Philosophy
Philosophy (literally 'love of wisdom', from the Ancient Greek word φιλοσοφία (philosophía), which comes from φίλος (phílos) and σοφία (sophía), meaning friend/lover and wisdom respectively) is an academic discipline concerned with the most fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought, action, and reality. Philosophy progresses according to various methods of rational inquiry.
Philosophy is accurately described as both the first science and the "Queen of the Sciences". Until the late 19th century, what is now called "science" was subsumed under Natural Philosophy.
Philosophy in the West has its origins in Ancient Greece (ca. 600 B.C.), when the first philosophers undertake an independent inquiry of theological creeds. Later, there was an important divide between Analytic philosophy (or Anglophone philosophy) and Continental philosophy. This divide can be traced back to the late 19th century and a split in focus between Gottlob Frege and the intellectual descendants of Friedrich Hegel.
The main branches of philosophy are Metaphysics, which is (broadly speaking) the study of what-is; Ethics, the study of correct action; Logic, the rules (both formal and informal) of reason; Epistemology, the study of knowledge, and Aesthetics, the study of the nature of beauty and the artistic criteria of judgment. Notable sub-branches include Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of Religion, Political Philosophy, and Philosophy of mind.
Branches of Analytic Philosophy
Broadly speaking, there are a number of topics one would expect to fall under the title Philosophy:
- Logic: The analysis of terms, propositions and the principles of reasoning
- Metaphysics: The analysis of concepts which transcend physical science, including the Philosophy of mind.
- Epistemology: The analysis of the nature of knowledge, how we know, and what we can and cannot know.
- Ethics: The analysis of the nature of morality and morals, how and why we determine right from wrong.
- Political Philosophy: The analysis of the nature of the human public sphere, which one may consider the ethics of the way society is arranged.
- Philosophy of Science: The analysis of scientific concepts and methodology, which concerns itself mostly with the foundations of science, and interdisciplinary areas.
- Aesthetics: The analysis of the nature and experience of art and beauty.
History of Philosophy
Conventionally the History of Western Philosophy is divided into four eras: Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary.
The Ancient era starts with the Presocratic philosophers and goes until the fall of the Roman empire; The Medieval goes until the end of the Middle Ages; The Moder up to the 20th century, and The Contemporary up to present.
Greek Philosophy
Philosophy in the West begins with Thales of Miletus, who was the first astronomer in recorded history to accurately predict a solar eclipse. The Milesian School founded by Thales included Anaxagoras, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Closely related is the work of Heraclitus of Ephesus. Around the time of Heraclitus, Parmenides of Elea, with his pupil Zeno, raised some serious objections to the project of Milesian philosophy. These objections laid the groundwork for Socrates and his pupil Plato, as well as the Atomists, Democritus and Leucippus.
The Twentieth Century
This century has offer a wide diversity of orientations. French Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941), 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature, Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) founder of phenomenology and the existentialism of German Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), and his follower, French Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980), philosopher, playwright, and novelist, that was the leading exponent of existentialism, are good examples. Also criticism of Positivism by German Jürgen Habermas (1929– ), a professor at the University of Frankfurt with the Critical Theory, and the Frankfurt School , a group of researchers associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research), founded in 1923 with members such as Theodor Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund , Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940), a German essayist and critic (He is known for his synthesis of eccentric Marxist theory and Jewish messianism) and Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979), U.S.; Structuralism, theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves, with members such as Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913), Swiss linguist, Roman Jakobson (1896 – 1982), Russian-American linguist and literary critic, Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – ), French anthropologist, Roland Barthes (1915 – 1880), French critic, and Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984), French philosopher and historian. Foucault is renowned for historical studies that reveal the sometimes morally disturbing power relations inherent in social practices. [1]
American Philosophy
Some scholars have said that American philosophers’ focus on the interconnections of theory and practice, on experience and community, but different concerns and themes have waxed or waned at different times; nevertheless American Philosophy can be seen as both reflecting and shaping collective American identity over the history of the nation. [2]
Main figures are: Charles Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952) in pragmatism. Also important are the works of: Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), George Santayana (1863-1952), Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), C. Wright Mills (1916-1962), Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) and W. V. Quine, (Willard Van Orman Quine) (1908–2000).
Remarkable is John Rawls (1921 - 2002) (political and moral philosophy) author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of Peoples (1999), and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001).
See also
External links
- History of Philosophy
- History of Philosophy - Resources
- A History of American Philosophy Book by Herbert W. Schneider.