2,000 Greater & Lesser Mysteries/2,000 Greater and Lesser Mysteries.iso/philos/mys01599.txt

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                                   PHILOSOPY
                                   =========

Philosophy is the oldest form of systematic, scholarly inquiry.
The name comes from the Greek philosophos, "lover of wisdom."
The term, however, has acquired several related meanings:  (1)
the study of the truths or principles underlying all knowledge,
being, and reality;  (2) a particular system of philosophical
doctrine;  (3) the critical evaluation of such fundamental
doctrines;  (4) the study of the principles of a particular
branch of knowledge;  (5) a system of principles for guidance
in practical affairs;  and (6) a philosophical spirit or
attitude.

All of these meanings of philosophy are recognizable in the
intellectual traditions of ancient Greece.  The pre-Socratics
(see PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY) sought to find fundamental,
natural principles that could explain what individuals know and
experience about the world around them.  The pre-Socratics and,
later, PLATO and ARISTOTLE tried to develop a comprehensive set
of principles that would account for their knowledge of both
the natural and the human world.  In developing philosophies,
these early thinkers saw that their reflections could be used
as a means of criticizing and often refuting popularly accepted
mythological views as well as the thoughts of their
predecessors and contemporaries.  SOCRATES, at his trial,
proclaimed a basic philosophical premise, that "the unexamined
life was not worth living." By this he meant that if people do
not examine and critically evaluate the principles by which
they live, they cannot be sure that worthwhile principles
exist.  As the Greek thinkers codified their pictures of the
world, they saw that for each science or study of some aspect
of the world there could be a corresponding philosophy of this
science or study, such as the philosophies of science, art,
history, and so on.  Each of these involves examining the
fundamental principles of a discipline to see if they are
logical, consistent, and--most important--true.

Because ancient philosophers questioned the various ways of
life by which people live and sought the most satisfactory one,
they developed their philosophical attitudes and theories as
guides to practical living.  From Socrates down to 20th-century
thinkers like Bertrand RUSSELL and Jean Paul SARTRE, a major
element of the philosophical enterprise has been devoted to
trying to designate what constitutes the good life for humans
both as individuals and as social and political beings.

This kind of concern has contributed to the image of the
philosopher as standing aside from and impervious to all the
ups and downs of everyday existence.  Michel de MONTAIGNE
declared that "to philosophize is to learn to die," indicating
that the philosopher can be philosophical even in the face of death.
The Stoic thinkers (see STOICISM) are usually seen as
the epitome of this sense of philosophy.  They maintained their
philosophical attitude of calm reflection in the face of all
sorts of temporary disasters.

PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS

Because the term philosophy has various meanings, the nature of
the field can be most easily grasped by examining the kinds of
problems and questions the field deals with.  In the beginnings
of Western philosophy, the pre-Socratic thinkers dealt
primarily with a metaphysical question:  What is the nature of
ultimate reality as contrasted to the apparent reality of
ordinary experience?  They tried to determine whether some
ultimate constituents of the world would be the real and basic
elements, whereas everything else would be ephemeral and merely a
surface appearance.  If such a reality existed, would it be
permanent and unalterable, or would it be subject to change or
alteration like everything else?  The pre-Socratics generated
some of the basic problems involved in defining reality, that
is, in finding something so basic that it cannot be explained
by anything else.  They found their attempts to present logical
explanations of their metaphysical theories ran into
paradoxical results.  Could a permanent, unchanging reality
account for a changing world?  ZENO OF ELEA became famous for
working out his paradoxes, which claimed nothing could really
change or move.  Some of his paradoxes and some of those
connected with the Greek ATOMISM still play a role in modern
theoretical physics.

Over time, some aspects of the attempt to delineate reality
became separated from the metaphysical quest and became the
subject matter of the various natural sciences.  This
development has accelerated since the 17th century.  The areas
of study that have been peeled off from philosophy and assigned
to the natural sciences include astronomy, physics, chemistry,
geology, biology, psychology, and others.  An example of this
process may be seen in the consideration of a major
metaphysical question, the relationship of mind and body.
Originally, Platonic metaphysics claimed that the body and the
mind were two separate and distinct entities.  Plato, in fact,
claimed the body was the prison house of the soul or mind.  In
the 17th century, Rene DESCARTES contended that mind and body
were two separate and distinct substances that had nothing in
common although they interact.  Several Indian schools of
philosophy hold a similar view.  In the West this problem was
gradually taken over by psychologists and neurophysiologists.
The present tendency is to reduce mental phenomena to brain
phenomena and thereby reduce the problem from a mind-body
problem to a body problem.

Another constant philosophical question, from Greek times up to
the present, has been to try to establish the difference
between appearance and reality.  Once people learned about sense
illusions, the question arose of how to tell what seems
to be from what really is.  Skeptical thinkers have pressed the
claim that no satisfactory standard can be found that will
actually work for distinguishing the real from the apparent in
all cases.  On the other hand, various philosophers have
proposed many such criteria, none of which has been universally
accepted.
Another type of question raised by philosophers is:  What is
truth?  Various statements about aspects of the world seem to
be true, at least at certain times.  Yet experience teaches
that statements that have seemed to be true have later had to
be qualified or denied.  Skeptics have suggested that no
evidence would be able to tell, beyond any show of doubt, that
a given statement is in reality true.  In the face of such a
challenge, philosophers have sought to find a criterion of
truth, especially a criterion of truth that would not be open
to skeptical challenge.

Philosophers have also traditionally raised questions about
values:  What is good?  How can good be distinguished from bad
or evil?  What is justice?  What would a just society be like?
What is beauty?  How can the beautiful be distinguished from
the ugly?  These questions all deal with matters of evaluation
rather than fact.  Scientific investigation is of only slight
help in determining if abortion is bad or if Vermeer's Milkmaid
is a beautiful picture.  The values that are at issue are not
perceived in the same way as facts.  If they were, much more
agreement would exist about the specific answers to value
questions.  The philosopher seeks to find some means of
answering these sorts of questions, which are often the most
important ones that a person can ask and which will exhibit the
basis of a theory of values.

PHILOSOPHICAL METHODS

In view of the kinds of questions that philosophers deal with,
what methods does the philosopher use to seek the answers?  The
philosopher's tools are basically logical and speculative
reasoning.  In the Western tradition the development of LOGIC
is usually traced to Aristotle, who aimed at constructing valid
arguments and also true arguments if true premises could be
uncovered.  Logic has played an important role in ancient and
modern philosophy--that of providing a clarification of the
reasoning process and standards by which valid reasoning can be
recognized.  It has also provided a means of analyzing basic
concepts to determine if they are consistent or not.

Logic alone, however, is not enough to answer philosophers'
questions.  It can show when philosophers are being consistent
and when their concepts are clear and unambiguous, but it
cannot ascertain if the first principles or the premises are
correct.  Here philosophers sometimes rely on what they call
intuition and sometimes on a speculative reasoning process.
From their initial premises, philosophers then try to work out
a consistent development of their answers to basic
philosophical questions, following the rules of logic.
Irrationalist philosophers, however, such as the Danish thinker
Soren KIERKEGAARD, have contended that the less logical the
solution to philosophical problems, the better.  Philosophers
such as these sometimes argue that the most important elements
of existence and experience cannot be contained by logic, which
is, after all, an element of experience itself.  The part, they
argue, cannot explain the whole.

PHILOSOPHY'S RELATION TO OTHER DISCIPLINES

Philosophy is both related to most disciplines and yet
different from them.  Almost from the beginning of both
mathematics and philosophy in ancient Greece, relations were
seen between them.  On the one hand, the philosophers were
strongly impressed by the degree of certainty and rigor that
appeared to exist in mathematics as compared to any other
subject.  Some, like the philosopher-mathematician PYTHAGORAS
OF SAMOS, felt that mathematics must be the key to
understanding reality.  Plato claimed that mathematics provided
the forms out of which everything was made.  Aristotle, on the
other hand, held that mathematics was about ideal objects
rather than real ones;  he held that mathematics could be
certain without telling us anything about reality.

In more modern times, Descartes and Baruch SPINOZA used
mathematics as their model and inspiration for formulating new
methods to discover the truth about reality.  The
philosopher-mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von LEIBNIZ, the
co-discoverer (with Isaac Newton) of calculus, theorized about
constructing an ideal mathematical language in which to state,
and mathematically solve, all philosophical problems.  Similar
views have been advanced in the 20th century as ways of
resolving age-old philosophical difficulties.  Attempts to
accomplish this have found far from unanimous approval,
however.

Philosophy has both influenced and been influenced by
practically all of the sciences.  The physical sciences have
provided the accepted body of information about the world at
any given time.  Philosophers have then tried to arrange this
information into a meaningful pattern and interpret it,
describing what reality might be like.  Western philosophers
over much of the last 2,500 years have provided basic
metaphysical theories for the scientists to fit their data into
and as the data changed, their metaphysical interpretations
have had to be adjusted.  Thus the scientific revolution of the
17th century, encompassing the scientific work of Johannes
Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, was accompanied by a metaphysical
revolution led by such thinkers as Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the prevailing
philosophers in England and France came to the conclusion that
the sciences are, and ought to be, completely independent of
traditional metaphysical interpretations.  Instead, the
sciences should just try to describe and codify observations
and experiences.  This approach has led in the last two
centuries to a divorce of philosophy from the sciences.  What has
developed in response is a new branch of philosophy, the
philosophy of science, which examines the methods of science,
the types of scientific evidence, and the ways the sciences
progress.

A third intellectual area that has been intimately involved
with philosophy is religion.  In ancient Greece some
philosophers like ANAXAGORAS and Socrates scandalized their
contemporaries by criticizing aspects of Greek religion.
Others offered more theoretical approaches about the evidence
for the existence and nature of God or the gods.  Some denied
the existence of a deity.

When Christianity entered the Greek world, attempts were made
to develop a philosophical understanding of Christianity.
Finally, toward the end of the 4th and beginning of the 5th
century, Saint AUGUSTINE achieved a synthesis of some of the
elements of Platonic philosophy with the essentials of
Christianity.  Throughout the Middle Ages,
philosopher-theologians among the Jews, Muslims, and Christians
sought to explain their religions in rational terms.  They were
opposed by antirational theologians who insisted that religion
is a matter of faith and belief and not of reasons and
arguments.  After the Reformation, philosophers like Spinoza
and David HUME began criticizing the traditional philosophical
arguments used by theologians.  Hume and Immanuel KANT sought
to show that all of the arguments purporting to prove the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul were
fallacious.  Philosophers sought to explain why people were
religious on nonrational grounds, such as psychological,
economic, or cultural ones.  The defenders of religion found
themselves estranged from the philosophers, who kept using the
latest results of science and historical research to criticize
religion.  Some, like Kierkegaard, made a virtue of this
estrangement, insisting that religious belief is a matter of
faith, and therefore not a matter of reason.  More recently,
since World War II, a group of theologians who are interested
in recent philosophical developments and in the relationship
between religion and contemporary culture have attempted to
discover what religious statements can be intellectually
meaningful.  The history of the relation between philosophy and
theology is thus a long and mixed affair, running the gamut
from clarifying religion and providing a justification for it
to tearing apart its intellectual underpinnings and trying to
see what is left that a 20th-century scientifically oriented
person can believe or take seriously.

BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY

The several different branches of philosophy correspond to the
different problems being dealt with.  One of the most basic is
EPISTEMOLOGY, the theory of knowledge (episteme is Greek for
knowledge).  It deals with what can be known, how it can be
known, and how certain the individual can be about it.  It has
special branches like the philosophy of science.  The kinds of
answers that emerge from a particular epistemology usually
structure its METAPHYSICS.  Metaphysics is the study of nature
of reality, the study of what features of experience are real
and which are apparent.  Aristotle called metaphysics the study
of being as such;  the term ontology is often used to describe
this branch of philosophy today.  How a person gets to know
about pure being (an epistemological problem) colors what it is
that is known.  The reverse is also the case.  What the
individual thinks the world is really like colors what he or
she thinks can be known about it.  How the individual reasons
about the world and how he or she can certify knowledge belongs
to the branch of philosophy called logic.  Logic provides the
rational framework for all philosophical discussion, but is
also itself open to metaphysical interpretations about what
sort of world it is explaining.

Other branches of philosophy such as ETHICS, AESTHETICS, and
political philosophy deal with evaluative aspects of the world
such as what is good conduct, what is beautiful, and what is
socially and politically just.  The proposed answers to these
questions are much involved with the philosopher's
epistemological and metaphysical theories, and the values the
philosopher espouses color his or her epistemology and
metaphysics.  Sometimes the pursuit of particular aspects of
experience (such as sensations) or the use of particular tools
(such as the analysis of language) will reorient philosophical
inquiry or give birth to new branches of philosophy.  Thus
philosophy is never reasoned in a vacuum.  It is concerned not
only with abstract questions;  it is also conditioned by
history.

HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

The Pre-Socratics

Western philosophy began in Greece, in the Greek settlement of
Miletus in Anatolia.  The first known philosophers were THALES
OF MILETUS and his students, ANAXIMANDER and ANAXIMENES.
Present-day knowledge of this MILESIAN SCHOOL is based on
fragments attributed to them by later writers.  These first
philosophers were metaphysicians, seeking for an element or
force behind appearance that explained everything.  Thales said
that all was ultimately water, Anaximander that it was
boundless or the infinite, and Anaximenes that it was air.
Subsequent Greek philosophers, such as HERACLITUS and
PARMENIDES, argued about whether change or permanence was the
basic feature of the world and about whether one or more than
one element was the fundamental constituent of reality (see
MONISM;  PLURALISM).  Greek philosophy before Socrates was
principally concerned with these metaphysical questions.

Socrates

Socrates, an Athenian, was primarily interested in value
questions that affected what a person should do.  At the time
in Athens, the paid teachers, the SOPHISTS, taught people how
to live successfully;  they did not raise the Socratic question
of what was the right way of life, however.  Socrates did not
write anything, but he is vividly portrayed by his pupil Plato
in the Dialogues as being the "gadfly" of Athens, forever
asking people why they are doing what they are doing and making
people realize that general principles were necessary to
justify their conduct.  Socrates was finally arrested and
accused of heresy and corrupting the young of Athens.  Socrates
used his trial, described in Plato's Apology, as a final
opportunity to make his general point.  His accusers, he
showed, did not know what the charges actually meant and had no
evidence for them.  He reported that the Delphic oracle had
said that he, Socrates, was the wisest of all of the Athenians.
Socrates said he was the wisest because he alone knew nothing
and knew that he knew nothing, whereas everybody else thought
they knew something.  In spite of his eloquence and wisdom,
Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death.

Plato

After Socrates' execution, his disciple Plato developed the
first comprehensive philosophical system and founded the
Academy, the first formal philosophical school.  Plato
contended that knowledge must be of universals (that is, of
general types or kinds) and not of particulars.  To know a
particular cat, Miranda, the individual must first know what it
is to be feline in general.  Otherwise he or she will not be
able to recognize the particular feline characteristics in
Miranda.  These universals, Plato claimed, were the basic
elements from which the world was formed.  They are called the
Forms, or Platonic Ideas.  Mathematics provides the most
obvious cases of these Forms.  They are known not by sense
perception but by reasoning.  They are known by the mind, not
by the bodily organs.  The world of Platonic Ideas is the
unchanging Forms of things.  The philosopher should turn away
from this world of appearance and concentrate on the world of
Forms.  Plato, in his most famous work, The Republic, said that
the world would be perfect when philosophers are kings and
kings are philosophers.  He believed that the philosopher-kings
would know what justice really is, and, based on their
knowledge of the Forms, they could then achieve justice in all
societies.

For Plato the ultimate Idea, which illuminated the rest of the
pure ideas, was the Idea of the Good.  As Plato grew older he
became more mystical about this idea.  The school of
NEOPLATONISM, which began a few centuries after his death,
stressed these otherworldly and mystical elements, identifying
the idea of the Good with God.

