode of development in terms of which it can be defined. The aim of theoretical science is to define the essential forms, purposes, and modes of development of all species and to arrange them in their natural order in accordance with their complexities of form, the main levels being the inanimate, the vegetative, the animal, and the rational. The soul, for Aristotle, is the form, or actuality, of the body, and humans, whose rational soul is a higher form than the souls of other terrestrial species, are the highest species of perishable things. The heavenly bodies, composed of an imperishable substance, or ether, and moved eternally in perfect circular motion by God, are still higher in the order of nature. Many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians in the middle Ages adopted this hierarchical classification of nature as a view of nature consistent with their religious beliefs. Aristotle's political and ethical philosophy similarly developed out of a critical examination of Platonic principles. The standards of personal and social behaviour, according to Aristotle, must be found in the scientific study of the natural tendencies of individuals and societies rather than in a heavenly realm of pure forms. Less insistent therefore than Plato on a rigorous conformity to absolute principles, Aristotle regarded ethical rules as practical guides to a happy and well-rounded life. His emphasis on happiness, as the active fulfilment of natural capacities, expressed the attitude toward life held by cultivated Greeks of his time. In political theory, Aristotle took a more realistic position than Plato. He agreed that a monarchy ruled by a wise king would be the ideal political structure, but recognized that societies differ in their needs and traditions and believed that a limited democracy is usually the best compromise. In his theory of knowledge, Aristotle rejected the Platonic doctrine that knowledge is innate and insisted that it can be acquired only by generalization from experience. He interpreted art as a means of pleasure and intellectual enlightenment rather than an instrument of moral education. His analysis of Greek tragedy has served as a model of literary criticism. Hellenistic and Roman PhilosophyFrom the 4th century BC to the rise of Christian philosophy in the 4th century ad, Epicureanism, Stoicism, scepticism, and Neoplatonism were the main philosophical schools in the Western world. Interest in natural science declined steadily during this period, and these schools were concerned mainly with ethics and religion, resulting in a change of attitude that has been described as a failure of nerve. EpicureanismIn 306 bc Epicurus founded a philosophical school in Athens. Because his followers met in the garden of his home they became known as philosophers of the garden. Epicurus adopted the atomistic physics of Democritus but made several important changes. In place of the random motion of the atoms in all directions, he assumed, for simplicity of explanation, that a uniform motion downward occurred. He also allowed an element of chance in the physical world by assuming that the atoms sometimes swerve in unpredictable ways, thus providing a physical basis for a belief in free will. He maintained that natural science is important only insofar as it can be applied in making practical decisions and in allaying fear of the gods or of death. The aim of human life, he claimed, is to achieve the maximum amount of pleasure, which he identified with gentle motion and the absence of pain. The Roman poet Lucretius preserves the teachings of Epicurus mainly in the philosophical poem On the Nature of Things. The latter contributed greatly to the popularity of Epicureanism in Rome. StoicismThe Stoic school, founded in Athens about 310 BC by Zeno of Citium, developed out of the earlier movement of the Cynics, who rejected social institutions and material values. Stoicism became the most influential school of the Greco-Roman world, producing such remarkable writers and personalities as the Greek slave and later Roman philosopher Epictetus and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was noted for his wisdom and his nobility of character. The Stoics taught that one could achieve freedom and tranquillity only by becoming insensitive to material comforts and external fortune and by dedicating oneself to a life of reason and virtue. Holding a somewhat materialistic conception of nature, they followed Heraclitus in believing the primary substance to be fire and in worshiping the Logos, which they identified with the energy, law, reason, and providence found throughout nature. Human reason was also considered part of the divine Logos, and therefore immortal. The Stoic doctrine that each person is part of God and that all people form a universal family helped to break down national, social, and racial barriers and to prepare the way for the spread of a universal religion. The Stoic doctrine of natural law, which makes human nature the standard for evaluating laws and social institutions, had an important influence on Roman and later Western law. ScepticismThe school of scepticism, which continued the Sophist criticisms of objective knowledge, dominated the Platonic Academy in the 3d century BC. The sceptics discovered, as had Zeno of Elea, that logic is a powerful critical device, capable of destroying any positive philosophical view, and they used it skilfully. Their fundamental assumption was that humanity cannot attain knowledge or wisdom concerning reality and that the way to happiness therefore lies in a complete suspension of judgment. As an extreme example of this attitude, it is said that Pyrrho, one of the most noted sceptics, refused to change direction when approaching a cliff and had to be diverted by his students. Carneades maintained that beliefs acquired inductively from experience could be probable, but never certain. NeoplatonismThe Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus combined Greek philosophy, particularly Platonic and Pythagorean ideas, with Judaic religion in a comprehensive system that anticipated Neoplatonism and Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mysticism. Philo insisted on the transcendent nature of God as surpassing human understanding and therefore indescribable; he described the natural world as a series of stages of descent from God, terminating in matter as the source of evil. He advocated a religious state, or theocracy, and was one of the first to interpret the Old Testament for the Gentiles. Ammonius Saccus and his more famous disciple Plotinus founded Neoplatonism, one of the most influential philosophical and religious schools and an important rival of Christianity, in the 3d century ad. Plotinus based his ideas on the mystical and poetic writings of Plato, the Pythagoreans, and Philo. The main function of philosophy, for him, is to prepare individuals for the experience of ecstasy, in which they become one with God. God, or the One, is beyond rational understanding and is the source of all reality. The universe emanates from the One by a mysterious process of overflowing of divine energy, in successive levels. The highest levels form a trinity of the One; the Logos, which contains the Platonic Forms; and the World Soul, which gives rise to human souls and natural forces. The farther things emanate from the One, according to Plotinus, the more imperfect and evil they are and the closer they approach the limit of pure matter. The highest goal of life is to purify oneself of dependence on bodily comforts and, through philosophical meditation, to prepare oneself for an ecstatic reunion with the One. Neoplatonism exerted a strong pantheistic influence on medieval thought. Medieval PhilosophyDuring the decline of Greco-Roman civilization, Western philosophers turned their attention from the scientific investigation of nature and the search for worldly happiness to the problem of salvation in another and better world. By the 3d century ad Christianity had spread to the more educated classes of the Roman Empire. The religious teachings of the Gospels were combined by the Fathers of the Church with many of the philosophical concepts of the Greek and Roman schools Augustinian Philosophy The process of reconciling the Greek emphasis on reason with the emphasis on religious emotion in the teachings of Christ and the apostles found eloquent expression in the writings of St. Augustine. He developed a system of thought that, through subsequent amendments and elaborations, eventually became the authoritative doctrine of Christianity. Largely as a result of his influence, Christian thought was Platonic in spirit until the 13th century, when Aristotelian philosophy became dominant. Augustine argued that religious faith and philosophical understanding are complementary rather than opposed and that one must believe in order to understand and understand in order to believe. Like the Neoplatonists, he considered the soul a higher form of existence than the body and taught that knowledge consists in the contemplation of Platonic ideas that have been purified of both sensation and imagery. The Platonic philosophy was combined with the Christian concept of a personal God who created the world and predestined its course, and with the doctrine of the fall of humanity, requiring the divine incarnation in Christ. Augustine attempted to provide rational solutions to the problems of free will and predestination, the existence of evil in a world created by a perfect and all-powerful God, and the three persons in one nature attributed to God in the doctrine of the Trinity. St. Augustine conceived of history as a dramatic struggle between the good in humanity, as expressed in loyalty to the city of God, or community of