Introduction to Western Philosophy

“AWESOME THOUTHTS ABOUT PHILOSOPHY”

One upon a time in a very distant place I have friends who are Princes they lived in the
beautiful Castle. Their named is Prince Joseph and Prince Mark; both of them are kind to their
servants and to people. But they have a big problem. They are ignorance about Philosophy and
how this philosophy develops, so they decided that I will be the one to tell story. They ask one of
their servants named Daniel to look after me. Then Daniel starts his journey. After two day’s he
return to the Castle together with me. My Princes friends are delightful upon seeing their old
friend we greeted and hug each other. Then they decided to have small party just to welcome
their guest. After the party I have had days of rest to regain my strength.

The following day I start telling story to the Princes in front of the garden that surrounded
with beautiful flowers and different kinds of birds. I begins with the story that Philosophy began
with man’s sense of wonder and curiosity expressed in questions “What are things really like?”
and “How can we explain the process of change in things?” Then, the princes start to think and
use their mind to wonder and amazed about the things they see around them. And I continued
that the birthplace of philosophy was the seaport town of Miletus, located across the Aegean Sea
from Athens, on the western shores of Ionia in Asia Minor, and for this reason the first
philosophers are called either Milesians or Ionians.

The princes enjoyed the story and learned new ideas, but at the back of their minds they
have questions. That is why they ask about the uses of philosophy? I told them that the used of
philosophy is to intensify oneself, it makes oneself feel at home and to satisfied curiosity. A
philosopher is someone who says really is it possible? A philosopher is someone who sees
possibility and reality? This philosophy does not vow to God but to reasons. Art and Religion do
not respond to reason. Art always accompany religion and concern with the feelings of the
artists. Religion is faith base. On the other hand science uses observation. It is the offspring of
philosophy and has life its own. Science also used its senses to know. After telling story I told
the princes the discussion will end and it will be continued in the following day.