Aristotle

Plato's leading student, Aristotle, developed the most
comprehensive philosophical system of ancient times.  Aristotle
broke with Plato, stressing the importance of explaining the
changing world that humankind lives in as opposed to the
Platonic Ideas.  Aristotle spent years studying the natural
sciences and collecting specimens, and about 90 percent of his
writings are on scientific subjects, mostly on biological ones.
Aristotle believed he could account for the changes and
alterations in this world without either having to deny their
reality or having to appeal to another world.  For Aristotle
all natural objects were composed of form and matter, and the
changes that take place in matter are the substitution of one
form for another.  This substitution takes place because every
natural object has a goal, or telos, which it is its nature to
achieve.  Thus stones, because they are essentially material,
seek the lowest point, which is why they fall down.  Each
species is ultimately trying to achieve a state of perfection
which for Aristotle was a state of perfect rest.  The cosmos,
as Aristotle saw it, is an ordered striving for this
perfection.  The pinnacle of the order is the Unmoved Mover,
the ultimate cosmic agent, which fully and perfectly realizes
its essence of eternal thought.  The heavenly spheres imitate
the Unmoved Mover and by so doing set the heavens in an eternal
spherical motion;  this process is repeated by individual
souls, and so on.  Aristotle's vision of the Cosmos remained
central to Western thought until the time of Nicolaus
Copernicus.

Hellenistic and Roman Periods

In the period from about 300 BC to AD 200 the central
philosophical concerns shifted to how an individual should
conduct his or her life.  The Stoics, the Skeptics (see
SKEPTICISM), and the Epicureans (see EPICUREANISM), although
they dealt with the classical epistemological and metaphysical
issues, emphasized the question of how humans should conduct
themselves in a miserable world.  All these theories stressed
withdrawal, whether physical, emotional, or intellectual, from
the turmoils of the day.

Medieval Period

Greek philosophy was the major formative influence on the later
philosophical traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
In all three, the theories of the Greeks, particularly Plato
and Aristotle, were employed to clarify and develop the basic
beliefs of the religious traditions.

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA introduced Platonic ideas and methods into
Jewish thought, particularly into the interpretation of
Scripture about the beginning of the Christian era.  He exerted
little influence on later Jewish thought, however, and the
Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages seems to have developed as a
movement parallel to those in Islam.  Important figures in
early medieval Jewish thought include Isaac Israeli, SAADIA BEN
JOSEPH GAON, and the Neoplatonist Solomon IBN GABIROL.  The
most important Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, however, was
MAIMONIDES.  Maimonides developed a comprehensive
interpretation of religion and understanding based on
Aristotelian principles that was influential in the Christian
West as well as among Jewish thinkers.

In Judaism, as in Islam and Christianity, religious speculation
and philosophy developed in close connection.  This development
is particularly evident in the Jewish mystical tradition, the
KABBALAH.  The esoteric teachings of these schools have
influenced much later Jewish thought, including that of
Spinoza, the most important Jewish philosopher of the early
modern period.  Drawing both on his religious background and on
the geometric method of Descartes, Spinoza developed a
philosophical PANTHEISM of great depth.

In the Islamic tradition as well the starting point was the
work of Plato and Aristotle.  The 9th-century Neoplatonist
al-KINDI was followed by al-FARABI, who drew on both Plato and
Aristotle to create a universal Islamic philosophy.  The most
important of the medieval Muslim philosophers, however, was
Avicenna (ibn Sina).  Starting from the distinction between
essence and existence, Avicenna developed a metaphysics in
which God, the necessary being, is the source of created nature
through emanation.  Both his metaphysics and his intuitionist
theory of knowledge were influential in the later Middle Ages
as well as in the later history of Islamic thought.

The philosophical tradition did not go unchallenged, however.
The 11th-century theologian and mystic al-GHAZALI mounted a
critique of philosophy, specifically Avicenna's, that is rich
in argument and insight.  Al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the
Philosophers provoked a response by AVERROES ibn Rushd entitled
the Incoherence of the Incoherence, in which al-Ghazali's
arguments are countered point for point.  Averroes was best
known, however, as an interpreter of Aristotle and excited
great influence on all subsequent thinkers in the Aristotelian
tradition.  In the later Middle Ages the historian and
philosopher IBN KHALDUN produced a trenchant critique of
culture, and the elaboration of metaphysics and epistemology
was carried on in the theosophical schools of Islamic
mysticism.

The first systematic Christian philosophy was that of ORIGEN,
but for the European Middle Ages no authority could rival Saint
Augustine.  Augustine elaborated a Neoplatonist vision
combining the metaphysics of PLOTINUS with an elaboration of
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.  To this he added an
epistemology in which knowledge is achieved through
illumination by grace.  No substantial movement arose beyond
Augustine until the 12th century, when new interest arose in
logic and theory of knowledge.  In this connection the most
important figures are Saint ANSELM and Peter ABELARD.

In the late 12th and early 13th centuries the writings of
Aristotle were reintroduced into the West, first in
translations from the Arabic and later in direct translation.
After some initial resistance Aristotle became the dominant
philosophical authority and remained so until the Renaissance.
First Saint ALBERTUS MAGNUS and then Saint Thomas AQUINAS
combined Aristotle's philosophy with the tradition of
Augustinian theology to produce a synthesis holding that
Aristotle was right about those things that are within the
grasp of reason, while what was beyond reason could only be
known by faith.  Thus reason could prove that God exists, but
his nature could be known only by faith.  More extreme
Aristotelian schools developed and came into conflict with the
church, which, in 1277, issued condemnations of many positions
held by Aristotle and Aquinas, among others.  In the 14th
century two figures dominated the scene:  DUNS SCOTUS and
WILLIAM OF OCCAM.  Scotus developed an extemely complex
philosophy based on a number of earlier positions, and Occam's
critiques of metaphysics and epistemology remain paradigms of
philosophical argument.