saints, and the evil in humanity, as embodied in the earthly city with its material values. His view of human life was profoundly pessimistic, asserting that happiness is impossible in the world of the living, where even with good fortune, which is rare, awareness of approaching death would mar any tendency toward satisfaction. He believed further that without the religious virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which require divine grace to be attained, a person couldnt develop the natural virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. His analyses of time, memory, and inner religious experience have been a source of inspiration for metaphysical and mystical thought. The only major contribution to Western philosophy in three centuries following the death of Augustine was made by the 6th-century Roman statesman Boethius, who revived interest in Greek and Roman philosophy, particularly Aristotle's logic and metaphysics. In the 9th century the Irish monk John Erigena developed a pantheistic interpretation of Christianity, identifying the divine Trinity with the One, Logos, and World Soul of Neoplatonism and maintaining that both faith and reason are necessary to achieve the ecstatic union with God. Scholasticism In the 11th century a revival of philosophical thought began as a result of the increasing contact between different parts of the Western world and the general reawakening of cultural interests that culminated in the Renaissance. The works of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers were translated by Arab scholars and brought to the attention of philosophers in Western Europe. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian philosophers interpreted and clarified these writings in an effort to reconcile philosophy with religious faith and to provide rational grounds for their religious beliefs. Their labours established the foundations of Scholasticism. Scholastic thought was less interested in discovering new facts and principles than in demonstrating the truth of existing beliefs. Its method was therefore dialectical, or argumentative. Intense concern with the logic of argument led to important developments in logic as well as theology. The Arab physician Avicenna united Neoplatonic and Aristotelian ideas with Muslim religious doctrine, and the Jewish poet Solomon ben Yehuda Ibn Gabirol made a similar synthesis of Greek thought and Judaism. The ecclesiastic and Scholastic philosopher Anselm of Canterbury adopted Augustine's view of the relation between faith and reason and combined Platonism with Christian theology. Supporting the Platonic theory of Ideas, Anselm argued in favour of the separate existence of universals, or common properties of things. He thus established the position of logical realism on one of the most vigorously disputed issues of medieval philosophy. The contrary view, known as nominalism, was formulated by the Scholastic philosopher Roscelin, who maintained that only individual, concrete objects exist and that the universals, forms, and ideas, under which particular things are classified, constitute mere sounds or marks, rather than intangible substances. The French Scholastic theologian Peter Abelard, whose tragic love affair with Hlose (circa 1098-1164) is one of the most memorable romantic stories in medieval history, proposed a compromise between realism and nominalism known as conceptualism, according to which universals exist in particular things as properties and outside of things as concepts in the mind. Abelard maintained that revealed religion must be justified by reason. He developed an ethics based on personal conscience that anticipated Protestant thought. The Spanish-Arab jurist and physician Averros, the most noted Muslim philosopher of the Middle Ages, made Aristotelian science and philosophy a powerful influence on medieval thought with his lucid and scholarly commentaries on the works of Aristotle. He earned himself the title the Commentator among the many Scholastics who came to regard Aristotle as the Philosopher. Averros attempted to overcome the contradictions between Aristotelian philosophy and revealed religion by distinguishing between two separate systems of truth, a scientific body of truths based on reason and a religious body of truths based on revelation. This so-called double-truth doctrine influenced many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian philosophers; it was rejected, however, by many others, and became an important issue in medieval philosophy. The Jewish rabbi and physician Moses Maimonides, one of the greatest figures in Judaic thought, followed Averros in uniting Aristotelian science with religion but rejected the view that both of two conflicting systems of ideas can be true. In his Guide to the Perplexed (1180) Maimonides attempted to provide a rational explanation of Judaic doctrine and defended religious beliefs (such as the belief in the creation of the world) that conflicted with Aristotelian science only when he was convinced that decisive evidence was lacking on either side. The English Scholastic theologian Alexander of Hales and the Italian Scholastic philosopher St. Bonaventure combined Platonic and Aristotelian principles and introduced the concept of substantial form, or nonmaterial substance, to account for the immortality of the soul. Bonaventure's view tended toward pantheistic mysticism in making the end of philosophy the ecstatic union with God. The German Scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus was the first Christian philosopher to endorse and interpret the entire system of Aristotelian thought. He studied and admired the writings of the Muslim and Jewish Aristotelians and wrote encyclopaedic commentaries on Aristotle and the natural science of his day. The English monk Roger Bacon, one of the first Scholastics to take an interest in experimental science, realized that a great deal remained to be learned about nature. He criticized the deductive method of his contemporaries and their reliance on past authority, and called for a new method of inquiry based on controlled observation. The greatest intellectual figure of the medieval era was St. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk who studied under Albertus Magnus. Aquinas combined Aristotelian science and Augustinian theology into a comprehensive system of thought that later became the authoritative philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote on every known subject in philosophy and science, and his major works, Summa Theologise and Summa Contra Gentiles, in which he presents a persuasive and systematic structure of ideas, still constitute a powerful influence on Western thought. His writings reflect the renewed interest of his time in reason, nature, and worldly happiness, together with its religious faith and concern for salvation. Aquinas argued against the Averroists that the truths of faith and the truths of reason couldnt conflict but rather apply to different realms. The truths of natural science and philosophy are discovered by reasoning from facts of experience, whereas the tenets of revealed religion, the doctrine of the Trinity, the creation of the world, and other articles of Christian dogma are beyond rational comprehension, although not inconsistent with reason, and must be accepted on faith. The metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, and politics of Aquinas were derived mainly from Aristotle, but he added the Augustinian virtues of faith, hope, and charity and the goal of eternal salvation through grace to Aristotle's naturalistic ethics with its goal of worldly happiness. Medieval Philosophy After AquinasThe most important critics of Thomistic philosophy were John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Duns Scotus developed a subtle and highly technical system of logic and metaphysics, but because of the fanaticism of his followers the name Duns later ironically became a symbol of stupidity in the English word dunce. Scotus rejected the attempt of Aquinas to reconcile rational philosophy with revealed religion. He maintained, in a modified version of the so-called double-truth doctrine of Averros, that all religious beliefs are matters of faith, except for the belief in the existence of God, which he regarded as logically provable. Against the view of Aquinas that God acts in accordance with his rational nature, Scotus argued that the divine will is prior to the divine intellect and creates, rather than follows, the laws of nature and morality, thus implying a stronger notion of free will than that of Aquinas. On the issue of universals, Duns Scotus developed a new compromise between realism and nominalism, accounting for the difference between individual objects and the forms that these objects exemplify as a logical rather than a real distinction. The English Scholastic William of Ockham formulated the most radically nominalistic criticism of the Scholastic belief in intangible, invisible things such as forms, essences, and universals. He maintained that such abstract entities are merely second intentions of words, that is, references of words to other words rather than to actual things. His famous rule, known as Ockham's razor, that one should not assume the existence of more things than are logically necessary, became a fundamental principle of modern science and philosophy. In the 15th and 16th centuries a revival of scientific interest in nature was accompanied by a tendency toward pantheistic mysticism. The Roman Catholic prelate Nicholas of Cusa anticipated the work of the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in his suggestion that the earth moved around the sun, thus displacing humanity from the centre of the universe; he also conceived of the