Evening pass and morning came. Then I continued again the story with the main topic
“The Earliest Greek Philosophers” and they are called “Poet Theologian”. Now I explain to the
princes why they are called “Poet Theologian” because they wrote story of mythology and
concerned with the natural world and its processes. I said to them that philosophy was first
thought in Greece. And the Greeks did not call themselves “Greek,” but “Hellenes,” because
they considered themselves descendants of Helen of Troy. They had a name for their kind of
curiosity, they called it “philosophy,” which means “love of wisdom” and they meant by it the
search for general knowledge. Prince Joseph asks question on how the things came into
existence? I recall the ideas of the natural philosophers and I discuss it. The first natural
philosophers is Thales of Miletus he thought that the source of all things was water. He believed
that all life originated from water. The next is Anaximander, he thought that our world was only
one of a myriad of worlds that evolve and dissolve in something he called the boundless. A third
philosopher from Miletus was Anaximenes, he thought that the source of all things must be “air”
or “vapour”. These three philosophers are called Ionian/Milesian cosmologists. Pythagoras, he
thought that all things come from numbers and the reality can be understood through numbers.
Next is Heraclitus, he thought that “all things are in flux,” and he expressed this concept of
constant change by saying that “you cannot step twice into the same river.” Parmenides is the
next one, he thought that everything in this world is permanent and things are not changing. Then
Zeno, he thought that change is just only illusion. Empedocles, thought that the universe is
consists of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Next is Anaxagoras, his concept of mind
(nous) as the principle that provides matter its order. He thought that the nature of reality is best
understood as consisting of mind and matter. Last of the Pre- Socratic is Democritus, he believed
that nature consisted of an unlimited number and variety of atoms. While I was telling the story I
noticed one thing the princes are attentive so much on the story and both of them are enjoying it.
Prince Mark suggested if possible that all their servants too can listen to the beautiful story, I
happily agree to the suggestion. Then Prince Joseph called all the servants. And I continue the
story talking that the height of ancient Greek civilization around 500 B.C., appeared a group of
men who were interested only in human enterprise, and they measured it by practical success.
These were the Sophists, brilliant teachers employed by the rich to instruct their sons. The
Sophists (the word means “men of wisdom”) thought their young charges how to win arguments
in the law courts and not to be concerned with right or wrong. Protagoras is the well-known
Sophists, he is best known for his statement that “Man, not nature or God, is the measure of all
things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things are not, that they not.” This time I
will introduce “The Three Greek Greatest Philosophers”, named Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
First is Socrates, the son of a stone-cutter and a midwife. He was a brilliant and moral counter-
puncher. His motto is “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Next to Socrates is his student
Plato. He was born in 427, it was his teacher who turned him to philosophy and founded school
called “Academy”. He is known chiefly for his theory of Ideas or Forms. Then, Aristotle is the
last one he was the student of Plato, and he oppose the teaching of his master. Aristotle founded
a school called the “Lyceum,” because it was in a park dedicated to the God Apollo under his
title “Apollo Lyceum.” He oriented his thought to the dynamic realm of becoming. Aristotle was
a materialist and he believed that universal truths can be known through examination via
observation of the natural world. He invented formal logic. After the greatest Greek philosophers
the beginning of a new epoch in the history of mankind appeared. A civilization sprang up Greek
culture and language played a leading role. This period, which lasted for about 300 years, is
known “Hellenism.” In the philosophies of the men who arose in this period of decline of
Athens, ethics took first place over the theory of reality. Epicurus is the man who chose feeling
as his guide. He preferred good feelings to bad ones, pleasure to pain. For him the greatest and
longest-lasting pleasure would be a state of repose, of utter tranquillity. Zeno also recommended
happiness, but it is different from Epicurus. For him only happiness that lay in refraining from
feeling, not a feeling of serenity, just no feeling at all. He is the founder of the Stoic school of
philosophy named after the “Stoa” or “Painted Porch.” Pyrrho, the founder of Skeptic school,
had only one principle, and it was to the effect that there no principles in which one could
believe. For him the senses cannot be trusted, because they are so intensely personal that they
report different thing to other people. Epicureans took over the atomism of Democritus and the
Stoics the logos and flux of Heralictus. The sage continued his story on the New Era of Religious
Philosophy and the center or main focus of this is no other but God himself. For Philo the
purpose of philosophy is to serve the faith. Philo’s student was a man named Ammnius Saccas,
who had a pupil named Plotinus. It was from Plotinus that St. Augustine, in the fourth century
A.D., learned how to construct a theology for Christianity. He used Neo-Platonism to depend
Christianity. He is known for his writing The City of God and The Confession. Next to St.
Augustine is the greatest and most significant philosopher of this period was St. Thomas
Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. He is a philosopher but he was just as much a theologian.
His most renowned literary achievements are his two major theological works, the Summa contra
Gentiles and Summa Theologica. After this era the focus was the return again to the material
world. William Occam, agreed that universals do not exist except as thoughts in the human
mind. Monks like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, the full scientific method was
discovered. Now Copernicus and later Galileo, with his new instrument, the telescope, and
Kempler were able to demonstrate that the earth was not the center of solar system but instead
revolved around the sun. Fraancis Bacon, establish scientific method as a firm way of
investigating natur. The first modern materialist is Thomas Hobbes, for him there are three
kinds of reality: space, body and motion. He believes that God exist but his nature is
undiscoverable. I ask the audience if they have questions about his previous discussion but they
remain silent and amazed. So I continue the story and the focus is knowledge from reasoning
alone. Descartes tried to get along with reasoning alone, without appealing to the evidence of the
senses. He is “the father of modern philosophy.” He motto is “Cogito, ergo sum.” which means
“I think, therefore I am.” Spinoza was the greatest of Jewish philosopher. He named his chief
work Ethics because he thought that the end of thought lay in moral action. But there was a lot
more to it than that. For him the essence of mind is thought, meaning conscious thought, and the
essence of matter is extension. Leibniz, he tried to explain the interaction between mind and
body by bringing back the atom of Democritus. He called them monads. Both mind and matter,
he declared, are composed of millions monads. The three of them became known in history of
philosophy: continental rationalists. The next era focuses on the knowledge from sense
experience. First is John Locke, who proposed appearance-and-reality. His theory of knowledge
is based on the sights we see, the sound we hear, the odors we smell, the objects we touch, the
food we taste. This method was called epistemology. Next is George Berkeley, he declared that
all qualities, primary as well as secondary, belong to one subject. His principle is “to be is to be
perceived,” esse est percipi. Last is David Hume, he said if we are relying entirely upon sense
experience, then there is no experience of the subject or self. You may experience sense
impressions; you may even experience your own ideas. The three of them had a common
reliance on sense experience to give them reliable knowledge. They are called empiricists and
their method is called empiricism. After the empiricists “the rise of science triumphs, during this
time scientific method took over the place of other kinds of investigation. For the first time in the
history of philosophy science and philosophy separated from each other. Scientists were led to
the experimental method of learning about nature, while the philosophers were led only to
learning about themselves. Jean- Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher insisted that human
life had been spoiled by civilization. The “noble savage” is not happier but less degraded than
civilized man.

