A Brief History of Western Philosophy

I've been writing a series of short essays on behalf of a good friend of mine, on the history of western philosophy. It occurred to me that some people here might also be interested in a brief summary or overview of the history of Western philosophy - without the technical jargon and/or long, detailed explanations.

My goal is not to explain the entirety of Western philosophy - if you are interested in that, go to university.

What I'm trying to do is just touch upon some of the key philosophic highpoints that characterise the primary epochs of philosophic history with a few of the most famous names and ideas and to (hopefully) show how they link together over time - with a particular focus upon what is particularly relevant to our modern political world.

Each chapter or essay is targeted to have a one-thousand word maximum so my goal is brevity (as much as that is possible with philosophy!). I'll post one chapter at a time, perhaps a week or two apart, to allow discussion or comments on each as we go.

Outline Plan:

1. The Pre-Socratics
2. Socrates/Plato
3. Aristotle
4. Romans
5. Christians
6. Machiavelli & The Renaissance
7. 17th Century Revolutions (Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Hobbes, Locke)
8. in process... (Enlightenment, Romanticism, Nationalism, Capitalism)

I'm posting no links, sources or footnotes to anything here. For all intents and purposes, this is my own original composition, a product of my education and long established interest in the topic.

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[I]Remember what the dormouse said, 'feed your head'. [/I]

As always, everything begins with the ancient Greeks...

1. The Pre-Socratics (circa 550 BC to 425 BC)

Western philosophy is said to begin with Thales of Miletus (Ionia in old Asia Minor - aka west coast of Turkey) in the 6th century BC. Thales himself gained his initial fame by successfully predicting an eclipse of the sun.

Thales is also the first man (that we know of) to have postulated an explanation for the creation of the world that didn't actually include the participation of any supernatural beings. Thales postulated the principle of land itself being physically created as 'similar to the way the Nile deposits silt at the delta'.

On the other hand, Thales also famously postulated that "all is water and the world is full of gods" - a supposition that suggests not only some kind of divine presence, but also the principle of a single unitary substance (in this case, water) that forms the basis of all physical matter.

Thales was closely followed by Anaximander and Anaximenes from the same geographic region (Ionia). They too followed the same impetus as Thales in trying to understand the nature of the world around us. They both shared the idea of a single unitary substance as the basis of all physicality in the universe, as Thales suggested, but also supposed that there was a single unitary force or principle that governed that substance. This theme is a very strong one throughout the subsequent centuries and millennia and dies only with our modern age.

While it is to be noted that although these early philosophers perceived nature as intimately intertwined with the realm of the gods, a striking change had been introduced - apparently unique throughout our known history -- the desire to discover a natural explanation for the universe (or the world around us) by means of observation and reasoning instead of the usual methods of divine inspiration, old myths, legends, omens, dreams, astrology and/or reading entrails, knucklebones, etc.

Parmenides of Elea (in Magna Graecia, in southern Italy) follows up these views with the introduction of the rudiments of logical analysis. Parmenides observed that "what is" cannot "come to be". And "what is", cannot change into something that it "is not". In this way, Parmenides is the first to observe a distinction between 'real' and 'apparent', or between 'truth' and 'sensory perception' - and also between 'being' and 'becoming'. Most importantly, Parmenides draws a sharp distinction between 'static' material substance and 'dynamic' force - a logical refinement upon Anaximander and Anaximenes's earlier views.

Zeno is another famous philosopher from this period (also from Ionia) who follows Parmenides' lead in turning towards reason and rationalism to analyse the world around him. Zeno's inquiry into the nature of motion (by theoretically analysing the movement of an arrow) has given us something that is known as 'Zeno's Paradox', which has a remarkable prescience of our present understanding (confusion) of the nature of light.

One of the most interesting developments in this period is associated with Leucippus and his successor Democritus. They follow in this 'Ionian' tradition of using reason in trying to understand the universe, and they attempt to fulfill the search for the elementary substance that constitutes the material universe - and assimilate the ideas of Parmenides and Zeno (vis a vis 'change' and 'motion'). As a result, they construct a theory that the world is composed of super-tiny immutable 'atoms' - a unitary and changeless substance - that are of infinite number. These infinitely numerous and infinitely tiny 'atoms' were believed to perpetually move about in a boundless void and by their random collisions and various combinations, produced the phenomena of the material world.