universe as infinite and identical with God. The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, who similarly identified the universe with God, developed the philosophical implications of the Copernican theory. Bruno's philosophy influenced subsequent intellectual forces that led to the rise of modern science and to the Reformation. Modern PhilosophySince the 15th century modern philosophy has been marked by a continuing interaction between systems of thought based on a mechanistic, materialistic interpretation of the universe and those founded on a belief in human thought as the only ultimate reality. This interaction has reflected, moreover, the increasing effect of scientific discovery and political change on philosophical speculation. Mechanism and Materialism The 15th and 16th centuries constituted a period of radical social, political, and intellectual developments. The explorations of the world, the Reformation with its emphasis on individual faith, the rise of commercial urban society, and the dramatic appearance of new ideas in all areas of culture stimulated the development of a new philosophical worldview. The medieval view of the world as a hierarchical order of beings created and governed by God was supplanted by the mechanistic picture of the world as a vast machine, the parts of which move in accordance with strict physical laws, without purpose or will. The aim of human life was no longer conceived as preparation for salvation in the next world, but rather as the satisfaction of people's natural desires. Political institutions and ethical principles ceased to be regarded as reflections of divine command and came to be seen as practical devices created by humans. In this new philosophical view, experience and reason became the sole standards of truth. The first great spokesman for the new philosophy was the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, who denounced reliance on authority and verbal argument and criticized Aristotelian logic as useless for the discovery of new laws. Bacon called for a new scientific method based on inductive generalization from careful observation and experiment. He was the first to formulate rules of inductive inference. The work of Galileo was of even greater importance in the development of a new worldview. Galileo brought attention to the importance of applying mathematics to the formulation of scientific laws. This he accomplished by creating the science of mechanics, which applied the principles of geometry to the motions of bodies. The success of mechanics in discovering reliable and useful laws of nature suggested to Galileo and to later scientists that all nature is designed in accordance with mechanical laws. Descartes The French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Ren Descartes followed Bacon and Galileo in criticizing existing methods and beliefs, but unlike Bacon, who argued for an inductive method based on observed facts, Descartes made mathematics the model for all science, applying its deductive and analytical methods to all fields. He resolved to reconstruct all human knowledge on an absolutely certain foundation by refusing to accept any belief, even the belief in his own existence, until he could prove it to be necessarily true. He found the logical proof of his own existence in the very act of doubting it, and his famous argument cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) provided him with the one certain fact or axiom from which he could deduce the existence of God and the basic laws of nature. Despite his mechanistic outlook, Descartes accepted the traditional religious doctrine of the immortality of the soul and maintained that mind and body are two distinct substances, thus exempting mind from the mechanistic laws of nature and providing for freedom of the will. His fundamental separation of mind and body, known as dualism, raised the problem of explaining the way in which two such different substances as mind and body can affect each other, a problem that he was unable to solve and that has been a concern of philosophy ever since. HobbesThe English philosopher Thomas Hobbes constructed a comprehensive system of materialistic metaphysics that provided a solution to the mind-body problem by reducing mind to the internal motions of the body. Applying the principles of mechanics to all areas of knowledge, he defined the concepts basic to each area, such as life, sensation, reason, value, and justice, in terms of matter and motion, thus reducing all phenomena to physical relations and all science to mechanics. In his ethical theory Hobbes derived the rules of human behaviour from the law of self-preservation and justified egoistic action as the natural human tendency. In his political theory he maintained that government and social justice are artificial creations based on social contract and maintained by force. He supported absolute monarchy as the most effective means of preserving peace. SpinozaThe Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza constructed a remarkably precise and rigorous system of philosophy that offered new solutions to the mind-body problem, the conflict between religion and science, and the mechanistic elimination of ethical values from the natural world. Like Descartes, he maintained that the entire structure of nature could be deduced from a few basic definitions and axioms, on the model of Euclidean geometry. Spinoza saw that Descartes's theory of two substances created an insoluble problem of the way in which mind and body interact; he concluded that the only ultimate subject of knowledge must be substance itself. Attempting to demonstrate that God, substance, and nature are identical, he arrived at the pantheistic conclusion that all things are aspects or modes of God. His solution to the mind-body problem, known as the theory of psychophysical parallelism, explained the apparent interaction of mind and body by regarding them as two forms of the same substance, which exactly parallel each other, thus seeming to affect each other but not really doing so. Spinoza's ethics, like the ethics of Hobbes, was based on a materialistic psychology according to which individuals are motivated only by self-interest, but in contrast to Hobbes, Spinoza concluded that rational self-interest coincides with the interest of others, and that the most satisfactory life is one devoted to scientific study and culminating in the intellectual love of God. Locke John Locke, one of the most influential figures in British thought, continued the empiricist tradition begun by Bacon. He attacked the prevalent rationalistic belief in knowledge independent of experience. Although he accepted the Cartesian division between mind and body and the mechanistic description of nature, he redirected philosophy from study of the physical world to study of the mind. In so doing he made epistemology the principal concern of modern philosophy. Locke attempted to reduce all ideas to simple elements of experience, but he distinguished sensation and reflection as sources of experience, sensation providing the material for knowledge of the external world and reflection the material for knowledge of the mind. Although not a skeptic, Locke greatly influenced the scepticism of later British thought by recognizing the vagueness of the concepts of metaphysics and by pointing out that inferences about the world outside the mind cannot be proved with certainty. His ethical and political writings had an equally great influence on subsequent thought; the founders of the modern school of utilitarianism, which makes pleasure the standard of right and wrong, drew heavily on the writings of Locke. His defence of constitutional government, religious tolerance, and natural human rights influenced the development of liberal thought in France and the United States as well as in Great Britain. Idealism and ScepticismThe German philosopher, mathematician, and statesman Got fried Wilhelm Leibniz developed a remarkably subtle and original system of philosophy. It combined the mathematical and physical discoveries of his time with the organic and religious conceptions of nature found in ancient and medieval thought. Leibniz viewed the world as an infinite number of infinitely small units of force, called monads, each of which is a closed world but mirrors all the other monads in its own system of perceptions. All the monads are spiritual entities, but those with the most confused perceptions form inanimate objects and those with the clearest perceptions, including self-consciousness and reason, constitute the souls and minds of humanity. God is conceived of as the Monad of Monads, who creates all other monads and predestines their development in accordance with a preestablished harmony that results in the appearance of interaction between the monads. Leibniz's view that all things are organic and spiritual initiated the philosophical tradition of idealism. BerkeleyThe Irish philosopher and Anglican churchman George Berkeley made idealism a powerful school in Anglo-American thought by combining it with the scepticism and empiricism that had become influential in British philosophy. Extending Locke's doubts about knowledge of the world outside the mind, Berkeley argued that no evidence exists for the existence of such a world, because the only things that one can observe are one's own sensations, and these are in the mind. To exist, he claimed, means to be perceived (esse est percipi), and in order to exist when one is not observing them, things must continue to be perceived by God. In claiming that sensory phenomena are the only objects of knowledge, Berkeley established the epistemological view of phenomenalism and prepared the way for the positivist movement in modern thought. HumeThe