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

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