Chapter 2 Philosophy’s History

Early Greek Philosophy Western philosophy appeared in Greece in the sixth century b.c.e. First attempt to provide a thoroughly secular & rational explanation of the natural world What is the basic reality underlying the world, changeless stuff of which: All things are made? © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Early Greek Philosophy Anaximander The Eleatics, Parmenides Zeno The Atomists, Democritus Leucippus Idealism Pythagoreans © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Early Greek Philosophy Plato and Aristotle pre-Socratic thought Plato combined the Pythagorean and Eleatic conception of reality With the Socratic concern with morality Multiplicity of the ordinary physical world on the basis of eternal, unchanging, ideal entities © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Early Greek Philosophy The discrepancy between our ideas and those things in the world to which those ideas refer Tried to explain the ordinary world of sense particulars on the basis of the universal Forms Eleaticism and materialism Aristotle objected to some of Plato’s reasoning © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Philosophy in The Middle Ages Wed philosophy to the requirements of the expanding Christian religion Thomas Aquinas Duns Scotus The rise of the New Science toward the end of the Renaissance © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Modern Philosophy Rene Descartes Idealist trend Knowledge must be erected on a solid foundation of certainty Idealist trend Continental Rationalists British Empiricists The possibility of a priori knowledge © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Modern Philosophy Immanuel Kant came up with an ingenious resolution of rationalism and empiricism Objects of our experience can be neither pure sensation (matter) nor pure thought (form) Absolute idealists on one side and liberals on the other © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Twentieth-Century Philosophy The twentieth century was characterized by a revolution against the past Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, John L. Austin, and P. F. Strawson Maurice Merlearu-Ponty Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, and Robert Brandom © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Future of Philosophy Philosophers are beginning to absorb currents of thought outside: Their own Western tradition from Africa, the Middle East, and especially the Far East Everyone has to be his or her own philosopher © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.