Some Main philosophical currents Are idealism, empiricism, rationalism or irrationalism. In this article, I list the leading philosophical schools of Western culture.
Since ancient times, man has raised questions such as the origin of his existence, truth or knowledge. Philosophy is distinguished from other disciplines that have attempted to answer these questions in the manner in which it justifies the answers. It is based on rational arguments.
To determine the philosophical currents of Western civilization, it is necessary to take into account the historical context in which they develop. The historical facts mark the thought of the time.
The philosophy of Western civilization is based in ancient Greece with the first philosophers, the pre-Socratics from the School of Miletus, founded by Thales of Miletus . Some of them, such as Heraclitus , Would have a great influence on the thinkers of the years to come, as is the case with Plato.
Later, with the splendor of the city of Athens in the fifth century BC, known as the"era of Pericles"would come the Sophists. These thinkers focus on the political and social organization of the polis. In this century the figure of Socrates , First to seek an absolute truth and to create a procedure based on dialogue.
The disciple of Socrates, Plato , Is the first known Greek philosopher of which they have complete works. With him, I begin the classification of the main philosophical currents of our culture.
14 main philosophical currents of the West
1 - Classical philosophy. Plato and Aristotle
Both Aristotle and Plato developed a theory that embraced not only the universal question about Being and knowledge, but also studied ethics and politics.
Plato and The Theory of Ideas
Plato (427-347 BC) was born into a wealthy family from Athens during the Peloponnesian War. He was the disciple of Socrates And is the first philosopher to have a complete written theory, Theory of Ideas. With this theory gives response to the origin of the world or of being and knowledge.
The Athenian philosopher says that Ideas are abstract entities that rule the world. The philosopher describes in the myth of the cavern, in his Republic , The world as something dual, which is divided into the world of Ideas which is only accessed through knowledge and the sensory world or the senses, which is mere appearance. The latter is changeable so it is not considered reliable. By this theory, Plato is considered the father of Objective Idealism.
Like Plato's dual world, so is the body, for it is divided into body and soul. Being the soul, the only thing that remains.
Plato was the founder of the Academy to which Aristotle would attend, of which I will speak later. Plato had a great influence on his disciple, although he introduced radical changes and questioned the theory of his teacher.
The philosophy of Plato is present in many other currents of thought later. In fact, his conception of a higher being as the Idea of Good and the duality of his theory will have much influence on religion and Christianity.
There will also be a current called Neoplatonism in the second century AD. Headed by Plotinus and Philo. This tendency exaggerates Plato's ideas by mixing them with religious aspects.
Aristotle
Aristotle Was born in the fourth century BC. He was very prolific in different disciplines like art or science. At the age of eighteen he emigrated to Athens where he formed with Plato. The disciple differs from the master in his idea of metaphysics. Aristotle shows greater common sense, says Bertrand Russell in his book History of Western Philosophy .
Plato agrees that it is the essence that defines being, but in its Metaphysics Makes a strong critic to the theory of its teacher. He objects that he does not rationally explain the division between the world of Ideas and the sensible world, nor the relation that Ideas have with the sensible world. For Aristotle there must be something more than movement and sense to the universe and linking the material with the formal. Aristotle was of great importance to medieval and scholastic philosophy.
2 - Hellenism
Hellenism is not a philosophical current as such, but a historical-cultural movement that took place as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great . The Greek polis became Hellenistic kingdoms that had common characteristics. At this time there are several remarkable philosophical currents.
- Skepticism . Founded by Pirrón . Comes from the verb Sképtomai (look askance at). It extended until the year 200 d.C in its later slope. He argues that the important thing is to reach the tranquility of the spirit, so do not try to reach absolute knowledge, since neither the senses nor reason are reliable.
- Epicureanism . This stream takes the name of its founder, Epicurus , And advocates the attainment of pleasure as the ultimate end. It is a cult of the body, because although it understands a world in which the Gods exist, they have no relation to the human being, whose sole objective is to reach the desires that constitute the motor of existence.
- Stoicism . Current founded by Zenón de Citio , Extended during six centuries (s.IV a.C-II d.C). According to Zeno, the course of life is determined by the laws of nature that are repeated cyclically. The only way to achieve happiness is to live according to nature.
Scholasticism Scholasticism
Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with the hegemony of the Christian religion, philosophy again becomes important, this time to explain the existence of God.
It was St. Augustine of Hippo The first to try to unify the Christian religion with classical Greek philosophy, but it was with the scholastic school that Aristotelian philosophy, which is used as a rational argument to prove the existence of God, reaches its peak.
