Philosophy and Philosophers

An Introduction to Western Philosophy

John Shand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317488149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This revised and updated edition of a standard work provides a clear and authoritative survey of the Western tradition in metaphysics and epistemology from the Presocratics to the present day. Aimed at the beginning student, it presents the ideas of the major philosophers and their schools of thought in a readable and engaging way, highlighting the central points in each contributor's doctrines and offering a lucid discussion of the next-level details that both fills out the general themes and encourages the reader to pursue the arguments still further through a detailed guide to further reading. Whether John Shand is discussing the slow separation of philosophy and theology in Augustine, Aquinas and Ockham, the rise of rationalism, British empiricism, German idealism or the new approaches opened up by Russell, Sartre and Wittgenstein, he combines succinct but insightful exposition with crisp critical comment. This new edition will continue to provide students with a valuable work of initial reference.

Chapter One
Presocratic Greek Philosophy

The past is not a story; only in retrospect under an interpretation does it unfold as history like a fictional tale in a book. Consequently, in reporting what happened in the past we lack one of the characteristics of a story: a definite beginning. However, in Greece a short time after 600 BC certain changes were taking place in human thought that seemed to have no precedent; and it is on these changes in the way human beings began to think about the world and themselves that the most fundamental aspects of today’s Western civilization – its science, ethics, politics, and philosophy – are founded. There were events of significance before this time; but 600 BC onwards marks alterations in human thought sufficient to describe it as a beginning.

The study of ancient philosophy is normally said to extend from 585 BC to AD 529. Of course, philosophical speculation did not cease at that date, but the banning of the teaching of Greek philosophy at the University of Athens by the Roman Christian Emperor Justinian, in AD 529, is thought of as a suitable event to mark a change.

The Presocratic period covers 585 BC to 400 BC and the term “Presocratic” has the obvious literal sense of denoting those philosophers living before Socrates. This meaning is only approximate, as some of the philosophers considered as Presocratics were contemporaries of Socrates who was born in 470 BC and died in 399 BC. Again the decision to divide history in this way is justified by its marking another beginning. A change in direction and style of thought was instigated by Socrates, for knowledge of whom we are almost entirely dependent on Plato (427–347 BC). The labelling of a group of many thinkers, whose work stretched over a period of 185 years, as the Presocratics, can be highly misleading if it is taken to imply a great unity of thought. Nevertheless, comprehension of any one of this group is aided by consideration of the others. Their views were diverse, and their degree of knowledge of the work of others varied greatly.

Considering the enormous claims made for the importance of the Presocratics, it is extraordinary that we have no document dating from that time written by these people. What we know of what they said and wrote comes to us, at best, second-hand, the most substantial contribution being made by Aristotle (384–322 BC), but also a good deal from Simplicius (AD 500–540); and there were many others. Of this derivative information, the most precious is that contained in the “fragments”; this is not actual text that has survived physically down the centuries, but rather all purported direct quotations from the Presocratics. The second source of information is the summaries and comments of those ancient philosophers and historians who did have direct access to Presocratic texts. We must beware of the corruption of Presocratic views by error, misunderstanding, or deliberate pointmaking.

To understand how these philosophers could have had such an influence on such a wide range of subjects, we have to understand that the early Greeks did not separate out disciplines in the way we do now. “Philosophy” literally means “love of wisdom”, and the topics that fell under this name covered what we now pick out as philosophy, logic, science, medicine, ethics, social science, psychology, and religion. The importance of the Presocratic philosophers, particularly the earlier ones, is to be found in their speculations in physics – the study of nature – for it is among these early tentative attempts to provide a complete, simple, unified explanation of the various phenomena of the world, or universe, that the outline of the methods and concepts of modern empirical science was first drawn. From a dissatisfaction with mythical accounts of the world explanations began to emerge that were generalizable and systematic rather than ad hoc, naturalistic rather than having recourse to supernatural gods and powers, and that were, most importantly, backed by arguments open to inspection, instead of assertions based on authority or mere durability – although the distinctions between the mythical and the new forms of explanation were not always sharp. The Presocratic philosophers were phusikoi (from which comes the word “physics”); speculators on the workings of nature.

It is necessary first to say something about the world in which they lived. Philosophy began not on mainland Greece, still less in Athens where it was later to flourish, but in Ionia – the western seaboard on the Aegean Sea of what is now Turkey, more generally called Asia Minor. Mycenaean civilization developed in mainland Greece between 1580 BC and 1120 BC under the considerable influence of the more ancient Minoan civilization (3000–1000 BC) of Crete. After the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, Greeks from the mainland after 1000 BC began colonizing the islands of the Aegean, and the west coast of Asia Minor, which became known as Ionia owing to the Ionic form of the Greek language spoken there. The Greeks of the sixth century BC looked back upon the Mycenaean period with nostalgia; the essential features of their myths and religion, told for example through the poems of Homer, were taken from the Mycenaeans. Around 700 BC the Ionians flourished with trade increasing around the Mediterranean. Various peoples influenced the cultural and intellectual growth of Ionia. From the Scythians in the north they received shamanistic beliefs that probably influenced Pythagoras. Other peoples to exert 'nfluence on Greek culture were the Lydians and Phrygians in Asia Minor, the Canaanites and Phoenicians – the latter providing the Greeks with the tremendously important matter of an alphabet. Egypt was also a country that fascinated the Greeks, and the effect can be seen in what the Greeks took from Egyptian mathematics and medicine. Perhaps the most significant influence was derived from the Babylonian Empire (which fell to the Persians in 538 BC) where major advances had been made in mathematics and the data collected on astronomical events. The Iranian peoples (which included the Persians) had military domination of Asia Minor by 540 BC.

