Western
Philosophy (Greek philosophia, “love of wisdom”), the rational and
critical inquiry into basic principles. Philosophy is often divided into four
main branches: m
etaphysics, the investigation of ultimate reality; epistemology,
the study of the origins, validity, and limits of knowledge; ethics, the study
of the nature of morality and judgment; and aesthetics, the study of the nature
of beauty in the fine arts.
As used originally by the ancient Greeks, the
term philosophy meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Philosophy comprised all areas of speculative thought and included the arts,
sciences, and religion. As special methods and principles were developed in the
various areas of knowledge, each area acquired its own philosophical aspect,
giving rise to the philosophy of art, of science, and of religion. The term
philosophy is often used popularly to mean a set of basic values and
attitudes toward life, nature, and society—thus the phrase “philosophy of life.”
Because the lines of distinction between the various areas of knowledge are
flexible and subject to change, the definition of the term philosophy
remains a subject of controversy.
Western philosophy from Greek antiquity to the
present is surveyed in the remainder of this article. For information about
philosophical thought in Asia and the Middle East, see Chinese
Philosophy; Islam; Buddhism; Daoism (Taoism); Confucianism; Indian
Philosophy.
Western philosophy is generally considered to
have begun in ancient Greece as speculation about the underlying nature of the
physical world. In its earliest form it was indistinguishable from natural
science. The writings of the earliest philosophers no longer exist, except for a
few fragments cited by Aristotle in the 4th century bc and by other writers of later
times.
The first philosopher of historical record
was Thales, who lived in the 6th century bc in Miletus, a city on the Ionian
coast of Asia Minor. Thales, who was revered by later generations as one of the
Seven Wise Men of Greece, was interested in astronomical, physical, and
meteorological phenomena. His scientific investigations led him to speculate
that all natural phenomena are different forms of one fundamental substance,
which he believed to be water because he thought evaporation and condensation to
be universal processes. Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, maintained that the
first principle from which all things evolve is an intangible, invisible,
infinite substance that he called apeiron, “the boundless.” This
substance, he maintained, is eternal and indestructible. Out of its ceaseless
motion the more familiar substances, such as warmth, cold, earth, air, and fire,
continuously evolve, generating in turn the various objects and organisms that
make up the recognizable world.
The third great Ionian philosopher of the
6th century bc, Anaximenes,
returned to Thales’s assumption that the primary substance is something familiar
and material, but he claimed it to be air rather than water. He believed that
the changes things undergo could be explained in terms of rarefaction
(thinning) and condensation of air. Thus Anaximenes was the first philosopher to
explain differences in quality in terms of differences in size or quantity, a
method fundamental to physical science.
In general, the Ionian school made the
initial radical step from mythological to scientific explanation of natural
phenomena. It discovered the important scientific principles of the permanence
of substance, the natural evolution of the world, and the reduction of quality
to quantity.
About 530 bc at Croton (now Crotona), in southern
Italy, the philosopher Pythagoras founded a school of philosophy that was more
religious and mystical than the Ionian school. It fused the ancient mythological
view of the world with the developing interest in scientific explanation. The
system of philosophy that became known as Pythagoreanism combined ethical,
supernatural, and mathematical beliefs with many ascetic rules, such as
obedience and silence and simplicity of dress and possessions. The Pythagoreans
taught and practiced a way of life based on the belief that the soul is a
prisoner of the body, is released from the body at death, and migrates into a
succession of different kinds of animals before reincarnation into a human
being. For this reason Pythagoras taught his followers not to eat meat.
Pythagoras maintained that the highest purpose of humans should be to purify
their souls by cultivating intellectual virtues, refraining from sensual
pleasures, and practicing special religious rituals. The Pythagoreans, having
discovered the mathematical laws of musical pitch, inferred that planetary
motions produce a “music of the spheres,” and developed a “therapy through
music” to bring humanity in harmony with the celestial spheres. They identified
science with mathematics, maintaining that all things are made up of numbers and
geometrical figures. They made important contributions to mathematics, musical
theory, and astronomy.
Heraclitus of Ephesus, who was active around
500 bc, continued the search of
the Ionians for a primary substance, which he claimed to be fire. He noticed
that heat produces changes in matter, and thus anticipated the modern theory of
energy. Heraclitus maintained that all things are in a state of continuous flux,
that stability is an illusion, and that only change and the law of change, or
Logos, are real. The Logos doctrine of Heraclitus, which identified the laws of
nature with a divine mind, developed into the pantheistic theology of Stoicism.
(Pantheism is the belief that God and material substance are one, and that
divinity is present in all things.)
In the 5th century bc, Parmenides founded a school of
philosophy at Elea, a Greek colony on the Italian peninsula. Parmenides took a
position opposite from that of Heraclitus on the relation between stability and
change. Parmenides maintained that the universe, or the state of being, is an
indivisible, unchanging, spherical entity and that all reference to change or
diversity is self-contradictory. According to Parmenides, all that exists has no
beginning and has no end and is not subject to change over time. Nothing, he
claimed, can be truly asserted except that “being is.” Zeno of Elea, a disciple
of Parmenides, tried to prove the unity of being by arguing that the belief in
the reality of change, diversity, and motion leads to logical paradoxes. The
paradoxes of Zeno became famous intellectual puzzles that philosophers and
logicians of all subsequent ages have tried to solve. The concern of the
Eleatics with the problem of logical consistency laid the basis for the
development of the science of logic.
The speculation about the physical world
begun by the Ionians was continued in the 5th century bc by Empedocles and Anaxagoras, who
developed a philosophy replacing the Ionian assumption of a single primary
substance with an assumption of a plurality of such substances. Empedocles
maintained that all things are composed of four irreducible elements: air,
water, earth, and fire, which are alternately combined and separated by two
opposite forces, love and strife. By that process the world evolves from chaos
to form and back to chaos again, in an eternal cycle. Empedocles regarded the
eternal cycle as the proper object of religious worship and criticized the
popular belief in personal deities, but he failed to explain the way in which
the familiar objects of experience could develop out of elements that are
totally different from them. Anaxagoras therefore suggested that all things are
composed of very small particles, or “seeds,” which exist in infinite variety.
To explain the way in which these particles combine to form the objects that
constitute the familiar world, Anaxagoras developed a theory of cosmic
evolution. He maintained that the active principle of this evolutionary process
is a world mind that separates and combines the particles. His concept of
elemental particles led to the development of an atomic theory of matter.
It was a natural step from pluralism to
atomism, the theory that all matter is composed of tiny, indivisible particles
differing only in simple physical properties such as size, shape, and weight.
This step was taken in the 4th century bc by Leucippus and his more famous
associate Democritus, who is generally credited with the first systematic
formulation of an atomic theory of matter. The fundamental assumption of
Democritus’s atomic theory is that matter is not infinitely divisible but is
composed of numerous indivisible particles that are too small for human senses
to detect. His conception of nature was thoroughly materialistic (focused
on physical aspects of matter), explaining all natural phenomena in terms of the
number, shape, and size of atoms. He thus reduced the sensory qualities of
things, such as warmth, cold, taste, and odor, to quantitative
differences among atoms—that is, to differences measurable in amount or
size. The higher forms of existence, such as plant and animal life and even
human thought, were explained by Democritus in these purely physical terms. He
applied his theory to psychology, physiology, theory of knowledge, ethics, and
politics, thus presenting the first comprehensive statement of deterministic
materialism, a theory claiming that all aspects of existence rigidly follow,
or are determined by, physical laws.
Toward the end of the 5th century bc, a group of traveling teachers called
Sophists became famous throughout Greece. The Sophists played an important role
in developing the Greek city-states from agrarian monarchies into commercial
democracies. As Greek industry and commerce expanded, a class of newly rich,
economically powerful merchants began to wield political power. Lacking the
education of the aristocrats, they sought to prepare themselves for politics and
commerce by paying the Sophists for instruction in public speaking, legal
argument, and general culture. Although the best of the Sophists made valuable
contributions to Greek thought, the group as a whole acquired a reputation for
deceit, insincerity, and demagoguery. Thus the word sophistry has come to
signify these moral faults.
The famous maxim of Protagoras, one of the
leading Sophists, that “man is the measure of all things,” is typical of the
philosophical attitude of the Sophist school. Protagoras claimed that
individuals have the right to judge all matters for themselves. He denied the
existence of an objective (demonstrable and impartial) knowledge, arguing
instead that truth is subjective in the sense that different things are true for
different people and there is no way to prove that one person’s beliefs are
objectively correct and another’s are incorrect. Protagoras asserted that
natural science and theology are of little or no value because they have no
impact on daily life, and he concluded that ethical rules need be followed only
when it is to one’s practical advantage to do so.
Perhaps the greatest philosophical
personality in history was Socrates, who lived from 469 to 399 bc. Socrates left no written work and is
known through the writings of his students, especially those of his most famous
pupil, Plato. Socrates maintained a philosophical dialogue with his students
until he was condemned to death and took his own life. Unlike the Sophists,
Socrates refused to accept payment for his teachings, maintaining that he had no
positive knowledge to offer except the awareness of the need for more knowledge.
He concluded that, in matters of morality, it is best to seek out genuine
knowledge by exposing false pretensions. Ignorance is the only source of evil,
he argued, so it is improper to act out of ignorance or to accept moral
instruction from those who have not proven their own wisdom. Instead of relying
blindly on authority, we should unceasingly question our own beliefs and the
beliefs of others in order to seek out genuine wisdom.