British philosopher and historian David Hume turned Berkeley's criticism of material substance against Berkeley's own belief in spiritual substance, arguing that no observable evidence is available for the existence of a mind substance, spirit, or God. All metaphysical assertions about things that cannot be directly perceived are equally meaningless, he claimed, and should be committed to the flames. In his analyses of causality and induction, Hume revealed that no logical justification exists for believing that any two events are causally connected or for making any inference from past to future, thus raising problems that have never been solved. Hume's work has had a profound effect on modern science in stimulating the use of statistical procedures in place of deductive systems and in encouraging the redefinition of basic concepts. Kant In answer to the scepticism of Hume, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant constructed a comprehensive system of philosophy that ranks among the greatest intellectual achievements in Western culture. Kant combined the empiricist principle that all knowledge has its source in experience with the rationalist belief in knowledge obtained by deduction. He suggested that although the content of experience must be discovered through experience itself, the mind imposes form and order on all its experiences, and this form and order can be discovered a priori, that is, by reflection alone. His claim that causality, substance, space, and time are forms imposed by the mind on its experience gave support to the idealism of Leibniz and Berkeley, but he made his view a more critical form of idealism by granting the empiricist claim that things-in-themselves, that is, things as they exist outside human experience, are unknowable. Kant therefore limited knowledge to the phenomenal world of experience, maintaining that metaphysical beliefs about the soul, the cosmos, and God (the nominal world transcending human experience) are matters of faith rather than of scientific knowledge. In his ethical writings Kant held that moral principles are categorical imperatives, absolute commands of reason that permit no exceptions and are not related to pleasure or practical benefit. In his religious views, which had a lasting effect on Protestant theology, he emphasized individual conscience and represented God primarily as a moral ideal. In political and social thought Kant was a leading figure of the movement for reason and liberty against tradition and authority. In France, intellectual activity culminated in the period known as the Enlightenment, which helped stimulate the social changes that produced the French Revolution. Among the leading thinkers of this period were Voltaire, who, developing the tradition of Deism begun by Locke and other liberal thinkers, reduced religious beliefs to those that can be justified by rational inference from the study of nature; Jean Jacques Rousseau, who criticized civilization as a corruption of humanity's nature and developed Hobbes's doctrine that the state is based on a social contract with its citizens and represents the popular will; and Denis Diderot, who founded the famous Encyclopaedia, to which many scientists and philosophers contributed. Absolute IdealismIn Germany, through the influence of Kant, idealism and voluntarism, that is, emphasis on the will became the dominant tendencies. Johann Gottlieb Fichte transformed Kant's critical idealism into absolute idealism by eliminating Kant's things-in-themselves and making the will the ultimate reality. Fichte maintained that the world is created by an absolute ego, of which the human will is a partial manifestation and which tends toward God as an unrealised ideal. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling went still further in reducing all things to the self-realizing activity of an absolute spirit, which he identified with the creative impulse in nature. The emphasis of romanticism on feeling and on the divinity of nature found philosophical expression in the thought of Schelling, who influenced the American transcendentalist movement, led by the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. HegelThe most powerful philosophical mind of the 19th century was the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose system of absolute idealism, although influenced greatly by Kant and Schelling, was based on a new conception of logic in which conflict and contradiction are regarded as necessary elements of truth, and truth is regarded as a process rather than a fixed state of things. The source of all reality, for Hegel, is an absolute spirit, or cosmic reason, which develops from abstract, undifferentiated being into more and more concrete reality by a dialectical process consisting of triadic stages, each triad involving an initial state (or thesis), its opposite state (or antithesis), and a higher state, or synthesis, that unites the two opposites. According to this view, logical laws govern history, so that all that's real is rational, and all that's rational is real. Later historical forms are more concrete fulfilments of the absolute spirit, whose highest stage of self-realization is found in the national state and in philosophy. Hegel stimulated greater interest in history by representing it as a deeper penetration into reality than natural science. His conception of the national state as the highest social embodiment of the absolute spirit was for some time believed to be a main source of modern totalitarian ideologies, although Hegel himself argued for a large measure of individual freedom. Other Influential PhilosophersThe German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer rejected the optimistic faith of Hegel in reason and progress. Schopenhauer maintained that both nature and humanity are products of an irrational will, from which people can escape only through art and through philosophical renunciation of the desire for happiness. The French mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte formulated the philosophy of positivism, which rejected metaphysical speculation and located all genuine knowledge in the so-called positive, or factual, sciences. Comte placed the science of sociology, which he founded, at the top of his classification of the sciences. The British economist John Stuart Mill developed and refined the empiricist and utilitarian traditions, applying their principles to all fields of thought. Mill and other utilitarian influenced liberal social and economic reforms in Great Britain. The Danish mystic Sren Kierkegaard attacked the Hegelian emphasis on reason, and his eloquent defence of feeling and of a subjective approach to the problems of life became one of the main sources of 20th-century existential philosophy. Evolutionary PhilosophyThe mechanistic world view of the 17th century and the faith in reason and common sense of the 18th century, although still influential, were modified in the 19th century by a variety of more complex and dynamic views, based more on biology and history than on mathematics and physics. Particularly influential was the theory of evolution through natural selection, proposed by Charles Darwin, whose work inspired conceptions of nature and of humanity that emphasized conflict and change, as against unity and substantial permanence. The German revolutionists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed the philosophy of dialectical materialism, based on the dialectical logic of Hegel, but they made matter, rather than mind, the ultimate reality. They derived from Hegel the belief that history unfolds according to dialectical laws and that social institutions are more concretely real than physical nature or individual mind. Their application of these principles to social problems took the form of historical materialism; the theory that economic relations determine all forms of culture and that social evolution proceeds through class conflict and periodic revolutions. This theory became the ideological basis for the Communist movement. The British philosopher Herbert Spencer developed an evolutionary philosophy based on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which explains all elements of nature and society as adaptations in the cosmic struggle for survival. Like Comte, he based philosophy on sociology and history, as the highest sciences. Nietzsche The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche returned to Schopenhauer's conception of life as the expression of a cosmic will, but he made the so-called will to power the source of all value. He called for a return from religious ethics to the more primitive and natural virtues of courage and strength. Continuing the romantic revolt against reason and social organization, he stressed the values of individual self-assertion, biological instinct, and passion. PragmatismToward the end of the 19th century pragmatism became the most vigorous school of thought in American philosophy. It continued the empiricist tradition of grounding knowledge on experience and stressing the inductive procedures of experimental science. Charles Sanders Peirce, who gave this view its name, formulated a pragmatic theory of knowledge, which defined the meaning of a concept as the predictions that can be made by use of the concept and that can be verified by future experience. William James, whose outstanding work in psychology provided a framework for his philosophical ideas, developed the pragmatic theory of truth. He defined truth as the capacity of a belief to guide one to successful action and proposed that all beliefs be evaluated in terms of their usefulness in solving problems. James justified religion on this pragmatic basis, but, insisting on the finiteness of God, he identified God