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Philosophy has rarely been an open-ended inquiry. In medieval times it was a servant of theology. Today it is the practice of elucidating the prejudices of middle-class academics. In its earliest forms it aimed to teach tranquillity.
The idea of a supernatural realm, which is acquired from monotheism, did not exist either. The Egyptians inherited animist traditions in which the world was full of spirits. In these traditions humans were not superior to other animals. There were not two wholly distinct orders of things – one of insentient matter and another of immaterial souls – but one that animal and human souls shared in common. Many of our most fundamental and seemingly self-evident categories of thought were absent.
