If you had asked me if i could write a blog post about philosophy a couple of years ago, i would say i can't and i couldn't have :) Lately, i have been trying to understand basics of philosophy and researched a little. Read something on the internet but then i realized it is a giant territory and has a big history. Therefore i searched for the simplest source to learn philosophy and found a book. Even though the book is about western philosophy, A Little History of Philosophy summarizes the major philosophers and ideas from the ancient greeks to 20th century. In this 3 part series of posts, i will try to summarize this book. Of course the field of philosophy is way larger than this blog post or this book. Due to nature of the term "idea", there are ideas that can be analyzed for hours. So this series is a summary of a summary. Keep that in mind.
The question of why is one of the most important questions in philosophy. That is why i have chosen this as the first subtitle. Why did i decide to read a book and summarize it? My purpose is not to teach you about philosophy since i have just starting learning it. Also i don't have enough knowledge. The most important thing i was wondering was the evolution of philosophy in the book. I was wondering how the perspective of the humans changed, developed or shaped throughout the known history of humankind, alongside with historical events and religions. This book helped a lot with the western philosophy but i also need to get into eastern philosophy some time :)
Also i wonder how a systematic philosophy should be formed or should be based on, in order to find the ideal. In other words, looking back to be able to reflect the future. That is why i haven written down the philosophers that i have found interesting, and explained their ideas basically. Also if you ask me, a living and thinking creature, human, can create its own philosophy. But there is a chance that your ideas might have been thought, questioned or discussed before.
So in this post, you will read my summary of a book, which is the summary of philosophy of someone else. I have written my own thoughts and deductions in italic font, so that you can distinguish the facts in the book and my thoughts. Of course i will ask "what can i add to all these" at the end of the last post. I haven't mentioned all of the philosophers in this book. I have selected the ones i thought was interesting. So let's get started.
The book starts with ancient greek philosophers and travels in time all the way to 1900s years. Back then, Socrates, Plato, Aristo didn't have much history or knowledge base before them. That is why we witness the fast evolution of philosophy in the book. Later in the timeline, other philosophers were able to add more on top of the giants like Socrates or Plato. A lot of them have pondered on concepts like existence, reality, god, happiness or ethics. Some of them are also skilled in other fields like physics, mathematics, geometry, chemistry, literature ..etc and have their work help the whole world. You may ask "what in the world is this one doing in this book?" for some of them, so be warned :)
We realize that environmental conditions or history effects the philosophical ideas while the field of philosophy is developing. But it's rare to see a philosophical base changing the history. At some point of this history in this book, christianity comes up and it causes new developments in philosophical ideas or gave rise to new perspectives. If you ask me, this is perfectly normal. IF the ability to think is coming from god, everything that comes from god would urge us to think about it :) But overthinker people might be a bit annoying. So we can start with the pioneer of annoying, Socrates.
He is a thinker who constantly asks questions, talks and bothers others. He can make people question what they claim to know and believe. He thinks a lot about reality and claims that people don't actually know the things they believe they know. The most interesting example of Socrates was this: If you knew that your friend is going to kill himself, would you steal his/her knives and other sharp tools? He asks this question to ponder on the concepts of ethics-right-wrong. Theft is not an ethical act but could it be justified in a certain situation? His view of life is full of examples like this. But we mostly know him by the written left-overs after him because he wasn't into writing much. He talks. His whole story is bigger than this. He says "Virtue is Knowledge". We can say he is the pioneer of the "know yourself" philosophy. He thinks the person must analyze himself/herself first. His death was execution due to the claims that he was neglecting the gods of athens. Therefore he is also known for his apology. He doesn't object to the decision of the execution. On the contrary, he annoys the judges.
It is an important milestone for him to be the first philosopher to propose the "know yourself" doctrine. Furthermore, i think people should always be sceptical about what they know and should always have questions like "is this right" or "who am i" or "what am i" somewhere in their mind. If one side of the philosophy coin is to be able to understand the world, the other side of this coin is to understand yourself. That is why i think his questions and perspective can be a base for our thought processes.
Plato is the student of Socrates and he primarily thinks about the concept of government, maybe due to what happened to Socrates. He supposes that the government must be a council of philosophers. He also states that everyone should not have the privilege to vote and have their say in the government. Here is an example for this statement: Think about a ship that has crew and travellers. There will be a voting to decide who will take command of the ship. But some people have no idea how a ship works. Is it logical to give all these people the privilege to vote ignorantly?
The perspective on reality of Plato is another subject. He has a cave allegory. Here is an example: Think about a person inside a cave and chained. This person never leaves the cave and he is presented a bunch of shadows on a wall for all his life. These images will determine his concept of reality. Hence, if the person leaves the cave one day, he might find the outer world a lot complicated and harsh. He may even want to get back inside the cave to those shadows. Plato is the first one to distinguish the visible (known) and invisible (unknown). This can also be mentioned as ideas and their applications or realizations. Plato is an abstract thinker like Socrates and talks a lot about abstract subjects.
His views of democracy might turn into dictatorship if interpreted the wrong way. But i don't think he is completely wrong about voting. If someone makes an ignorant decision, others will be effected by it too. Of course we can talk about democracy for hours but this is not the place. I have also mentioned the cave allegory of Plato in my post about Metaverse.
Aristo, who is the student of Plato, started thinking about tangible subjects instead of abstract ones like philosophers before. The subject he mostly thought about is happiness, what it is and how to achieve it. Because his writing was too complex, most of the things he wrote was not completely understood or even questioned. For example, he thought a piece of metal would fall down to earth faster than a piece of wood. But nobody seems to try and test this idea back in the day.