with the unconscious energy of nature. Idealism became a powerful school of thought in Great Britain through the work of Francis Bradley, who maintained, like Hegel, that all things must be understood as aspects of an absolute totality. Bradley denied that relations exist on the ground that no two things exist and that only one real subject of thought can be postulated, the real itself. He argued that whenever a thing is said to have a certain characteristic, then this thing, as subject, must be the entire world and reality itself. Any other assumption would be self-contradictory, because anything less than reality itself has contradictory predicates; a stove, for example, is sometimes hot, but it is also sometimes cold. The Scottish philosopher John McTaggart (1866-1925) also drew on Hegelian idealism, maintaining that space and time are unreal because their conceptions are self-contradictory. The only reality, he argued, is mind. The British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, who, like McTaggart, revived Hegelian idealism, emphasized the aesthetic and dramatic character of the world process. Pragmatic IdealismJosiah Royce, in the idealist movement in the U.S., combined idealism with elements of pragmatism. Royce interpreted human life as the effort of the finite self to expand into the absolute self through science, religion, and loyalty to wider communities. The American philosopher John Dewey further developed the pragmatic principles of Peirce and James in a comprehensive system of thought that he called experimental naturalism, or instrumentalism. Dewey emphasized the biological and social basis of knowledge and the instrumental character of ideas as plans of action. He insisted on an experimental approach to ethics, that is, on relating values to individual and social needs. Dewey's theory of education, which stressed the preparation of the individual for creative activity in a democratic society, had a profound influence on educational methods in the U.S. In France, the most influential view in the early part of the 20th century was the evolutionary vitalism of Henri Bergson, who propounded the lan vital, the spontaneous energy of the evolutionary process. Bergson defended feeling and intuition against the abstract, analytical approach to nature of science and science-minded philosophy. In Germany, Edmund Husserl, founder of the school of phenomenology, interpreted philosophy as the discovery of essential relations by reflection on that which is directly present to consciousness. White head The British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North White head revived interest in speculative metaphysics in the U.S. by developing a highly technical system of concepts that combined the Platonic theory of Ideas with the organicism of Leibniz and Bergson. Whitehead, who was also an outstanding physicist, applied the revolutionary developments in 20th-century science to show the failure of mechanistic science as a way of fully interpreting reality. According to White head, things are not unchanging substances having definite spatial boundaries, but are living processes of experience embodying eternal objects, or universals, fused with them by God. Santayana and OthersThe American poet and philosopher George Santayana combined pragmatism, Platonism, and materialism in a comprehensive philosophy that stressed intellectual and aesthetic values. Benedetto Croce established idealism as a dominant tradition in Italian philosophy, reviving the Hegelian conception of reality as a process of historical development through the conflict of opposites, but stressing feeling and intuition, rather than abstract reason, as the source of ultimate truth. Bertrand Russell continued the empiricist and utilitarian traditions in British thought. Russell's application of developments in logic, mathematics, and physics to problems of philosophy was a major influence on the school of logical empiricism. The British philosopher G. E. Moore, the main figure in the so-called realist revolt against idealism, argued for the reality of the objects of common-sense belief. Moore's cultivated simplicity of style and highly precise use of everyday language influenced the development of the school of analytic philosophy. Analytic PhilosophyThe school of logical empiricism, or logical positivism, founded in Vienna, became a powerful movement in American thought. Logical empiricism, which combines the positivism of Hume and Comte with the Cartesian and Kantian concern for logical rigor and precision, rejects metaphysics as a meaningless game of words, insists on the definition of all concepts in terms of observable facts, and assigns to philosophy the task of clarifying the concepts and the logical syntax of science. A less technical form of analytic philosophy, also called linguistic analysis, which was inspired by the work of Moore and developed explicitly by his pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein, has become the dominant view in present-day British philosophy. This school of thought also rejects speculative metaphysics and limits philosophy to the task of clearing up intellectual puzzles caused by the ambiguity of language by analysing the meanings of words in ordinary discourse. It identifies the meaning of a word with the way in which the word is generally used. Existential philosophy, which stems from the 19th-century romantic revolt against reason and science in favour of passionate involvement in life, became influential in Germany through the work of Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. Heidegger combined the phenomenological approach of Husserl with the Kierkegaardian stress on intense emotional experience and with Hegel's conception of negation as a real force. Heidegger's philosophy substitutes Nothingness for God as the source of human values; Jaspers finds God, which he calls Transcendence, in the intense emotional experience of human beings. Jose Ortega y Gasset, the principal figure of existential philosophy in Spain, defended intuition against logic and criticized the mass culture and mechanized society of modern times. In Israel the Austrian author and scholar Martin Buber, combining Jewish mysticism with strains of existential thought, interpreted human experience as a dialogue between the individual and God. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich have developed various syntheses of traditional theology with the existential view that knowledge is more emotional than scientific in Switzerland by Karl Barth and in the U.S. In France, Jean Paul Sartre fused ideas of Marx, Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Heidegger into a conception of human beings as those who project themselves out of nothingness by recognizing absolute freedom to assert their own values and thus assume moral responsibility for their acts. During the 1960s the writings of the American clergyman Martin Luther King indicated that Western philosophy had been too remote from the great social and political upheavals taking place throughout the world. Following the principles of the Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi, King advocated a program of non-violent resistance to injustice. Meaning and InterpretationMythology, body of myths of a particular culture, and also the study and interpretation of myth. Myth is a complex cultural phenomenon that can be approached from a number of viewpoints. In general, myth is a narrative that describes and portrays in symbolic language the origin of the basic elements and assumptions of a culture. Mythic narrative relates, for example, how the world began, how humans and animals were created, and how certain customs, gestures, or forms of human activities originated. Almost all cultures possess or at one time possessed and lived in terms of myths.Myths differ from fairy tales in that they refer to a time that is different from ordinary time (see Folktales). The time sequence of myth is extraordinaryan other timethe time before the conventional world came into being. Because myths refer to an extraordinary time and place and to gods and other supernatural beings and processes, they have usually been seen as aspects of religion. Because of the all-encompassing nature of myth, however, it can illuminate many aspects of individual and cultural life.Meaning and Interpretation From the beginnings of Western culture, myth has presented a problem of meaning and interpretation, and a history of controversy has accumulated about both the value and the status of mythology.Myth, History, and Reason In the Greek heritage of the West, myth or mythos has always been in tension with reason or logos, which signified the rational and analytic mode of arriving at a true account of reality. The Greek philosophers Xenophanes, Plato, and Aristotle, for example, exalted reason and made trenchant criticisms of myth as a proper way of knowing reality.In the Judaeo-Christian tradition the notion of history has been opposed to myth. Complicating this opposition was the concept that the God of the Hebrews and Christians, although existing outside ordinary time and space, was revealed to humanity within human history and society. Thus, God was revealed to Moses in the Egypt of the pharaohs.The distinctions between reason and myth and between myth and history, although fundamental, were never quite absolute. Aristotle concluded that in some of the early Greek creation myths, logos and mythos overlapped. Plato used myths as allegory and also as literary devices in developing an argument. Mythos, logos, and history overlap in the prologue to the Gospel of John in the New Testament; there, Jesus, the Christ, is portrayed as the Logos, who came from eternity into historical time. Early Christian