modern vs ancient philosophy - history of philosophy

chewy

sorta related to what we were discussing in the studying philosophy thread

i didn't know what the difference was between ancient and modern philosophy so i tried to find out

a timeline for starters - http://radicalacademy.com/diahistphil.htm

right so i think i get the difference/progress of ancient philosophy to (modern philosophy) as we know it but looking round theres seems a medieval period too which then progress to the more recent centuries

.......god damnit i can't find the bookmark i made of the page that was quite enlightening and readable (which makes a change) but basically the difference or change was actaully between mythology and philosophy, when you think of ancient india or egypt all their philosophy was actually told in terms of heros/gods in stories, which were examples of good or bad behaviour etc it was only in greece just before the time of all the famous geezers like plato that philosophy was discussed in itself and not in story or myth form....

it occured in greece cos it was the first time there was mass trade of goods and services so people travelled more and came across more different ways of living and also around that time that the system of kings broke down so people didn't have to just reflect the views of the king...

thats what i got from reading the page anyway, i must find it again it was very good

anyone want to fill in the rest...? its be nice if you give a summary yourself rather just links

simu

Good idea for a thread!

OK, for a bit of early medieval philosophy, seeing as you mentioned that in your post. Note: this is a simplification of a simplification ... ... there's a hell of a lot more stuff you could write about these topics!

Summarising from here plus a few bits from other sources:

Thinkers were trying to find philosophical backing for their religion (whether Christianity, Judaism or Islam) so much so that what we now consider to be Christian doctrine stems more from Greek philosophy than than from the Biblical tradition.

First: Augustine whose work exemplifies this fusion of religion and philosophy. He was a Manichaean (a dualistic religion that emphasised a stark division between good and evil - spirit was good, matter evil) but converted to Christianity. From then on he began to build a philosophy that combined Christianity with aspects of neoplatonism. (Neoplatonism was founded by Egyptian philosopher Plotinus, who was inspired by Plato's writings - main idea: there is a god-type being that extends itself down into all levels of being, each level is a weaker expression of the level above it).

Augustine believed that reason and philosophy are only useful to those that have faith.

He rejected the Skeptics' claims as to the impossibility of knowledge saying that even if he was mistaken in his thinking, the fact that he was mistaken proved that he existed.

He believed that all humans are sinful by nature.

As for how evil would arise in a world created by a perfectly good God, he replied that evil was not a real thing but rather, the absence of the good.

Giving humans the freedom to choose between good and evil, he believed to be so important to the divine plan as to take precedence over the fact that most humans chose to sin. This had to be so as a perfect God could not will people to suffer.

Humans were tarnished by original sin and thus, God's grace rather than human actions was the only way to be redeemed.

Augustine's conception of God is influenced by Plato. Mathematics showed that we were able to reach knowledge of things outside the realm of the senses (see Plato's forms). This realm of eternal forms outside the senses needed to be supported by something - by a God that was even greater than them says Augustine. What if God decided to change mathematics just to mess with our heads? Wouldn't happen says Aug. as the will of God is eternal.

If God has infinite will and knowledge, why doesn't he make humans act whatever way he wants them to? If God knows everything a person will do, how can free will exist? Aug. says that a god who is eternal has to stand outside time as we know it. Experiencing time and causality are features of the limited, human mind. It's within these limitations that we are responsible for our actions - God's knowledge is outside this and so has no influence on our moral responsibility.

Augustine lived from 354-430 btw and had a huuuge influence on the subsequent doctrines of Western Christianity.

The Roman Empire collapsed in 427. Some people tried to preserve written knowledge in the time that followed this but little in the way of philosophy emerged.

One idea that did emerge in the 5th/6th century was the 2 ways in which humans could understand God: 1. the via positiva: reasoning analogically from lower to higher levels of being until one reaches some comprehension of the divine essence. 2. the via negativa: it's impossible to arrive at knowledge of god in terms of things in this world - knowledge of God can only be achieved through mystical consciousness.

Next Person: Boethius! (lived 480-534)

He translated Aristotle's works on logic from Greek to Latin thus providing a valuable support for the study of logic in the Middle Ages. Through commentaries he wrote on other works, he focused medieval thought on the problem of universals (features shared by different individual things that exemplify the universal e.g. redness, tallness etc) The problem was: say you have two individual entities but you classify them both as belonging to the same species. What is this species - is it an independent entity in which case there must exist a separate shpere of abstract entities in which this species exists (Plato's forms again!) or is it just a name and nothing more?

Next person: John Scotus Eriugena (lived 812-877) (Scotus meant "Irish", "Eriugena" meant "of Ireland - compare Éire - so his name actually means Irish John from Ireland! )

He worked with the via negativa and Aristotelian logic to develop a more systematic description of the neoplatonic view of the nature of reality. Reality could, said he, be apprehended under 4 categories:

The creating uncreated - that was God.

The creating created - the Platonic forms (including human souls) through which the divine produces the world.

The uncreating created - the stuff we see around us in the natural world.

The uncreating uncreating - God again.

The first and last contradict each other - comprehension of God was to be gained through mystical communion rather than logic.

Plus, each human was a microcosm in which analogues of these 4 categories interacted.

And that's über-Irish John.

After him, philosophy in the West went into a slump for a bit - dialectical reasoning was subordinated to the teachings of religion and many writers encouraged ignorance and unwillingness to question accepted opinion.

The next guy they have on there is Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) but that's enough from me for now...

chewy

thanks for that... it sees that translators are very important people, or perhaps the translator were philosophers with an interest... in learning about the catalyst for the renaisannce in my art course it was also a guy (somebody beginning with R ra..something) who translated the greek classics (to do with science/maths mostly) into latin (or was it french/italian/english help me out here!) who made it possible for loads more people to read this stuff which envitalbly led to a overall increase in knowledge that helped sparked of the rennaisance...

it also shows how trade and travel influence philosophy to... i wonder what "philosophy" is up to today

back to the history....

simu

Originally posted by chewy

it also shows how trade and travel influence philosophy to... i wonder what "philosophy" is up to today

.

Well, you could look up some of the people at the end of that timeline you linked to above!

DadaKopf

That timeline is funny. I mean, Marx was certainly a positivist, but wasn't he a Marxist and not a Positivist? And most of Sartre's and Heidegger's work would be considered Phenomenological existentialist, not Existentialist. And how come Lukacs is a Cultural Theorist when he was a Critical Marxist? Gramsci was a Marxist who theorised connections between base and superstructure but wasn't a Cultural Theorist per se. And there's simply no such thing as Deconstructionism.

Goes to show how zraxy typologies are!

simu

It's better not to trust websites automatically for info - check lots of different sites on whatever topic you're interested in and some real world (tm) books as well - or else you might end up with one person's totally skewed view on said topic!

I might add that to the charter actually.

chewy

marx was marxist hmmm but like what was amarxist before there was marx?

then im a cumminsist then am i ?

simu

Marxism before Marx? What do you mean? Are you asking what influences Marx had?

DadaKopf

His biggest influences, to my knowledge, were Ludwig Feuerbach (philosopher) and David Ricardo (economist). And also Darwin.

Of course, Hegel case a long shadow over both Feuerbach and Marx and most people who came after him.

I find periodisation like that a vaguely udeful heuristic tool but shouldn't ever be taken too literally. Things simply don't change like that. Well, unless you're Thomas Kuhn or Michel Foucault or something.