Philosophy and Philosophers - an Introduction to Western Philosophy - Contents - Preface - Introduction
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Philosophy and philosophers
An introduction to Western philosophy
John Shand
© John Shand 1993
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 1993 by UCL Press
UCL Press Limited
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
The name of University College London (UCL) is a registered
trade mark used by UCL Press with the consent of the owner.
ISBN 0-203-49899-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-80723-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN:1-85728-074-1 HB
Published by arrangement with Penguin Books Limited.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction viii
Chronology of philosophers xi
1. Presocratic Greek philosophy 1
Pre-Parmenidean philosophers 6
Parmenidean philosophers 10
Post-Parmenidean philosophers 15
2. Greek philosophy 21
Plato 23
Aristotle 35
3. Medieval philosophy 52
Augustine 55
Aquinas 59
Ockham 65
4. Rationalism 74
Descartes 75
Spinoza 87
Leibniz 100
5. Empiricism 114
Locke 116
Berkeley 129
Hume 141
6. Transcendental idealism 157
Kant 160
7. Later German philosophy 176
Hegel 179
Nietzsche 190
vi Contents
8. Analytical philosophy 203
Russell 207
Wittgenstein 219
9. Phenomenology and existentialism 232
Husserl 232
Sartre 245
10. Logical positivism and falsificationism 259
Ayer 260
Popper 271
11. Linguistic philosophy 284
Wittgenstein 284
12. Recent philosophy 305
Gilbert Ryle 305
Nelson Goodman 306
W.V.O.Quine 306
J.L.Austin 307
Stuart Hampshire 307
Donald Davidson 307
P.F.Strawson 307
Thomas S.Kuhn 308
Paul Feyerabend 309
Michael Dummett 309
Richard Rorty 309
John R.Searle 310
Saul Kripke 310
Bibliography 313
Index 333
PREFACE
Several people have helped me write this book.
I should especially like to thank my wife Judith for her unflagging
and invaluable encouragement, as well as her practical help; she
checked the whole manuscript and proofs and also pointed out
anything ambiguous or unclear; without her help this book would not
have been completed.
I should like to acknowledge the help of the following people, each
of whom read and commented on some part of the manuscript: David
Bell, Michael Clark, David E.Cooper, Oswald Hanfling, Desmond P.
Henry, David Lamb, Harry Lesser, Kathryn Plant, Robert Wilkinson.
Thanks must also go to Ted Honderich and Jonathan Riley. In a general
way I should like to thank all my past Open University students,
whose actual and hypothetical opinions as to what is comprehensible I
constantly bore in mind while writing the book. Invaluable has been
the availability of the facilities of the University of Manchester: the
Philosophy Department library and especially the John Rylands
University Library of Manchester. Any remaining deficiencies in this
book are of course entirely my responsibility.
I have not given precise references for quotations in the book,
thinking them unnecessary and inappropriate in a work of this kind.
However, I direct the reader’s attention to the extensive annotated
bibliography. The very few short direct quotations used are therefore
left without precise references, although I sometimes cite the work
from which the quote comes, and in all cases it should be obvious
which philosopher is being quoted.
JOHN SHAND
vii
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this book is to give an introduction to Western philosophy
through its past, both distant and more recent, and to serve as a useful
work for more advanced students of philosophy. The subject of
philosophy is presented in this book by studying the thought of major
philosophers and by concentrating on what are generally regarded as
the central areas of philosophy: the nature of philosophy itself, the
theory of knowledge (epistemology) and the essential nature of reality
(metaphysics). It is hoped that this work will satisfy the curiosity of
those who want to understand what philosophy is and will provide a
key to further study of philosophy and philosophers. To aid the reader
in further study an extensive annotated bibliography is included,
which serves as a guide primarily to works by and about the
philosophers considered in this book, although it also includes
reference to more general works in philosophy.
The various chapters and sections within the book can be usefully
read in isolation, since they are relatively autonomous, although there
is an additional cumulative beneficial effect that results from reading
right through the book in order.
It is impossible to deal with every controversy over interpretation.
However, every attempt has been made to be clear and accurate. The
general approach to each philosopher considered is to present an account
which tries to make their views hang together convincingly, rather than
subject them to intense critical dissection. There are, however, some
critical observations which naturally arise from exposition.
It is difficult to give an account of the defining features of
philosophy. The reason for the difficulty in answering the question of
what philosophy is paradoxically provides an answer of sorts. An
essential part of philosophy is the extent to which it reassesses its own
nature. Philosophy tends to ask extremely broad and fundamental
questions, and it raises problems which are not normally considered
problems at all in most other areas of human inquiry. A feature which
helps us to understand the nature of philosophy, and is one of the chief
attractions of the subject, is its freedom of thought: in philosophy no
question is, on the face of it, unaskable.