Socrates taught that every person has full
knowledge of ultimate truth contained within the soul and needs only to be
spurred to conscious reflection to become aware of it. In Plato’s dialogue
Meno, for example, Socrates guides an untutored slave to the formulation
of the Pythagorean theorem, thus demonstrating that such knowledge is innate in
the soul, rather than learned from experience. The philosopher’s task, Socrates
believed, was to provoke people into thinking for themselves, rather than to
teach them anything they did not already know. His contribution to the history
of thought was not a systematic doctrine but a method of thinking and a way of
life. He stressed the need for analytical examination of the grounds of one’s
beliefs, for clear definitions of basic concepts, and for a rational and
critical approach to ethical problems.
Plato, who lived from about 428 to 347
bc, was a more systematic and
positive thinker than Socrates, but his writings, particularly the earlier
dialogues, can be regarded as a continuation and elaboration of Socratic
insights. Like Socrates, Plato regarded ethics as the highest branch of
knowledge; he stressed the intellectual basis of virtue, identifying virtue with
wisdom. This view led to the so-called Socratic paradox that, as Socrates
asserts in the Protagoras, “no man does evil voluntarily.” (Aristotle
later noticed that such a conclusion allows no place for moral responsibility.)
Plato also explored the fundamental problems of natural science, political
theory, metaphysics, theology, and theory of knowledge, and developed ideas that
became permanent elements in Western thought.
The basis of Plato’s philosophy is his
theory of Ideas, also known as the doctrine of Forms. The theory
of Ideas, which is expressed in many of his dialogues, particularly the
Republic and the Parmenides, divides existence into two realms, an
“intelligible realm” of perfect, eternal, and invisible Ideas, or Forms, and a
“sensible realm” of concrete, familiar objects. Trees, stones, human bodies, and
other objects that can be known through the senses are for Plato unreal,
shadowy, and imperfect copies of the Ideas of tree, stone, and the human body.
He was led to this apparently bizarre conclusion by his high standard of
knowledge, which required that all genuine objects of knowledge be described
without contradiction. Because all objects perceived by the senses undergo
change, an assertion made about such objects at one time will not be true at a
later time. According to Plato, these objects are therefore not completely real.
Thus, beliefs derived from experience of such objects are vague and unreliable,
whereas the principles of mathematics and philosophy, discovered by inner
meditation on the Ideas, constitute the only knowledge worthy of the name. In
the Republic, Plato described humanity as imprisoned in a cave and
mistaking shadows on the wall for reality; he regarded the philosopher as the
person who penetrates the world outside the cave of ignorance and achieves a
vision of the true reality, the realm of Ideas. Plato’s concept of the Absolute
Idea of the Good, which is the highest Form and includes all others, has been a
main source of pantheistic and mystical religious doctrines in Western
culture.
Plato’s theory of Ideas and his
rationalistic view of knowledge formed the foundation for his ethical and social
idealism. The realm of eternal Ideas provides the standards or ideals according
to which all objects and actions should be judged. The philosophical person, who
refrains from sensual pleasures and searches instead for knowledge of abstract
principles, finds in these ideals the basis for personal behavior and social
institutions. Personal virtue consists in a harmonious relation among the three
parts of the soul: reason, emotion, and desire. Social justice likewise consists
in harmony among the classes of society. The ideal state of a sound mind in a
sound body requires that the intellect control the desires and passions, as the
ideal state of society requires that the wisest individuals rule the
pleasure-seeking masses. Truth, beauty, and justice coincide in the Idea of the
Good, according to Plato; therefore, art that expresses moral values is the best
art. In his rather conservative social program, Plato supported the censorship
of art forms that he believed corrupted the young and promoted social
injustice.
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Aristotelian
Philosophy |
Aristotle, who began study at Plato’s
Academy at age 17 in 367 bc, was
the most illustrious pupil of Plato, and ranks with his teacher among the most
profound and influential thinkers of the Western world. After studying for many
years at Plato’s Academy, Aristotle became the tutor of Alexander the Great. He
later returned to Athens to found the Lyceum, a school that, like Plato’s
Academy, remained for centuries one of the great centers of learning in Greece.
In his lectures at the Lyceum, Aristotle defined the basic concepts and
principles of many of the sciences, such as logic, biology, physics, and
psychology. In founding the science of logic, he developed the theory of
deductive inference—a process for drawing conclusions from accepted premises by
means of logical reasoning. His theory is exemplified by the syllogism (a
deductive argument having two premises and a conclusion), and a set of rules for
scientific method.
In his metaphysical theory, Aristotle
criticized Plato’s theory of Forms. Aristotle argued that forms could not exist
by themselves but existed only in particular things, which are composed of both
form and matter. He understood substances as matter organized by a particular
form. Humans, for example, are composed of flesh and blood arranged to shape
arms, legs, and the other parts of the body.
Nature, for Aristotle, is an organic
system of things whose forms make it possible to arrange them into classes
comprising species and genera. Each species, he believed, has a form, purpose,
and mode of development in terms of which it can be defined. The aim of science
is to define the essential forms, purposes, and modes of development of all
species and to arrange them in their natural order in accordance with their
complexities of form, the main levels being the inanimate, the vegetative, the
animal, and the rational. The soul, for Aristotle, is the form of the body, and
humans, whose rational soul is a higher form than the souls of other terrestrial
species, are the highest species of perishable things. The heavenly bodies,
composed of an imperishable substance, or ether, and moved eternally in perfect
circular motion by God, are still higher in the order of nature. This
hierarchical classification of nature was adopted by many Christian, Jewish, and
Muslim theologians in the Middle Ages as a view of nature consistent with their
religious beliefs.
Aristotle’s political and ethical
philosophy similarly developed out of a critical examination of Plato’s
principles. The standards of personal and social behavior, according to
Aristotle, must be found in the scientific study of the natural tendencies of
individuals and societies rather than in a heavenly or abstract realm of pure
forms. Less insistent therefore than Plato on a rigorous conformity to absolute
principles, Aristotle regarded ethical rules as practical guides to a happy and
well-rounded life. His emphasis on happiness, as the active fulfillment of
natural capacities, expressed the attitude toward life held by cultivated Greeks
of his time. In political theory, Aristotle agreed with Plato that a monarchy
ruled by a wise king would be the ideal political structure, but he also
recognized that societies differ in their needs and traditions and believed that
a limited democracy is usually the best compromise. In his theory of knowledge,
Aristotle rejected the Platonic doctrine that knowledge is innate and insisted
that it can be acquired only by generalization from experience. He interpreted
art as a means of pleasure and intellectual enlightenment rather than an
instrument of moral education. His analysis of Greek tragedy has served as a
model of literary criticism (see Criticism, Literary).
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HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN
PHILOSOPHY |
From the 4th century bc to the rise of Christian philosophy
in the 4th century ad,
Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism, and Neoplatonism were the main philosophical
schools in the Western world. Interest in natural science declined steadily
during this period, and these schools concerned themselves mainly with ethics
and religion. This was also a period of intense intercultural contact, and
Western philosophers were influenced by ideas from Buddhism in India,
Zoroastrianism in Persia, and Judaism in Palestine.
In 306 bc Epicurus founded a philosophical
school in Athens. Because his followers met in the garden of his home they
became known as philosophers of the garden. Epicurus adopted the atomistic
physics of Democritus, but he allowed for an element of chance in the physical
world by assuming that the atoms sometimes swerve in unpredictable ways, thus
providing a physical basis for a belief in free will. The overall aim of
Epicurus’s philosophy was to promote happiness by removing the fear of death. He
maintained that natural science is important only if it can be applied in making
practical decisions that help humans achieve the maximum amount of pleasure,
which he identified with gentle motion and the absence of pain. The teachings of
Epicurus are preserved mainly in the philosophical poem De Rerum Natura
(On the Nature of Things) written by the Roman poet Lucretius in the 1st
century bc. Lucretius contributed
greatly to the popularity of Epicureanism in Rome.
The Stoic school, founded in Athens about
310 bc by Zeno of Citium,
developed out of the earlier movement of the Cynics, who rejected social
institutions and material (worldly) values. Stoicism became the most
influential school of the Greco-Roman world, producing such remarkable writers
and personalities as the Greek slave and philosopher Epictetus in the 1st
century ad and the 2nd-century
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was noted for his wisdom and nobility of
character. The Stoics taught that one can achieve freedom and tranquility only
by becoming insensitive to material comforts and external fortune and by
dedicating oneself to a life of virtue and wisdom. They followed Heraclitus in
believing the primary substance to be fire and in worshiping the Logos, which
they identified with the energy, law, reason, and providence (divine
guidance) found throughout nature. The Stoics argued that nature was a system
designed by the divinities and believed that humans should strive to live in
accordance with nature. The Stoic doctrine that each person is part of God and
that all people form a universal family helped break down national, social, and
racial barriers and prepare the way for the spread of Christianity. The Stoic
doctrine of natural law, which makes human nature the standard for evaluating
laws and social institutions, had an important influence on Roman and later
Western law.
