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org/wiki/Western_philosophy

Western philosophy
Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought and work of the Western world.
Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with
Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics such as Thales (c. 624 – c. 546 BC) and Pythagoras
(c.   570   – c.   495   BC), and eventually covering a large area of the globe.[1][2] The word
philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek philosophía (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the
love of wisdom" (φιλεῖν phileîn, "to love" and σοφία sophía, "wisdom").

The scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of (at least some of)
the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. This included the problems of
philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such
as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology
(Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics).

Contents
Ancient
Pre-Socratic period
Classical period
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Hellenistic period
Roman period
Medieval
Renaissance
Modern
Early modern (17th and 18th centuries)
Late modern (19th-century)
Contemporary (20th and 21st centuries)
Analytic philosophy
Continental philosophy
Existentialism
German idealism
Marxism and critical theory
Phenomenology and hermeneutics
Structuralism and post-structuralism
Pragmatism
Process philosophy
Thomism
Western philosophical subdisciplines

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Philosophy contrasted with other disciplines

Natural science
Theology and religious studies
Mathematics
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Ancient

Pre-Socratic period

In the pre-Socratic period, ancient philosophers first

articulated questions about the "archḗ" (the cause or
first principle) of the universe. Western philosophy is
generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western
Asia Minor, or Ionia, with Thales of Miletus, who was
active c. 585 BC and was responsible for the opaque
dictum, "all is water." His most noted students were
respectively Anaximander ("all is apeiron", meaning
roughly, "the unlimited") and Anaximenes of Miletus
("all is air").
Ionia, source of early Greek
Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of
philosophy, in western Asia Minor
Ionia, later lived in Croton in southern Italy (Magna
Graecia). Pythagoreans hold that "all is number," giving
formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of
the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or
reincarnation.

Classical period

Socrates

A key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but
transformed Greek philosophy into a branch of philosophy that is still pursued today. It is
said that following a visit to the Oracle of Delphi he spent much of his life questioning
anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to disprove the oracular prophecy that
there would be no man wiser than Socrates.[3] Socrates used a critical approach called the
"elenchus" or Socratic method to examine people's views. He aimed to study human things:
the good life, justice, beauty, and virtue. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of
his many disciples wrote down his conversations. He was tried for corrupting the youth and
impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Although his
friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by

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his principles. His execution consisted of drinking the poison

hemlock and he died in 399 BC.

Plato

Plato was a student of Socrates. Plato founded the Academy of

Bust of Socrates, Roman
copy after a Greek original
from the 4th century BC
Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, which applied the
Socratic method of inquiry to examine philosophical problems.
Some central ideas of Plato's dialogues are the immortality of
the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and
the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that
constitute true reality and contrast with the changeable
material things he called "becoming".
Aristotle

Aristotle was a pupil of Plato.

Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and
scientist. He wrote about physics, biology, zoology,
metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric,
politics and logic. Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to
attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotle tutored
Alexander the Great, who in turn conquered much of the
ancient world at a rapid pace. Hellenization and Aristotelian
philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all
subsequent Western and Middle Eastern philosophers,
including Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Western medieval,
Jewish, and Islamic thinkers.
Aristotle in The School of
Hellenistic period Athens, by Raphael

Following Socrates a variety of schools of thought emerged. In

addition to Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Peripatetic school, other schools of thought
derived from Socratic philosophy included the Academic Skeptics, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics,
the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists. In addition, two non-Socratic schools derived from the
teachings of Socrates' contemporary Democritus flourished, Pyrrhonism and Epicureanism.

Roman period

Roman philosophy was heavily influenced by the traditions of Greek philosophy. Thorough
study of Greek philosophy was first introduced by Cicero. In Imperial times Epicureanism
and Stoicism were particularly popular, especially the latter, as represented by the works of
Seneca the Younger and Marcus Aurelius.[4]

Medieval
Medieval philosophy roughly extends from the Christianization of the Roman Empire until

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the Renaissance.[6]
Medieval philosophy
is defined partly by
the rediscovery and
further development
of classical Greek
and Hellenistic
philosophy, and
partly by the need to
address theological
problems and to
integrate the then
widespread sacred
doctrines of
Abrahamic religion St. Anselm of Canterbury is
Saint Augustine was the greatest (Islam, Judaism, credited as the founder of
philosopher of the early Middle and Christianity) scholasticism.
Ages[5] with secular
learning. Early
medieval philosophy was
influenced by the likes of Stoicism, Neoplatonism, but, above
all, the philosophy of Plato himself.

Some problems discussed throughout this period are the

relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the
object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of
knowledge, of universals, and of individuation. The prominent
figure of this period was Augustine of Hippo (one of the most
important Church Fathers in Western Christianity) who
adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it in the 4th century
and whose influence dominated medieval philosophy perhaps
up to end of the era but was checked with the arrival of
Aristotle's texts. Augustinianism was the preferred starting
point for most philosophers (including Anselm of Canterbury, St. Thomas Aquinas,
the father of scholasticism) up until the 13th century. painting by Carlo Crivelli,
1476
The Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th and 9th century was
fed by Church missionaries travelling from Ireland, most
notably John Scotus Eriugena, a Neoplatonic philosopher.

The modern university system has roots in the European medieval university, which was
created in Italy and evolved from Catholic Cathedral schools for the clergy during the High
Middle Ages.[7]

Thomas Aquinas, an academic philosopher and the father of Thomism, was immensely
influential in Catholic Europe; he placed a great emphasis on reason and argumentation,
and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and
epistemological writing.

Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo,
Boethius, Anselm, Gilbert de la Porrée, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Thomas

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Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan; the Jewish philosophers
Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhazen,
Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer, Ibn Khaldūn, and Averroes. The medieval tradition
of scholasticism continued to flourish as late as the 17th century, in figures such as Francisco
Suárez and John of St. Thomas.

Renaissance
The Renaissance ("rebirth") was a
period of transition between the
Middle Ages and modern
thought,[8] in which the recovery of
classical texts helped shift
philosophical interests away from
technical studies in logic,
metaphysics, and theology towards
eclectic inquiries into morality,
philology, and mysticism.[9][10] The
Erasmus is Credited as study of the classics and the
the Prince of the
humane arts generally, such as
Humanists
history and literature, enjoyed a
scholarly interest hitherto unknown
in Christendom, a tendency
referred to as humanism.[11][12] Displacing the medieval
interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists followed Bronze statue of Giordano
Petrarch in making man and his virtues the focus of Bruno by Ettore Ferrari,
philosophy.[13][14] Campo de' Fiori, Rome

At the point of passage from Renaissance into early/classical

modern philosophy, the dialogue was used as a primary style of writing by Renaissance
philosophers, such as Giordano Bruno.[15]

How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed.[16]

Modern
The term "modern philosophy" has multiple usages. For example, Thomas Hobbes is
sometimes considered the first modern philosopher because he applied a systematic method
to political philosophy.[17][18] By contrast, René Descartes is often considered the first
modern philosopher because he grounded his philosophy in problems of knowledge, rather
than problems of metaphysics.[19]

Modern philosophy and especially Enlightenment philosophy[20] is distinguished by its

increasing independence from traditional authorities such as the Church, academia, and
Aristotelianism;[21][22] a new focus on the foundations of knowledge and metaphysical
system-building;[23][24] and the emergence of modern physics out of natural philosophy.[25]

Early modern (17th and 18th centuries)

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Some central topics of Western

philosophy in its early modern
(also classical modern)[26][27]
period include the nature of the
mind and its relation to the body,
the implications of the new
natural sciences for traditional
theological topics such as free will
and God, and the emergence of a
secular basis for moral and
political philosophy.[28] These
trends first distinctively coalesce Portrait of John Locke, by
Portrait of René Descartes,
in Francis Bacon's call for a new, Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1697
after Frans Hals, second
empirical program for expanding
half of 17th century
knowledge, and soon found
massively influential form in the
mechanical physics and
rationalist metaphysics of René Descartes. [29]

Other notable modern philosophers include Baruch Spinoza,

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, George Berkeley,
David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.[27][30][31][32] Many other
contributors were philosophers, scientists, medical doctors,
and politicians. A short list includes Galileo Galilei, Pierre
Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, Nicolas Malebranche, Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, Christian
Wolff, Montesquieu, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Reid, Jean le Rond Portrait of David Hume, by
d'Alembert, Adam Smith, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Allan Ramsay, 1754

The approximate end of the early modern period is most often

identified with Kant's systematic attempt to limit metaphysics, justify scientific knowledge,
and reconcile both of these with morality and freedom.[33][34][35]

Late modern (19th-century)

Late modern philosophy is usually considered to begin

around the pivotal year of 1781, when Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing died and Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
appeared.[36]

German philosophy exercised broad influence in this century,

owing in part to the dominance of the German university
system.[37] German idealists, such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, and the members of Jena Romanticism (Friedrich
Hölderlin, Novalis, and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
transformed the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is Hegel, steel engraving,
constituted by a rational or mind-like process, and as such is after 1828
entirely knowable.[38][39] Arthur Schopenhauer's identification
of this world-constituting process as an irrational will to live

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influenced later 19th- and

early 20th-century
thinking, such as the work
of Friedrich Nietzsche.

The 19th century took the

radical notions of self-
organization and intrinsic
order from Goethean
science and Kantian
metaphysics, and
proceeded to produce a
long elaboration on the
tension between Friedrich Nietzsche,
systematization and photograph by Friedrich
organic development. Hartmann, c. 1875
Foremost was the work of
Arthur Schopenhauer
Hegel, whose
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic
(1813–16) produced a "dialectical" framework for
ordering of knowledge.

As with the 18th century, developments in science arose from philosophy and also
challenged philosophy: most importantly the work of Charles Darwin, which was based on
the idea of organic self-regulation found in philosophers such as Smith, but fundamentally
challenged established conceptions.

After Hegel's death in 1831, 19th-century philosophy largely turned against idealism in favor
of varieties of philosophical naturalism, such as the positivism of Auguste Comte, the
empiricism of John Stuart Mill, and the historical materialism of Karl Marx. Logic began a
period of its most significant advances since the inception of the discipline, as increasing
mathematical precision opened entire fields of inference to formalization in the work of
George Boole and Gottlob Frege.[40] Other philosophers who initiated lines of thought that
would continue to shape philosophy into the 20th century include:

Gottlob Frege and Henry Sidgwick, whose work in logic and ethics, respectively,
provided the tools for early analytic philosophy.
Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, who founded pragmatism.
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, who laid the groundwork for existentialism
and post-structuralism.

Contemporary (20th and 21st centuries)

The three major contemporary approaches to academic philosophy are analytic philosophy,
continental philosophy and pragmatism.[41] They are neither exhaustive nor mutually
exclusive.

