historiography of philosophy, or the study of how to conduct history pertaining to philosophy two fundamental questions: Why should one study the history of philosophy? And how should one study the history of philosophy?

Presentist Approach

• A presentist approach to the history of philosophy examines philosophical texts for the arguments they contain and judges whether their conclusions remain relevant for philosophical concerns today.
• A presentist approach concerns itself with the present concerns of philosophy and holds past philosophers to present standards.
• (+) benefit from a rich body of past wisdom—even in our everyday lives
• (-) it neglects various contexts in which past philosophers lived and worked
• Past philosophers are judged by contemporary standards instead of being understood in relation to the historical and cultural contexts in which they lived and wrote
  • example: Plato’s political project becomes easier to understand as well, for in questioning the limits of human knowledge and seeking a deeper understanding of the truth, the Allegory of the Cave attempts to solve what Plato sees as the problems inherent in both tyrannical and democratic forms of government.

Contextualist Approach

• The contextualist approach to philosophical texts aims to be more sensitive to the history surrounding their creation
• (+) This approach attempts to understand historical philosophy on its own terms, using concepts and ideas that would have been appropriate to the time period in which they were written.
• example:
  • an often-misunderstood passage from the Hebrew Bible is “an eye for an eye.”
  • Many today interpret this passage as a justification for violence, not realizing that the passage reflects a body of laws meant to restrict retaliation.
• (-) This means that they might become interested in the history of philosophy for history’s sake, ignoring the instrumental value of historical philosophy for contemporary philosophers

Hermeneutic Approach

• (+) The hermeneutic approach takes the historical context of a text seriously, but it also recognizes that our interpretation of history is conditioned by our contemporary context.
• (-) fall prey to a tendency to think about history as culminating in the present.

Egyptian Origins of Classical Philosophy

• traces Greek beliefs about the gods, religious practices, and understanding of the natural world to Egypt.

Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics

• Could Pythagoras have learned, rather than discovered, the “Pythagorean” theorem—the law of relationships between the sides and hypotenuse of a right triangle—in Egypt? Almost assuredly. A Babylonian clay tablet dating to approximately 1800 BCE, known as Plimpton 322, demonstrates that the Babylonians had knowledge not only of the relationship of the sides and hypotenuses of a right triangle but also of trigonometric functions (Lamb 2017).
• The Berlin Papyrus 6619: evidence that the Egyptians could solve quadratic equations

Akhenaten's Metaphysics

• In the mid-14th century BCE, Akhenaten became pharaoh in Egypt
• Akhenaten held that solar energy was the element out of which all other elements evolved or emanated
• Akhenaten established an unseen divinity responsible for causation. Aten became the one true substance that created the observable world

The Egyptian Origins Controversy

argued that the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians played a foundational role in the formation of Greek civilization and philosophy. the African and Middle Eastern origins of Greece was widely accepted until the 19th century, when it was replaced by a racist “Aryan model” proposing Indo- European origins instead

Ancient Greek Philosophy

Socrates (470–399 BCE), Plato (c. 428–347 BCE), and Aristotle (384–322 BCE); and then to later schools of thought, including the Epicureans and Stoics. Sophists, traveling teachers of rhetoric who serve as foils for Plato’s philosophers.

The Presocratics

the Presocratics as interested in questions of metaphysics and natural philosophy, with many of them proposing that nature consisted of one or more basic substances. Those who think nature consisted of a single substance are called monists, in contrast to pluralists, who see it as consisting of multiple substances The claim proposed by Thales of Miletus (620–546 BCE) that the basic substance of the universe was water is somewhat ambiguous.

Prominent Monists

Thales and two of his students, Anaximander and Anaximenes, made up the monist Milesian school.

• Anaximander thought that water was too specific to be the basis for everything that exists. Instead, he thought the basic stuff of the universe was the apeiron, the indefinite or boundless.
• Anaximenes held that air was the basic substance of the universe. Parmenides, one of the most influential Presocratic monists, went so far as to deny the reality of change Zeno proposed paradoxes, known as Zeno’s paradoxes, that demonstrate that what we think of as plurality and motion are simply not possible.

