A History of Western Philosophy
A History of Western Philosophy MANY histories of philosophy exist, and it has not been my purpose merely to add one to their number. My purpose is to exhibit philosophy as an integral part of social and political life: not as the isolated speculations of remarkable individuals, but as both an effect and a cause of the character of the various communities in which different systems flourished.
A History of Western Philosophy PDF
INTRODUCTION
The conceptions of life and the world which we call “philosophical” are a product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called “scientific,” using this word in its broadest sense.
Individual philosophers have differed widely in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered into their systems, but it is the presence of both, to some degree, that characterizes philosophy.
“Philosophy” is a word that has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain.
Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.
All definite knowledge–so I should contend– belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science, there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy.
Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such that science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem as convincing as they did in former centuries. Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind and what is matter?
Is the mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order?
Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is based, or are all ways of living merely futile?
If there is a way of living that is noble, what does it consist of, and how shall we achieve it? Must the good be eternal in order to deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is inexorably moving toward death? Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly?
To such questions, no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but their very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy.
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