theologians, attempting to understand the Christian revelation, argued about the roles of myth and history in the biblical account.Greek Mythology, religious beliefs and related ritual observances of the ancient Greeks, whose civilization based on the city state emerged in the early 1st millennium BC. It consists mainly of a body of diverse stories and legends about a variety of gods. Greek mythology had become fully developed by about the 8th century BC, when three works of literature incorporating important mythological material appeared. These works were Theogony by the poet Hesiod, and the Iliad and the Odyssey by the poet Homer.Greek mythology has several distinguishing characteristics. The Greek gods resemble humans in form and show human feelings. Unlike ancient religions such as Hinduism or Judaism, Greek mythology did not generally involve special revelations or spiritual teachings. Practices and beliefs also varied widely from one city state to another. While belief was not controlled by a religious government or defined in sacred books, it played a central role in daily life in ancient Greece. Religious architecture was highly formalized, and the great achievements of Greek art were largely created for religious contexts of one kind or another.Origins The origins of Greek mythology have been the subject of much speculation. Attempts have been made to relate it to the primitive religions of the Minoan civilization that emerged on Crete in the 3rd millennium BC.The ancient Greeks themselves offered some explanations for the development of their mythology. In Sacred History, Euhemerus, a mythographer who lived in the 4th century BC, recorded the widespread belief that myths were distortions of history and that the gods were heroes who had been glorified over time. In the 5th century BC the philosopher Prodicus of Ceos taught that the gods were personifications of natural phenomena, such as the Sun, Moon, winds, and water. Herodotus, the Greek historian who also lived in the 5th century BC, believed that many Greek rituals were inherited from the Egyptians.Principal Gods The Greeks believed that the gods chose Mount Olympus, in a region of Greece called Thessaly, as their home. On Olympus, the gods formed a society that ranked them in terms of authority and powers. However, the gods could roam freely, and individual gods became associated with three main domainsthe sky or heaven, the sea, and Earth. The 12 chief deities, usually called the Olympian gods, were Zeus, Hera, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hestia, Hermes, Demeter, and Poseidon.Zeus was the head of the gods, and the spiritual father of gods and people. His wife, Hera, was the queen of heaven and the guardian of marriage. Other major deities were Hephaestus, god of fire and metalworkers; Athena, goddess of wisdom and war; and Apollo, god of light, poetry, and music. Artemis, goddess of wildlife and the Moon; Ares, god of war; and Aphrodite, goddess of love, were other gods of heaven. They were joined by Hestia, goddess of the hearth; and Hermes, messenger of the gods and ruler of science and invention.Poseidon, brother of Zeus, was the ruler of the sea and god of earthquakes. His son by his wife Amphitrite was Triton, half man and half fish. Other lesser sea deities included the 50 daughters of Nereus, sea nymphs known as the Nereids.Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, was associated with the Earth. Her daughter Persephone was captured by Hades (an important god but not generally considered an Olympian), who ruled the underworld. Here Persephone lived as Hadess wife for the winter months, while Demeter mourned, returning to Earth for the spring and summer. The underworld was traditionally located at the centre of the Earth. It was populated by the souls of people who had died; heroes and other great souls inhabited the Elysian Fields, while the wicked were punished in the infernal regions.Dionysus, god of wine and pleasure, was among the most popular gods. The Greeks devoted many festivals to this earthly god, and in some regions he became as important as Zeus. He was often accompanied by a host of fanciful gods, including satyrs, centaurs, and nymphs. Satyrs were lustful creatures with the legs of a goat and the upper body of a monkey or human. Centaurs had the head and torso of a man and the body of a horse. The beautiful and charming nymphs haunted woods and forests.Worship and Beliefs Greek mythology emphasized the weakness of humans in contrast to the great and terrifying powers of Nature. The Greeks believed that their gods, who were immortal, controlled all aspects of nature. Therefore, the Greeks acknowledged that their lives were completely dependent on the goodwill of the gods. In general, relations between people and gods were considered friendly. However, the gods delivered severe punishment to mortals who showed unacceptable behaviour, such as indulgent pride, extreme ambition, or even excessive prosperity.Greek mythology was interwoven with every aspect of Greek life. Each city devoted itself to a particular god or group of gods, for whom the citizens often built temples (regarded as the houses of the gods, who were represented by a cult statue) in front of which worship took place around an open-air altar. They regularly honoured the gods in festivals, which high officials supervised. At festivals and other official gatherings, poets recited or sang great legends and stories. Many Greeks learnt about the gods through the words of poets.Greeks also learnt about the gods by word of mouth at home, where worship was common. Different parts of the home were dedicated to certain gods, and people offered prayers to those gods at regular times. An altar to Zeus, for example, might be placed in the courtyard, while Hestia was ritually honoured at the hearth.Although the Greeks had no official religious organization, they universally honoured certain holy places. Delphi, for example, was a holy site dedicated to Apollo. A temple built at Delphi contained an oracle, or prophet, whom brave travellers questioned about the future. A group of priests represented each of the holy sites. These priests, who also might be community officials, interpreted the words of the gods but did not possess any special knowledge or power. In addition to prayers, the Greeks often offered sacrifices to the gods, usually of a domestic animal such as a goat.As Greek civilization developed, particularly during the Hellenistic age (323-27 BC), when Greek-inspired art and culture flourished throughout the far-flung empire conquered by Alexander the Great, Greek mythology also changed. New philosophies and the influence of neighbouring civilizations caused a gradual modification of Greek beliefs. However, the essential characteristics of the Greek gods and their legends remain unchanged. Ancient Greece - PerspectivesThe classical period of ancient Greece reached its peak in Athens in about 450 BC, and lasted until the reign of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC. It was a time of extraordinary intellectual, cultural and artistic achievement, which was to have a profound influence on the development of western civilization. The extent of this influence is almost unlimited, affecting virtually every aspect of human existence including philosophy, politics, mathematics, drama, art and architecture. Words such as politics and democracy, economy and history, biology and physics, mathematics and logic, theology and philosophy, ethics and psychology all date back to this time.These enduring contributions to human progress originated from a world whose boundaries were much smaller than those we know today. The ancient Greeks view of the world around them can be seen in the maps of the historian Herodotus. They were familiar with the Mediterranean as a result of trade and settlement, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, but their knowledge of inland areas was relatively limited. They knew that beyond Gibraltar lay the Atlantic, but they had little idea of the full size of this ocean. Herodotus also described a circumnavigation of Africa, but, in contrast to other regions he discussed, was unable to provide details of its people, plants or animals.The Greeks also developed a concept of the solar system that, although based on a fundamental error, was to dominate astronomy in Europe for nearly two thousand years. According to Plato, who was influenced by the followers of Pythagoras, the earth was a sphere around which sun, moon, and planets moved in circles. Ptolemy further developed this theory in the Hellenistic period, and it was not until the sixteenth century that a heliocentric concept of the universe emerged as a serious challenge to the old ideas.Greek religion had developed over many centuries, based on stories about the gods handed down through the generations. The most important gods included Zeus, their leader, his wife Hera, Athene, Artemis and Apollo. Despite their supernatural powers, they were essentially human in form and behavior, and this humanizing tendency was to find full expression in classical Greek art and culture. Philosophers and intellectuals might not believe in the gods, but most of the population apparently did, and during the classical period there was still considerable respect for orthodox religion. In 399 BC Socrates was condemned to death for impiety against these gods, a scapegoat after the defeat of Athens in the Great War against Sparta.Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Greek civilization was democracy, which gradually developed in Athens, with popular assemblies and courts of law. It became essential for Athenians to master the art of oratory if they were to convince their fellow citizens of their political arguments. Education, debating groups and schools of philosophy thrived as Athenians sought to become involved in the political process. Although democracy in Athens was available to less than half the population, women and slaves being excluded, it sowed the seeds of the modern democracies we know today."Word.app CU*F*DWordu( d"Times New RomanN123&Heading 1L"Times New Roman < &Heading 2L"Times New Roman < &Heading 3L h3r h3r \cefd\c ef(d.A)JPhilosophersBerkeley 1685-1753Refuted materialism, believed it depends on how it is perceived.Descartes 1596-1650A Dualist - believes that reality can be separated into two components; spiritual and material. The spiritual part of reality makes thinking and knowledge possible.I think therefore I am - Cogito ergo sum.Hume 1711-1776Believed that we are fundamentally creatures of instinct and habit whose mental lives are dominated by passion rather than reason, whose beliefs are formed by mechanisms of association and custom rather than by a priori reflection and whose mortal lives are the product of feeling by convention.Socrates 470-399Philosophy as a way of life, Socratic dialogue. Delphi said no one was wiser than he. Ethics, virtue.Plato 427-347Believed in no ugliness and infanticide.Education - Literacy and Physical, Totalitarianism.Aristotle 384-322Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience.Believed that when you die your soul dies with you.Two aspects substance and essence.For Aristotle Reason is an organic process like breathing and walking.Key element was the study of purpose known as Teleology.He advocated the golden mean, the idea that a moderate existence is the way to happiness.Believed that woman was an unfinished man, that all characteristics were from the male side.Kant 1724 - 1804An Idealist - brought together Rationalism and Empiricism.The forms of sensibility are space and time. They are not characteristics of "things in themselves" Kant says that they are "empirically real but transcendentally ideal"Spinoza 1632 - 1677A Vitalist who believed that all of reality e.g. rocks, trees are alive and capable of knowing.We too are stardust...Locke 1632 - 1704An Empiricist believed that we can only be sure of something once we have experienced it.Kierkegaard 1813 - Hegel 1770 - 1831An IdealistMarx (Buried Highgate Cemetery)An Ideologist, CommunistDemocritus 460 - 370A Materialist Theorised that the world was made entirely of atoms.Foucault 1926 - 1984Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.PhilosophiesMonismView shared by many pre-Socratic philosophers (ca. 600 B.C.) that all reality is made up of one substance.EpicureanismHellenistic school of philosophy that emphasises happiness.TeleologyStudy of the purpose of things and the belief that all things have special purposes.StoicismHellenistic belief that nothing really matters, including pleasure and pain.MysticismBelief that human beings can be directly conscious of God.NeoplatonismAncient and medieval view that reality emanates from an ideal world of perfect forms.ScholasticismMedieval universal philosophy combining Aristotle's logic with the belief in God.ConfucianismChinese philosophy emphasising respect for others.TaoismChinese mystic philosophy based on a harmony between humanity and nature.HinduismCluster of Indian philosophical traditions emphasising detachment from pain and desire.BuddhismOffshoot of Hinduism that says to renounce the self.MonotheismBelief in just one God.HumanismRenaissance movement that saw human activity as a reflection of divinity.EmpiricismScientific view that knowledge comes from observation.RationalismScientific view that knowledge is possible without having to experience.VitalismBelief that all material things are alive and capable of sense and thought.DualismView that the world and the mind are made up of two aspects: matter and spirit.DeismBelief that God exists but has not interfered with the world since creating it.IdealismView that a transcendent mind is at work behind reality in general and human history in particular.DialecticsMethod of reasoning that moves back and forth between opposites.MarxismEconomic philosophy emphasising the plight of the modern worker.StructuralismLinguistics-based philosophy that sees meaningful ideas as relative to one another.PhenomenologyBoth a philosophy and a psychology based on the idea that we bring our own attitudes with us whenever we perceive things.ExistentialismA philosophical theory emphasising that man is responsible for his own actions and free to choose his development and destiny.Logical PositivismView that logic applied to meaning can yield certainty.Analytic PhilosophyPhilosophy based on the rapplication of mathematical logic to language.DeconstructionView that meaning is unstable, exceeding intention and lacking self-coherence.FeminismPhilosophy and political orientation committed to describing and undoing the oppression of women.New AgeBelief that a new era of global human consciousness is at hand in which people will make unprecedented use of their mental powers."Word.app CUhF+*!+D.+Q*Q?IAPlato's school of philosophy, so named after the grove where he lectured. The teachings of Plato's successors are conventionally divided into the Old Academy, which clove closely to Plato's positions, and the New Academy, begun by Arcesilaus in the 3rd century B.C., which was characterized byScepticism. See Plato; Scepticism.AThe branch of philosophy devoted to the study of the universe and its origins. Cosmology traditionally includes questions of whether the universe is infinite in space and time, for example, as well as questions of whether all things can be contingent or whether there must in some sense be an initial necessary cause or first mover. Why is there something rather than nothing? is perhaps the ultimate cosmological question.AAn argument attempting to prove the existence of God from the existence of the world. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas presents several forms of the cosmological argument. In one, he argues that all phenomena have an efficient cause; nothing causes itself, and an infinite regress of causes is impossible; therefore, there must be a first efficientcause, which is God. Others to put forward cosmological arguments include Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Locke.CEnglish statesman and philosopher of science, known for his repudiation of traditional speculative philosophy and his insistence on the acquisition of knowledge by means of induction. Bacon's outline of induction stressed empirical observation, inference, and verification through repeated observation and experiment. The obstacles to such a route to knowledgeand to rationality generally, Bacon termed idols: the Idols of the Tribe, common to people in general and including the mistaken notion that sense-perception affords direct access to reality; the Idols of the Den, including the tendency of each individual to interpret data according to his own peculiar and singular disposition; he Idols of the Marketplace, includingdangers to rationality from ambiguous and ill-defined language; and the Idolsof the Theater, including errors based on the dogmas of traditional philosophical systems.AIslamic physician and philosopher of Persian origin, born in Bukhara. Avicenna's reputation as a philosopher in the Islamic world was so great that he was called the third Aristotle (al-F-ar-ab-i being the second). He wrote a comprehensive system that was primarily Aristotelian. He distinguished between necessary and contingent being, and inso doing first elaborated the distinction between essence and existence. He had a great influence upon the Scholastics.AConditional statements with false antecedents: Had this dime been made of copper, it would have conducted electricity, Had Nixon not resigned, he would have been impeached. Important contemporary work has been stimulated by the fact that it is easy to find both true and falsecounterfactuals, although all material conditionals with false antecedents are counted as true in classical logic.ALiterally, the science of duty. Deontological ethics holds that some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences. Kant's categorical imperative is a deontological principle -- the morally good action is the one done out of respect for the moral law, and the consequences of such action are immaterial to its moral goodness. For such a deonotologist, it isthe reason for an action and not its consequences that we must judge either good or bad.DThe views of the Frankfurt School, which began with the Institute for Social Research founded in Frankfurt in 1923. Since most of the Institute's members left Nazi Germany before the war, it was reestablished in New York in 1936. Max Horkheimer took over the school in 1930 and gave it itstheoretical definition. Under him members of the school reexamined Marxism from a Hegelian perspective and in light of their disillusionment with both the West and the Soviet Union. They also attempted to integrate Marxism and psychoanalysis, doing a great deal of work on the authoritarian personality (the title of a book by Adorno). They did not emphasize revolution but instead emphasized tolerance. They also focused attention on the role and function of the family in bourgeois society. Critical Theory is also very influential in the philosophy of art and aesthetics. It particularly addresses the phenomenonof mass culture in the United States and compares it to fascism, particularly in its erasure of the distinction between public and private and the fact thatit was not created by the people but was forced upon them and dominates them. A contemporary critical theorist is Jurgen Habermas..BA movement in Greek philosophy from the 4th century B.C. to the 6th century A.D. The Cynics held that happiness was to be found in the virtuous life, which was the natural life. They viewed Greek social conventions as unnatural and preached asceticism and self-sufficiency. The Cynics proceededless by argument than by practice, diatribe, and satire; thus, the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope is said to have searched by daylight with a lamp for a humanbeing. Other Cynics included Antisthenes, Crates, and Hipparchia. Cynicism hada great influence on Stoicism.