Western Philosophy

I

Introduction

Western Philosophy (Greek philosophia, “love of wisdom”), the rational and critical inquiry into basic principles. Philosophy is often divided into four main branches: metaphysics, the investigation of ultimate reality; epistemology, the study of the origins, validity, and limits of knowledge; ethics, the study of the nature of morality and judgment; and aesthetics, the study of the nature of beauty in the fine arts.

As used originally by the ancient Greeks, the term philosophy meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Philosophy comprised all areas of speculative thought and included the arts, sciences, and religion. As special methods and principles were developed in the various areas of knowledge, each area acquired its own philosophical aspect, giving rise to the philosophy of art, of science, and of religion. The term philosophy is often used popularly to mean a set of basic values and attitudes toward life, nature, and society—thus the phrase “philosophy of life.” Because the lines of distinction between the various areas of knowledge are flexible and subject to change, the definition of the term philosophy remains a subject of controversy.

Western philosophy from Greek antiquity to the present is surveyed in the remainder of this article. For information about philosophical thought in Asia and the Middle East, see Chinese Philosophy; Islam; Buddhism; Daoism (Taoism); Confucianism; Indian Philosophy.

II

Greek Philosophy

Western philosophy is generally considered to have begun in ancient Greece as speculation about the underlying nature of the physical world. In its earliest form it was indistinguishable from natural science. The writings of the earliest philosophers no longer exist, except for a few fragments cited by Aristotle in the 4th century bc and by other writers of later times.

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A

The Ionian School

The first philosopher of historical record was Thales, who lived in the 6th century bc in Miletus, a city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. Thales, who was revered by later generations as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, was interested in astronomical, physical, and meteorological phenomena. His scientific investigations led him to speculate that all natural phenomena are different forms of one fundamental substance, which he believed to be water because he thought evaporation and condensation to be universal processes. Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, maintained that the first principle from which all things evolve is an intangible, invisible, infinite substance that he called apeiron, “the boundless.” This substance, he maintained, is eternal and indestructible. Out of its ceaseless motion the more familiar substances, such as warmth, cold, earth, air, and fire, continuously evolve, generating in turn the various objects and organisms that make up the recognizable world.

The third great Ionian philosopher of the 6th century bc, Anaximenes, returned to Thales’s assumption that the primary substance is something familiar and material, but he claimed it to be air rather than water. He believed that the changes things undergo could be explained in terms of rarefaction (thinning) and condensation of air. Thus Anaximenes was the first philosopher to explain differences in quality in terms of differences in size or quantity, a method fundamental to physical science.

In general, the Ionian school made the initial radical step from mythological to scientific explanation of natural phenomena. It discovered the important scientific principles of the permanence of substance, the natural evolution of the world, and the reduction of quality to quantity.

B

The Pythagorean School

About 530 bc at Croton (now Crotona), in southern Italy, the philosopher Pythagoras founded a school of philosophy that was more religious and mystical than the Ionian school. It fused the ancient mythological view of the world with the developing interest in scientific explanation. The system of philosophy that became known as Pythagoreanism combined ethical, supernatural, and mathematical beliefs with many ascetic rules, such as obedience and silence and simplicity of dress and possessions. The Pythagoreans taught and practiced a way of life based on the belief that the soul is a prisoner of the body, is released from the body at death, and migrates into a succession of different kinds of animals before reincarnation into a human being. For this reason Pythagoras taught his followers not to eat meat. Pythagoras maintained that the highest purpose of humans should be to purify their souls by cultivating intellectual virtues, refraining from sensual pleasures, and practicing special religious rituals. The Pythagoreans, having discovered the mathematical laws of musical pitch, inferred that planetary motions produce a “music of the spheres,” and developed a “therapy through music” to bring humanity in harmony with the celestial spheres. They identified science with mathematics, maintaining that all things are made up of numbers and geometrical figures. They made important contributions to mathematics, musical theory, and astronomy.

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