Philosophy does not have to be especially defensive or coy about its
nature or existence. It is sometimes said that the subject matter of
philosophy is far removed from anything that could have practical
importance in life. Even if this were true it would not follow that
philosophy is not worth bothering with, for it might well be
intrinsically interesting. In any case, philosophy does examine ideas in
ethics and politics that have immediate practical consequences.
Moreover, one of the reasons why philosophy is important is that more
than any other subject it freely examines presuppositions and
assumptions that people have that might otherwise go unquestioned;
and many of these very basic beliefs, which people may take for
granted, lead to, and underpin, other beliefs which have immediate
practical consequences in that they determine what people believe and
how they act. Whenever and wherever we live we absorb a worldview
which can be so familiar that it can, through going unnoticed, go
unexamined. So long as people are not dogmatically locked into, or
wedded to, a fixed system of ideas and beliefs there will always be
philosophy. Philosophy is not a luxury, indeed it becomes a necessity
just as soon as people are able and willing to think freely about their
beliefs. The terrible consequences that have followed from
dogmatically held beliefs throughout human history bear sufficient
testimony to the need to philosophize. Anyone who open-mindedly
and critically examines, rather than simply accepts, fundamental ideas,
has started doing philosophy. Philosophy cuts very deeply into our
beliefs concerning the world and our place in it.
It is characteristic of philosophy that it goes back to where most
other subjects begin and then probes still further back in its inquiries.
Philosophy discusses enduring problems arising from life and thought.
It is one of the attractions of philosophy that it connects thinkers of
otherwise different historical ages and finds in them the same
fundamental problems.
Reference to the historical and intellectual context in which a
philosophical position arose may help us to understand what is meant
by that position. However, it is important not to confuse the truth of
philosophical positions and the soundness of the arguments presented
for them with either their causal, psychological, historical origin or the
extent of their causal, psychological, historical influence. Philosophy
involves expounding existing ideas, creating new imaginative ideas,
and critically assessing the soundness of arguments put forward in
support of views claimed to be true. Neither the causal origin of a
claim or argument, nor its causal influence on human affairs, has any
relevance in assessing the truth of a claim or the soundness of the
argument presented for it. One can of course trace origins and
influences as well, but that is not the same as, and not a substitute for,
assessing the validity of arguments and the truth of beliefs. A given
philosophy could have an interesting origin or be very influential, but
may still be bad philosophy for all that.
The nature of metaphysics can be characterized as the attempt by
reason and argument alone to understand the essential structure of the
world on the presupposition that there must be some features that all
possible realities must have in common, however else they may differ.
The metaphysician claims to be able to determine some general
necessary truths about the nature of reality by reason alone
independently of observation and the evidence of experience.
Epistemology is concerned with what knowledge is, what conditions
have to be satisfied for knowledge, what counts as good evidence and
justification, and what in that case are the kinds of things we can
know. Both metaphysics and epistemology raise questions which
cannot be answered by empirical scientific investigation because any
such investigation will have metaphysical and epistemological
assumptions and presuppositions underpinning it, and so any answers
derived from science would beg the questions raised. For example
science makes assumptions about the reliability of empirical evidence,
the nature of empirical theories, and what conditions have to be
satisfied in general for it to be rational to believe one theory rather
than another.
References in this book to ethics and politics will be few, although
some mention of ethics is unavoidable because it is sometimes
inextricably connected to a philosopher’s concern with knowledge and
the general structure of existence.
Those who are interested and willing to follow the path of
philosophical inquiry are embarked on perhaps the greatest adventure
of ideas of all. Philosophy is an important part of what Bertrand
Russell called “all the noonday brightness of human genius”, destined
though it may be to ultimate annihilation; it is by such activity that for
the time being human beings dignify themselves in the face of a
universe that may seem at best indifferent to human concerns.
CHRONOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHERS
This lists the main philosophers considered in this book, apart from
those in Chapter Twelve, “Recent philosophy”. Sometimes, with
figures from the more distant past, the dates are uncertain.
BC AD
Thales (c.624–c.546) Augustine (354–430)
Anaximander (c.610–c.546) Aquinas (1225–74)
Anaximenes (c.585–c.528) Ockham (c.1285–1349)
Pythagoras (c.571–c.497) Descartes (1596–1650)
Xenophanes (fl.540) Spinoza (1632–77)
Heraclitus (fl.504) Locke (1632–1704)
Parmenides (fl.501–492) Leibniz (1646–1716)
Zeno (fl.464) Berkeley (1685–1753)
Anaxagoras (c.500–428) Hume (1711–76)
Empedocles (c.484–c.424) Kant (1724–1804)
Socrates (470–399) Hegel (1770–1831)
Democritus (c.460–c.371) Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Leucippus (fl.450–420) Husserl (1859–1938)
Melissus (fl.441) Russell (1872–1970)
Plato (427–347) Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Aristotle (384–322) Popper (1902– )
Sartre (1905–80)
Ayer (1910–89)
xi