Rationalism

The synthesis of Christianity and Aristotelianism was a major
form of SCHOLASTICISM, which dominated European philosophy into
the 17th century.  During the Renaissance other forms of
ancient philosophy began to be revived and used as ammunition
against the scholastics.  This involved the Renaissance
Platonists and the Skeptics, as well as others interested in
esoteric doctrines like that of the Kabbalah.  In terms of the
future development of philosophy, the revival of ancient
skepticism played the greatest role.  This view, popularized by
Montaigne in the late 16th century, raised the fundamental
epistemological problem of what can be known.  The methods of
the new scientific schools conflicted with, and thus brought
into question, the principles inherited from the Middle Ages.
Rene Descartes proposed a method for guaranteeing knowledge.
He argued that in order to provide a secure foundation for
knowledge it was necessary to discover "clear and distinct
ideas" that could not be doubted and could serve as a basis for
deriving further truths.  He found such an idea in the
proposition "I think, therefore I am." Using this as a
paradigm, Descartes drew a distinction between thinking
substance and extended substance, or mind and matter.  He went
on to draw conclusions about God, nature, and mind that
continue to be influential.  For this reason Descartes is often
considered the founder of modern philosophy.

A few years after Descartes's death, Baruch de Spinoza offered
his theory to improve on that of Descartes.  Spinoza insisted
that only one substance, God, exists, and that two of his
attributes are thought and extension.  Everything that is and
that can be known about is an aspect of God.  Spinoza's God,
however, was the antithesis of the God of traditional religion.
God, or Nature (as Spinoza put it), was the laws from which
everything followed.  In Spinoza's pantheistic world everything
had to be what it was, and everything was to be understood
rationally.  The mind and body were two aspects of the same
thing, which was to be understood either logically or in terms
of natural science.

A third great 17th-century rationalist was Gottfried Wilhelm
von Leibniz.  The basic unit of his metaphysics, equivalent to
a substance, was the monad, a center of force or energy.  Each
monad was internally determined by its definition.  Monads
could not interact, but, due to a "preestablished harmony," the
action in one monad coincided with that in another.  God chose
the monads in the world so that it would be the best of all
possible worlds.  (A world with more or less or different
monads would not be as good, or God would have chosen it.) Leibniz
believed that the truths about monads could be
discovered by rational analysis.

Empiricism

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were all rationalists in their
epistemologies;  they stressed a world of metaphysical truths
that could be discovered by reason.  In contrast to this kind
of philosophizing, a quite different approach developed in
Great Britain, stressing the importance of sense experience as
the basis of knowledge (see EMPIRICISM).  Starting with Sir
Francis BACON, the empirical theory of knowledge was propounded
both as a way of eliminating various metaphysical and
theological difficulties and as a way of genuinely advancing
knowledge.  The most important statement of this theory was
made by John LOCKE.  He claimed that all knowledge comes from
sense experience.  Individuals are, however, forced to believe
that underlying experience is some indefinable kind of
substance.  No one can be completely certain of direct
intuitive inspections of his or her ideas, less certain of
demonstrations from them, and still less certain of what Locke
called "sensative knowledge," knowledge of the reality of
experience.  In spite of the limitations on knowledge, humans
can know enough to function in this world.

Bishop George BERKELEY saw Locke's theory as having dangerous
skeptical and irreligious tendencies because of its reliance on a
material substance for ideas to belong to.  Berkeley insisted
that the only things truly known are ideas and that ideas can
only exist in the minds that perceive them.  Matter is simply
complexes of sensations.  Nothing really exists except
perceiving and being perceived (esse est percipere).  What
holds the world together is that God perceives everything all
of the time.  Berkeley's IDEALISM gained few adherents.  If it
is granted that all of our knowledge consists only of sense
experiences, no evidence exists that the world is any more than
ideas and the minds they are in.  In philosophy this position
is called SOLIPSISM, the view that the only reality is the
self.

Berkeley was followed by David Hume, who showed that a
thoroughly consistent empirical theory of knowledge leads to a
complete skepticism.  Hume's major contribution was to show
that an individual cannot gain any causal information about
experience, or about what is beyond immediate experience, from
empirical knowledge.  He or she can neither deduce nor induce
the cause or the effect of experience (see CAUSALITY).
Individuals thus have no basis for accepting that the future
must resemble the past.  It is only habit or custom that leads
them to expect and believe that the items found constantly
conjoined in experience will remain so in the future.  Hume
also argued that from empirical data humans could have no real
knowledge of substance, mind, or even God.  They are reduced to
complete skepticism except that habits or customs make them
unjustified believers.

Kant and Hegel

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that reading Hume
awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers and made him realize the
depths of the problem of knowledge that cried out for a
solution.  Kant insisted that humans do possess genuine
knowledge.  The problem was to show how, in the face of Hume's
critique, knowledge was possible.  Kant first insisted that
although all knowledge begins in experience, this does not mean
that all knowledge comes from experience.  The human mind
provides the forms and the categories which can be used to
describe experience.  Because these are the necessary
conditions of all possible human experience, experience will
have certain characteristics.  But this knowledge cannot be
extended to what is beyond all possible experience--to real
substances (things-in-themselves;  see NOUMENON), to the self,
or to God.