@AGerman word literally meaning there-being. It is used by Hegel to refer to a determinate being rather than being in general. It is also used, particularly by Heidegger, to refer to man or human being in the sense that man is already a being active in his world before we bring philosophical reflectionto bear upon him.pABroadly, the belief in a God who is impersonal, transcendent, and not involved in the world -- that is, in a God who is an absentee landlord. More narrowly, a strain in 17th and 18th century philosophy in England and France that held that reason proves the existence of God, and there need be no recourse to revelation. Deism is conventionally contrasted with theism.@AAn anti-institutional philosophical practice, first undertaken by Jacques Derrida, which calls into question the basic ideas and beliefs that give legitimacy to current forms of knowledge, particularly in philosophy. It emphasizes what has been marginalized, bringing what is on the margins ofphilosophy to the center.kFR株Valid0C"#Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947)0$#British mathematician and philosopher known for work in the foundations of mathematics with Bertrand Russell (Principia Mathematica) and for later work in metaphysics, most notably in Process and Reality.Weber, Max (1864-1920)0EpAcademy0FIo Cosmology0  G.-{Cosmological Argument0HBacon, Francis (1561-1626)0I'Avicenna (Arabic Ibn S-in-a) (980-1037)0('J Aesthetics0  That branch of philosophy dedicated to the study of art and artistic values. An aesthetics is also used to designate a particular theory of art or a particular approach to artistic values.Counterfactuals0K Deontology0  LCritical Theory0MCynicism0 N.Dasein0O@Deism0PpDeconstruction0Q@CAThe doctrine that all events, including all human choices, are necessitated; that none happens by chance, and none could possibly have failed to occur as it did. Most familiarly, causal determinism is the doctrine that all events are necessitated by earlier causes; given those causes, they could not have failed to occur.AOne of the two spirits distinguished by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, the other being the Apollonian. The Dionysian is the spirit of irrationality, absurdity, ecstasy, and excess. Dionysian festivals areassociated with drunkenness and debauchery and sometimes with frenzied insanity. The Dionysian spirit in man is that of his irrational and animal instincts, and must be harnessed and channeled by the rational, Apollonianspirit.kBFrench philosopher, Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Founder of deconstruction. Influenced by and has written on Hegel, Nietzsche, Saussure, Freud, and Husserl. Received his doctorate only in 1980, based on his many publications including Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference, and Of Grammatology.Derrida is highly critical of the western philosophical tradition, itsinstitutional nature and its exclusivity. He is considered by many to be a literary theorist rather than a philosopher. His work remains far moreinfluential in the United States than in France.DAmerican philosopher, especially of education. Dewey focused on experience as fundamental to life. Knowledge is only one type of experience. Human experience is one of the kinds of transactions that constitute nature, the others being the physicochemical and psychophysical.People are involved in constant transactions with the whole of nature, and they can come to understand nature through systematic inquiry. For Dewey, knowledge requires experimentation rather than contemplation. He developed aninstrumental or experimental logic, the function of which was to study the ways in which we are most successful in gaining knowledge. There are no firstprinciples. Rather, knowledge is rational because it proceeds by a self-corrective process -- we must constantly test our claims and check them with others. He was critical of the approach to education in late 19th centuryAmerica, which treated the child as a passive recipient of information, but he was equally critical of theories of education that said that children should beallowed to choose what they want to learn -- such an approach ignores the immaturity of children's experience. Dewey saw children as naturally curiousand explorative and thus thought that a child should learn by doing.CFor Socrates, argument by means of question and answer, with the goal of displaying the weaknesses of the argument of the person questioned. For Plato, rational discourse, which attempts to apprehend the essence of things, and ultimately, the idea of the Good. For Aristotle, a form of reasoning whose premises are based on generally accepted opinion. The modern notion of dialectic as the triad of thesis, antithesis, synthesis was first introduced bythe German philosopher Fichte in 1794. The Hegelian dialectic, however, is not mechanical in this way but is organic and involves concepts passing over intotheir opposites and the achievement of a higher unity in this opposition. ForHegel, dialectic is not simply a process of thought but a world process -- one through which history and the universe as a whole proceeds. While Marx usedthis Hegelian notion of dialectic, Engels and many later Marxists reverted to the mechanical movement of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.>AThe theory that all ethical language is merely emotive; that it serves only to express likes and dislikes, rather than to describe any ethical state of affairs. A simple form of emotivism appears in A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. A more sophisticated form appears in Charles Stevenson's Ethics and Language.AOriginally, a Greek term meaning opinion and public decree. For the Greeks, it came to mean the teachings of the philosophical schools. For the Christians, it meant the teaching of the church. For Kant, dogmatism is the position that reason is able to proceed from concepts alone, without referenceto the sensibility or to experience. Following Kant, dogma has taken on the pejorative meaning of a rigidly held belief based on authority, not on reason or experience.AAny doctrine that asserts a pair of irreducible categories. Plato'sdistinction between the sensible and intelligible worlds is a form of dualism, as is Manicheanism's opposition of the principles of light and darkness. Similarly, Descartes's distinction between mind and body is a dualism ofsubstance. Kant posits an epistemological dualism between the activity of the understanding and the passivity of the sensibility. Dualism is often contrasted with monism.(AThe doctrine that some properties of things are essential to them. In contemporary usage, essentialism is taken as coextensive with the view that there are de re necessities, or real necessities in the things themselves, rather than merely linguistic necessities based on how they are described.CAA philosophical position that holds that sense experience rather than reason is the source of all knowledge. It is opposed to rationalism and is exemplified in modern philosophy by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Kant is also considered by many to be an empiricist in that he believes that experience isnecessary to knowledge.tAIn general, the term may be used for any cultural period that celebrates reason as a central human virtue and attempts to expand human horizons by rational human efforts alone. The Enlightenment is often used to designate a particular period of this sort in 17th and 18th-century European history, fostered particularly by English, Dutch, French, and German philosophers.#BA school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in 306 B.C. in Athens by Epicurus (341-270 B.C.). It survived at least until the second century A.D. Epicureanism held that knowledge originates through the senses; that all things, including the soul, are composed of atoms; and that happiness consists in pleasure, especially peace of mind. Although Epicureanism is oftenassociated with debauchery, the school in fact emphasized peace of mind to an extent that resembled asceticism. Besides Epicurus, the most famous member of the school is Lucretius.!BThe branch of philosophy that concentrates on moral questions: questions of right and wrong, good and bad action, virtues and vices, and rights and obligations. Descriptive ethics in a psychological, sociological, or anthropological attempt to characterize what it is that people happen to believe about right and wrong, virtues and vices, and the like. Normativeethics, in contrast, is a more properly philosophical discipline in which the attempt is to find out the truth about right and wrong, virtues and vices, and rights and obligations.?BA philosophical movement usually considered to have been founded by Kierkegaard. Heidegger and Sartre are the best-known 20th-century existentialists. The movement is perhaps best characterized by the slogan existence precedes essence, which means that there is no self before action, that we are what we do and no more. Existentialists also hold that reality cannot be fully comprehended, that the universe does not make sense, and that there is no underlying rationality. In existentialism there is no answer to the question "Why are things as they are and not otherwise?"@The doctrine that ethical values are rel