History of Philosophy, Term Paper Example

Any account of the history of philosophy infers a claim regarding a certain essence of philosophy; namely, such a history presupposes the commonality of procedures and thematic concerns that make a particular form of thought philosophical. The discernment of this history entails a kind of meta-reflection as to what philosophy itself is, such that the recounting of the history of philosophy is the grouping together of a diverse number of thinkers according to the conclusions of this analysis. Yet this commonality is by no means clearly delineated, as Deleuze and Guattari note: “the bibliography on the nature of philosophy itself is very limited.” (1994, p. 1) Despite this unclear nature that is the pre-condition for the establishment of any possible history, the simple reflection on etymology is in this regard certainly beneficial. Philosophy as derived from the Greek is a love of wisdom. It is therefore not wisdom itself. The sophists, those opponents of philosophy, are those who are etymologically the embodiment of wisdom: but these sophists are viewed from the perspective of the philosophers as demonstrating a pseudo-wisdom. Rather, philosophy as a love of wisdom is a certain relationship towards wisdom, as opposed to the pronouncement of wisdom itself, which is the work of demagogues and false prophets. The history of philosophy in this regard is the history of the relationship towards wisdom.

In line with historical accounts, one can detect a singular beginning for this history: it is located in Ancient Greek thought. Following etymology, what is at stake in Ancient Greece is precisely an attempt to establish a relationship to wisdom, an approach to wisdom. The pre-conditions for this notion appear most clearly in the opposition to doxa, the common opinion. Alain Badiou summarizes the initial Greek moment of philosophical thought as follows: philosophy must always “separate truth from knowledge…or in Plato’s language, truth from doxa, to have an access to the real.” (2005, p. 133) In this account, what is crucial to understanding philosophy is that it denotes a certain break from vulgar, everyday beliefs and ideology: it is a radically critical enterprise. Philosophy does not merely accept given structures and given ascriptions of truth: it must always maintain a certain distance to mass opinion; it must not let this opinion determine its own thought. Philosophy must clear away the illusions of everyday life and attempt to establish its relation to the real: this is the terms of its dedication to its object, and hence its love.

This therefore is the crucial gesture in the history of philosophy: the Greek appearance of a new and radical form of thought that relentlessly questions authority. That we find the most common origin of philosophy beginning with Plato’s Socratic dialogues underscores this point. Socrates is sentenced to death by the Athenian city-state precisely because of his questioning of the pre-existing ideology of this state. Socrates therefore represents the pivotal beginning point of philosophical thought because his initial philosophical gesture is the rejection of all previous assumptions regarding what is true. Religions and political ideologies that make the pretense to claim to know what is true must be looked upon suspiciously by the philosopher. In this regard, we can see the clear importance of the myth of the cave from Plato’s Republic, in defining the task of the philosopher. The cave myth speaks to the reign of accepted opinion. Those confined to the cave have never seen life or each other; they watch images on a screen, which they believe to be real, but are rather merely creations of those who have imprisoned them within the cave. As Plato asks: “They resemble us, I replied. For let me ask you, in the first place, whether persons so confined could have seen anything of themselves or of each other beyond the shadows thrown by the fire upon the part of the cavern facing them?” (1997, p. 225) The task of the philosopher is to recognize the falsity of this situation, its ideological mystification, and attempt to break the bondage of the controlling images. One must instead ascend away from the cave, and towards a true light that is the philosopher’s relationship to wisdom. Following this initial myth, the history of philosophy can be understood as the attempt to realize such a Platonic imperative, breaking from socially-controlled and manipulated knowledge, in order to bear witness to a truth that quotidian everyday life with its banalities and fake necessities always obstructs. Moreover, the philosopher stresses that it is possible through this critical thought to reveal that which is real: the power of human thought can break down the walls of ideological obscurantism and establish itself in relation to wisdom.