The 20th century deals with the upheavals produced by a series of conflicts within
philosophical discourse over the basis of knowledge, with classical certainties overthrown,
and new social, economic, scientific and logical problems. 20th century philosophy was set
for a series of attempts to reform and preserve, and to alter or abolish, older knowledge

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systems. Seminal figures include Bertrand Russell, Ludwig

Wittgenstein, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul
Sartre. The publication of Husserl's Logical Investigations
(1900–1) and Russell's The Principles of Mathematics (1903) is
considered to mark the beginning of 20th-century philosophy.[42]
The 20th century also saw the increasing professionalization of
the discipline and the beginning of the current (contemporary)
era of philosophy.[43]

Since the Second World War, contemporary philosophy has been

divided mostly into analytic and continental traditions; the former
carried in the English speaking world and the latter on the
Martin Heidegger continent of Europe. The perceived conflict between continental
and analytic schools of philosophy remains prominent, despite
increasing skepticism regarding the distinction's usefulness.

Analytic philosophy

In the English-speaking world, analytic philosophy

became the dominant school for much of the 20th
century. The term "analytic philosophy" roughly
designates a group of philosophical methods that stress
detailed argumentation, attention to semantics, use of
classical logic and non-classical logics and clarity of
meaning above all other criteria. Though the movement
has broadened, it was a cohesive school in the first half
of the century. Analytic philosophers were shaped
strongly by logical positivism, united by the notion that
philosophical problems could and should be solved by
attention to logic and language.

Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore are also often counted

as founders of analytic philosophy, beginning with their
Bertrand Russell
rejection of British idealism, their defense of realism
and the emphasis they laid on the legitimacy of analysis.
Russell's classic works The Principles of
Mathematics, [44] "On Denoting" and Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North
Whitehead), aside from greatly promoting the use of mathematical logic in philosophy, set
the ground for much of the research program in the early stages of the analytic tradition,
emphasizing such problems as: the reference of proper names, whether 'existence' is a
property, the nature of propositions, the analysis of definite descriptions, and discussions on
the foundations of mathematics. These works also explored issues of ontological
commitment and metaphysical problems regarding time, the nature of matter, mind,
persistence and change, which Russell often tackled with the aid of mathematical logic.

Gottlob Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) was the first analytic work, according
to Michael Dummett (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, 1993). Frege took "the linguistic
turn," analyzing philosophical problems through language. Some analytic philosophers held
that philosophical problems arise through misuse of language or because of
misunderstandings of the logic of human language.

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In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who studied under

Russell at Cambridge, published his Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly "logical" account of
linguistic and philosophical issues. Years later, he
reversed a number of the positions he set out in the
Tractatus, in for example his second major work,
Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations was
influential in the development of "ordinary language
philosophy," which was mainly promoted by Gilbert
Ryle and J. L. Austin.
Gottlob Frege, c. 1905
In the United States, meanwhile, the philosophy of
Willard Van Orman Quine was having a major
influence, with the paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". In that paper Quine criticizes the
distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, arguing that a clear conception of
analyticity is unattainable.

Notable students of Quine include Donald Davidson and Daniel

Dennett. The later work of Russell and the philosophy of
Willard Van Orman Quine are influential exemplars of the
naturalist approach dominant in the second half of the 20th
century. But the diversity of analytic philosophy from the 1970s
onward defies easy generalization: the naturalism of Quine and
his epigoni was in some precincts superseded by a "new
metaphysics" of possible worlds, as in the influential work of
David Lewis. Recently, the experimental philosophy movement
has sought to reappraise philosophical problems through social
science research techniques.
Patricia Churchland, 2005
Some influential figures in contemporary analytic philosophy
are: Timothy Williamson, David Lewis, John Searle, Thomas
Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett, John McDowell, Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen,
and Patricia Churchland.

Analytic philosophy has sometimes been accused of not contributing to the political debate
or to traditional questions in aesthetics. However, with the appearance of A Theory of
Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick, analytic political
philosophy acquired respectability. Analytic philosophers have also shown depth in their
investigations of aesthetics, with Roger Scruton, Nelson Goodman, Arthur Danto and others
developing the subject to its current shape.

Continental philosophy

Continental philosophy is a set of 19th- and 20th-century philosophical traditions from

mainland Europe. 20th-century movements such as German idealism, phenomenology,
existentialism, modern hermeneutics (the theory and methodology of interpretation),
critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism and others are included within this loose
category. While identifying any non-trivial common factor in all these schools of thought is
bound to be controversial, Michael E. Rosen has hypothesized a few common continental
themes: that the natural sciences cannot replace the human sciences; that the thinker is
affected by the conditions of experience (one's place and time in history); that philosophy is

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both theoretical and practical; that metaphilosophy or

reflection upon the methods and nature of philosophy
itself is an important part of philosophy proper.[46]

The founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl,

sought to study consciousness as experienced from a
first-person perspective, while Martin Heidegger drew
on the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl to
propose an unconventional existential approach to
ontology.

Phenomenologically oriented metaphysics undergirded

existentialism—Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus—and finally
post-structuralism—Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François
Lyotard (best known for his articulation of
postmodernism), Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida
Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt,
(best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis
c. 1921[45]
known as deconstruction). The psychoanalytic work of
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Julia
Kristeva, and others has also been influential in
contemporary continental thought. Conversely, some philosophers have attempted to define
and rehabilitate older traditions of philosophy. Most notably, Hans-Georg Gadamer and
Alasdair MacIntyre have both, albeit in different ways, revived the tradition of
Aristotelianism.