Against this background Greek city-states began to crystallize out, first on the mainland, then spreading to Ionia by the 7th century BC. The change is significant because it created a sympathetic environment for philosophical thinking and science. The city-states were ruled by oligarchies, but oligarchies which had come to power with the consent, and remained under the influence, of a significant proportion of the population. Although certainly not democracies – since the group with a say excluded women, slaves, and the poor – these states did at least embody some kind of stability through a law invested with some legitimacy through consent, replacing the arbitrary and volatile power of the absolute despot. A relatively stable and increasingly prosperous environment, and an alphabet, were opportune conditions for the rise of scientific and philosophical speculation.

The concerns of Greek philosophy centred on perplexing problems derived from common observation and nascent science: the one (unity) and the many (plurality), permanence and change, reality and appearance, existence (being) and non-existence (non-being). We observe a world of many things over which we require a sense of its unity into one world; we observe also a world of change and movement beyond which we require a sense of its essential stability. Under the heading of permanence and change comes the search for something stable behind the restless world as it appears; something that would either explain the apparent world, or declare it ultimately illusory. We also observe a world containing a plurality of objects; behind this there must be something that binds this diversity into one permanent unified cosmos. Without such a “something”, we lack an overall and ultimate explanation for the world. The Greek word kosmos (from which we derive “cosmos”) implies a universe which is ordered and beautiful in arrangement, and therefore in principle capable of explanation.

Much of Greek philosophy is an attempt to discern underlying similarity between apparently diverse phenomena, which can act as a common explanation of the apparently different phenomena. Similarity is emphasized rather than difference. Thus an explanation of why two differing phenomena occur might be derived from some underlying factor beyond the features by which they differ. This simplifies by eliminating the need for special explanations applicable only to each phenomenon. This approach is one of the foundations of modern science. To use an example from modern science: the way in which, after being dropped from a plane, the phenomena of the falling of a cow and of a hammer are explained does not require two special explanations, one applicable only to cows and the other only to hammers, rather the two apparently diverse phenomena are united under the common underlying reality that they are both physical bodies.

There are various possibilities that ensue from the attempt to provide a unified explanation of the phenomena of the universe in the face of its apparent diversity:

1. To give an account of some material stuff or substance which underlies, and can perhaps be used to explain, all the apparent variety.
2. To give an account of some universal controlling law which brings unity to the plurality of the apparent world.
3. To assert that the world as it appears is an illusion because to be really as it appears would be inherently contradictory, and to deduce that the real world must be quite other than it appears.
4. To be sceptical about our ability to provide a unifying explanation for the world.

In the Presocratics all these possibilities – which are not of course mutually exclusive – are considered.

Among the philosophers called Presocratics there are some minor figures who will not be discussed. Some Presocratics probably wrote nothing. Of the ones who did write, the amount of evidence we have as to what they said varies greatly. Unsurprisingly, although there are difficulties of interpretation in all cases, some are more difficult than others.

It will be useful first to present a list of the most significant Presocratics in the rough order in which they are usually considered and to display the three main phases of Presocratic thought (see below: I = pre-Parmenidean, II = Parmenidean, III = post-Parmenidean). Any attempt to categorize groups of Presocratic philosophers is more or less arbitrary; the categories must emphasize similarities at the expense of differences. The Milesians sit quite well together as a group; although, as will be seen, Anaximander produces sufficiently unusual views to make us doubt this grouping. Melissus is included among the Eleatics, although he did not come from Elea, because of his general approach and because he was probably a pupil of Parmenides. It is customary to divide these philosophers into those from Ionia and those from the Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily. Pythagoras, who was born in Ionia, comes under southern Italy because of his work and influence in that area.

The customary division of Presocratic philosophy into three phases, as above, is one of which the philosophers themselves would not have been conscious. The first phase (I) indicates (with the exception of Xenophanes) an optimism in the power of empirical explanation; the second (II) denotes a period of the ascendancy of pure reason, separated from empirical explanation and evidence; the third phase (III) can be understood as an attempt to reconcile phases (I) and (II).

