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History of philosophy. The history of philosophy is the systematic study of the development of philosophical thought. It focuses on philosophy as rational inquiry based on argumentation, but some theorists also include myth, religious traditions, and proverbial lore. Western philosophy originated with an inquiry into the fundamental nature of ...
- Historical Overview
- Philosophy in Egypt & Mesopotamia
- Indian Philosophy
- Persian Philosophy
- Chinese Philosophy
- Greek Philosophy
- Branches of Philosophy
- Conclusion
A philosophical system may develop independently but usually is a response to religion; when religion fails to fully answer a people's questions or address their needs, the people turn to philosophy. People's existential questions traditionally have been answered by the development of religious systems which assured them of the existence of superna...
The earliest philosophical system seems to have developed in Egypt as a response to the religious vision of a paradise after death known as the Field of Reeds, a mirror image of one's life on earth, where the souls of the justified dead would live eternally. The question which seems to have inspired Egyptianphilosophy is how one should live in orde...
In India, philosophy developed in response to the Vedas, the scriptures of Hinduism (known as Sanatan Dharma, “Eternal Order”, to adherents), in the form of the Upanishads (the earliest written c. 800-500 BCE). The Vedas were understood as the emanations of the Universe, the literal words of God, and the Upanishadswere composed to clarify and expla...
Persian philosophy was almost certainly already developed before c. 1500 BCE as evidenced by the Avesta (Zoroastrian scriptures) which draws on concepts from the polytheistic Early Iranian Religion. Zoroaster conceived of a new religious paradigm of a single god, Ahura Mazda, creator and sustainer of the universe, whose supernatural adversary was A...
The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in China were times of chaos as the Zhou Dynasty was declining, and Chinese philosophy was developed in response to this disorder. The early texts of Confucianism are thought to have been composed during the Zhou Dynasty and later developed by the sage Confucius (l. 551-479 BCE). Confuciani...
Greek philosophy began in the 6th century BCE with Thales of Miletus who initiated it with the question “What is the basic 'stuff' of the universe?” (Ancient Philosophy, 8). Thales' inquiry seems an anomaly because of the religious beliefs of his time which seem to have been meeting the needs of the people. Ancient Greek religionheld that the gods ...
The areas of interest of modern-day philosophy apply equally to the East and West but the names by which they are known were developed by the Greeks. Although various schools may break some into sub-sections, the branches of study are: Metaphysics – The Study of Existence, so named for Aristotle's work on the subject. Far from being a definitive te...
Plato attributed the vision of his philosophy to his teacher, Socrates, who wrote nothing himself. Almost all of what is known of Socrates' life and teaching comes from Plato and another of Socrates' students, Xenophon (l. 430 - c. 354 BCE). Whether Plato's work accurately reflects Socrates' teachings is unknown and will never be known, but scholar...
- Joshua J. Mark
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and ...
History of Philosophy. The history of philosophy in the West began in ancient Greece in the sixth century BC, particularly with a group of philosophers called the pre-Socratics. It is necessary to take into account that in the Egyptian and Babylonian cultures there were antecedents of great thinkers, philosophers and writers in whose products ...
philosophy, (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, “love of wisdom”) the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. Philosophical inquiry is a central element in the intellectual history of many civilizations. The subject of philosophy is treated ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
407 BCE. Plato meets Socrates, abandons aspiration to be playwright. c. 404 BCE - 323 BCE. Life of Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. 403 BCE. Plato turns away from politics toward philosophy. 399 BCE. Trial and death of the philosopher Socrates, who taught in the court of the Agora. 384 BCE - 322 BCE.
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Western Philosophy - by which we usually mean everything apart from the Eastern Philosophy of China, India, Japan, Persia, etc - really began in Ancient Greece in about the 6th Century B.C. Thales of Miletus is usually considered the first proper philosopher, although he was just as concerned with natural philosophy (what we now call science ...