Prominent Pluralists

• Heraclitus held that nothing remains the same and that all is in flux.
• Anaxagoras (500–428 BCE) and Empedocles (494–434 BCE) were substance pluralists who believed that the universe consisted of more than one basic kind of “stuff.”
  • Anaxagoras believed that it is mind, or nous, that controls the universe by mixing and unmixing things into a variety of different combinations.
  • Empedocles held that there were four basic substances (the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water) that were combined and recombined by the opposing forces of love and strife.
• here are the schools of the atomists, who held the view that the basic substance of the universe was tiny, indivisible atoms. For the atomists, all was either atoms or void.

Presocratic Theology

• The Presocratic philosopher Pythagoras (570–490 BCE) and his followers, known as the Pythagoreans, comprised a rational yet mystical sect of learned men. The Pythagoreans had a reputation for learning and were legendary for their knowledge of mathematics, music, and astronomy as well as for their dietary practices and other customs (Curd 2011)
• Pythagoreans’ key beliefs was the idea that the solution to the mysteries of the universe was numerical and that these numerical mysteries could be revealed through music
• Xenophanes, who was fascinated by religion, rejected the traditional accounts of the Olympian gods. He sought a rational basis of religion and was among the first to claim that the gods are actually projections of the human mind.
• he held that there is a God whose nature we cannot grasp.

Socrates and Plato

• Socrates writings are usually divided into three periods: early, middle, and late.
• question of what is the nature of virtue and whether virtue can be taught
• theory of the forms, a metaphysical doctrine that holds that every particular thing that exists participates in an immaterial form or essence that gives this thing its identity.
• The invisible realm of the forms differs fundamentally from the changing realm we experience in this world.
• rulers of states should be philosopher-kings who have the clearest understanding of forms

Aristotle

• Plato’s most famous pupil Aristotle as simply “the Philosopher.”
• natural philosophy, the fields of study that eventually gave rise to science.
• he nature of any single thing could be understood by answering four basic questions:
  • “What’s it made of?” (material cause)
  • “What shape does it have?” (formal cause)
  • “What agent gave it this form?” (efficient cause)
  • and, finally, “What is its end goal?” (final cause).
• Aristotle settles on the answer “happiness” or, more accurately, “eudaimonia.”
• empiricism, which means that they believed that all knowledge was derived from sense experience.

Epicureans

• The two principal Greek Epicureans were Epicurus himself (341–270 BCE) and his Roman disciple Lucretius (c. 99–55 BCE).
• Instead, he proposed that people could achieve fulfilling lives if they were self- sufficient and lived free from pain and fear.
• Epicureans thought that the best way to do this was to retire from society into philosophical communities far from the hustle and bustle of the crowd. Epicurus and Lucretius saw the fear of death as our most debilitating fear, and they argued that we must overcome this fear if we were going to live happy lives.

Roman Philosophy

Rhetoric and Persuasion in Politics

• Whereas the philosopher sought the truth in a dispassionate way using reason as a guide, the Sophist addressing a crowd was indifferent to truth, seeking power and influence by appealing to the audience’s emotions.

Stoicism

• The Roman Stoics further developed this idea, proposing four core virtues: courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom
• The Stoics prized rational self-control above everything else
• he Stoics were systematic philosophers whose writings focused on ethics, physics, logic, rhetoric, and grammar.

Academic Skepticism

• The Academic Skeptics opposed the Stoic claims that sense impressions could yield true knowledge, holding instead that knowledge is impossible.
• Things are more or less believable based on various criteria, and this degree of believability is the basis for judgment and action.
• The philosopher, orator, and statesman Cicero (106–43 BCE) was the most prominent of the Academic Skeptics.

Neoplatonism

Plotinus (c. 204–270) led a revival of Plato’s thought in the late Roman Empire that lasted until Emperor Justinian closed Plato’s Academy in 529

The key metaphysical problem in Neoplatonism was accounting for how a perfect God could create a universe that was manifestly imperfect

Defining Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy

• unlike Descartes, who created a new philosophy—a modern epistemology that gave rise to advancements in politics and science—Jewish philosophers have not been involved in the project of creating something from scratch.
• A Jewish philosopher—and the same could be said for a Christian or Muslim philosopher—always works with a partner, i.e., the events and facts central to the religion.
• foundational texts that claim that God created the world. This is a metaphysical starting point for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers

Early Jewish Philosophy

Philo of Alexandria

Philo identifies Plato’s forms as logos, or the thoughts of God Separate from the eternal divinity—Aristotle’s unmoved mover—logos serves as the mediator between God and the physical world Philo’s fusion of Greek and Jewish philosophy lays the foundation for early Christian doctrine.