The school of Skepticism, which continued
the Sophist criticisms of objective knowledge, dominated Plato’s Academy in the
3rd century bc. The Skeptics
discovered, as had Zeno of Elea, that logic is a powerful critical device,
capable of destroying any positive philosophical view, and they used it
skillfully. Their fundamental assumption was that humanity cannot attain
knowledge or wisdom concerning reality, and they therefore challenged the claims
of scientists and philosophers to investigate the nature of reality. Like
Socrates, the Skeptics insisted that wisdom consisted in awareness of the extent
of one’s own ignorance. The Skeptics concluded that the way to happiness lies in
a complete suspension of judgment. They believed that suspending judgment about
the things of which one has no true knowledge creates tranquility and
fulfillment. As an extreme example of this attitude, it is said that Pyrrho, one
of the most noted Skeptics, refused to change direction when approaching the
edge of a cliff and had to be diverted by his students to save his life.
During the 1st century ad the Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher
Philo of Alexandria combined Greek philosophy, particularly Platonic and
Pythagorean ideas, with Judaism in a comprehensive system that anticipated
Neoplatonism and Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mysticism. Philo insisted that
the nature of God so far transcended (surpassed) human understanding and
experience as to be indescribable; he described the natural world as a series of
stages of descent from God, terminating in matter as the source of evil. He
advocated a religious state, or theocracy, and was one of the first to interpret
the Old Testament for the Gentiles.
Neoplatonism, one of the most influential
philosophical and religious schools and an important rival of Christianity, was
founded in the 3rd century ad by
Ammonius Saccus and his more famous disciple Plotinus. Plotinus based his ideas
on the mystical and poetic writings of Plato, the Pythagoreans, and Philo. The
main function of philosophy, for him, is to prepare individuals for the
experience of ecstasy, in which they become one with God. God, or the One, is
beyond rational understanding and is the source of all reality. The universe
emanates from the One by a mysterious process of overflowing of divine energy in
successive levels. The highest levels form a trinity of the One; the Logos,
which contains the Platonic Forms; and the World Soul, which gives rise to human
souls and natural forces. The farther things emanate from the One, according to
Plotinus, the more imperfect and evil they are and the closer they approach the
limit of pure matter. The highest goal of life is to purify oneself of
dependence on bodily comforts and, through philosophical meditation, to prepare
oneself for an ecstatic reunion with the One. Neoplatonism exerted a strong
influence on medieval thought.
During the decline of Greco-Roman
civilization, Western philosophers turned their attention from the scientific
investigation of nature and the search for worldly happiness to the problem of
salvation in another and better world. By the 3rd century ad, Christianity had spread to the more
educated classes of the Roman Empire. The religious teachings of the Gospels
were combined by the Fathers of the Church with many of the philosophical
concepts of the Greek and Roman schools. Of particular importance were the First
Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Ephesus in 431, which drew upon
metaphysical ideas of Aristotle and Plotinus to establish important Christian
doctrines about the divinity of Jesus and the nature of the Trinity.
The process of reconciling the Greek
emphasis on reason with the emphasis on religious emotion in the teachings of
Christ and the apostles found eloquent expression in the writings of Saint
Augustine during the late 4th and early 5th centuries. He developed a system of
thought that, through subsequent amendments and elaborations, eventually became
the authoritative doctrine of Christianity. Largely as a result of his
influence, Christian thought was Platonic in spirit until the 13th century, when
Aristotelian philosophy became dominant. Augustine argued that religious faith
and philosophical understanding are complementary rather than opposed and that
one must “believe in order to understand and understand in order to believe.”
Like the Neoplatonists, he considered the soul a higher form of existence than
the body and taught that knowledge consists in the contemplation of Platonic
ideas as abstract notions apart from sensory experience and anything physical or
material.
The Platonic philosophy was combined with
the Christian concept of a personal God who created the world and
predestined (determined in advance) its course, and with the doctrine of
the fall of humanity, requiring the divine incarnation in Christ. Augustine
attempted to provide rational understanding of the relation between divine
predestination and human freedom, the existence of evil in a world created by a
perfect and all-powerful God, and the nature of the Trinity. Late in his life
Augustine came to a pessimistic view about original sin, grace, and
predestination: the ultimate fates of humans, he decided, are predetermined by
God in the sense that some people are granted divine grace to enter heaven and
others are not, and human actions and choices cannot explain the fates of
individuals. This view was influential throughout the Middle Ages and became
even more important during the Reformation of the 16th century when it inspired
the doctrine of predestination put forth by Protestant theologian John Calvin.
Augustine conceived of history as a
dramatic struggle between the good in humanity, as expressed in loyalty to the
“city of God,” or community of saints, and the evil in humanity, as embodied in
the earthly city with its material values. His view of human life was
pessimistic, asserting that happiness is impossible in the world of the living,
where even with good fortune, which is rare, awareness of approaching death
would mar any tendency toward satisfaction. He believed further that without the
religious virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which require divine grace to be
attained, a person cannot develop the natural virtues of courage, justice,
temperance, and wisdom. His analyses of time, memory, and inner religious
experience have been a source of inspiration for metaphysical and mystical
thought.
The only major contribution to Western
philosophy in the three centuries following the death of Augustine in ad 430 was made by the 6th-century Roman
statesman Boethius, who revived interest in Greek and Roman philosophy,
particularly Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. In the 9th century the Irish
monk John Erigena developed a pantheistic interpretation of Christianity,
identifying the divine Trinity with the One, Logos, and World Soul of
Neoplatonism and maintaining that both faith and reason are necessary to achieve
the ecstatic union with God.
Even more significant for the development
of Western philosophy was the early 11th-century Muslim philosopher Avicenna.
His work modifying Aristotelian metaphysics introduced a distinction important
to later philosophy between essence (the fundamental qualities that make
a thing what it is—the treeness of a tree, for example) and existence
(being, or living reality). He also demonstrated how it is possible to combine
the biblical view of God with Aristotle’s philosophical system. Avicenna’s
writings on logic, mathematics, physics, and medicine remained influential for
centuries.
In the 11th century a revival of
philosophical thought began as a result of the increasing contact between
different parts of the Western world and the general reawakening of cultural
interests that culminated in the Renaissance. The works of Plato, Aristotle, and
other Greek thinkers were translated by Arab scholars and brought to the
attention of philosophers in Western Europe. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian
philosophers interpreted and clarified these writings in an effort to reconcile
philosophy with religious faith and to provide rational grounds for their
religious beliefs. Their labors established the foundations of
Scholasticism.
Scholastic thought was less interested in
discovering new facts and principles than in demonstrating the truth of existing
beliefs. Its method was therefore dialectical (based upon logical
argument), and its intense concern with the logic of argument led to important
developments in logic as well as theology. The Scholastic philosopher Saint
Anselm of Canterbury adopted Augustine’s view of the complementary relation
between faith and reason and combined Platonism with Christian theology.
Supporting the Platonic theory of Ideas, Anselm argued in favor of the separate
existence of universals, or common properties of things—the properties Avicenna
had called essences. He thus established the position of logical realism—an
assertion that universals and other ideas exist independently of our awareness
of them—on one of the most vigorously disputed issues of medieval
philosophy.
The contrary view, known as nominalism,
was formulated by the Scholastic philosopher Roscelin, who maintained that only
individual, solid objects exist and that the universals, forms, and ideas, under
which particular things are classified, constitute mere sounds or names, rather
than intangible substances. When he argued that the Trinity must consist of
three separate beings, his views were deemed heretical and he was forced to
recant in 1092. The French Scholastic theologian Peter Abelard, whose tragic
love affair with Héloïse in the 12th century is one of the most memorable
romantic stories in medieval history, proposed a compromise between realism and
nominalism known as conceptualism, according to which universals exist in
particular things as properties and outside of things as concepts in the mind.
Abelard maintained that revealed religion—religion based on divine revelation,
or the word of God—must be justified by reason. He developed an ethics based on
personal conscience that anticipated Protestant thought.
The Spanish-Arab jurist and physician
Averroës, the most noted Muslim philosopher of the Middle Ages, made
Aristotelian science and philosophy a powerful influence on medieval thought
with his lucid and scholarly commentaries on the works of Aristotle. He earned
himself the title “the Commentator” among the many Scholastics who came to
regard Aristotle as “the Philosopher.” Averroës attempted to overcome the
contradictions between Aristotelian philosophy and revealed religion by
distinguishing between two separate systems of truth, a scientific body of
truths based on reason and a religious body of truths based on revelation. His
view that reason takes precedence over religion led to his exile in 1195.
Averroës’s so-called double-truth doctrine influenced many Muslim, Jewish, and
Christian philosophers; it was rejected, however, by many others, and became an
important issue in medieval philosophy.
The Jewish rabbi and physician Moses
Maimonides, one of the greatest figures in Judaic thought, followed his
contemporary Averroës in uniting Aristotelian science with religion but rejected
the view that both of two conflicting systems of ideas can be true. In his
Guide for the Perplexed (1190?) Maimonides attempted to provide a
rational explanation of Judaic doctrine and defended religious beliefs (such as
the belief in the creation of the world) that conflicted with Aristotelian
science only when he was convinced that decisive evidence was lacking on either
side.