The scholastic term comes from the clerical schools of the time. The father of this current is St. Anselm of Canterbury , Although others stand out as Saint Thomas of Aquino , Whose theory also combines Aristotelianism and Christian faith. This trend that includes philosophy and religion would extend until the fourteenth century.
Humanism
Humanism is a cultural current born in the fourteenth century in Italy and spread throughout Europe. It covers until the sixteenth century and is characterized by its interest in the classics.
In the philosophical field, thinkers like Nicolás de Cusa , Marsilio Ficino or Pietro Pomponazzi That develop the Aristotelian and Platonic theories, adapting them to the times.
It is noteworthy that, at this time, the Catholic religion is no longer in the ascendant by events like the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther .
Rationalism
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the scientific revolution takes place, establishing a new method of knowledge and new disciplines such as mathematical physics. In this context, modern philosophy is born with currents like rationalism.
The doctrines classified as rationalists argue that reality can only be known through reason and that ideas are something that are given a priori, are innate and do not come from the world of the senses.
The creator of rationalism is Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who designs a philosophical theory based on the method of analysis of mathematics, where it left no room for error. It is the known method of doubt or Cartesian method.
This form of knowledge describes it in his main work, Method Speech (1637). Also noteworthy is Cartesian theory, the dual conception of man in soul and body, thinking substance (res cogitans) and extensive substance (res extensa), which will be questioned by empiricists like Hume.
His doctrine revolutionized philosophy, since with the Renaissance , Currents such as skepticism had resurfaced at the hands of Montaigne , Which were reconsidered if a true knowledge of the world was possible for man.
Skeptics to which Descartes criticizes because, he says, denying the existence of true knowledge are already demonstrating the presence of human thought.
In this rationalist current there are other exponents like Spinoza (1632-1677) and Leibniz .
6- Encyclopedism and Mechanism
The 18th century is the Age of Enlightenment for the birth of the Enlightenment. A movement that praises knowledge and changes the order centered on God by an anthropocentric model in which priority is given to reason.
The Enlightenment is symbolically identified with the French Revolution, which defends the equality of all men, regardless of their origin. With this fact, the Old Regime is set aside to establish a new political order based on reason.
The revolution would not have been possible without great thinkers of this time as Voltaire (1694-1778), Rousseau (1712-1778) and of course, without Diderot (1713-1784) and the Encyclopedia , Which he published with D'Alembert (1717-1783). The first great dictionary of human knowledge that gives name to this intellectual and philosophical movement.
Diderot and D'Alembert refer to Francis Bacon , Philosopher of the previous century. Bacon already criticized the traditional knowledge that had to science like instrument and defended its social work and its importance for the progress of the human being.
Therefore, during the Age of Enlightenment, the predominant philosophical current is mechanicism and the defense of experimental philosophy. A philosophy that, according to Diderot allowed a knowledge within reach of all, since it was not necessary to know the mathematical methods that Descartes uses with his rationalism.
7- Empiricism
Another current that reacts critically to rationalism is empiricism, which defends knowledge through sensible experience.
However, empiricism can not be considered totally contrary to rationalism, since the two theories are based on reason and ideas, what varies is where they come from, whether they are innate or based on experience. This doctrine is also framed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its main exponents are John Locke Y David Hume .
Empiricism or"English empiricism"is born with the Essay on human understanding Of John Locke, where he argues that knowledge is acquired on the basis of experience. Based on this conception proposes a method, the"historical method"based on the description of these ideas given by experience.
For his part, David Hume takes the empiricism of Locke further, to the point of rejecting the Cartesian duality. For Hume, the concepts of"substance,""transcendence,"and"I"are the product of one's imagination. Everything comes from the senses.
It only distinguishes two human faculties, the immediate perception or impressions and the reflection or ideas. According to this, only the present is important, what our senses touch.
Based on this, develops a relationship of cause and effect, referring to that we know that something is going to happen because it happens constantly or continuously. The most important works of David Hume are Treatise on human nature (1739-40) and Essays on human understanding (1748).
8- Criticism or Transcendental Idealism
The main referent of Transcendental Idealism is the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). This doctrine, collected in his work Critique of pure reason (1781) and later in Critique of practical reason (1788) and in Critic of the trial (1790) argues that the subject influences the knowledge of the given object with imposed conditions.
That is to say when the subject tries to know something brings with it universal elements or substances (phenomena that remain in the time) that are given a priori.
The method of inquiry that Kant proposes based on this theory is the criticism, consisting in finding out where the limits of knowledge are. He tries to combine the empiricist and rationalist thoughts that he criticizes for having focused on a single part of reality.
Another element of great importance in Kantian theory is the Categorical imperative , A formula with which Kant resolves his conception of reason, which for him was the greatest right of the human being.