Early Jewish Ethics and Metaphysics

the Sanhedrin, a semiautonomous Jewish legal and judicial body that had been forcibly relocated to northern Israel, began transcribing the oral traditions so as not to lose them. These writings would later become the Talmud.

Early Christian Philosophy

The Catholic Church gradually filled this political and cultural void, as it sought to make itself the legitimate heir of Roman power. Philosophy reflects this transformation in Western European society, with the uncertainty and turmoil of the period reflected in the work of philosophers of late antiquity such as Augustine and Boethius.

Augustine

scholasticism that developed later, reflected in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Confessions, he used his own life and the story of his initially reluctant turn to Christianity as an allegory for understanding God’s universe and humanity’s place within it.

• Pelagian heresy, which held that humans could achieve salvation themselves without divine grace
• Manichean heresy, which held that the universe was a battlefield between the forces of good and evil that are equal in power
• Augustine held that all of creation was good simply by virtue of the fact that God had created it

Boethius

Boethius has not lost true happiness, or the true Platonic form of happiness, as these are not found in material possessions or high stature, but in family, virtuous actions, and wisdom.

Anselm

Anselm (1033–1109) served as Bishop of Canterbury and sought to extend the reach of Christianity into the British Isles. Anselm is an early proponent of—and some say the founder of—the philosophical school of Scholasticism, which anticipates the writings of prominent Scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas. Anselm believed that a rational system of thought reflects the rationality inherent in the universe and that reason and logic can lead people to God.

Islamic Philosophy

• In 622 CE, the Prophet Muhammed led his followers out of Mecca to Medina, which signaled the birth of Islam as a political power (Adamson 2016, 20).
• prohibited the teaching of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers
• allowed in the 8th cnetury CE, which led to the flourishing of philosophy in the Islamic world

Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

the Proof of the Truthful, the argument proposed that existence requires that there be a necessary entity—an entity that cannot not exist. Ibn Sina believed that the rational order of the universe was comprehensible by our human mind Ibn Sina, similar to Locke, proposed that humans are born with a rational soul that is a blank slate five external senses associated with the animal soul (sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch) and two internal senses of the human rational soul, memory and imagination Building on Aristotle’s idea of induction conveyed in Posterior Analytics, Ibn Sina developed a scientific methodology of experimentation in his treatise “On Demonstration” within his Book of Healing

Induction involves making an inference based on observations. Ibn Sina stated that—unlike untested induction—experimentation provides the basis of certain knowledge.

Ibn Sina’s experimentation involved a search for falsification of a correlation—just like the scientific method used today, which, for example incorporates control groups (McGinnis 2003).

(1) scammony has the power to purge, (2) scammony causes purging, (3) a power to purge causes purging

Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

Like Ibn Sina, his philosophy took its inspiration from Aristotle

He thought that the Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotle had distorted the original meaning of Aristotle’s work and sought a return to Aristotle’s original works in his commentaries.

intelligent design advocates, that holds that it is not possible to explain the complexity of living beings without a creator.

Quranic scripture to show that religion required philosophical reflection

Al-Ghazali — The Incoherence of the Philosophers

Al-Ghazali sought to refute these challenges while also strengthening the theological basis for Sunnism.

Al-Ghazali’s claim that philosophical reflection must remain distinct from the Muslim faith and that mystical union with Allah or God is the only true path to religious enlightenment

Late Medieval Philosophy in Christian Europe

Bonaventure

he argued that God is the source of all knowledge but that “knowledge of the divine truth is impressed on every sou

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) is the quintessential Scholastic philosopher

Aquinas is probably best known for his five ways to demonstrate the existence of God

he writes that we can define God in five ways: as an unmoved mover, first cause, necessary being, absolute being, and grand designer.

n order to avoid an infinite regress, we must assume an unmoved mover who put all the entities into motion. Similarly, God is the first cause of everything that exists, or else we face an infinite causal regress. Everything that exists has contingent existence, save for God. God is the necessary being upon which every contingent being depends. Contingent beings have qualities that are relative to one another (bigger and smaller, etc.), which entails an absolute being to whom all these are relative. Finally, the evidence of design in the world implies a grand designer.

Jewish Philosophers in the Christian and Islamic Worlds

Moses Maimonides and Levi ben Gershom.

Moses Maimonides

Maimonides’s philosophical work begins with the question concerning the relationship between theology and philosophy.