Abelard, Averroës, and Maimonides were
each accused of blasphemy because their views conflicted with religious beliefs
of the time. The 13th century, however, saw a series of philosophers who would
come to be worshiped as saints. The Italian Scholastic philosopher Saint
Bonaventure combined Platonic and Aristotelian principles and introduced the
concept of substantial form, or nonmaterial substance, to account for the
immortality of the soul. Bonaventure’s view tended toward pantheistic mysticism
in making the aim of philosophy the ecstatic union with God.
The 13th-century German Scholastic
philosopher Saint Albertus Magnus was the first Christian philosopher to endorse
and interpret the entire system of Aristotelian thought. He studied and admired
the writings of the Muslim and Jewish Aristotelians and wrote commentaries on
Aristotle in which he attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s thought with Christian
teachings. He also took a great interest in the natural science of his day. The
13th-century English monk Roger Bacon, one of the first Scholastics to take an
interest in experimental science, realized that a great deal remained to be
learned about nature. He criticized the deductive method of his contemporaries
and their reliance on past authority, and called for a new method of inquiry
based on controlled observation (see Deduction).
The most important medieval philosopher
was Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk who was born in Italy in 1225 and
later studied under Albertus Magnus in Germany. Aquinas combined Aristotelian
science and Augustinian theology into a comprehensive system of thought that
later became the authoritative philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote
on every known subject in philosophy and science, and his major works, Summa
Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles, in which he presents a
persuasive and systematic structure of ideas, still constitute a powerful
influence on Western thought. His writings reflect the renewed interest of his
time in reason, nature, and worldly happiness, together with its religious faith
and concern for salvation.
Aquinas made many important investigations
into the philosophy of religion, including an extremely influential study of the
attributes of God, such as omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, and benevolence.
He also provided a new account of the relationship between faith and reason,
arguing against the Averroists that the truths of faith and the truths of reason
cannot conflict but rather apply to different realms. The truths of natural
science and philosophy are discovered by reasoning from facts of experience,
whereas the tenets of revealed religion, the doctrine of the Trinity, the
creation of the world, and other articles of Christian dogma are beyond rational
comprehension, although not inconsistent with reason, and must be accepted on
faith. The metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, and politics of Aquinas
were derived mainly from Aristotle, but he added the Augustinian virtues of
faith, hope, and charity and the goal of eternal salvation through grace to
Aristotle’s naturalistic ethics with its goal of worldly happiness.
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Medieval Philosophy After
Aquinas |
The most important critics of Thomistic
philosophy (adherence to the theories of Aquinas) were the 13th-century Scottish
theologian John Duns Scotus and 14th-century English Scholastic William of
Ockham. Duns Scotus developed a subtle and highly technical system of logic and
metaphysics, but because of the fanaticism of his followers the name Duns later
ironically became a symbol of stupidity in the English word dunce. Scotus
rejected the attempt of Aquinas to reconcile rational philosophy with revealed
religion. He maintained, in a modified version of the double-truth doctrine of
Averroës, that all religious beliefs are matters of faith, except for the belief
in the existence of God, which he regarded as logically provable. Against the
view of Aquinas that God acts in accordance with his rational nature, Scotus
argued that the divine will is prior to the divine intellect and creates, rather
than follows, the laws of nature and morality, thus implying a stronger notion
of free will than that of Aquinas. On the issue of universals, Scotus developed
a new compromise between realism and nominalism, accounting for the difference
between individual objects and the forms that these objects exemplify as a
logical rather than a real distinction.
William of Ockham formulated the most
radically nominalistic criticism of the Scholastic belief in intangible,
invisible things such as forms, essences, and universals. He maintained that
such abstract entities are merely references of words to other words rather than
to actual things. His famous rule, known as Ockham’s razor—which said that one
should not assume the existence of more things than are logically
necessary—became a fundamental principle of modern science and philosophy.
In the 15th and 16th centuries a revival
of scientific interest in nature was accompanied by a tendency toward
pantheistic mysticism—that is, finding God in all things. The Roman Catholic
prelate Nicholas of Cusa anticipated the work of the Polish astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus in his suggestion that the Earth moved around the Sun, thus
displacing humanity from the center of the universe; he also conceived of the
universe as infinite and identical with God. The Italian philosopher Giordano
Bruno, who similarly identified the universe with God, developed the
philosophical implications of the Copernican theory. Bruno’s philosophy
influenced subsequent intellectual forces that led to the rise of modern science
and to the Reformation.
The word modern in philosophy
originally meant “new,” distinguishing a new historic era both from antiquity
and from the intervening Middle Ages. Many things had occurred in the
intellectual, religious, political, and social life of Europe to justify the
belief of 16th- and 17th-century thinkers in the genuinely new character of
their times. The explorations of the world; the Protestant Reformation, with its
emphasis on individual faith; the rise of commercial urban society; and the
dramatic appearance during the Renaissance of new ideas in all areas of culture
stimulated the development of a new philosophical worldview.
The medieval view of the world as a
hierarchical order of beings created and governed by God was supplanted by the
mechanistic picture of the world as a vast machine, the parts of which move in
accordance with strict physical laws, without purpose or will. In this view of
the universe, known as Mechanism, science took precedence over spirituality, and
the surrounding physical world that we experience and observe received as much,
if not more, attention than the world to come. The aim of human life was no
longer conceived as preparation for salvation in the next world, but rather as
the satisfaction of people’s natural desires. Political institutions and ethical
principles ceased to be regarded as reflections of divine command and came to be
seen as practical devices created by humans.
The human mind itself seemed an inexhaustible
reality, on a par with the physical reality of matter. Modern philosophers had
the task of defining more clearly the essence of mind and of matter, and of
reasoning about the relation between the two. Individuals ought to see for
themselves, they believed, and study the “book of Nature,” and in every case
search for the truth with their own reason.
Since the 15th century modern philosophy has
been marked by a continuing interaction between systems of thought based on a
mechanistic, materialistic interpretation of the universe and those founded on a
belief in human thought as the only ultimate reality. This interaction has
reflected the increasing effect of scientific discovery and political change on
philosophical speculation.
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Mechanism and
Materialism |
In the new philosophical climate,
experience and reason became the sole standards of truth. The first great
spokesman for the new philosophy was the English philosopher and statesman
Francis Bacon, who denounced reliance on authority and verbal argument and
criticized Aristotelian logic as useless for the discovery of new laws. Bacon
called for a new scientific method based on reasoned generalization from careful
observation and experiment. He was the first to formulate rules for this new
method of drawing conclusions, now known as inductive inference (see
Induction).
The work of Italian physicist and
astronomer Galileo was of even greater importance in the development of a new
worldview. Galileo brought attention to the importance of applying mathematics
to the formulation of scientific laws. This he accomplished by creating the
science of mechanics, which applied the principles of geometry to the motions of
bodies. The success of mechanics in discovering reliable and useful laws of
nature suggested to Galileo and to later scientists that all nature is designed
in accordance with mechanical laws.
These great changes of the 15th and 16th
centuries brought about two intellectual crises that profoundly affected Western
civilization. First, the decline of Aristotelian science called into question
the methods and foundations of the sciences. This decline came about for a
number of reasons including the inability of Aristotelian principles to explain
new observations in astronomy. Second, new attitudes toward religion undermined
religious authority and gave agnostic and atheistic ideas a chance to be heard.
During the 17th century French
mathematician, physicist, and philosopher René Descartes attempted to resolve
both crises. He followed Bacon and Galileo in criticizing existing methods and
beliefs, but whereas Bacon had argued for an inductive method based on observed
facts, Descartes made mathematics the model for all science. Descartes
championed the truth contained in the “clear and distinct ideas” of reason
itself. The advance toward knowledge was from one such truth to another, as in
mathematical reasoning. Descartes believed that by following his rationalist
method, one could establish first principles (fundamental underlying
truths) for all knowledge—about man, the world, and even God.
Descartes resolved to reconstruct all
human knowledge on an absolutely certain foundation by refusing to accept any
belief, even the belief in his own existence, until he could prove it to be
necessarily true. In his so-called dream argument, he argued that our inability
to prove with certainty when we are awake and when we are dreaming makes most of
our knowledge uncertain. Ultimately he concluded that the first thing of whose
existence one can be certain is oneself as a thinking being. This conclusion
forms the basis of his well-known argument, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think,
therefore I am”). He also argued that, in pure thought, one has a clear
conception of God and can demonstrate that God exists. Descartes argued that
secure knowledge of the reality of God allowed him to have his earlier doubts
about knowledge and science.
Despite his mechanistic outlook,
Descartes accepted the traditional religious doctrine of the immortality of the
soul and maintained that mind and body are two distinct substances, thus
exempting mind from the mechanistic laws of nature and providing for freedom of
the will. His fundamental separation of mind and body, known as dualism, raised
the problem of explaining how two such different substances as mind and body can
affect each other, a problem he was unable to solve that has remained a concern
of philosophy ever since. Descartes’s thought launched an era of speculation in
metaphysics as philosophers made a determined effort to overcome dualism—the
belief in the irreconcilable difference between mind and matter—and obtain
unity. The separation of mind and matter is also known as Cartesian dualism
after Descartes.
The 17th–century English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes, in his effort to attain unity, asserted that matter is the only
real substance. He constructed a comprehensive system of metaphysics that
provided a solution to the mind-body problem by reducing mind to the internal
motions of the body. He also argued that there is no contradiction between human
freedom and causal determinism—the view that every act is determined by a prior
cause. Both, according to Hobbes, work in accordance with the mechanical laws
that govern the universe.