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of late

19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound
doctrinal differences,[47][48] shared the belief that
philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not
merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living
human individual.[49] In existentialism, the individual's
starting point is characterized by what has been called "the
existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion
in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[50]
Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic
or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too
abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[51][52] Søren Kierkegaard, sketch
by Niels Christian
Although they did not use the term, the 19th-century Kierkegaard, c. 1840
philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are
widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their
influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.[53][54][55]

German idealism

German idealism emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed
out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s.[56]

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Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the

view that there are limits on what can be understood, since
there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of
objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason
(1781) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of
rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new
groundwork for studying metaphysics. Although Kant held that
objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose
a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure
sensory data—a framework including space and time
themselves—he maintained that things-in-themselves existed
independently of human perceptions and judgments; he was
therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Kant's account of
things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex.
Portrait of Immanuel Kant,
Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich c. 1790
Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of
the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy.

The most notable work of absolute idealism was G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,
of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas were not new, but that all the previous philosophies had
been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims
of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which
arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between "being" and "not being"), and
also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their
compatibility at a higher level of examination ("being" and "not being" are resolved with
"becoming"). This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as
the "Hegelian dialectic".

Philosophers influenced by Hegel include Ludwig Feuerbach, who coined the term
"projection" as pertaining to humans' inability to recognize anything in the external world
without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things; Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels;
and the British idealists, notably T. H. Green, J. M. E. McTaggart, F. H. Bradley, and R. G.
Collingwood.

Few 20th-century philosophers embraced the core tenets of German idealism after the
demise of British idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic, most
notably Frankfurt School critical theorists, Alexandre Kojève, Jean-Paul Sartre (in his
Critique of Dialectical Reason), and Slavoj Žižek. A central theme of German idealism, the
legitimacy of Kant's "Copernican revolution", remains an important point of contention in
21st-century post-continental philosophy.

Marxism and critical theory

Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis, originating from Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels. It analyzes class relations and societal conflict using a materialist interpretation of
historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation. Marxist analyses and
methodologies influenced political ideologies and social movements. Marxist
understandings of history and society were adopted by academics in archeology,
anthropology, media studies, political science, theater, history, sociology, art history and
theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics,
critical psychology and philosophy.

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In contemporary philosophy, the term "critical theory" describes the Western Marxist
philosophy of the Frankfurt School, which was developed in Germany in the 1930s. Critical
theory maintains that ideology is the principal obstacle to human emancipation.[57]

Phenomenology and hermeneutics

Edmund Husserl's phenomenology was an ambitious attempt

to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of
conscious experience in general.[58] An important part of
Husserl's phenomenological project was to show that all
conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a
feature that Husserl called intentionality.[59] Husserl
published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat
phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but
he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses.
Husserl's work was immediately influential in Germany, with
the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich
(Munich phenomenology) and Göttingen (Göttingen
phenomenology). Phenomenology later achieved international
Edmund Husserl, in the
fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin
1910s
Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant and a
proponent of hermeneutic phenomenology, a theoretical
synthesis of modern hermeneutics and phenomenology),
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Through the work of Heidegger and Sartre,
Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.

Structuralism and post-structuralism

Inaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,

structuralism sought to clarify systems of signs through
analyzing the discourses they both limit and make possible.
Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the
other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of
existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates
thought. This led continental thought away from humanism,
and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language
is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but
language speaks man.

Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its Ferdinand de Saussure
positivism soon came under fire by post-structuralism, a wide
field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves
structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyze
systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued
that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself
determined by what it examines. While the distinction between the signifier and signified
was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to
grasp the signified results in more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being
deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible.

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Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy throughout the 1960s and early
1970s, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and
Jacques Lacan. Post-structuralism came to predominate from the 1970s onwards, including
thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and even Roland Barthes;
it incorporated a critique of structuralism's limitations.

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.[60] It
asserts that the truth of beliefs consists in their usefulness and efficacy rather than their
correspondence with reality.[61] Charles Sanders Peirce and William James were its co-
founders and it was later modified by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness
of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James
conceptualized final truth as something established only by the future, final settlement of all
opinion.[62]

Pragmatism attempted to find a scientific concept of truth that

does not depend on personal insight (revelation) or reference
to some metaphysical realm. It interpreted the meaning of a
statement by the effect its acceptance would have on practice.
Inquiry taken far enough is thus the only path to truth.[63]

For Peirce commitment to inquiry was essential to truth-

finding, implied by the idea and hope that inquiry is not
fruitless. The interpretation of these principles has been
subject to discussion ever since. Peirce's maxim of pragmatism
is, "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have
practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to
have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our
William James, in 1906 conception of the object."[64]

Critics accused pragmatism falling victim to a simple fallacy:

that because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is an appropriate basis for
its truthfulness.[65] Pragmatist thinkers include Dewey, George Santayana, and C. I. Lewis.

Pragmatism was later worked on by neopragmatists Richard Rorty (who was the first to
develop neopragmatist philosophy in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979)),[66]
Hilary Putnam, W. V. O. Quine, and Donald Davidson. Neopragmatism has been described
as a bridge between analytic and continental philosophy.[67]

Process philosophy

Process philosophy is a tradition beginning with Alfred North Whitehead, who began
teaching and writing on process and metaphysics when he joined Harvard University in
1924.[68] This tradition identifies metaphysical reality with change.

Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to continental philosophy than analytic

philosophy, because it is usually only taught in continental departments.[69] However, other
sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between
the poles of analytic versus continental methods in contemporary philosophy.[70][71]

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Thomism

Largely Aristotelian in its approach and content, Thomism is

a philosophical tradition that follows the writings of Thomas
Aquinas. His work has been read, studied and disputed
since the 13th century, especially by Roman Catholics.
Aquinas enjoyed a revived mainstream interest beginning in
contemporary philosophy, among both atheists (Philippa
Foot) and theists (Elizabeth Anscombe).[72] Thomist
philosophers tend to be rationalists in epistemology, as well
as metaphysical realists and virtue ethicists. They claim that
humans are rational animals whose good can be known by
reason that can be achieved by the will. Thomists argue that
soul or psyche is real and immaterial but inseparable from
matter in organisms. Soul is the form of the body. Thomists
accept Aristotle's causes as natural, including teleological or Alasdair MacIntyre in 2009
final causes. In this way, although Aquinas argued that
whatever is in the intellect begins in the senses, natural
teleology can be discerned with the senses and abstracted from nature through
induction.[73]

Contemporary Thomism encompasses multiple variants, from neo-scholasticism to

existential Thomism.[74]

The so-called new natural lawyers like Germain Grisez and Robert P. George applied
Thomistic legal principles to contemporary ethical debates, while Freeman proposed that
Thomism's cognition was most compatible with neurodynamics. Analytical Thomism (John
Joseph Haldane) encourages dialogue between analytic philosophy and broadly Aristotelian
philosophy of mind, psychology and hylomorphic metaphysics.[75] Other contemporary
Thomists include Eleonore Stump, Alasdair MacIntyre and John Finnis.

Western philosophical subdisciplines

Western philosophers have often been divided into some major branches, or schools, based
either on the questions typically addressed by people working in different parts of the field,
or notions of ideological undercurrents. In the ancient world, the most influential division of
the subject was the Stoics' division of philosophy into logic, ethics, and physics (conceived as
the study of the nature of the world, and including both natural science and metaphysics). In
contemporary philosophy, specialties within the field are more commonly divided into
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics (the latter two of which together comprise
axiology, or value theory). Logic is sometimes included as a main branch of philosophy,
sometimes as a separate science philosophers happen to work on, and sometimes just as a
characteristically philosophical method applying to all branches of philosophy.

Within these broad branches there are now numerous sub-disciplines of philosophy. At the
broadest level there is the division between analytic (the English-speaking world and Nordic
countries) and continental philosophy (in the rest of Europe). For continental philosophy
subdividing philosophy between "experts" is problematic for the very nature of the
interdisciplinary task of philosophy itself; however, for most of analytic philosophy further
divisions simplify the task for philosophers in each area.

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The interest in particular sub-disciplines waxes and wanes over time; sometimes sub-
disciplines become particularly hot topics and can occupy so much space in the literature
that they almost seem like major branches in their own right. (Since the 1970s philosophy of
mind—which is, generally speaking, mainly a sub-discipline of metaphysics—has taken on
this position within analytic philosophy, and has attracted so much attention that some
suggest philosophy of mind as the paradigm for what contemporary analytic philosophers
do.)

Philosophy contrasted with other disciplines

Natural science

Originally the term "philosophy" was applied to all intellectual endeavors. Aristotle studied
what would now be called biology, meteorology, physics, and cosmology, alongside his
metaphysics and ethics. Even in the eighteenth century physics and chemistry were still
classified as "natural philosophy", that is, the philosophical study of nature. Today these
latter subjects are popularly referred to as sciences, and as separate from philosophy. But
the distinction is not clear; some philosophers still contend that science retains an
unbroken — and unbreakable — link to philosophy.

More recently, psychology, economics, sociology, and linguistics were once the domain of
philosophers insofar as they were studied at all, but now have only a weaker connection with
the field. In the late twentieth century cognitive science and artificial intelligence could be
seen as being forged in part out of "philosophy of mind."

Philosophy is done primarily through self-reflection and critical thinking. It does not tend to
rely on experiment. However, in some ways philosophy is close to science in its character
and method; some analytic philosophers have suggested that the method of philosophical
analysis allows philosophers to emulate the methods of natural science; Quine holds that
philosophy does no more than clarify the arguments and claims of other sciences. This
suggests that philosophy might be the study of meaning and reasoning generally; but some
still would claim either that this is not a science, or that if it is it ought not to be pursued by
philosophers.

All these views have something in common: whatever philosophy essentially is or is

concerned with, it tends on the whole to proceed more "abstractly" than most (or most
other) natural sciences. It does not depend as much on experience and experiment, and does
not contribute as directly to technology. It clearly would be a mistake to identify philosophy
with any one natural science; whether it can be identified with science very broadly
construed is still an open question.

This is an active discipline pursued by both trained philosophers and scientists.

Philosophers often refer to, and interpret, experimental work of various kinds (as in
philosophy of physics and philosophy of psychology), but such branches of philosophy aim
at philosophical understanding of experimental work. Philosophers do not perform
experiments and formulate scientific theories qua philosophers.

Theology and religious studies

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Like philosophy, most religious studies are not experimental. Parts of theology, including
questions about the existence and nature of gods, clearly overlap with philosophy of religion.
Aristotle considered theology a branch of metaphysics, the central field of philosophy, and
most philosophers before the twentieth century have devoted significant effort to theological
questions. So the two are not unrelated. But other parts of religious studies, such as the
comparison of different world religions, can be easily distinguished from philosophy in just
the way that any other social science can be distinguished from philosophy. These are closer
to history and sociology, and involve specific observations of particular phenomena, here
particular religious practices.

