Western Philosophy Timeline

1. Western Philosophy Timeline Continental Philosophy Hellenistic/ Medieval Rationalists Empiricists Kant Ancient Plotinus Augustine Anselm Abelard Aquinas Ockham Descartes Leibniz Spinoza Locke Berkeley Hume Kant Plato Aristotle Analytic Philosophy

2. Anglo-American Philosophy Continental Philosophy British Idealists Empiricists Locke Berkeley Hume Analytic Philosophy Early 20th Century Rejection of Idealism (Defense of Commonsense) Logical Atomism Logical Positivism Ordinary Language Philosophy Contemporary Analytic Philosophy

9. Representative Theory of Perception

10. The Veil of Perception

11. Continental Philosophy • Continental philosophy tends to explain things not by reducing them to simple entities but by understanding them in a broader, holistic, historical context. • This approach includes phenomenology, existentialism, and Deconstruction. • One philosophical archetype of the continental approach is Martin Heidegger.

12. Analytic Philosophy:Logic and the dream of a precise and unambiguous language • Analytic philosophy stresses logic, testability, precision and clarity. • Common to this way of approaching philosophy is the notion that the universe consists of independent (atomic) entities, material particles, sense data, impressions, and “facts.” • Logical and linguistic analyses are said to be the only proper methods for sorting out philosophical confusions. • One philosophical archetype of the analytical approach is Ludwig Wittgenstein.

13. Ludwig Wittgenstein • One of the most influential analytic philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born into a prominent family in Austria. As a child and young man Wittgenstein exhibited numerous talents and interests. • In 1912, Wittgenstein registered at Cambridge University to study under Bertrand Russell, one of the most prominent philosophers in the world at the time. • From 1911 to 1913, Wittgenstein discussed the foundations of logic and philosophy with Russell and key figures such as philosopher G. E. Moore (1873-1958), economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), and mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-1930).

14. …Wittgenstein • In 1914, at the start of WWI, Wittgenstein joined the Austrian army. He was captured in 1917. • While a prisoner of war he wrote his first major work, TractatusLogico-Philosophicus. • In 1920, Wittgenstein temporarily gave up philosophy, convinced that in the Tractatus he had, once and for all, solved philosophical problems. • He worked for some time as a gardener in a monastery, then as a grade school teacher and finally as an architect.

15. …Wittgenstein • In 1929, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge where he was awarded a Ph.D. Over the next several years he worked intensely and rejected many of his former philosophical positions. • In 1939, Wittgenstein was made a professor at Cambridge. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s he worked on his second major work, the Philosophical Investigations. It was published posthumously. • In 1951, Wittgenstein died of prostate cancer.

16. What Are You Talking About? • Analytic philosophers emphasize the need to clear up linguistic confusions to show that most philosophical “problems” are based upon an abuse of language. • Analytic philosophers are very interested in technical issues in language and logic, as opposed to traditional philosophical concerns such as the meaning of life. • Early analytic philosophers tended to advocate realism. • Realism is the belief that there exists an independent objective world of accessible things and facts. • Philosophy should concern itself with identifying and eliminating mistaken claims about reality.

17. The Tractatus • Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is seen as a major example of the linguistic-analytical turn in twentieth century philosophy. • The Tractatusconsists of seven main propositions and comments on those seven, arranged numerically. He attempts to show the underlying structure of language. • His basic point is this: what cannot be said cannot be thought; trying to say the unsayable amounts to trying to say the unthinkable. • Wittgenstein argues that the complex propositions of ordinary language are meaningful only if they are analyzable into simpler, ultimately elemental propositions that consist only of names.

18. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein further argues: • Analysis must end in simple unanalyzable names that refer to objects. • Sentences that cannot be reduced to simple symbols are meaningless. • Ultimately, all meaningful sentences fall under the natural sciences. • Traditional philosophical problems as such do not exist. • Philosophy is ultimately an ethical and therapeutic enterprise that enables us to see the world afresh.

19. PhilosophicalInvestigations • Upon reflection, Wittgenstein determined that the Tractatus itself relied upon illegitimate metaphysical assumptions. • Accordingly, rather than one meaningful language, there are many different languages with many different structures and many different uses. • In the Investigations and other writings, Wittgenstein talks about languages as we use it in ordinary life, using such expressions as “forms of life,” “language games,” and “family resemblances,” not as once-and-for-all, fixed, logically exact relationships, but rather as certain kinds of natural human practices.

20. Philosophical Investigations • Wittgenstein now thinks of words as tools and sentences as instruments. • The structure of language now determines the structure of thought and consequently the structure of experience.

21. Wittgenstein’s Turn • Fact-stating is only one language use; there are countless others and thus countless ways of experiencing the world. • Language as used in ordinary life exemplifies certain kinds of natural human practices. • When philosophy succeeds, it allows us to give philosophical problems a rest. • According to Wittgenstein,“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”