That formula reads as follows:"Act in such a way that you never treat man as a mere means or instrument for your own ends, but always and at the same time consider it as an end."
Here we see the egalitarian conception of the reason that Kant has, any man has the same right as you to defend his reason.
In fact, although in this classification, I frame Kant as an idealist, it is not entirely clear by his constant references in studies on the Philosophy of the Enlightenment. In a document Of Michel Foucault collected in the Colombian Magazine of Psychology mentions a text of Kant published in a German newspaper in the year 1784 that gathers the idea of the philosopher on the movement of the Lights.
The text is entitled What is Enlightenment? (Was ist Aufklärug?). In it, Kant defines the Enlightenment as a way of escape to the minority state of age in which the man was by his own fault.
9- Marxism and Historical Materialism
Materialist doctrines are those that conceive a single reality based on matter and where consciousness is only a consequence of that matter.
The main materialistic current of the nineteenth century is Marxism. This philosophical, historical and economic doctrine is based on the class struggle. He affirms that the history of humanity is the history of the power struggle between some classes and others.
This theory is strongly marked by the context of Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the capitalist system. The parents of Marxism are Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).
Marxist theory is based on historical materialism by stating that"the history of humanity is the history of the class struggle." According to these two thinkers, economics (a material concept) is the engine of the world and social inequalities. This materialist conception, Hegel , The main referent of absolute idealism.
The most important works of Marx They are The capital (1867) and Communist Manifesto (1848), written in collaboration with Engels.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a philosophical current created by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). According to this doctrine, things and people should be judged by the pleasure and good they produce, the ultimate end being happiness. Therefore, according to this approach is useful that which provides happiness to the greatest number of people.
Although utilitarianism is a movement contemporaneous with the enlightened, it placed it after Marxism, in the nineteenth century, by the dimension that gave it John Stuart Mill . John is the son of James Mill (1773-1836), also a follower of this theory.
John Stuart Mill brings a novel aspect to this theory with the important distinction between satisfaction and happiness, establishing the former as a point state, while happiness is somewhat more abstract. Following this statement, it affirms that it does not have to be related a life full of satisfactory facts with a happy life.
11- Positivism
Movement created by Auguste Comte (1798-1857). It bets on a social reform through a science (sociology) and a new religion based on the solidarity between the men.
On the basis of this theory, it raises the law of the three stages; The theological stage that takes center to God, the metaphysical stage in which the protagonist is the man himself and the positive stage where science prevails and men cooperate with each other to solve problems.
12- Irrationalism
Irrationalism defends the prevalence of the will of the human being over reason. It arose in the 19th century and is mainly represented by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Nietzsche (1844-1900).
The theories of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche differ in many respects, but they also coincide in others that classify these two theories as irrationalists. Both put reason at the service of the individual.
Schopenhauer defends the principle of individuation, by which man tries to dominate reality through reason to extend as much as possible the life of the individual.
This striving for survival is not only in men, but in all living beings so that in the end there is a"cosmic struggle"to continue to exist. This eagerness is what the philosopher calls"will to live."
Nietzsche also focuses on the individual but conceives it differently than Schopenhauer who paints an individual disillusioned with life, while the individual of Nietzsche has an illusion, to become"superman."
Schopenhauer's most important work is The world as will and representation (1818).
The works where Nietzsche develops his theory are The tragedy's origin (1872), The science of science (1882 and 1887), This is how Zarathustra spoke (1883-1891), Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Genealogy of Morals (1887).
Existentialism
This current arises in the early twentieth century and, as its name says, the main question that arises is human existence. One of its precursors is Kierkegaard (1813-1855). For existentialists, the existence of man is above its essence.
Among the existentialists we also find Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus . It was also strongly influenced by the existentialist approaches to Spanish Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955).
If you are interested in this philosophical current, do not forget to visit The 50 best existentialist phrases .
Other Philosophical Currents
- Cynicism : Philosophical school founded by Antisthenes In century IV a.C. He argues that virtue is the only good, leading a life that despises riches. Among the cynics, highlights Diogenes .
- Absolute idealism : Movement of century XVIII led by Hegel (1770-1831). This doctrine defends that the spirit is the only absolute reality. Other philosophers like Schelling (1775-1854) also spoke of the absolute.
- Subjective idealism or immaterialism : The real is what the observant subject perceives. Movement represented by Berkeley (1865-1753)
- Structuralism : Cultural movement with philosophical aspects that analyzes the systems or structures until arriving at a complete concept. This current is initiated by Claude Lévi-Strauss . Another representative of this movement was Michel Foucault.
References
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