The empiricist tradition in modern philosophy often held that religious questions are
beyond the scope of human knowledge, and many have claimed that religious language is
literally meaningless: there are not even questions to be answered. Some philosophers have
felt that these difficulties in evidence were irrelevant, and have argued for, against, or just
about religious beliefs on moral or other grounds.

Mathematics

The philosophy of mathematics is a branch of philosophy of science; but in many ways

mathematics has a special relationship to philosophy. This is because the study of logic is a
central branch of philosophy, and mathematics is a paradigmatic example of logic. In the
late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, logic made great advances, and mathematics has
been proven to be reducible to logic (at least, to first-order logic with some set theory). The
use of formal, mathematical logic in philosophy now resembles the use of mathematics in
science, although it is not as frequent.

See also
Eastern philosophy
Glossary of philosophy
History of metaphysical realism
History of metaphysical naturalism
History of philosophy
Index of philosophy
List of philosophers
List of philosophical theories
List of philosophies
Pseudophilosophy

National traditions

American philosophy
British philosophy
French philosophy
German philosophy (including Austrian philosophy)
Polish philosophy

Non-mainstream movements

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New realism
Objectivism
Personalism
Post-analytic philosophy
Post-Continental philosophy
Theosophy (Theosophy and Western philosophy)

References
1. Kenny, Anthony, A New History of Western Philosophy, chapter 1.
2. Gottlieb, Anthony, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the
Greeks to the Renaissance, 1st Edition, chapters 1 and 2.
3. West, Thomas G., and Platon. Plato's Apology of Socrates: an interpretation, with a new
translation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979.
4. Roman Philosophy (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (https://www.iep.utm.edu/roma
nphi/)
5. The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 15. World Book. 2000.
6. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume II: From Augustine to Scotus
(Burns & Oates, 1950), p. 1, dates medieval philosophy proper from the Carolingian
Renaissance in the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth century, though he
includes Augustine and the Patristic fathers as precursors. Desmond Henry, in Edwards
1967, pp. 252–257 volume 5, starts with Augustine and ends with Nicholas of Oresme in
the late fourteenth century. David Luscombe, Medieval Thought (Oxford University
Press, 1997), dates medieval philosophy from the conversion of Constantine in 312 to
the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s. Christopher Hughes, in A.C. Grayling (ed.),
Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), covers
philosophers from Augustine to Ockham. Gracia 2008, p. 620 identifies medieval
philosophy as running from Augustine to John of St. Thomas in the seventeenth century.
Kenny 2012, volume II begins with Augustine and ends with the Lateran Council of
1512.
7. Haskins, Charles H. (1898). "The Life of Medieval Students as Illustrated by their
Letters". The American Historical Review. 3 (2): 203–229. doi:10.2307/1832500 (https://
doi.org/10.2307%2F1832500). JSTOR 1832500 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1832500).
8. Schmitt & Skinner 1988, p. 5, loosely define the period as extending "from the age of
Ockham to the revisionary work of Bacon, Descartes and their contemporaries.
9. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez (The
Newman Press, 1953), p. 18: "When one looks at Renaissance philosophy … one is
faced at first sight with a rather bewildering assortment of philosophies."
10. Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University
Press, 1992), p. 4: "one may identify the hallmark of Renaissance philosophy as an
accelerated and enlarged interest, stimulated by newly available texts, in primary
sources of Greek and Roman thought that were previously unknown or partially known
or little read."
11. Gracia, Jorge J.E. Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject. p. 621. "the humanists …
restored man to the centre of attention and channeled their efforts to the recovery and
transmission of classical learning, particularly in the philosophy of Plato." in Bunnin &
Tsui-James 2008.

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12. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez (The
Newman Press, 1953), p. 29: "The bulk of Renaissance thinkers, scholars and scientists
were, of course, Christians … but none the less the classical revival … helped to bring
to the fore a conception of autonomous man or an idea of the development of the
human personality, which, though generally Christian, was more 'naturalistic' and less
ascetic than the mediaeval conception."
13. Schmitt & Skinner 1988, pp. 61, 63: "From Petrarch the early humanists learnt their
conviction that the revival of humanae literae was only the first step in a greater
intellectual renewal" […] "the very conception of philosophy was changing because its
chief object was now man—man was at centre of every inquiry."
14. Cassirer; Kristeller; Randall, eds. (1948). "Introduction". The Renaissance Philosophy of
Man (https://archive.org/details/renaissancephilo00cass). University of Chicago Press.
15. James Daniel Collins, Interpreting Modern Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2015,
p. 85.
16. Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 44 n. 2.
17. "Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy" (http://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/). Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Hobbes is the founding father of modern political
philosophy. Directly or indirectly, he has set the terms of debate about the fundamentals
of political life right into our own times."
18. "Contractarianism" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/). Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.: "Contractarianism […] stems from the Hobbesian line of
social contract thought"
19. Diane Collinson (1987). Fifty Major Philosophers, A Reference Guide. p. 125.
20. Rutherford 2006, p. xiii, defines its subject thus: "what has come to be known as "early
modern philosophy"—roughly, philosophy spanning the period between the end of the
sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, or, in terms of figures,
Montaigne through Kant." Nadler 2008, p. 1, likewise identifies its subject as "the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Kenny 2012, p. 107, introduces "early modern
philosophy" as "the writings of the classical philosophers of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries in Europe".
21. Steven Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, 2008, pp. 1–2: "By the
seventeenth century […] it had become more common to find original philosophical
minds working outside the strictures of the university—i.e., ecclesiastic—framework. […]
by the end of the eighteenth century, [philosophy] was a secular enterprise."
22. Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press,
2006), p. xii: "To someone approaching the early modern period of philosophy from an
ancient and medieval background the most striking feature of the age is the absence of
Aristotle from the philosophic scene."
23. Donald Rutherford, The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge
University Press, 2006), p. 1: "epistemology assumes a new significance in the early
modern period as philosophers strive to define the conditions and limits of human
knowledge."
24. Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, p. 211: "The period between
Descartes and Hegel was the great age of metaphysical system-building."
25. Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, pp. 179–180: "the seventeenth
century saw the gradual separation of the old discipline of natural philosophy into the
science of physics […] [b]y the nineteenth century physics was a fully mature empirical
science, operating independently of philosophy."