Even though the book doesn't explain Aristo deeply, he thought matter and physics a lot. Furthermore, he has created a systematic to be able to understand the concept of entity. I will say it is more complicated than i can explain here and just like the people in his times, i won't question him :) But we can say that Pyrrhon has born as a reaction to Aristo not being questioned.
We can say Pyrrhon is the first thinker who questions the concept of reality through scepticism perspective. He supposes that the reality is constructed out of our senses and therefore it can be deceptive. But the main idea here is not doubting what you hear or see. He basically says that you can't draw conclusions on the existence of an outside being or entity. He calls this, epokhe. Or maybe judgementlessness. But it is said that he exaggerated this idea. It is said that he believes that you can't know if you are going to fall if you step into a cliff. It looks like it was a miracle he was able to live. But this can be a bit of exaggeration :) We can say Pyrrhon started the scepticism phenomena.
There are other overboard ideas in this series of philosophers. Pyrrhon is the first one. I would say, questioning or accepting the reality would not change it but would effect yourself. Because you are part of that reality too. On the other hand, from my point of view, the epokhe state is very meaningful. Just because you have seen or heard or lived things and experienced them, doesn't necessarily mean that all of the later experiences will be the exact same. If we are not talking about the laws of universe, we should always have some room for scepticism or fault margin and should be judgementless. Not ignorant, but judgement free.
Epicurus has thought a lot about death to derive a meaning for live. He believes that the key to a happy life is less belongings, less people and less dependency. This is why he idealizes a life with simple achievements instead of endless tastes or pleasures. He understands the life after death as a completely different phase. For example, he states that you won't be seeing yourself after death. You will be in a completely different dimension. He didn't perceive death as a tragedy and he says that the darkness before you were born is also unknown. He says something like this: If i exists, death doesn't exists. If death exists, i don't exists.
It is interesting to try to find the meaning of life in death. But this means that you will form your physical existence on ultimate end. This approach doesn't make sense to me. Because ends usually don't imply any meanings or purpose on processes. I wonder if it is the fear of dissappearance into non-existence that gives rise to this perspective. From one point of view, he looks like a person with a monotheistic belief. Also, by saying "if i exists then death doesn't, if death exists, then i don't", i think he means existing things cannot disappear, non-existing things cannot come to existence. I think he sees death as a mere transition to another state.
The stoic era is summarized with 3 philosophers in the book. These 3 has began with this motto: Since we are minding things, let's learn how to ignore things or mind the necessary ones. So you should only focus on the things you can intervene. Because what happens to you is mostly out of your control but your reaction is in your control.
The stoic understanding is very widely accepted in the world and this is a big idea if you research a little. But the extreme version of this could result in negligence or ignorance or insensitivity. This would result in egoism or selfishness. On the contrary, stoicism is about evaluating your reactions. I have mentioned that Pyrrhon 's scepticism was judgementless rather than ignorant. That is why i would say we should keep this way of thinking. There is one more thing i recognize here. It looks like we are shift from the concepts like existence, non-existence, reality to life, death, life perspectives and doctrines.
The first philosopher in the book who asks questions on religion and god. He primarily asks "how should i live?". He might also be the first philosopher to ask "if there is a god, why is god allowing bad things happen". One of the most common answer to this question is the existence of a good and a bad god. In other words Manichaeism. But this explanation can't satisfy him and he concludes that good and bad becomes meaningful by the free will of humans. Simply put, there is humans free will while creating good and bad. He is a christian and he tries to merge religion and philosophy. Augustine says "if god is pulling all the strings available, what would be the point of living or a personality?". He thinks we are not just players playing by the script. Instead we have choices and we are distinguishing good and bad. Which is parallel to christianity.
İbn-i Sina is the eastern counterpart of Augustine. This is the first time we realize a religious belief shapes a philosophy. At this point, you would ask this: Are religions made up or derived from god or a higher level of power? If you believe it is all made up by humans, your path would be vastly different. You would end up thinking the ideas of philosophers who base their view on religion would also be made up. But if you believe in a godlike being, you can't produce philosophical ideas without involving a god. I don't think there would be an in-between place here. If there is one, it would be a softened or a weakened god. So the next philosopher, Boethius, asks if the god is created a script and we are just playing it, what is a choice?
Most of the philosophers in the book have a roller-coaster lives. Just like Socrates, Boethius is another philosopher who has been executed. Unlike Socrates, he tries to defend himself but nobody believes him. (I will probably mention this again when i talk about justice from the perspective of reality one day) He writes his book "Consolation of Philosophy" while he is waiting for the end in the prison. This book tells you how to have a philosophical attitude when things go south. He is also inspired by christianity in his time. He also concludes that we have free will and god is creating the choices and letting us to decide.
What happened to Boethius is ridiculous. We usually dive deep when we face events that we can't explain or make sense of. For example, when you are imprisoned unjustly or when someone hurts you or you lose your job. It's the time when you can't answer "why did this happen?". Boethius says consolation can be philosophy in these situations. Some people believe that god will reward you to compensate these unfortunate events. I am one of them and i think you would get some consolation from god here or afterlife. But here is the thing: Despite the fact that sometimes it could be enough for us to question the whole universe, god or ourselves, some people just don't change whatever happens to them. I mean don't you ever question things or try to figure out why or make sense of it? Is everything in life this much meaningless to you?
The book continues with Anselmus and Aquinas after Boethius by jumping 600 years ahead. During this period, islam is spreading across middle east but that part is not in the book, since it is about western philosophy. Also the beliefs like buddhism or hinduism are not included here too. That is another part of this world of philosophy which should be known. See you at the next post :)
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