Pythagoras is the last of the great 'pre-Socratics'. He founded a mystical school of philosophy at Croton in southern Italy (called Magna Graecia because it was full of Greek city-state-colonies at that time). This school originates as a religious brotherhood centered upon the cult of Apollo & the Muses.

Pythagoras is best known for his contribution to geometry (Pythagorean Theorem), which is highly appropriate since Pythagoras believed that mathematical forms governed and/or ordered the universe. Such mathematical forms could be discerned in the harmony of the musical scale and the annual cycles of the heavenly spheres. On the other hand, Pythagoras and his school was also very closely identified with the ancient Greek 'mystery religions' (with their mysterious 'eastern' influences) - particularly Orphism - which stands in contrast to the other 'pre-Socratic' philosophers with their notable focus upon reason, rationalism and understanding of logic as the primary process of explanation of the universe (cf. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Parmenides & Zeno).

Unfortunately, the archaic Greek mystery religions maintained a far too effective secrecy and left us no written record of their forms and/or ideas so little is 'actually' known about them other than their existence, though much is speculated and has been inferred about them through dedicated scholarship on the topic. I won't address that here because it is outside our primary topic (and outside my primary field of competence).

This completes our little survey of the 'pre-Socratic' era of Greek philosophy. The key development here to take note of (besides the remarkable brilliance and prescience of Zeno & Democritus!) is the search for 'non-supernatural' explanations for natural phenomena. This itself constitutes the beginning of 'philosophy' as a branch of study apart from theology/divinity/religion.

With philosophy itself established, three particular themes are notable here: 1) the seeking of understanding the unifying principle or substance that governs or structures or forms the physical universe, and 2) the development and application of principles of logic and rational deduction, and 3) the persistent influence of irrational mysticism.

Comments and questions and/or criticisms are always welcome. (999 words!)

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[I]Remember what the dormouse said, 'feed your head'. [/I]

That was very nice. I'm looking forward to the "Aristotle" entry .
Or that mysticism was(is?) an integral part of the search for knowledge?

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[SIZE="1"][I]Filled with mingled cream and amber/ I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber/ Through the chamber of my brain -
Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies/ Come to life and fade away.
What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today.
- Edgar Allan Poe[/I][/SIZE]

Considered the importance of relativism in democracy, protagoras looks at an unbypassable presocratic philosopher.

First a word of thanks is in order. If not for the composing, then for the sharing.
Cheers MM

Ah, and I was hoping for just that.
Now I'm off to the Pre-Socratics.

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It is often said that anarchists live in a world of dreams and do not see the things which happen today. We see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudices that besets us.
[I]P.Kropotkin; Anarchism: Its philosophy and ideal.[/I]

I want to thank you Mad Michael for this thread. I really enjoyed the first entry. I only had a couple philosophy classes in college but I enjoyed them so much I continued to read some books after I graduated. Mostly existentialist philosophers, David Hume, and a few others. Now I simply do not have time but short essays like that are perfect because I can fit them in.

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Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. -Carl Sagan

Thanks a lot, Michael. Sadly, I've never had any philosophy classes.

This should help me get some ideas, and maybe inspire me to have a look in the local library. I enjoyed the first entry very much

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Excellent work, Sir Michael

I'm not sure if you consider the period even before this to be on-topic, but would you agree that early Greek astronomy was the conditio sine qua non and probably the incentive for people like Thales ?

It would seem that celestial observations led to the thinking about the natural world in a non-mythical way. The periodicity (cf. Heraclitus) that was observed in several aspects of celestial movements might be the origin of the rational approach to the explanation of the universe ?

The evolution you describe seems to go hand in hand with the early developments in the field of astronomy. About the same time, Anaxagoras suggested that the mind controls the universe, that comets are formed by colliding planets (which implies spherical planets !) and that the Sun is a fiery ball (spherical again), and he gave the correct explanation for eclipses.