In his ethical theory Hobbes derived the
rules of human behavior from the law of self-preservation and justified egoistic
action as the natural human tendency. In his political theory he maintained that
government and social justice are artificial creations based on social contract
(voluntary agreement between people and their government) and maintained by
force. In his most famous work, Leviathan (1651), Hobbes justified
political authority on the basis that self-interested people who existed in a
terrifying “state of nature”—that is, without a ruler—would seek to protect
themselves by forming a political commonwealth that had rules and regulations.
He concluded that absolute monarchy is the most effective means of preserving
peace.
Whereas Hobbes tried to oppose Cartesian
dualism by reducing mind to matter, the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch
Spinoza attempted to reduce matter to divine spiritual substance. He constructed
a remarkably precise and rigorous system of philosophy that offered new
solutions to the mind-body problem and to the conflict between religion and
science. Like Descartes, Spinoza maintained that the entire structure of nature
can be deduced from a few basic definitions and axioms, on the model of
Euclidean geometry. However, Spinoza believed that Descartes’s theory of two
substances created an insoluble problem of the way in which mind and body
interact. He concluded that the ultimate substance is God and that God,
substance, and nature are identical. Thus he supported the pantheistic view that
all things are aspects or modes of God (see Pantheism).
Spinoza’s solution to the mind-body
problem explained the apparent interaction of mind and body by regarding them as
two forms of the same substance, which exactly parallel each other, thus seeming
to affect each other but not really doing so. Spinoza’s ethics, like the ethics
of Hobbes, was based on a materialistic psychology according to which
individuals are motivated only by self-interest. But in contrast to Hobbes,
Spinoza concluded that rational self-interest coincides with the interest of
others.
English philosopher John Locke responded
to the challenge of Cartesian dualism by supporting a commonsense view that the
corporeal (bodily or material) and the spiritual are simply two parts of
nature that remain always present in human experience. He made no attempt to
rigorously define these parts of nature or to construct a detailed system of
metaphysics that attempted to explain them; Locke believed that such
philosophical aims were impossible to carry out and thus pointless. Against the
rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza, who believed in the ability to achieve
knowledge through reasoning and logical deduction, Locke continued the
empiricist tradition begun by Bacon and embraced by Hobbes. The empiricists
believed that knowledge came from observation and sense perceptions rather than
from reason alone.
In 1690 Locke gave empiricism a
systematic framework with the publication of his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. Of particular importance was Locke’s redirection of
philosophy away from the study of the physical world and toward the study of the
human mind. In so doing he made epistemology, the study of the nature of
knowledge, the principal concern of philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In his own theory of the mind Locke attempted to reduce all ideas to simple
elements of experience, but he distinguished sensation and reflection as sources
of experience, sensation providing the material for knowledge of the external
world, and reflection the material for knowledge of the mind.
Locke greatly influenced the skepticism
of later British thinkers, such as George Berkeley and David Hume, by
recognizing the vagueness of the concepts of metaphysics and by pointing out
that inferences about the world outside the mind cannot be proved with
certainty. His ethical and political writings had an equally great influence on
subsequent thought. During the late 18th century the founders of the modern
school of utilitarianism, which makes happiness for the largest possible number
of people the standard of right and wrong, drew heavily on the writings of
Locke. His defense of constitutional government, religious tolerance, and
natural human rights influenced the development of liberal thought during the
late 18th century in France and the United States as well as in Great
Britain.
| B |
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Idealism and
Skepticism |
Efforts to resolve the dualism of mind and
matter, a problem first raised by Descartes, continued to engage philosophers
during the 17th and 18th centuries. The division between science and religious
belief also occupied them. There, the aim was to preserve the essentials of
faith in God while at the same time defending the right to think freely. One
view called Deism saw God as the cause of the great mechanism of the world, a
view more in harmony with science than with traditional religion. Natural
science at this time was striding ahead, relying on sense perception as well as
reason, and thereby discovering the universal laws of nature and physics. Such
empirical (observation-based) knowledge appeared to be more certain and
valuable than philosophical knowledge based upon reason alone.
After Locke philosophers became more
skeptical about achieving knowledge that they could be certain was true. Some
thinkers who despaired of finding a resolution to dualism embraced
skepticism, the doctrine that true knowledge, other than what we
experience through the senses, is impossible. Others turned to increasingly
radical theories of being and knowledge. Among them was German philosopher
Immanuel Kant, probably the most influential of all because he set Western
philosophy on a new path that it still follows today. Kant’s view that knowledge
of the world is dependent upon certain innate categories or ideas in the human
mind is known as idealism.
German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz, like Spinoza before him, worked in the rationalist
(reason-based) tradition to produce a brilliant solution to the problems raised
by dualism. Leibniz, a mathematician and statesman as well as a philosopher,
developed a remarkably subtle and original system of philosophy that combined
the mathematical and physical discoveries of his time with the organic and
religious conceptions of nature found in ancient and medieval thought. Leibniz
viewed the world as an infinite number of infinitely small units of force,
called monads, each of which is a closed world but mirrors all the other
monads through its activity, which is perception. All the monads are spiritual
entities, but they can combine to form material bodies. Leibniz conceived of God
as the Monad of Monads, which creates all other monads and predestines their
development.
Leibniz’s theory of the predestination of
monads, also called the theory of preestablished harmony, entailed a radical
rejection of causality—the view that every effect must have a cause. According
to Leibniz, monads do not interact with each other at all, and the appearance of
mechanical causality in the natural world is unreal, akin to an illusion.
Likewise, there is no room in the universe for free will: Even though we enjoy
the illusion of acting freely, all human actions are predetermined by God.
Despite these gloomy conclusions, Leibniz’s philosophy was profoundly optimistic
because he argued that ours was the best of all possible worlds. He based this
belief on considerations about the nature of truth and necessity. French writer
Voltaire mocked this viewpoint in Candide (1759), a satirical novel that
examines the woes heaped on the world in the name of God.
In the 18th century Irish philosopher and
Anglican churchman George Berkeley, like Spinoza before him, rejected both
Cartesian dualism and the assertion by Hobbes that only matter is real. Berkeley
maintained that spirit is substance, and that only spiritual substance is real.
Extending Locke’s doubts about knowledge of an external world, outside the mind,
Berkeley argued that no evidence exists for the existence of such a world,
because the only things that we can observe are our own sensations, and these
are in the mind. The very notion of matter, he maintained, is incoherent and
impossible. To exist, he claimed, means to be perceived (“esse est
percipi”), and in order for things to exist when we are not observing them,
they must continue to be perceived by God. By claiming that sensory phenomena
are the only objects of human knowledge, Berkeley established the view known as
phenomenalism, a theory of perception that suggests that matter can be
analyzed in terms of sensations.
Whereas Berkeley argued against
materialism by denying the existence of matter, 18th-century Scottish
philosopher David Hume questioned the existence of the mind itself. Hume’s
skeptical philosophy also cast doubt on the idea of cause as understood in all
previous philosophies and seriously disputed earlier arguments for the existence
of God. His most important philosophical work, A Treatise of Human
Nature, was published in three volumes in 1739 and 1740.
All metaphysical assertions about things
that cannot be directly perceived are equally meaningless, Hume claimed, and
should be “committed to the flames.” In his analyses of causality and induction,
Hume revealed that there is no logical justification for believing that any two
events which occur together are connected by cause and effect or for making any
inference from past to future. Hume noted that we depend on our past experience
whenever we form beliefs about anything that we do not directly perceive and
whenever we make predictions about the future. According to the empiricist
doctrine of Bacon, Locke, and Berkeley, we can do this because experience
teaches us what particular things belong together as causes and effects. Hume,
however, argued that this attempt to learn from experience is not at all
rational, thus calling into question the reliability of our memories, our
reasoning processes, and our ability to learn from past experiences or to make
even the smallest predictions about the future—for example, that the sun will
rise tomorrow. Though extreme, Hume’s skepticism about philosophical empiricism
raised problems about the possibility of knowledge that contemporary
philosophers still struggle to resolve.
German philosopher Immanuel Kant was
among the first to appreciate Hume’s skepticism, and in response he published
the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), widely considered the greatest single
work in modern philosophy. In this work Kant made a thorough and systematic
analysis of the conditions for knowledge. As an example of genuine knowledge, he
had in mind the contributions to physics of English scientist Isaac Newton. In
the case of Newtonian physics, reason seemed to have done an effective job of
understanding the data supplied by the senses and to have succeeded in
postulating universal and necessary laws of nature, such as the law of
gravitation and the laws of motion. Kant proposed to explain how such knowledge
is possible, thereby providing a complete reply to Hume’s skepticism and
answering many of the problems that had plagued Western philosophers since the
time of Descartes.
Kant started by making a fresh analysis
of the elements of knowledge, asking for the first time an extremely basic
question, “How is our experience possible in the first place?” Kant’s
predecessors had taken experience for granted. Thus Descartes agreed that we
seem to have sensory knowledge of the world but asked whether this knowledge was
true or the result of a dream. Similarly, Hume’s skepticism about causation
arose when he concluded that we do not encounter causality in our ordinary
experience of the world and that any inferences about it, beyond immediate
experience, were questionable. Kant’s answer to the skepticism of Descartes and
Hume involved certain categories, such as space, time, substance, and causality,
which he maintained are essential to our thinking and to our experience of
phenomena in the world. These categories he called transcendental. All objects
of our knowledge, he concluded, must conform to the human mind’s essential ways
of perceiving and understanding—ways that involve the transcendental
categories—if they are to be knowable at all. Kant maintained that he had
developed a revolutionary hypothesis about knowledge and reality that he
believed to be as significant for the future of philosophy as the hypothesis of
Copernicus—that the planets orbit the Sun—had been for science.
Kant’s claim that causality, substance,
space, and time are forms imposed by the mind gave support to the idealism of
Leibniz and Berkeley. Kant, however, made his view a more critical form of
idealism by granting the empiricist claim that things-in-themselves—that is,
things as they exist outside human experience—are unknowable. Kant therefore
limited knowledge to the “phenomenal world” of experience, maintaining that
metaphysical beliefs about the soul, the cosmos, and God (the “noumenal world”
transcending human experience) are matters of faith rather than of scientific
knowledge.
In his ethical writings Kant held that
moral principles are categorical imperatives, absolute commands of reason
that permit no exceptions and are not related to pleasure or practical benefit.
Kant argued that human beings should act as members of an ideal “kingdom of
ends” in which every person is treated as an end in himself or herself, and
never as a means to someone else’s ends. In addition, everyone should govern
their conduct as if their actions were to be made law—a law that applies equally
to all without exception. Kant thereby postulated a freedom of action based on
moral order and equality. His moral philosophy contributed to modern political
ideas about freedom and democracy. Kant was a leading figure of the movement for
reason and liberty against tradition and authority, and in his religious
teachings he emphasized individual conscience and represented God primarily as a
moral ideal.
Kant’s writings constituted a high point
of the Enlightenment, a fertile intellectual and cultural period that helped
stimulate the social changes that produced the French Revolution (1789-1799).
Other leading thinkers of this movement included Voltaire, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, and Denis Diderot. Voltaire, developing the tradition of Deism begun
by Locke and other liberal thinkers, reduced religious beliefs to those that can
be justified by rational inference from the study of nature. Rousseau criticized
civilization as a corruption of humanity’s nature and developed Hobbes’s
doctrine that the state is based on a social contract with its citizens and
represents the popular will. Diderot published a 35-volume work known as the
Encyclopédie to which many scientists and philosophers contributed.
Diderot and his Encyclopedists, as they were known, associated the progress and
the happiness of humankind with science and knowledge, whereas Rousseau
criticized such ideas along with the very notion of civilization.
| C |
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19th-Century
Philosophy |
Philosophers of the 19th century generally
developed their views with reference to the work of Kant. In Germany, Kant’s
influence led subsequent philosophers to explore idealism and ethical
voluntarism, a philosophical tradition that places a strong emphasis on human
will. Whereas philosophers before Kant had explored the objects of knowledge,
German philosophers who followed Kant on the path of idealism turned to the
subject of knowledge—known variously as the ego, the I, the mind, and human
consciousness.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte transformed Kant’s
critical idealism into absolute idealism by eliminating Kant’s
“things-in-themselves” (external reality) and making the self, or the ego, the
ultimate reality. Fichte maintained that the world is created by an absolute
ego, which is conscious first of itself and only later of non-self, or the
otherness of the world. The human will, a partial manifestation of self, gives
human beings freedom to act. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling moved still
further toward absolute idealism by construing objects or things as the works of
the imagination and Nature as an all-embracing being, spiritual in character.
Schelling became the leading philosopher of the movement known as romanticism,
which in contrast to the Enlightenment placed its faith in feeling and the
creative imagination rather than in reason. The romantic view of the divinity of
nature influenced the American transcendentalist movement, led by poet and
essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The most powerful philosophical mind of
the 19th century was the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose
system of absolute idealism, although influenced greatly by Kant and Schelling,
was based on a new conception of logic and philosophical method. Hegel believed
that absolute truth, or reality, exists and that the human mind can know it.
This is so because “whatever is real is rational,” according to Hegel. He
conceived the subject matter of philosophy to be reality as a whole, a reality
that he referred to as Absolute Spirit, or cosmic reason. The world of human
experience, whether subjective or objective, he viewed as the manifestation of
Absolute Spirit.
Philosophy’s task, according to Hegel,
is to chart the development of Absolute Spirit from abstract, undifferentiated
being into more and more concrete reality. Hegel believed this development
occurs by a dialectical process—that is, a process through which conflicting
ideas become resolved—which consists of a series of stages that occur in
triads (sets of three). Each triad involves (1) an initial state (or
thesis), which might be an idea or a movement; (2) its opposite state (or
antithesis); and (3) a higher state, or synthesis, that combines elements from
the two opposites into a new and superior arrangement. The synthesis then
becomes the thesis of the next triad in an unending progress toward the ideal.
Hegel argued that this dialectical logic
applies to all knowledge, including science and history. His discussion of
history was particularly influential, especially because it supported the
political and social philosophy later developed by Karl Marx. According to Hegel
human history demonstrates the dialectical development of Absolute Spirit, which
can be observed by studying conflicts and wars and the rise and fall of
civilizations. He maintained that political states are real entities, the
manifestation of Spirit in the world, and participants of history. In every
epoch a particular state is the bearer or agent of spiritual advance, and it
thereby gathers to itself power. Because the dialectic means opposition and
conflict, war must be expected, and it has value as evidence of the health of a
state.
Hegel’s philosophy stimulated interest in
history by representing it as a deeper penetration into reality than the natural
sciences provide. His conception of the national state as the highest social
embodiment of the Absolute Spirit was for some time believed to be a main source
of 20th-century totalitarianism, although Hegel himself advocated a large
measure of individual freedom.
German philosophers of the 19th century
who came after Hegel rejected Hegel’s faith in reason and progress. Arthur
Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea (1819) argued that existence
is fundamentally irrational and an expression of a blind, meaningless force—the
human will, which encompasses the will to live, the will to reproduce, and so
forth. Will, however, entails continuous striving and results in disappointment
and suffering. Schopenhauer offered two avenues of escape from irrational will:
through the contemplation of art, which enables one to endure the tragedy of
life, and through the renunciation of will and of the striving for happiness.
Schopenhauer was one of the first Western
philosophers to be influenced by Indian philosophy, which was then appearing in
Europe in translation. The influence of Buddhist thought, for example, appears
in his sense that the world is full of evil and suffering which can be overcome
only through resignation and renunciation. Schopenhauer’s own view that an
irrational force lies at the center of life subsequently influenced
voluntaristic psychology, a school of psychology that emphasized the causes for
our choices; sociological studies that examine nonrational factors affecting
people; and cultural attitudes that play down the value of reason in life.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
continued the revolt against reason initiated by the romantic movement, but he
scornfully repudiated Schopenhauer’s negative, resigned attitude. Instead,
Nietzsche affirmed the value of vitality, strength, and the supremacy of an
existence that is purely egoistic. He also scorned the Christian and democratic
ideas of the equal worth of human beings, maintaining that it is up to a few
aristocrats to refuse to subordinate themselves to a state or cause, and thereby
achieve self-realization and greatness. For Nietzsche the power to be strong was
the greatest value in life. Although Nietzsche valued geniuses over dictators,
his beliefs helped bolster the ideas of the National Socialists (Nazis) who
gained control of Germany in the 1930s (see National Socialism).
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
developed another distinctive philosophy of life. Kierkegaard’s ideas, which
were not appreciated until a century after their appearance, were literary,
religious, and self-revealing rather than systematic in character. They stressed
the importance of experiences that the intellectual mind judges as absurd,
including the experiences of angst (“anxiety”) and “fear and trembling.”
(The latter phrase is the title of one of his books.) Such experiences, in his
view, lead first to despair and eventually to religious faith. Kierkegaard
discussed this process in terms of the religious person who is commanded by God
to sacrifice his own most cherished treasures, as in the example of Abraham and
the sacrifice of Isaac in the Old Testament. Although Abraham cannot understand
this absurd request from God, he decides to obey his commitment to God. Through
such terrible experiences, Kierkegaard claimed, we learn that humanity’s
relationship to God is absolute and all else relative. What is most significant
in a person’s life, Kierkegaard concluded, are the decisions made in such
ethical crises.
Kierkegaard’s ideas came to have
importance in the 20th century. The concepts of existence, dread, the absurd,
and decision were influential in Germany, France, and English-speaking
countries. The condition of humankind during an epoch with two world wars gave
these ideas a new relevance; the philosophers who developed them founded the
movement now known as existentialism.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, both
economists as well as philosophers, dominated philosophy in England during the
19th century. Bentham originated the ethical principle of utilitarianism—that
what is useful is good—and Mill developed and refined the doctrine. The
utilitarians argued for an ethical principle that would be superior to the
self-interest of the individual, just as Kant had established a rational
principle of moral law superior to individual desire, by which people’s conduct
ought to be governed. The utilitarians based their principle on the theory that
everyone desires his or her own happiness, that people have to find that
happiness in society, and that consequently we all have an interest in the
general happiness. They took the position that whatever produces the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people is what is most useful for all. This
is the meaning of the principle of utility, or benefit, from which
utilitarianism takes its name.