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26. Jeffrey Tlumak, Classical Modern Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, Routledge,

2006, p. xi: "[Classical Modern Philosophy] is a guide through the systems of the seven
brilliant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophers most regularly
taught in college Modern Philosophy courses".
27. Richard Schacht, Classical Modern Philosophers: Descartes to Kant, Routledge, 2013,
p. 1: "Seven men have come to stand out from all of their counterparts in what has come
to be known as the 'modern' period in the history of philosophy (i.e., the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries): Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and
Kant".
28. Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, pp. 212–331.
29. Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, pp. 2–3: "Why should the early
modern period in philosophy begin with Descartes and Bacon, for example, rather than
with Erasmus and Montaigne? […] Suffice it to say that at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and especially with Bacon and Descartes, certain questions and
concerns come to the fore—a variety of issues that motivated the inquiries and debates
that would characterize much philosophical thinking for the next two centuries."
30. Rutherford, The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, p. 1: "Most often
this [period] has been associated with the achievements of a handful of great thinkers:
the so-called 'rationalists' (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and 'empiricists' (Locke,
Berkeley, Hume), whose inquiries culminate in Kant's 'Critical philosophy.' These
canonical figures have been celebrated for the depth and rigor of their treatments of
perennial philosophical questions..."
31. Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, p. 2: "The study of early modern
philosophy demands that we pay attention to a wide variety of questions and an
expansive pantheon of thinkers: the traditional canonical figures (Descartes, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume), to be sure, but also a large 'supporting cast'..."
32. Bruce Kuklick, "Seven Thinkers and How They Grew: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz;
Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Kant" in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in
History (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 125: "Literary, philosophical, and
historical studies often rely on a notion of what is canonical. In American philosophy
scholars go from Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey; in American literature from James
Fenimore Cooper to F. Scott Fitzgerald; in political theory from Plato to Hobbes and
Locke […] The texts or authors who fill in the blanks from A to Z in these, and other
intellectual traditions, constitute the canon, and there is an accompanying narrative that
links text to text or author to author, a 'history of' American literature, economic thought,
and so on. The most conventional of such histories are embodied in university courses
and the textbooks that accompany them. This essay examines one such course, the
History of Modern Philosophy, and the texts that helped to create it. If a philosopher in
the United States were asked why the seven people in my title comprise Modern
Philosophy, the initial response would be: they were the best, and there are historical
and philosophical connections among them."
33. Rutherford 2006, p. 1: "epistemology assumes a new significance in the early modern
period as philosophers strive to define the conditions and limits of human knowledge."
34. Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, p. xiii.
35. Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, p. 3.

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36. Karl Ameriks, Kant's Elliptical Path, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 307: "The
phenomenon of late modern philosophy can be said to have begun right around the
pivotal year of 1781, when Kant's Critique of Pure Reason appeared. It was around this
time that German thought started to understand itself as existing in a period when
philosophy's main traditional options appeared to have been played out, and it no longer
seemed appropriate to define oneself as simply modern or enlightened."
37. Baldwin 2003, p. Western philosophy (https://books.google.com/books?id=I09hCIlhPpk
C&pg=PA4), p. 4, at Google Booksby the 1870s Germany contained much of the best
universities in the world. […] There were certainly more professors of philosophy in
Germany in 1870 than anywhere else in the world, and perhaps more even than
everywhere else put together.
38. Beiser, Frederick C., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge, 1993), page 2.
39. Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801,
Harvard University Press, 2002, p. viii: "the young romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel,
Novalis—[were] crucial figures in the development of German idealism."
40. Baldwin 2003, p. 119: "within a hundred years of the first stirrings in the early nineteenth
century [logic] had undergone the most fundamental transformation and substantial
advance in its history."
41. Nicholas Joll, "Contemporary Metaphilosophy" (http://www.iep.utm.edu/con-meta/)
42. Spindel Conference 2002 – 100 Years of Metaethics. The Legacy of G.E. Moore,
University of Memphis, 2003, p. 165.
43. M.E. Waithe (ed.), A History of Women Philosophers: Volume IV: Contemporary Women
Philosophers, 1900-Today, Springer, 1995.
44. Russell, Bertrand (22 February 1999). "The Principles of Mathematics (1903)" (http://fair
-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-principles-of-mathematics). Fair-use.org. Retrieved
22 August 2010.
45. Halberstadt, Max (c. 1921). "Sigmund Freud, half-length portrait, facing left, holding
cigar in right hand" (https://www.loc.gov/item/98514770/). Library of Congress. Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20171228054049/https://www.loc.gov/item/98514770/)
from the original on 28 December 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
46. Michael Rosen, "Continental Philosophy from Hegel", in A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy
2: Further through the Subject, Oxford University Press (1998), p. 665.
47. John Macquarrie, Existentialism, New York (1972), pages 18–21.
48. Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, New York (1995), page 259.
49. John Macquarrie, Existentialism, New York (1972), pages 14–15.
50. Robert C. Solomon, Existentialism (McGraw-Hill, 1974), pages 1–2.
51. Ernst Breisach, Introduction to Modern Existentialism, New York (1962), page 5
52. Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism: From Dostoevesky to Sartre, New York (1956), page
12
53. Matustik, Martin J. (1995). Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity. Indiana University Press.
ISBN 978-0-253-20967-2.
54. Solomon, Robert (2001). What Nietzsche Really Said. Schocken.
ISBN 978-0-8052-1094-1.
55. Religious thinkers were among those influenced by Kierkegaard. Christian existentialists
include Gabriel Marcel, Nicholas Berdyaev, Miguel de Unamuno, and Karl Jaspers
(although he preferred to speak of his "philosophical faith"). The Jewish philosophers
Martin Buber and Lev Shestov have also been associated with existentialism.