After Kant a new metaphysical movement developed in Germany
starting from Kant's claim that the individual contributes the
form of all possible experience.  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL
advanced the idea that the basic element of reality (The Real)
is not a principle of organization interior to the mind but a
process that acts through individuals and unfolds itself in the
history of the world.  This universal reason has expressed
itself in the various forms of the world's development--from a
purely physical stage, to a biological one, to a human one.  In
the human one, society is developing from ancient tyranny
toward freedom in a final rational state, in which all previous
contradictory developments will be resolved (see DIALECTIC).
Hegel worked out a metaphysics in which all of human history
was rational.  His ideas were influential throughout Europe in
the 19th century, particularly on the ideas of Karl MARX.
Hegel's ideas were soon taken up in the United States by Josiah
ROYCE and others and in England by idealistic philosophers such
as F.  H.  BRADLEY.

20th Century

Twentieth-century philosophy has been characterized in part by
its revolt against Hegelianism.  PRAGMATISM in the United
States and the modern empiricism of Bertrand Russell, LOGICAL
POSITIVISM, and linguistic philosophy in both Britain and
America all rejected Hegelian metaphysics.  The pragmatists
wanted an earthy theory--that the truth is that which works--as
an expeditious way of solving problems.  From William JAMES to
John DEWEY pragmatism dominated American thought in the first
half of this century.  Logical positivism, based on modern
developments in logic and an empiricism like Hume's, was the
joint result of English thinkers like Russell and an Austrian
group called the Vienna circle, whose most influential member,
Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN, had been a student of Russell's at
Cambridge.  The English and Austrian positivists and linguistic
philosophers challenged any form of metaphysical thinking and
insisted that something could be said to be true if (and only
if) it could be verified by logical or scientific procedures.
No metaphysical claim, they insisted, could meet this test (see
ANALYTIC AND LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY).

Quite different kinds of philosophy developed in France and
Germany.  One of the most extreme reactions to Hegel came from
the Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard.  Kierkegaard believed
that all metaphysical systems are unsuccessful, but that to
avoid despair an individual had to opt for some sort of belief,
by taking a "leap of faith." Kierkegaard's emphasis on
subjectivity, confrontation, and despair has greatly influenced
the school of thought called EXISTENTIALISM.  Although
Kierkegaard was a religious Christian, many of those who have
used his basic approach are irreligious.

Among several important reactions to Kant, the most notable is
PHENOMENOLOGY, developed by Edmund HUSSERL.  Bracketing
questions about the self and other transcendental ideas,
Husserl attempted to elaborate a method for the analysis of
experience as it presents itself.  His most important student,
Martin HEIDEGGER, developed a philosophy of "being-in-the
world," which has also influenced Jean Paul Sartre and other
existentialists.

To tell in what direction the mainstream of philosophy will
move in the last quarter of the 20th century is impossible at
this close range.
RICHARD H. POPKIN

EASTERN PHILOSOPHY

The Indian Tradition

The philosophical traditions of India have their beginnings in
reflection on the VEDAS and specifically in attempts to
interpret the UPANISHADS.  A wide variety of schools emerged
including some that specifically reject the authority of the
Vedas.  Thus the Indian philosophy is commonly divided in two
traditions:  the orthodox schools of HINDUISM that accept Vedic
authority, and the nonorthodox schools that do not accept that
authority.  Within the first category are six major schools:
Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Mimamsa, and Vedanta.  The
second category consists of Charvaka, Jainism, and Buddhism.
Samkhya, one of the oldest and most influential of the schools,
is traditionally held to have been founded by Kapila, who may
have lived as early as the 7th century BC and to whom the
Samkhya-sutra (Principles of Samkhya) is attributed.  Samkhya
metaphysics is based on the distinction between prakriti and
purusha, which may be rendered as the objective, or nature, and
the subjective, or self.  All objects in the world are
essentially constituted by the combination of atoms, which
emerge from the eternal and uncaused prakriti.  Even the
individual ego, or mind, is a result of the constant atomic
flux of prakriti.  Purusha, on the other hand, is not to be
identified with the ego, or mind.  It also is uncaused,
eternal, and unchanging and underlies the perceived ego.  There
is a plurality of such selves, which are the loci of
consciousness and in conjunction with which prakriti evolves.
The bondage to suffering that is the common starting point of
all Indian philosophical thought arises from the involvement of
purusha with prakriti.  Release comes when ignorance is
overcome;  that the attachment of purusha to the changing
empirical world is illusory becomes apparent.

The means by which this ignorance is overcome are elaborated by
the YOGA school.  While accepting much of the Samkhya position,
Yoga, as developed by Patanjali (2d century BC), believes in a
supreme self or purusha, identified with the god Isvara.  The
method of Yoga is to bring the self to understanding by
meditation designed to curb the constant changes brought on by
involvement in the perceived world.  The knowledge acquired
through meditation is an intuitive, nonrational, and direct
cognition of the nature of things.  This intuition is the
cessation of individuality and the identity of the self with
the eternal purusha.  Some form of Yoga is recognized as a
practical method of enlightenment by most of the other Indian
schools.

The Vaisheshika system is thought to have been developed by
Kanada in the 3d century BC.  The essential aspect of
Vaisheshika is a complex pluralistic metaphysics that
recognizes nine substances:  earth, water, fire, air, ether,
space, time, self, and mind.  The first four material
substances are atomic and give rise to material composite
objects.  Mind is also atomic but does not give rise to
composite objects.  Vaisheshika tends to be theistic and sees
God as guiding the world in accordance with the law of KARMA.
Human action perpetuates the workings of karma, and thus
liberation is achieved through the cessation of action, and
achievement of a state beyond pleasure, pain, and experience in
general.

