Marcus Weeks - Philosophy in Minutes

PHILOSOPHY IN MINUTES

MARCUS WEEKS

First published in 2014

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Copyright Quercus Editions Ltd 2014
Text by Marcus Weeks
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CONTENTS

Introduction

The word philosophy, like so much else in Western philosophy, is Greek in origin: the original word (philosophia) means love of wisdom, but while that may be a nice description of the subject, it doesnt tell us much about what it actually is.

Perhaps it is best to think of philosophy as being what philosophers do an activity, rather than a study which is to use the human capacity for rational thought to pose and attempt to answer fundamental questions about the universe and our place in it. This may be a broad definition of a very broad subject, but it is a useful way to distinguish philosophy from other ways in which we try to make sense of the world we live in. At its heart, philosophy is thinking: thinking about why things are the way they are, how best we should live our lives, how we can be certain about what we know, and what meaning, if any, there is to our existence. The same questions are asked by religion and science, but while religion gives answers based on faith or belief, philosophy uses reasoning, and where science provides description, philosophy seeks explanation.

Philosophy as an academic subject studies the ideas of the great thinkers, and it is these that will dominate this book, but it is also something that almost everybody indulges in: we all spend some of our time wondering about the same questions addressed by the great philosophers or discussing them with friends in the pub or over the dinner table. Often, we will disagree, and just as often, we will find no definite answers philosophers, too, have widely differing opinions, and frequently come up with more questions than answers. But philosophers throughout history have provided us with different ways of looking at these questions, and by understanding their thought processes we can learn how to organize our thoughts and arguments.

Branches of philosophy

Raphaels famous fresco The School of Athens depicts key figures in the history of classical philosophy.

The first philosophers that we know of appeared in the sixth century BCE in ancient Greece. As civilizations became well established and more sophisticated, thinkers began to question traditional explanations for the workings of the universe and society, and sought answers based on rational thought rather than convention or religion. The first question they addressed was What is the world made of? the branch of philosophy we now call metaphysics. From this, they also began to question how we can be sure of what we know (the branch of epistemology) and the nature of our existence (ontology). Slowly, they developed a systematic way of analysing their arguments, logic and techniques of questioning to elicit fundamental ideas. This opened up the field of moral philosophy, or ethics, which is concerned with concepts such as justice, virtue and happiness, and this in turn led to many philosophers exploring what kind of society we want to live in (giving rise to the branch known as political philosophy).

Metaphysics

For the first philosophers, the burning question was: What is everything made of? At its most basic, this is the central question of a branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. Many of the theories proposed by the ancient Greek philosophers the notions of elements, atoms and so on formed the basis of modern science, which has since provided evidence-based explanations for these fundamental questions.

Metaphysics, however, has evolved into a field of enquiry beyond the realms of science: as well as dealing with the make-up of the cosmos, it examines the nature of what exists, including such ideas as the properties of material things, the difference between mind and matter, cause and effect, and the nature of existence, being and reality (a branch of metaphysics known as ontology). Although some philosophers have challenged the validity of metaphysics in the face of scientific discovery, recent developments in areas such as quantum mechanics have renewed interest in metaphysical theories.

Epistemology

It soon became apparent to philosophers in ancient Greece that there was an underlying problem with all the questions they were attempting to answer, best summed up by the simple question: How can we know that? This, and similar questions about what sort of thing we can know (if anything), how we can acquire knowledge and the nature of knowledge itself, have preoccupied Western philosophy ever since, forming the branch of philosophy known as epistemology.

Some philosophers believe that we acquire knowledge by experience and through the evidence provided to us by our senses a view known as empiricism; others think that knowledge is primarily acquired by a process of reasoning, a view known as rationalism. The division between empiricism and rationalism helped to define various schools of philosophy until the 19th century. Other areas of epistemology, meanwhile, deal with the connection between knowledge and concepts such as truth and belief.

Ontology

Considered to be the major branch of metaphysics, ontology is the field of philosophy that examines the nature of existence and reality. It is distinct from epistemology in that it is not concerned with our knowledge of a thing, but addresses the questions of whether something actually exists, and what sort of things can be said to exist.