All of what you describe did come about without a mathematical framework (Euclid lived after Plato) which makes it even more impressive. It never ceases to amaze me how many Newtons/Einsteins/Galileos this and your next two periods have known. What we have here are the basic ideas for the next two millennia in the field of 'natural history'.

Probably some if not all of these early people were true 'uome universale' who were versed in all fields or perhaps the distinctions did not exist yet ?

__________________
It is often said that anarchists live in a world of dreams and do not see the things which happen today. We see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudices that besets us.
[I]P.Kropotkin; Anarchism: Its philosophy and ideal.[/I]

Maybe an additional explanation is in order here :

Zeno's Paradox :
There's different versions, but they all show the same idea.
Say there's two runners that partake in a race. Runner A is known to be faster than runner B so the latter gets a headstart of say 10 meters. Now as they start to run, runner A will arrive at the point where runner B started after some time. By that time runner A has run 10 meters and runner B less (since he's slower), e.g. 8 meters. Now by the time runner A reaches this point, runner B will have advanced 8 * 8/10 = 6.4 meters. It will take runner A again some time to reach that point and in that time runner B will have advanced again and so on. It thus takes runner A an infinite amount of 'running up' to catch runner B. Hence it's impossible for a faster runner to overtake a slower runner

The relation of this to the nature of light MM refers to is (I presume) the following :
In relativity (Einstein) the speed of light is the same for each and every observer, viz. 'c' (about 300000 km/sec).
This means that if you're standing still, you'll see light go by at this speed. But also if you drive your car at 90 mph you'll still see light go by at this speed. Also, if you're in a rocket at 40000 km/hour, you'll STILL see light go by at that speed. And to make it really confusing : If you move at 90% of the speed of light vis-à-vis some reference point YOU WILL STILL SEE light go by at speed 'c'. Thus you can never catch up with a ray of light.

If you're confused by either, don't worry, it IS confusing
(Although neither really are paradoxes).

__________________
It is often said that anarchists live in a world of dreams and do not see the things which happen today. We see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudices that besets us.
[I]P.Kropotkin; Anarchism: Its philosophy and ideal.[/I]

I think this is quite close, but not at all there. Most ancient cultures like the people of Mesopotamia, had a good grasp of astronomy, too. The South american civilisations are fairly notorious for it, i.e. the Maya calendar. They all were rather good at maths as astronomy was concerned, but never applied it to other things.

No, I think the phrase 'in a non-mythical way' is absolutely misplaced here. What singled out the greek from other people was that they got mythical about numbers. I think it ultimately comes from how their viewed their gods.

Let me explain that one:
Consider Homer. The Ilias is as much a story about gods as about men. When you read it you can't help thinking that the greek perceived their gods in the way children perceive adults: They apparently have great power and amazing talents and they certainly run the world, but you can't help noticing that they suffer from certain constraints they can't influence. Greek gods have to follow rules. They even can be wounded by mortal men, as it happens to Aphrodite in the Ilias. Aias stabs her with a spear, if I remember correctly.

That's where numbers step in. As you know, the gods were, at the sky, represented by the Planets. The modern names for the planets are mostly latin, except for Mars (Uranos and Pluto, too, but they were named later on, by modern astronomers), but they kept their divine connection. So, by looking at the sky the greek could see that their gods were subordinate to numbers. It was after that they grasped the idea that everything else was, too. They threw their numbers at anything and found that it usually worked.
Music was the next example. Ever heard the term "music of the spheres"? They found that music was ruled by numbers, too, and inferred that, hence, music ruled the celestial spheres. Usually you'll find that people think this is a medieval concept, but that's not true - it's much older. It's just the name for it that's medieval.

So the greek fancy for numbers and geometry started out as mysticism, and it stayed that way for two millenia. Think of all this 'hermetic' stuff (remember: Hermes=greek god) with its magic numbers and pentagrams and so on. Numbers have always been mystical.
The association of numbers with distincly non-mythical science is extremely recent and hasn't really caught on yet. People still believe in lucky numbers, unlucky numbers, the Number of the Beast... You name it.

EDIT:
This also is where MM gets it, alas, dead wrong:
This is simply wrong. The greek approach eventually led to a non-supernatural description of the world, but it really wasn't that. It was mysticism by numbers, nothing else.

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