Nyaya is closely associated with Vaisheshika, and they are
often grouped together.  The emphasis in Nyaya is on methods of
argument, and particularly on the elaboration of logical
theory, which is used to justify Vaisheshika metaphysics.
Nyaya distinguishes various forms and origins of knowledge, as
originally put forward by the school's founder Gantama (2d
century BC).  In the course of time Nyaya developed a variety
of arguments for the existence of God, as conceived by
Vaisheshika, some of which parallel the classic arguments in
the Western traditions.

The Mimamsa is often divided into two main branches, the Purva
Mimamsa and the Uttara Mimamsa.  The Mimamsa sutra of Jainini
dates perhaps from the 4th century BC and begins a tradition in
which the two most important later figures are Kumarila Bhatta
and Prabhakara, both 7th century AD.  The Mimamsa in general is
concerned with establishing the nature and demands of religious
law or duty (DHARMA) as it is found in the Vedas.  As such it
tends to emphasize the practical, although Mimamsa thinkers
have made important contributions to logic and theory of
knowledge.
The Mimamsa, particularly the Uttara Mimamsa, is closely
associated with VEDANTA and sometimes treated simply as a
school within the Vedantic tradition.  Vedanta means "the end
of the Vedas" and in general suggests analysis and
contemplation of the theory and vision of the Vedic material.
The point of departure for Vedanta is Badarayana's Brahma
sutras, also known as the Vedanta sutras.  This represents the
earliest attempt to organize and explicate the Upanishads and
is itself an extremely difficult text, which has served as the
object of commentaries by the major figures of later Vedanta
schools.  Central to these schools is the interpretation of
Brahman (see BRAHMA AND BRAHMAN) and its relation to atman
(self).  The best known of the schools is the nondualist, or
advaita, Vedanta of Shankara (AD 788-820), for whom Brahman is
undifferentiated, eternal, and unchanging and the world is
illusion, or maya.  The modified nondualism, or
vishishtadvaita, of Ramanuja (1017-1137) argues for the reality
of individual self (atman) and the world but claims that they
are dependent on Brahman.  The dualist, or dvaita, Vedanta of
Madhva (1197-1276) insists on a sharp distinction between
Brahman and atman, as well as between Brahman and the world.

Of the three nonorthodox schools, the first two can be dealt
with briefly.  Charvaka is known only from fragments referred
to in the works of its opponents.  It seems to have been an
extreme materialist reaction to the Vedic teachings and to have
argued for the primacy of life in the world, the extinction of
the individual at death, and perhaps an ethic of personal
gratification.  JAINISM, on the other hand, is an ethical
religion that arose in the 6th century BC.  It insists on the
distinction between matter and soul and argues for a realistic
atomism in the context of an atheistic universe.  Salvation is
achieved through the three jewels of faith, knowledge, and
practice of the virtues, which are nonviolence, truth telling,
not stealing, chastity, and not being attached to worldly goods
and concerns.

BUDDHISM originated as a sectarian movement in India in the
6th-5th century BC, but it spread over much of China, Southeast
Asia, and Japan.  In the course of its history Buddhism has
developed diverse philosophical traditions.  The central
teaching of Buddhism is the dharma.  This term can mean a
variety of things, including "the nature of things," "the law,"
and "the true view of reality." Dharmas, in the plural, are
usually held to be the genuine constituents of reality as
opposed to the mere appearance.  Common to almost all schools
of Buddhist philosophy is the view that all things in the world
have their origin in other things, a doctrine known as
"dependent coorigination." This doctrine leads in most cases to a
metaphysics of flux, usually joined to a pluralistic atomism.
Another doctrine common to almost all schools is that of
anatta, the denial of a metaphysical self.  The doctrine of
anatta is often seen as a consequence of dependent
coorigination, and the perceived self is analyzed as a bundle
of skandhas, the five components of personality.

The analysis of these doctrines differed from school to school,
however, and within a few centuries of the Buddha's death a
variety of positions had developed, traditionally held to have
been 18.  The two most important divisions were the
Mahasanghikas and the Sthaviras, the former identifying with
the larger community and the latter claiming to continue the
tradition of the elders.  Out of these two groups developed
Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, a division that continues to
this day.

Among the philosophical schools of Theravada are the
Pudgalavadins, the Vaibhashika, and the Sautrantika.  For the
Pudgalavadins the doctrine of anatta proved unacceptable.  They
themselves were divided into a number of sects but were united
in the view that some sort of unifying person (pudgala) must
exist as the subject of karmic rebirth and possible salvation.
The pudgala served as a principle of identity through time in
the context of which the various religious and intellectual
doctrines of Buddhism could be said to make sense.  The
Vaibhashikas (a branch of the Saravastivadin sect), on the
other hand, argued that the dharmas, the actual constituents of
reality, were identical with those of perceived reality if
properly analyzed.  The proposed analysis is one of a plurality
of events, coordinated by causal laws.  Essences and general
concepts are merely abstractions, with only a conceptual as
opposed to an actual reality.  Knowledge, on this view, is a
direct perception of real events and objects.  The Sautrantikas
have much in common with the Vaibhashikas, but they distinguish
between a phenomenal world and the world as it really is.  Thus
the Sautrantikas deny the reality of perceived dharmas.  This
difference is important in their respective theories of
knowledge because, unlike the Vaibhashikas, the Sautrantikas do
not say that objects are directly perceived.  They are, rather,
inferred from the representations of sense imprinted upon the
mind through contact with the world.

