....... HOME ....... MAIN ARTICLE .... ESSAYS .... ... HISTORY ... DISCUSSION .... GALERY .... . . ........ EDIT ........ Contents Introduction * History Of Philosophy ....- Ancient Philosophy ....- Medieval Philosophy ....- Modern Philosophy ....- Post-Modern Philosophy * Branches Of Philosophy Keywords See Also References Bibliography PHILOSOPHY Human Study Mental Discipline Newest Version - 3, updated Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 20:53:38, 8508 bytes - by Anonymous. This article is for information and educational purposes only and is not intended to give medical, legal or professional advice.. Discipline which focuses on non-numerical abstract concepts such as existence, reality, beauty, truth, spirituality, and religion. INTRODUCTION One of the inherent qualities of human beings, and one which, as far as we know, distinguishes us from animals, is our ability to extrapolate from our sense perception of the world that surrounds us and create abstract concepts which we can use to organize, and manipulate objects and predict future events. One type of abstract concept is numbers. Mathematics is the discipline which deals with numbers. All other abstract concepts fall under the discipline of philosophy. Philosophy is traditionally divided into east and west. Eastern philosophy being the most cohesive of the two, retaining practices and beliefs that go back hundreds if not thousands of years. Western philosophy has experienced a more volatile existence, in which students and teachers have a more rebellious nature. A student of Buddhism may expand on the Buddhist way, bringing about new practices. Said discipline may evolve in a gradual manner, but still, retain the essence of its ancestral teaching. Zen Buddhism is still Buddhism and Buddhism is still in many ways Hinduism. In the case of Western thought, ideas tend to evolve in a more predatorial manner. From Hegelian dialectics, came about both Fascism and Marxism, two philosophies which are opposite, with completely different world views, who see themselves as the only true redeemers of mankind. Its no wonder that throughout the twentieth century, many of the bloodiest conflicts came about through the absolutist tendencies of both philosophies. In turn, Hegel believed that his “idealism” was also the “truest of the bunch” rejecting Kantian philosophy, a philosophy which defined eighteenth-century Europe. This is not to say that western philosophy is always cannibalistic, many philosophies tend to look back into older knowledge for inspiration. There were, after all, “Neo-Platonists”, in the roman empire. As there are Neo-Platonists today. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Whether or not philosophy had a beginning, is a highly debated topic. Not to say that the act of contemplation was invented at some point in history, rather, when did “philosophy” as we see it today begin. In the case of eastern philosophy, there is a very different conception of when something is. Hinduism to us began as a set of different beliefs that originated some time ago near the year 2000 BC, slowly conglomerating with other belief systems of the area. But to the Hindus, Hinduism has always been, it’s more of an abstract description of the world which was discovered rather than created. The same applies to the Chinese Tao, “the way”, envisioned as an eternal set of principles, in stark contrast with the western conception of philosophy (generally speaking), in which philosophy becomes very personal, fleeting. Existentialism is a way of seeing the world, not “the way” of seeing it; it has different flavors, Camus envisions his brand of existentialism differently that Kierkegaard or Beauvoir did. Ancient Philosophy There is a common idea that philosophy began to develop in ancient Greece when collective interested shifted from the natural world to the mental one. Experts regard this change as the mythos-logos transition. Gradually thinkers began to gravitate towards the more metaphysical aspects of life in stark contrast with the pre-Socratic (mythological) thinkers which concentrated on the base substance of things. Atomic theory as such began in ancient Greece with pre-philosophers such as Democritus and Protagoras developing their conception of the theoretical composition of the universe. Others like Pythagoras concentrated on the mathematical description of reality. Figures like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle began to appear in the 5th and 4th centuries before Christ, developing ideas such as the distinction of form (the metaphysical essence of things) and matter (the physical essence of things). These ideas fermented in various forms throughout the end of ancient Greece and the beginning of the roman empire, with various philosophies emerging as a product of inbreeding between the theories, falling out and sometimes instances of inspired individuals providing a new way to see the world. The Romans did not particularly add much to the already existent Greek schools of thought, rather choosing to develop rhetoric and logic, rather than the epistemological and metaphysical of their Greek counterparts. With the exceptions of the stoic philosophers and Christian philosophers which gave way to the medieval age of philosophy. Medieval Philosophy Medieval philosophy, which began somewhere close to the year 400 AD and lasted till the 1400s, concentrated mostly on religious philosophy. Here a distinction is to be made between theology and religious philosophy. Most experts agree that, where philosophy is preoccupied with the question: “Is there a God?”, theology asks “What does God want from us?”. The line blurs when considering the eastern conception of God. Eastern metaphysicians sometimes regard atheism as part of their religion, others believe in a completely different conception of what “God” is, varying from “nothing” to “anything”. Philosophers like Saint Anselm regarded God as “a being that which no greater could be conceived”. Saint Thomas Aquinas regarded God as a perfect being from which all things are created. Others like Saint Augustine noted the overwhelming difficulty in describing God through language in the first place. Gradually, philosophy transitioned into modernity through the renaissance. Focusing more on the human rather than the godly. Modern Philosophy From the Renaissance up until the early twentieth century we have what is called modern philosophy. A somewhat confusing term given that we see ourselves, in the present, as modern. Nevertheless, experts denote our current philosophical epoch as post-modern. Modern philosophy began as a general effort to revisit the classics of ancient Greece, but which quickly grow out into many different and often time opposing philosophies that characterize the west. Philosophy quickly divided into two very different branches. Rationalism which stated that only through reason, man can achieve true knowledge, as such one should revisit all ideas previously conceived. On the other end of the spectrum, empiricism emerged as a counter to rationalism, stating that one can only create knowledge through experience. This created a stark divide among philosophers until 1781 when the philosopher Immanuel Kant published his “Critique of Pure Reason” which bridged the gap between them. From Kant, the idealist movement began to take form, from whom the dialectic and existentialist schools that paved the way for post-modern philosophy can trace their roots. Post-Modern Philosophy Post-modern philosophy grew out of eighteenth-century philosophy yet holds a strong opposition to the premises held by modern philosophers. Specifically, that there a no universal standards from which man can discern values. This is not the same as stating that no values exist, rather that they vary from society to society. Post-modern philosophy is deconstructive in nature, mainly existing as a constant critique of the status quo. In the twenty-first century, today, there is a growing conflict between those who openly adhere to the post-modern view and those who look at the past philosophies as an alternative BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY Philosophy is divided into several branches, each of which addresses a main category of abstract idea. There is no exact agreement on how to divide philosophy into branches. However, some important branches are epistemology, which deals with the concept of truth and how to arrive at truth, ethics, which tries to determine optimal behavior, both individually and collectively, such as in politics, aesthetics, which tries to define beauty and metaphysics, which deals with meaning by endeavoring to understand the origin and future of our reality. These abstract concepts are interrelated, so the way one defines one of these branches influences the understanding of other branches. Furthermore, since all human branches of knowledge use abstract concepts, philosophy impacts and ties together all disciplines of human study. KEYWORDS The following keywords are alternate terms which can be used to access this page. philosophy SEE ALSO REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHY top