Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

by Philip Stokes

Although philosophy no longer uses Latin as its first language, many of Cicero’s philosophical terms are still in common employment today. Latin phrases such as a priori (meaning ‘prior to experience’), a posteriori (derived from experience), a fortiori (even more so), reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity), ceteris paribus (a caveat meaning ‘other things being equal’), are not just in common philosophical usage but also, in some cases, set the agenda for the philosophical debate. For example, the great debate between empiricists and rationalists (see Locke and Leibniz, respectively) is primarily a debate over whether there can be such a thing as a priori knowledge – as the rationalists maintain – or whether all knowledge is a posteriori, in other words, derived from experience. In both logic and philosophical logic, Latin terms remain in current and widespread use.

A Jew both by birth and upbringing, he is principally remembered for his philosophical commentaries on the scriptures.

For Philo, man is created by God, first as a form in the mind – or Logos – of God, and next as a corporeal being possessed of an incorporeal soul. So constituted, man is ‘a border-dweller, situated on the borderline between the divine and the non-divine’. Philo claims that the corporeal body belongs to the world, the mind to the divine.

Moreover, Philo is also heavily influenced by the Stoics and, in particular, is keen to emulate their use of allegory to provide a philosophical exegesis of the scriptures. The scriptures should not be read literally, says Philo, but as containing hidden truths, waiting to be found by those with the patience and will to discover them.

Origen

But the danger for Philo, as more than one commentator has noted, is that the influence Greek philosophy exerts on him is so strong that he does not appear to realize that his own religious foundations are in danger of being swept away. No one would claim Philo’s thought has been completely overwhelmed by its Greek influence, but it is surely compromised by it.

First, there are his essays on Stoic philosophy, then the sermonising Epistles, and finally his plays, often depicting graphic violence. His many plays include The Trojan Women, Oedipus, Medea, The Mad Hercules, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, Agamemnonand Thyestes.

As with the other Stoics, the heart of his philosophy was the belief in a simple life devoted to virtue and reason.

However, his extant works, particularly the one hundred and twenty-four essays of his Epistles, but also to a degree his essays, contain the same tone, being often persuasive entreaties rather than expositions of technical philosophy.

Seneca’s stoicism is less a theoretical philosophy than a guide to living.

Like the Epicureans, the Stoics thought that a proper understanding of the world would transform our daily lives. Unlike the Epicureans, the Stoics did not pursue a hedonistic lifestyle. Rather, Seneca insists that the only good is virtue. Doing the right thing is of paramount importance and one should show an attitude of indifference to all else.

Altruism

‘The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts’

He is known for his only work the Meditations or Writings to Himself, written, according to critics, in the midst of the Parthian war when he might have better used his time directing the army.

The Stoic philosophy was primarily concerned with living in accordance with both one’s own nature and universal Nature, perhaps best understood in the sense meant by Taoist philosophers of the East. Simple

Hence the Stoic conclusion that the only infallible good is virtue, which includes the usual list of Greco-Roman excellences: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.

Founded by Pyrrho around the 3rd century BC, the Pyrrhonian Sceptics expounded a formidable counter-philosophy to contemporary schools of thought, principally the Aristotelians, the Epicureans and the Stoics.

The philosophy of the Sceptics is at once simple and far-reaching. It is simple in that it turns on one principal claim, which is that one cannot assert any proposition with any better justification than one can assert its contradictory.

Thus Pyrrho’s philosophy is said to be summed up in the dictum ‘No more this than that’, meaning that one is no more justified to assert a proposition ‘X’ than its negation, ‘not X’.

Rather, the intention is to bring about a kind of therapeutic apostasy, which Sextus clearly shows will lead to tranquillity and

peace of mind, the ultimate ambition of sceptical philosophy.

Sextus offers a battery of sceptical arguments to back his claim that for any proposition its contradictory can be asserted with equal justification. Clearly, the same object can look very different from a distance than it does from nearby, but why should we think the closer inspection more accurate than the other? Sometimes it is only by standing back that something can be seen clearly. To someone who claims snow is white, it could be pointed out that snow is only frozen water, and that water is colourless. Of course, we can give explanations as to why snow ‘appears’ white and water ‘appears’ colourless, but to do so is only to favour one way of looking at things over another. Someone could equally give an alternative and incompatible explanation to account for the same appearances. Because of the logical gap b...

But the sceptic, by suspending all judgement of what is good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, neither pursues nor avoids anything with any passion or intensity. He remains indifferent to the vicissitudes of life, and hence achieves tranquillity.

Plotinus’ fame lies in his reworking and development of the philosophy of Plato, work that would give rise to what later became known as ‘Neoplatonism’, although his philosophy is also influenced by Aristotle and the Roman Stoics.

His many works were collected and edited by his student Porphyry under the title Enneads.

His philosophy is aimed at helping the student to return, in union or communion, to the One or ultimate Being by means of contemplation.

As in Christian theology, Plotinus believed in a tripartite of divinities, these being the One, the Intellect and the Soul. However, unlike the Christian trinity, these are not on an equal footing but are rather successive ‘stages’ or emanations of contemplative being.

The One, which Plotinus – following Plato – sometimes referred to as ‘the Good’, is beyond description. Language can only point to the One, and even the many names of the One are not its true names.Ra...

The Intellect is like the light of the Sun, it illuminates the One, and is the means by which the One contemplates itself. The Intellect is the source and ground of the archetypes, or Platonic Forms (see Plato), of material things. Thought and the objects of thought are united in the Intellect, there is no division between subject and object, perceiver and perceived.

The next level of reality is Soul, which corresponds to rational or discursive thinking. There is a higher and lower division, between the higher and inward-facing Soul, looking towards the divine by means of the Intellect, and the lower and outward-facing Soul. Plotinus calls this lower part Nature.

Time is only created by the inadequate ability of Nature to contemplate the divine.

According to Plotinus, it comes about in the lower order of material existence because Soul, unlike the Intellect, is unable to contemplate the Forms immediately, but instead must contemplate them as fragmented objects perceived in moments of succession.

At the heart of Augustine’s philosophy is the belief that only through faith can wisdom be attained.

He saw both philosophy and religion as quests for the same thing, namely truth, but with the former inferior to the latter in this pursuit.

Although reason alone could attain to some truths, Augustine maintained that rational thought was the servant of faith.

He argued, following the Epistle of St Paul, that all men are born in sin. Redemption is only possible by the grace of God regardless of our actions on Earth. Adam, in taking the apple had condemned himself and all of mankind to damnation. Our only salvation lies in repentance, but this does not guarantee that we will be chosen to go to heaven and not to hell.

At the beginning of his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein famously called this common-place conception ‘the Augustinian picture of language’ Much of the rest of the Investigations is a successful repudiation of the Augustinian conception of language.

For it was while imprisoned and awaiting execution that the Roman senator Boethius wrote his De Consolatione Philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), the most widely read and influential book, after the Bible, up to and including the Middle Ages.

Boethius, faced with execution, seeks to find solace for his misfortunes. Despite being a Christian and a hero of the Catholic Church, unlike Augustine, Boethius appeals to reason rather than faith for his consolation. In the book he sets out and defines some of the perennial problems of philosophy, including the problem of evil, free will and determinism, the nature of justice and of virtue. Boethius, primarily motivated by Plato in his philosophical views, finds that, ‘The substance of God consisteth in nothing else but goodness’. In other words, for Boethius, God and ‘Goodness’ are synonymous.

Christian scholar.

Boethius’ solution is Aristotelian in essence, conceiving the divine providence as rather like a spectator of the Universe rather than an intervening agent.

free will

determinism.

Scholastics

Now remembered as the father of the Scholastic tradition, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 until his death, Anselm is of philosophical interest mainly for his logical arguments in two major works, the Monologion (meaning ‘Soliloquy’) and the Proslogion (Discourse), both of which gave various arguments intended to prove the existence of God.

Anselm’s most famous response to this challenge was to become famously known as ‘the ontological argument for the existence of God’ which has been called by some one of the most hotly debated issues in the history of philosophy.

In response, Anselm claimed that the quality of perfection is an attribute that only applies to God, and therefore his ontological argument cannot be used to prove the existence of imaginary islands or anything else.

Kant’s principle complaint was that the concept of God as a perfect being does not entail that God exists since ‘existence’ is not a perfection.

The concept of a perfect being that exists is no more or less great than the concept of a perfect being that does not exist. Philosophers agree that the problem with Anselm’s argument revolves around the fact that we surely cannot ascertain whether something exists or not merely by analysing the meaning of a word or concept. However,

Chief amongst Aquinas’ many achievements are the ‘Five Ways’, or proofs of the existence of God, from his Summa Theologica. The Five Ways are the clearest and most succinct attempt to prove the existence of God by means of logical argument.