Among the Mahayana schools the Yogacara and the Madhyamika are
the two most important.  The Yogacara differs markedly from the
three schools noted above in arguing that only consciousness is
genuinely real and that perceived objects are ultimately
illusory.  The claim is that, because objects are constituted
by instantaneous events, they have no duration and thus cannot
be said to exist.  The unenlightened consciousness laboring
under the law of karma does not realize this, but through the
practice of yoga and moral discipline liberation can be
achieved, and the identity of the perceived world with
consciousness can be grasped.

Many scholars hold the Madhyamika to be the central philosophy
of Buddhism.  The name itself means "traveler on the middle
way" and suggests a position that attempts to mediate between
the extremes of the other schools.  The founder and leading
intellect of Madhyamika was Nagarjuna (2d century AD).
Nagarjuna mounted a detailed critique of the theory of
knowledge that held knowledge to be expressible only in terms
of propositions.  These propositions are derived from
individual concepts and from perceptions and are in some sense
a construction of the individual rather than a genuine
representation of reality in itself.  Understanding is reached
when the relativity of these conceptual constructions is
recognized and claims to absolute knowledge and truth are given
up.  The highest wisdom is in seeing this ephemeral relativity
and acquiring direct awareness of reality itself, unconditioned
by concepts.  Many later schools are related to the Madhyamika,
including the Zen schools, although the relations are difficult
to uncover in many places.

The Chinese Tradition

Philosophical thought in China has largely concerned itself
with social and political philosophy.  This assertion is not to
say that cosmological and metaphysical speculation has been
absent.  The I CHING reflects a complicated vision of the
universe.  The oracles of the I Ching began to assume their
present written form perhaps as early as the 7th century BC,
and the book as a whole played an important role throughout the
subsequent development of Chinese philosophy.

The first recognized philosopher in China, however, was
CONFUCIUS (541-497 BC).  Confucius taught that the goal of the
philosopher was to become learned, but this concept means more
than merely knowing a large number of facts.  Rather, on the
basis of a broad learning in the classic texts, the canon of
which he essentially formulated, Confucius held that a person,
regardless of his or her social status, could become aware of
the moral order of the cosmos and of his or her proper place in
it.  He taught the primacy of the family, and the duties
incumbent upon its various members, stressing harmony and unity
and the self-evident goodness of the ethical life.  This vision
has in many ways remained a dominant one in CONFUCIANISM.

The recorded sayings of Confucius do not present a systematic
vision.  The first figure in the Confucian tradition to move
toward a philosophical system was MENCIUS (4th-3d century BC).
Mencius argued for the essential goodness of persons--that
divergence in moral responsibility is a result of a bad
upbringing or environment.  The results of a poor moral
training can be overcome by education, and society is, thus,
essentially perfectable.  The duty of government is to foster
the well-being of the people and bring society to perfection, a
goal with which the genuine ruler is in accord due to his
inborn goodness and moral sense.

A strain in Confucianism diametrically opposed to the idealism
of Mencius arose a generation later in the thought of Hsun-tzu
(330-225 BC).  Hsun-tzu argued that, far from good, the inborn
nature of persons is evil, or uncivil.  Rather than eliciting
innate moral virtues through education, Hsun-tzu insists on the
need to impose them from without.  This doctrine has been
variously interpreted;  such a position leads to the
nonabsoluteness of ethical norms and hence leads as much in the
direction of liberalism as authoritarianism.  Yet another facet
of Hsun-tzu's thought is an acute logical sense, and he left a
penetrating essay on names and meaning.  Until the advent of
Neoconfucianism in the medieval period, Hsun-tzu was usually
considered a superior thinker to Mencius.  The Neoconfucians
emphasized an essentialist moral striving based on Confucius,
Mencius, and two texts, the Great Learning and Doctrine of the
Mean.  In its various forms, Neoconfucian thought dominated
Chinese learning and social life until the beginning of the
20th century.

The second important indigenous Chinese tradition is TAOISM.
The teaching of the Tao Te Ching, a work attributed to the
semilegendary LAO-TZU (6th century BC), is elusive and complex
and can perhaps best be characterized as teaching the eternal
principle of reality and the way in which all things are
governed by and find their true natures in it.  It implies a
metaphysics of impermanence and change, and the philosopher who
attains a clear vision of the eternal Tao (way) and its
relation to this flux acquires happiness and peace.  The most
important later Taoist philosopher was Chuang-tzu.  In
CHUANG-TZU the Taoist divergence from, and rejection of, the
Confucian ideals becomes pronounced.  Whereas the Confucian
tradition believes in the molding of the person through
education, Chuang-tzu saw the classical teachings of the
schools as tending to lead the person away from an
understanding of the nature of things, the Tao, and thus away
from a genuine awareness of his or her own nature and place in
the world.  This outlook sometimes led to Taoism being seen as
antisocial.  Nevertheless, both Chuang-tzu and Mencius, who was
perhaps his contemporary, saw the goal of philosophy as
attaining an awareness of the essential harmony of things,
although they disagreed on the origin of this harmony and how
awareness is to be attained.

Only the two main strands in Chinese thought have been
mentioned.  The Moists, who taught the existence of a Supreme
Spirit that possessed equal and universal love for all people;
the Legalists, who advocated a practical philosophy of
political domination;  and the Buddhists, who became important
from the 4th century AD on, also exercised wide influence in
Chinese thought.  Within the Neoconfucian tradition a variety
of positions emerged.

In the last century Western philosophical and political thought
has entered the Chinese tradition, most importantly Marxism.
In Chinese philosophy, as in the other traditions examined,
drawing any firm conclusions about the future is impossible.