Let us now look at the Presocratics in the light of the four approaches, (a), (b), (c), (d), given above, as possible replies which ensue from asking the central early Greek question: how to explain, or reconcile, the permanence (one, unity, being) required for a unifying explanation of the universe, with the appearance of constant change (many, plurality, becoming). Under this notion we find the following groupings:

1. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Leucippus, Democritus
2. Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras
3. Parmenides, Melissus, Zeno
4. Xenophanes

To a great extent the guide to putting a particular philosopher in a certain group is merely a matter of emphasis. Plainly those in (a), say, have not only to be concerned with the basic stuff of the universe, but also with the forces that control it, as in (b).

Pre-Parmenidean philosophers

The concept linking the Milesians is that of arche. Arche is an explanatory concept introduced to understand the Presocratics by Aristotle; it denotes the original and controlling stuff and first principle of the universe, the nature of which provides an explanation of the existing universe, and its origin, as a whole.

Very little is known of the first philosopher-scientist Thales. His chief subject for explanation is the energy of the universe. One answer to this is hylozoism: a view whereby everything in the universe is to some degree animate. This does not mean that stones are conscious, and subject to pain and desire; all-pervasive life is a matter of wide degree. Movement is one of the most powerful intuitive criteria for life, and Thales noticed that magnets were capable of both being moved and moving certain other objects. In the case of Thales the arche was water, and seems for Thales to have been self-moving. That water should have been the arche need not surprise us greatly since we can immediately reflect upon its life-sustaining properties, and that, when dried out, things die. This provides an explanation for the cosmos which dispenses with the need for ad hoc divine intervention; it is this that marks an important step towards rational science. But we should not think that such a view necessarily involves atheism. Indeed, Thales believed that the world as a whole is pervaded with a divine life-force; this accounts for the change and variety of the world. Thales also held the view that the earth floats on a bed of water.

The second, and the most interesting, of the Milesians is Anaximander. Anaximander’s arche is not any ordinary material stuff, but what he called apeiron: the infinite or indefinite. Apeiron is a substance and principle of infinite extent and indefinite character; because it explains all the universe it is unlimited in extent, and since from it are evolved all qualities of things, the apeiron itself has no qualities. Apeiron is neither hot nor cold, wet nor dry; it is qualitatively neutral. The world as we know it is evolved from the entirely homogeneous continuum of apeiron by a temporary local imbalance in opposing elements of the apeiron; and this passing away and coming to be of worlds is cyclical. Features of the world from the original state are produced by a process of ‘winnowing out”, or shaking, with like qualities gathering with like; this may involve a doctrine of eternal motion. The controlling principle is a form of cosmic justice, whereby if one quality gains dominance there has to be recompense for this by an increase in the opposite quality. The obvious problem surrounding an explanation from imbalance in apeiron, is why any kind of imbalance should begin, given its once homogeneous state.

Anaximander held the view that the earth does not move and is cylindrical in shape. The doctrine of an immobile earth was to remain a powerful force in Western cosmology until the time of Copernicus (1473–1543) and Galileo (1564–1642). The reason for supposing that the earth was motionless was based on the equality of forces to which it is subject in its situation equidistant from the edges of the universe.

One of the most interesting aspects of Anaximander is his view on biology and the origins of life, for here he held that life was derived from the action of the sun on moist things, whereby fish developed, and within fish adult humans were originally formed who appeared when the fish form was shed.

Anaximenes, the last of the Milesian philosophers, presents a less bold doctrine of arche than Anaximander, for while the arche is infinite, Anaximenes returns to a physical substance: air. Air is in constant motion as can be felt, but not seen, from the wind. By a process of rarefaction and condensation air becomes visible in the forms we recognize as fire (rarefaction) and water and stone (condensation); through this process an account is given of how things change. The earth is flat and rides on air, and it is surrounded by heavenly bodies, all of which are centres of fire, but most are so distant from earth that they provide no heat.

With Pythagoras we move to a different phase in Greek philosophy. In the case of Pythagoras it is even more difficult than usual to disentangle those doctrines actually originating with him from those attributed to him by the school of Pythagoreans which appeared later in southern Italy. Pythagoreanism is what is more important to us from the aspect of a philosophical study.

Pythagoras, and those who called themselves his followers, fostered a secret society who kept the doctrines of “The Master” Pythagoras unrevealed, and also formed a political movement; this, and the deliberately exaggerated legend woven around Pythagoras, to the extent of the attribution of magical powers, aroused the suspicion and derision of contemporary thinkers such as Heraclitus, Xenophanes, and the historian Herodotus. The Pythagorean sect seems to have been more concerned with embodying a way of life than encouraging free inquiry. Nevertheless Pythagoras was a brilliant poly...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Presocratic Greek Philosophy
• 2 Greek Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle
• 3 Medieval Philosophy: Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham
• 4 Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
• 5 Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, Hume
• 6 Transcendental Idealism: Kant
• 7 Later German Philosophy: Hegel, Nietzsche
• 8 Analytical Philosophy: Russell, Wittgenstein
• 9 Phenomenology and Existentialism: Husserl, Sartre
• 10 Logical Positivism and Falsificationism: Ayer, Popper
• 11 Linguistic Philosophy: Wittgenstein
• 12 Recent Philosophy
• Bibliography
• Chronology of Philosophers
• Index