In this sense, the history of philosophy as the history of the relationship to wisdom is essentially the question of “what is real?” In Platonism, we find a complete rejection of the world of appearances in favor of a world of ideal forms that are incorruptible and the true source of all things – this is a radical version of the socio-critical thesis at the heart of philosophy, as that which appears to us always finds its source of origin, its realness, beyond that which itself is. Thought uses its rationality summarized in the Greek term logos to clear the path for the emergence of the Real and to behold it. Historical philosophical progressions from Plato onwards can be viewed as variations of this sense of what is most radically real: for example, the Neo-Platonists and the notion of the One understood the singular source for the manifestation of all things. The crucial thread is thus precisely the rejection of the world of appearance.

However, breaks with this approach, can also be said to exist in different forms. For example, Aristotle’s concept of a Prime Mover evinces the source of all things in the chain of causality. Every effect has a cause: therefore a given appearance can always be traced back to a certain reason why it exists. However, this possibly leads to a notion of an infinite regress: what is the first cause? For Aristotle this implies a certain religious or theological element: the first cause is the Prime Mover, that which itself is uncaused and unaffected – it corresponds to an example of a singular monotheistic God.

These conceptions of Aristotle help clarify why the post-Greek philosophers, heavily influenced by the monotheism of Christianity, could also use Greek rationality to further support their notion of faith. St. Thomas Aquinas’ contribution, for example, can be understood as an attempt to synthesize the dominant Christian belief in Europe with the radicality of Greek philosophy: the Aristotelian Prime Mover corresponds to the absoluteness of the monotheistic Christian God. Entire metaphysical systems can be created e from the Aristotelian insight, and the religiously inclined philosopher finds a new way to explain what is real according to the absoluteness of God.

However, this synthesis of religion and philosophy is arguably that which Plato most opposed: the divine insights of revelation are perhaps nothing more than variants of accepting opinion without critical reflection. This is the danger when philosophy intermingles with religion: the latter threatens the former’s socio-critical aim. In this regard, one can understand the significance of a thinker such as Descartes in the history of philosophy. Away from opinion, Descartes attempts to establish an undeniable truth that can be acquired through the exercise of thought itself: “Cogito, ergo sum”, I think therefore I am – this becomes the foundation of what is real. Regardless of the content of thought, it cannot be disproved that I am thinking – rationality and thought establishes itself as its own first principle.

Nevertheless, this certain omnipotence of thought that Descartes creates finds itself overturned by Kant. For Kant’s critical project can be said to continue Platonic criticism, but in a radically new form: Kant makes a distinction between the phenomenon and the noumenon. Kant states that we can only know things in our own terms; we can never achieve the “Real” that would be free of our own opinions, namely, as determined by the given preconditions of our own rationality. In this regard, Kant can be considered a direct opponent to the Platonic and philosophical tradition, insofar as one can never get outside oneself to experience the real. Arguably, the Kantian project finds its most radicalized form in the nihilism of Nietzsche. With Nietzsche, it is precisely the notion that there is something real behind appearance that must be rejected. As Ge Ling Shang writes, “The world is appearance or more appearance. For Nietzsche appearance is no longer something degraded, distorted, erroneous, and thus opposed to the higher Being.” (2007, p. 87) With Nietzsche, philosophy comes full circle – the Platonic belief in the Real beyond appearance is rejected – this is the great error of philosophy, since the world that we see all there is and there is thus no great truth that exists behind the scenes. And this is precisely why nihilism is crucial in the history of philosophical thought: there is nothing behind the proverbial curtain that can be revealed. From the nihilistic perspective, philosophy as an attempt to develop a relation to the real has really all the while developed a relation to nothing.

In this regard, the history of philosophy thus becomes the history of a misconception, insofar as one takes the Nietzschean verdict seriously: philosophy has operated with its own illusion, despite its criticism of the world of opinion: the illusion that there exists a real wisdom and truth. One can say that twentieth century post-modernism is a continuation of this position, as relativism becomes the norm. The question thus becomes: is philosophy after nihilism possible? Or is nihilism the end of the history of philosophy?

Works Cited

Badiou, A. (2005). Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy. London:Continuum.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1994). What is Philosophy? London: Verso.

Plato. (1997). Republic. London: Wordsworth.

Shang, G.L. (2007). Liberation as Affirmation: The Religiosity of Zhuanzi and Nietzsche. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.