In evaluating happiness, Bentham believed
it possible to measure quantitatively the pleasures resulting from each
action—the pleasures of oneself and the pleasure of others—and thus to decide in
any instance what promoted the greatest amount of happiness. Mill partly
abandoned that idea and maintained that one should consider the quality, or
type, of pleasure as well as the quantity. Mill applied utilitarian principles
to social justice, and the principle of utility influenced legislation that
brought about social and economic reforms in Great Britain.
The most influential achievement in
political philosophy during the 19th century was the development of Marxism
(see Political Theory). German political philosopher Karl Marx, who
created the system known as Marxism, and his collaborator Friedrich Engels
accepted the basic form of Hegel’s dialectic of history, but they made crucial
modifications. For them history was a matter of the development not of Absolute
Spirit but of the material conditions governing humanity’s economic existence.
In their view, later known as historical materialism, the history of society is
a history of class struggle in which the ruling class uses religion and other
traditions and institutions, as well as its economic power, to reinforce its
domination over the working classes. Human culture, according to Marx, is
dependent on economic (material) conditions and serves economic ends. Religion,
he concluded, is “the opiate of the masses” that serves the political end of
suppressing mass revolution. Marxism is a theory of revolution, of history, of
economics, and of politics, and it served as the ideology for Communism.
Although he was a philosopher Marx had disdain for merely theoretical
intellectual work, stating, “The philosophers have only interpreted the
world in different ways; the point is to change it.”
Marx’s view of human history is both
profoundly pessimistic and profoundly optimistic. Its pessimism lies in his
belief that history reflects the oppression of the many by a small minority, who
thereby secure economic and political power. It is optimistic on two counts.
First, Marx believed that technical innovations bring about new ways of meeting
human needs and make it increasingly possible for people to satisfy their
deepest wants and to develop and perfect their individual capacities. Second,
Marx claimed to have proved that the long history of oppression would soon end
when the masses rise up and usher in a revolution that will create a classless
utopian society. The first idea enabled Marx to bring attention in the modern
era to Aristotle’s idealistic conception of human flourishing, which called upon
people to develop and manifest many different abilities, including intellectual,
artistic, and physical skills. The second idea motivated much radical activity
during the 20th century, including the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the
Communist victory in China in 1949, and the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
Toward the end of the 19th century,
pragmatism became the most vital school of thought within American philosophy.
It continued the empiricist tradition of grounding knowledge on experience and
stressing the inductive procedures of experimental science. The pragmatists
believed in the progress of human knowledge and that ideas are tools whose
validity and significance are established as people adapt and test them in
physical and social settings. For pragmatists, ideas demonstrate their value
insofar as they enrich human experience.
The three most important American
philosophers of the pragmatic movement were Charles Sanders Peirce, who founded
pragmatism and gave the movement its name; psychologist and religious thinker
William James; and psychologist and educator John Dewey. Their work continued
into the 20th century. Peirce formulated a pragmatic theory of knowledge and
advocated “laboratory philosophy” whereby researchers investigate and clarify
the kinds of knowledge that can be gained either through everyday experience or
through scientific inquiry. By limiting the realm of meaningful questions to
those that concern possible experience, Peirce hoped to introduce scientific
logic into metaphysics. He advanced a theory of truth that defined truth as that
which an ideal community of researchers could agree upon. Peirce concluded that
many traditional philosophical concepts have no practical use and thus are
meaningless.
Whereas Peirce sought to determine the
meaning of terms and ideas and thereby make metaphysics a precise and pragmatic
discipline, James and Dewey applied the principles of pragmatism in developing a
comprehensive philosophy. Like Peirce, James maintained that the meaning of
ideas lies in their practical consequences. If an idea has no practical uses,
then it is meaningless. James focused on the power of true ideas to offer
individuals, rather than scientific researchers, practical guidance in handling
problems that arise in everyday experience. Truth, according to James, resides
in those experiences that enable people to successfully navigate the challenges
and demands of the world.
Dewey emphasized the cooperative process
in which human beings, as intelligent and social beings, create and revise ideas
about the world. One such process was scientific inquiry; another was
participation in just and democratic social and political communities. Dewey
concluded that science and democracy are the only sure guides for intelligent
behavior. His progressive social philosophy communicates a vision of a world in
which science, education, and social reform demonstrate the benefits of
pragmatic ideas for human life.
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20th-Century
Philosophy |
A diversity of methods, interests, and
styles of argumentation marked 20th-century philosophy and proved both fruitful
and destructive. This diversity, and the divisions that arose, proved fruitful
as new topics arose and new ways developed for discussing these topics
philosophically. It proved destructive, however, as philosophers wrote
increasingly for a narrow audience and often ignored or derided philosophical
styles different from their own.
In the decades following World War II
(1939-1945), significant divisions arose between so-called continental
philosophers, who worked on the European continent, and philosophers in the
United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Deconstruction and other
postmodern theories followed existentialism and phenomenology on the continent,
whereas the Americans, Britons, and Australians worked in the analytic
tradition. In the final decades of the century, the divisions between
continental and analytic philosophy eased as interest moved away from the old
disputes, and more and more philosophers became interested in exploring common
roots of the two traditions in the history of Western philosophy.
German philosopher Edmund Husserl
founded the 20th-century movement of phenomenology. Husserl said that
philosophers must attempt to describe and analyze phenomena as they occur,
setting aside such considerations as whether the phenomena are objective or
subjective. He emphasized careful observation and interpretation of our
conscious perceptions of things. First, we must attend to what we are conscious
of, observing our perceptions far more carefully and intensely than we do in
everyday life. Second, we must reflect upon these observations and interpret
them without preconceptions. Husserl maintained that we arrive at meaning and
the key to solving philosophical problems through a logical analysis of the data
that emerges from such a “phenomenological study” of the contents of the mind.
French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
and German philosopher Martin Heidegger further developed phenomenology and its
emphasis on pure description. For Merleau-Ponty, however, all perceptual
experience carries with it a reference to something beyond and independent of
our perception of it. Heidegger, too, sought to return to what he claimed had
become unfamiliar—Sein (German for “being” or “existence”).
Heidegger was also a key figure in the
20th-century movement known as existentialism. Existentialists focused on the
personal: on individual existence, subjectivity, and choice. Two central
existential doctrines claim that there is no fixed human essence structuring our
lives and that our choices are never determined by anything except our own free
will. In making choices in life, we determine our individual selves. These
doctrines imply that human beings have enormous freedom. Existentialists
maintained that the human ability to make free choices is so great that it
overwhelms many individuals, who experience a “flight from freedom” by falsely
treating religion, science, or other external factors as constraints and limits
on individual freedom. In addition to Heidegger the main existentialist thinkers
include French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and her companion, the
philosopher, novelist, and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre.
Analytic philosophy rose to prominence
in the United Kingdom after the end of World War I (1914-1918). This movement
heralded a linguistic shift according to which the philosophical study of
language became the central task of philosophy. Many analytic philosophers
concluded that a number of issues prominent in the history of philosophy are
unimportant or even meaningless because they arose when philosophers
misunderstood or misused language. Analytic philosophy is based upon the
assumption that the careful analysis of language and concepts can clear up these
problems and confusions. The key figures at the beginning of the movement were
British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell and Austrian-born British
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Russell, strongly influenced by the
precision of mathematics, wished to construct a logical language that would
reflect the nature of the world. He argued that what he called the “surface
grammar” of everyday language masks a true “logical grammar,” knowledge of which
is essential for understanding the true meaning of statements. Russell and many
philosophers influenced by him asserted that complex statements can be reduced
to simple components; if their logic does not permit such reduction, then the
statements are meaningless.
Russell’s view was central to the
development of the so-called Vienna Circle, a group of analytic philosophers
active from about 1920 to 1950, who were led by Rudolf Carnap and Moritz
Schlick. The members of the Vienna Circle were scientists or mathematicians as
well as philosophers, and they originated the movement known as logical
positivism. They believed that the clarification of meaning is the task of
philosophy, and that all meaningful statements are either scientifically
verifiable statements about the world or else logical tautologies
(self-evident propositions). According to the logical positivists the discovery
of new facts belongs to science, and metaphysics—the construction of
comprehensive truths about reality—is a pretentious pseudo-science.
Wittgenstein, who studied with Russell
at Cambridge University, was perhaps the most important analytic philosopher.
Like Russell, he distrusted ordinary language. In his Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus (1921) Wittgenstein stated that “philosophy aims at the
logical clarification of thoughts.” Philosophy’s function, he believed, is to
monitor the use of language by reducing complex statements to their elementary
components and by rebuffing all attempts to misuse words in creating the
illusion of philosophical depth. “What can be said at all can be said clearly,
and what we cannot talk about we must consign to silence.” The Tractatus
made important contributions to the philosophy of language, logic, and the
philosophy of mathematics. The account of language in Wittgenstein’s later work
was much richer and more sophisticated than that in the Tractatus.
However, Wittgenstein never abandoned his radical early views on the nature of
philosophy.
As the analytic movement developed,
different ideas emerged about how philosophical analysis should proceed. A group
called constructivists was inspired by Russell, the early writings of
Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. The solutions to philosophical
problems, the constructivists argued, lie in using tools of logic to create more
precise technical vocabularies. Two leading representatives of this movement
were the American philosophers Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine. Quine saw
language and logic as themselves embodying theories about reality, rather than
consisting of theory-neutral tools of analysis. By contrast, the descriptivists
maintained that philosophical analysis should focus on the careful study of the
everyday usage of crucial terms. This group was inspired by the 20th-century
British philosophers G. E. Moore, Gilbert Ryle, and John Austin.