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56. Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801,
Harvard University Press, 2002, part I.
57. Geuss, R. The Idea of a Critical Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ch. 4.
58. Smith, Woodruff D. (2007). Husserl. Routledge.
59. Dreyfus, Hubert L.; Wrathall, Mark A. (2011). A Companion to Phenomenology and
Existentialism (https://books.google.com/books?id=xGNN75vXX0MC). John Wiley &
Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5656-4.
60. Pragmatism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pra
gmatism/). 13 September 2013. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
61. Rorty, Richard (1982). The Consequences of Pragmatism. Minnesota: Minnesota
University Press. p. xvi.
62. Putnam, Hilary (1995). Pragmatism: An Open Question. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 8–12.
63. Peirce, C.S. (1878), "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12,
286–302. Reprinted often, including Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 388–410 and
Essential Peirce v. 1, 124–41. See end of §II for the pragmatic maxim. See third and
fourth paragraphs in §IV for the discoverability of truth and the real by sufficient
investigation. Also see quotes from Peirce from across the years in the entries for
"Truth" (http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/truth.html) and "Pragmatism,
Maxim of..." (http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/pragmatismmaxim.html) in
the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola, editors,
University of Helsinki.
64. Peirce on p. 293 of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp.
286–302. Reprinted widely, including Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (CP)
v. 5, paragraphs 388–410.
65. Pratt, J.B. (1909). What is Pragmatism?. New York: Macmillan. p. 89.
66. Pragmatism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://www.iep.utm.edu/pragmati/)
67. William Egginton/Mike Sandbothe (eds.). The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy.
Contemporary Engagement between Analytic and Continental Thought. SUNY Press.
2004. Back cover.
68. "Alfred North Whitehead (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)" (https://www.iep.utm.ed
u/whitehed/).
69. William Blattner, "Some Thoughts About "Continental" and "Analytic" Philosophy" (http://f
aculty.georgetown.edu/blattnew/contanalytic.html)
70. Seibt, Johanna. "Process Philosophy" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philoso
phy/). In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
71. Nicholas Gaskill, A.J. Nocek, The Lure of Whitehead, University of Minnesota Press,
2014, p. 4: "it is no wonder that Whitehead fell by the wayside. He was too scientific for
the "continentals," not scientific enough for the "analytics," and too metaphysical—which
is to say uncritical—for them both" and p. 231: "the analytics and continentals are both
inclined toward Kantian presuppositions in a manner that Latour and Whitehead
brazenly renounce."
72. Kerr, Fergu (2008). After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=GlIDGodwC30C). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-3714-0.
73. Aquinas, De veritate, Q. 2, art. 3, answer 19.
74. Feser, Edward (2009). Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide (https://books.google.com/books?id
=uWdCAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA216). Oneworld Publications. p. 216.
ISBN 978-1-85168-690-2.

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75. Paterson, Craig; Pugh, Matthew S. (2006). Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue (h
ttps://books.google.com/books?id=hRIp3FaoqqUC). Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-3438-6.

Further reading
Kenny, Anthony. A New History of Western Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Copleston, Frederick (1946–1975). A History of Philosophy. Great Britain: Continuum.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1996) [1892 Kegan Paul]. Haldane, Elizabeth
Sanderson, ed. Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie [Hegel's Lectures on
the history of philosophy 3 vols.]. Humanities Press International.

External links
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu)
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://web.archive.org/web/200811230720
19/http://www.rep.routledge.com/views/home.html)
Western philosophy (https://inpho.cogs.indiana.edu/idea/758) at the Indiana Philosophy
Ontology Project
Western philosophy (https://philpapers.org/browse/history-of-western-philosophy) at
PhilPapers
Philosophy Sites on the Internet – Tel Aviv University list (http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/
philos/links.htm)
Glyn Hughes' Squashed Philosophers (http://www.sqapo.com/index.htm) – abridged
versions of classic philosophy texts.
Short History of Western Philosophy, A (https://web.archive.org/web/20090413090205/ht
tp://www.lutterworth.com/lp/titles/shwphil.htm), by Johannes Hirschberger; edited by
Clare Hay; ISBN 978-0-7188-3092-2
Philosophy Forums (http://forums.philosophyforums.com/)
Philosophy Wiki (http://sophiasdialectic.com)

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