This conflict came about, Maimonides proposed, because philosophers developed doctrines that do not follow from objective evidence and reason, whereas theologians erroneously interpreted religious texts literally

Maimonides claimed that biblical literalism was the main reason people could not get closer to God. Instead, biblical texts ought to be interpreted figuratively.

Maimonides rejects anthropomorphic religious elements, such as God in human form

we often understand God’s attributes as analogous to human attributes, we often liken God’s knowledge to human knowledge. This sort of analogical thinking is misguided, Maimonides argued.

Human knowledge is finite and quantifiable, as is human power. God’s knowledge and power are infinite and hence not the finite knowledge and power familiar to us.

Every attribute that is found in the books of the deity . . . is therefore an attribute of His action and not an attribute of His essence

Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides)

Gersonides (1288–1344) sought to demonstrate the compatibility between Jewish faith and reason. His most well-known work, Wars of the Lord, takes up the problem of the relationship between Torah or Jewish scripture on the one hand and reason on the other.

The Rise of Reason in the Early Modern Era

early modern era ;debate about when it began

Yacob, Copernicus, and others had to challenge religious authorities in arguing for a truth based on reason, mathematical logic, and scientific observation

Nicolaus Copernicus

refuting the heliocentric theory that proposed the solar system revolved around the sun

Zera Yacob

Yacob argued against the supremacy of one religion over another.

Ch 4 Review Questions — The Emergence of Classical Philosophy

4.1 Historiography and the History of Philosophy

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a presentist approach to the history of philosophy?

advantage: you have more access to different perspectives. disadvantage: misinterpretation without contextual information. example: plato's allegory of the cave had a political undertone, but will be used if read literally and without context

Note: some problems are timeless. Insights gained from the past can be used today. This is the idea of wisdom.

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a contextualist approach to the history of philosophy?

advantage: better interpretation disadvantage: I didn't quite understand the argument, except that I recall the illusion of progress when comparing history to the present, that we're more superior now, when in reality, progress is not real (?) - I don't know how to articulate this better

Note: too focused on context might miss its universal applicability

3. What approach to the history of philosophy represents a middle ground between the presentists and the contextualists?

I forgot the term, but it considers the context in the past, while also accounting that today's climate is different and being aware of directly transferring knowledge over to the present.

Note: hermeneutic, named after Hermes (who interprets the will of God for humans)

4.2 Classical Philosophy

4. What evidence suggests that many of the ideas we attribute to Greek philosophers may have had their origin in ancient Egypt or Babylonia?

• The evidence that the greeks were in close contact with egypt and babylonia. Also, the fact that famous greek philosophers like aristotle learned math from alexandria (egypt). Also, egypt and babylonia had already used mathematical principles that were later attributed to Aristotle.

Note: it's pythagoras, and pythogogas' theorem

5. How can one justify Parmenides's claim that the world is unchanging?

• He was a monist, which is different from a pluralist. To him, everything came from the same source (water). So if we're all made of water, and water is unchanging, than we're all unchanging.

Note: the idea of water came from Thales. Parmenides was purely logical. He says things either exist or don't exist. Things that exist cannot become 'nothing'. Thus there is no change and there is constant.

6. What are Aristotle's four causes, and how did he apply them?

• The material source: what is it made of
• The 'end-goal' source: its purpose
• the 'faciliator' source: who uses it
• and one more

It was said that he assigns the causes based on the purpose of it. He also argued that because of cause-and-effect, all had a pre-cause, and if you apply this many times, you will find the first uncaused cause, which is interpreted as 'God'.

• material: what's it made of
• form: give it an image
• creator: who creates it
• purpose: what's it for

4.3 Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy

7. How is Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy different from classical philosophy?

They are grounded by the religious text and such as 'builds on top' of existing religious thoughts, rather than creating from scratch (Spinoza).

Note: they balance between reason and religion. Classical philospohy: there is only reason.

8. How did Philo of Alexandria develop Plato and Aristotle's ideas to explain the creation?

Philo was a neoplatonism, meaning moving away from XYZ to reason. (Forgot what XYZ is). He introduces 'monad', the idea of the pefect source, and how we're away from it.

Note: god -> logos -> materi world

9. How did Ibn Sina's scientific approach differ from that of Aristotle and the Epicureans?

Aristotle and Epicureans were both 'materialist' or 'empiricist'. Avicenna however formalized the idea of hypothesis: run experiments to collect data, then draw a conclusion.