Although the radical formulations of
analytic philosophy from the first half of the 20th century no longer hold sway,
analytic philosophy continues to flourish. Many contemporary philosophers have
adopted ideas, methods, or values from the movement, including the Americans
Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy also has
widely influenced the training and practices of philosophers today. On the one
hand, its influence has led to a renewed commitment to clarity, concision,
incisiveness, and depth in philosophical thinking and writing. On the other
hand, it has also caused many philosophers to embrace difficult and obscure
technical language to such an extent that their ideas are accessible to only a
small community of specialists.
Inaccessible ideas and impenetrable
prose also characterize many postmodern philosophical texts, although the
difficulties in this case are often intentional and reflect specific postmodern
claims about the nature of language and meaning. The literal meaning of
postmodernism is “after modernism,” and in many ways postmodernism
constitutes an attack on modernist claims about the existence of truth and
value—claims that stem from the European Enlightenment of the 18th century. In
disputing past assumptions postmodernists generally display a preoccupation with
the inadequacy of language as a mode of communication. Among the major
postmodern theorists are French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel
Foucault, and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Derrida originated the philosophical
method of deconstruction, a system of analysis that assumes a text has no
single, fixed meaning, both because of the inadequacy of language to express the
author’s original intention and because a reader’s understanding of the text is
culturally conditioned—that is, influenced by the culture in which the reader
lives. Thus texts have many possible legitimate interpretations brought about by
the “play” of language. Derrida stresses the philosophical importance of pun,
metaphor, ambiguity, and other playful aspects of language traditionally
disregarded in philosophy. His method of deconstruction involves close and
careful readings of central texts of Western philosophy that bring to light some
of the conflicting forces within the text and that highlight the devices the
text uses to claim legitimacy and truth for itself, many of which may lie beyond
the intention of its author. Although some of Derrida’s ideas about language
resemble views held by the analytic philosophers Wittgenstein, Quine, and
Davidson, many philosophers schooled in the analytic tradition have dismissed
Derrida’s work as destructive of philosophy.
Foucault created a searing critique of
the ideals of the Enlightenment, such as reason and truth. Like Derrida,
Foucault used close readings of historical texts to challenge assumptions,
demonstrating how ideas about human nature and society, which we assume to be
permanent truths, have changed over time. From an array of historical texts
Foucault created “philosophical anthropologies” that reveal the evolution of
concepts such as reason, madness, responsibility, punishment, and power. By
examining the origins of these concepts, he maintained, we see that attitudes
and assumptions that today seem natural or even inevitable are historical
phenomena dependent upon time and place. He further claimed that the historical
development of these ideas demonstrates that seemingly humane and liberal
Enlightenment ideals are in reality coercive and destructive.
Lacan agreed with Derrida and Foucault
about the need to overturn crucial cultural and philosophical assumptions, but
he arrived at this conclusion by a different method altogether. Influenced by
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund
Freud, Lacan claimed that the unconscious portion of the mind operates with
structures and rules analogous to those of a language. He used this claim to
criticize both psychoanalytic theory and philosophy. On the one hand, he
believed that concepts from linguistics could clarify and correct Freud’s
picture of the mind and provide the field of psychoanalysis with greater
philosophical depth. On the other hand, he maintained that applying
psychoanalytic methods and theories to linguistics would radically revise
traditional philosophical views of language and reason.
Feminist philosophers also challenge
basic principles of traditional Western philosophy, investigating how
philosophical inquiry would change if women conducted it and if it incorporated
women’s experiences as well as their viewpoints. In interpreting the history of
Western philosophy, feminists study texts by male philosophers for their
depiction of women, masculine values, and biases toward men. Feminist
philosophers also write about women’s experiences of subjectivity, their
relationship to their bodies, and feminist concepts of language, knowledge, and
nature. They explore connections between feminism in philosophy and other
emerging feminist disciplines, such as feminist legal theory, feminist theology,
and ecological feminism. Central to feminist philosophy is the concept of the
oppression of women who live in patriarchal (male-controlled) societies;
much of the work of feminist philosophers has gone into understanding patriarchy
and developing alternatives to it. Prominent feminist philosophers include
French postmodern philosophers Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous and American
philosopher of law Catharine MacKinnon.
| D6 |
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Environmental
Philosophy |
Environmental philosophy is concerned
with issues that arise when human beings interact with the environment. For
instance, is a transformation of society necessary for the survival of living
organisms and the environment? How is the exploitation of nature related to the
subjugation of women and other oppressed humans? How can the philosophical study
of the environment guide and inspire effective environmental activism. Most
environmental philosophers seek to apply philosophical methods and ideas in
collaboration with academics and activists working in the environmental
sciences, theology, and feminism.
Two figures who played a prominent role
in founding environmental philosophy are Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess and
American naturalist, conservationist, and philosopher Aldo Leopold. Naess
founded the so-called deep-ecology movement in the 1970s. The movement
distinguishes between shallow ecology, which views nature in terms of its value
to human beings, and deep ecology, which values nature independently of its
usefulness to humanity. Leopold, in his influential book A Sand County
Almanac (1949), called for the extension of ethical concern to include all
life on Earth, not just human life. Other contemporary environmental
philosophers include American ecological theologian Thomas Berry and American
ecological feminist Karen Warren.
| D7 |
|
Contemporary Political
Philosophy |
Political philosophy dates back to Plato
and Aristotle who discussed the nature of the ideal government and the ideal
society. It continued in theories on individual liberty and political
institutions put forth by Hobbes, Mill, and Rousseau. Political philosophy today
features a lively dialogue between defenders of the liberal position and
defenders of the communitarian position. The former place the highest value on
individual liberties; whereas the latter argue that extreme individual freedom
undermines shared community values.
According to liberalism the chief
goods (benefits) of government and society are personal and political
freedoms, such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of
conscience (belief). Many liberal theorists view the freedom to make
moral choices as the most important freedom; they argue that political and
social systems should be organized to allow individuals the freedom to pursue
their own ideas about “the good life.” Communitarians respond that granting
individuals this extreme freedom of choice ultimately limits human experience by
undermining shared communal values. They claim that by ignoring the importance
of community, liberalism disregards humanity’s social nature.
Prominent communitarians include
Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and American philosopher Michael Sandel.
Important liberal theorists include British philosopher Isaiah Berlin and
American philosophers Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls. Rawls is the author of A
Theory of Justice (1971), considered to be the most significant work of
political philosophy in the 20th century. In this book, he presents the idea of
“justice as fairness,” a principle that promotes the equal distribution of the
benefits and burdens of society among individuals. Any advantages that society
confers should benefit those who are most disadvantaged, Rawls believes. From
this and other principles he has developed theories about political and social
relations within liberal democracies and between those democracies and certain
illiberal states. Rawls’s ideas remain a major inspiration for much current work
in political philosophy.
Although most contemporary philosophy is
highly technical and inaccessible to nonspecialists, some contemporary
philosophers concern themselves with practical questions and strive to influence
today’s culture. Practitioners of feminist philosophy, environmental philosophy,
and some areas of contemporary political philosophy seek to use the tools of
philosophy to resolve current issues directly related to peoples’ lives. Nowhere
have philosophers more enthusiastically embraced practical relevance than in
contemporary applied ethics, a field that has developed since the 1960s. Most of
the questions applied ethicists raise concern the general theme “How should we
live and die?”—a question central to ancient Greek philosophy.
Separate areas of specialization, such
as biomedical ethics and business ethics, have emerged within applied ethics.
Biomedical ethics deals with questions arising from the life sciences and human
health care, and has two subspecialties: bioethics and medical ethics.
Bioethicists study the ethical implications of advances in genetics and
biotechnology, such as genetic testing, genetic privacy, cloning, and new
reproductive technologies. For example, they consider the consequences for
individuals who learn they have inherited a fatal genetic disease, or the
consequences of technology that enables parents to choose the sex of a baby.
Bioethicists then offer advice to legislators, researchers, and physicians
active in these areas. Specialists in medical ethics offer advice to physicians,
other health care personnel, and patients on a wide variety of issues, including
abortion, euthanasia, fertility treatments, medical confidentiality, and the
allocation of scarce medical resources. Much of the work in medical ethics
directly affects the everyday practice of medicine, and most nursing students
and medical students now take courses in this field.
Business ethicists bring ethical
theories and techniques to bear on moral issues that arise in business. For
example, what are the responsibilities of corporations to their employees, their
customers, their shareholders, and the environment? Most business students take
courses in business ethics, and many large corporations regularly consult with
specialists in the field. Business ethicists also address larger topics, such as
the ethics of globalization and the moral justification of various economic
systems, such as capitalism and socialism.
Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian painter, sculptor,
architect, and poet whose artistic accomplishments exerted a tremendous
influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent European art. Michelangelo
considered the male nude to be the foremost subject in art, and he explored its
range of movement and expression in every medium. Even his architecture has a
human aspect to it, in which a door, window, or support may refer to the face or
body, or the position of architectural elements may suggest muscular tension.
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