I open new topic the focus is the ‘Greatest European Philosopher’. First is Immanuel
Kant, his philosophy is that he saw all of it as hung on experience, conscious and deliberate
experience. Universal ideas which were not product of experience are linked to it by calling them
a priori, because they came before experience. The rest is posteriori, or after experience. Next is
Hegel, for him reality is a process, and a move with what he called its own logic, which is the
dialectic of three, separates movements: a “thesis”, beginning; an opposite, called the antithesis;
and a resolution of the two in a third called the synthesis. After Hegel is Arthur Schopenhaur, he
had two great philosophical truths. First was his theory of the will, the second was his theory of
art. Then Jeremy Bentham called his new moral theory utilitarianism, a word which has been
much used ever since. He meant that the highest moral good is “The greatest happiness of the
greatest number” of people. One of his followers, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), pointed out
that some pleasures were higher than others, the intellectual for instance higher than the sensual.
His famous essay of utilitarianism was to defend the principle of utility. After Stuart was
Freidrich Nietzche, he advocated in his conception of the Superman was a “master morality.”
and for him “God is dead.”

Philosopher who recommended a complete surrender to science was a Frenchman named

Auguste Comte. His philosophy is called positivism. Karl Marx was a German; he claimed that
philosophy and social are one at the same thing. His wrote his famous books, especially Das
Kapital. Marx and Engles philosophy is a complete philosophy, with a theory of reality as well
as prescriptions for social and political action called “Marxism” for short. Its practice has been
known as “communism”. The philosophy of the Frenchman Henri Bergson was one of the only
two philosophers ever to receive a Noble Prize for literature (the other was Bertrand Russell).
For him intuition alone---the feelings--- more akin to instinct than to intelligence, can give us the
richness and vitality of experience, because intuition works from within. The story shifts to the
United States, a group of Americans who have gone by the name of pragmatists, from the Greek
“word for practice.” Their leader and founder of their philosophy was Charles S. Pierce (1839-
1914). The truth is what works best in practice and so from the point of view of practice itself, it
is best to discover the truth. What is true will work. This is Pierce’s pragmatic declaration. His
good friend named William James; he adopted the philosophy of his friend Pierce, which he too
called pragmatism. But his version was sharply different form Pierce’s. He declared that what
works is true. John Dewey is the last pragmatist; he called his philosophy instrumentalism by
which he meant that ideas are the instruments for social action. Instrumentalism is also a theory
of knowledge. The philosophy of the United States of America may be called idealistic
materialism. An idealism deals to the reality of universal truth. Materialism deals to the
particular things. Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) founded his idealism on European philosophers.
Reality for him was reflected in human thought and in the reality of God’s mind. Materialism
begun in the same period with Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776); Matter itself Colden declared,
was unknowable, but we could know it through its actions. Josiah Royce was interested in
religion and Pierce’s idea of experience became a sort of infinite experience of the Absolute.

I told my audience that I am already in the climax of the story and the focus in on the
recent European philosophy. The most notable for their influence are the following. Søren
Aabye Kierkegaard, he is the founder of existentialism. His famous phase is “essence precedes
essence” he set about to discover the reality in the situation. Edmund Husserl, he called his
study of conscious phenomenology, a long word which had first been used by Kant to describe
appearances as distinct from reality which lay behind it. Heidegger, he combined Kierkegaard’s
existentialism with Husserl’s phenomenology, and made a metaphysical interpretation of the
result. He proposed his own version of Hegel’s being-in-itself. Heidegger’s term is Dasein, a
German word meaning being there. The most influential philosopher in English-speaking world
is the Austrian, Ludwig Wittgenstein, he is known for his Analytic philosophy. Let us look
briefly now at those modern philosophers who called themselves realists. Realism is not a new
philosophy in the world. It was the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. It was the American realist,
Charles Sanders Peirce, who first called our attention to the fact that science requires realism.
Thomas Reid, the leader of the Scottish school of philosophy, fell back upon common sense.
Max Plank discovered that the matter consists in packets of energy. Whitehead recognized this
permanence by calling them eternal objects. My story of how philosophy evolves from the
Ancient Period until Contemporary Period will end here. Now it’s the turn of my listener to
deepen their knowledge and understanding on all the philosophers I discussed, especially to my
friend princes. The night before I left the Castle my friends prepared big celebration and we had
party during that night. It was memorable and unforgettable because that was the first time that
we were together. In the morning I left the Castle and start my journey to go back to my place.