Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and action of the Western world. In order to understand the impact of philosophy on the modern Western mind and how Western philosophy of the modern period assumed its face, we need to have an overview of the journey of philosophy from the ancient period to the modern period.
Pre-Socrates Ancient Period
The pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, Zeno of Elea, the Sophists, and many others, were interested in cosmology—a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with nature and origin of the universe, while rejecting mythical answers to such questions (A.C. Grayling, The History of Philosophy.UK, Penguin Books, 2019, 11). They were specifically interested in the arche (the cause or first principle) of the world.
The Sophists in general promoted subjectivism and relativism. They were secular atheists, relativists and cynical about religious beliefs and all traditions. Protagoras, a Sophist philosopher, claimed that “man is the measure of all things”, suggesting there is no objective truth (Grayling, 53).
This was also applied to issues of ethics. Another Greek sophist named Prodicus argued that laws could not be taken seriously because they changed all the time.
Classical period
The Classical period of ancient Greek philosophy centers on Socrates (470 BC – 399 BC) and the two generations of students following him. Socrates developed a critical approach, called the Socratic method, to examine people’s views. He focused on issues of human life: eudaimonia (well-being), justice, beauty, truth, and virtue.
After Socrates’ death, Plato founded the Platonic Academy which persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, and Platonic philosophy which says that happiness or eudaimonia is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and virtues are skills needed to attain it.
As Socrates had done, Plato identified virtue with knowledge. This led him to questions of epistemology on what knowledge is and how it is acquired. Plato believed that the senses are illusionary and could not be trusted. (Grayling, 68).
The final school of philosophy to be established during the Classical period was the Peripatetic school, founded by Plato’s student, Aristotle who was born fifteen years after the death of Socrates.
Aristotle
It is helpful to know something about Aristotle’s logic because important developments in later philosophy either turned upon it or were sparked by extensions and developments of it, especially in Bertrand Russel and others in the twentieth century ‘Analytic philosophy’.
Aristotle’s writings on logic are known as the Organon, which means ‘instrument’, indicating that they are treatises on the methods of enquiry and reasoning (Grayling, 85).
If Aristotle were alive today, he would be a scientist, and most likely a biologist; he would have a lively interest in scientific method and logic. (Grayling, 84).
Hellenistic (Greek) and Roman Philosophy after Aristotle
The Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods saw the continuation of Aristotelianism and Cynicism, and the emergence of new philosophies, including Pyrrhonism (doubt, skepticism), Epicureanism (hedonism: pleasure is the highest good), Stoicism (personal well-being), and Neo-pythagoreanism (combination of Pythagorean teachings with Platonic, Peripatetic, Aristotelian and Stoic philosophic traditions). Platonism also continued but came under new interpretations, particularly academic skepticism in the Hellenistic period and Neoplatonism in the Imperial period.
The traditions of Greek philosophy heavily influenced Roman philosophy. In Imperial times, Epicureanism and Stoicism were particularly popular. Two prominent philosophical schools that made long lasting impact on European mind are Greek and Alexandrian. While Greek philosophy owes its existence to mainly Plato and his student Aristotle, the Alexandrian school is represented by Plotinus and Porphyry.
Although many of the European philosophers got influenced by the Alexandrian Neoplatonism, but the most influential philosophers who made indelible impact on the European mind and shaped their further thought processes were Plato (428 BC-348 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC). Taught by Plato Aristotle founded the Peripatetic school of philosophy.
The Greeks could never understand mystical Oneness as did the Alexandrians. In other words, Greek thought remained stuck at the stage of Being and could not move forward to the stage of Oneness. In the Islamic terminology we can say that European thought, as the offspring of the Greek thought, always remained entangled in astonishment (Taḥayyur).
Mujaddid Alf Thānī Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī has said that Plato got trapped into his intuitions. That is why he went astray. According to Plato, intuition, supernatural (perceiving ideas seen before birth) or rational (recollection of knowledge or cognition of ideas in the mind), is the immediate perceiving of ideas.
The aim of intuitive knowledge is the definition of the essence. (Dariusz Pietca, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Poland). In fact, the Greek philosophers wondered only in the world of forms, a world-view attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas.
It is called as the theory of Forms or theory of Ideas. Hence, Greek philosophy is not metaphysics in the real sense. Mujaddid Sirhindī says that Plato considered purification of self as to be everything but didn’t reach purification of heart.
That is the main reason for his bewilderment. Later the roman philosophers strengthened and carried forward the same thought further till it culminated in the 19th century in the form of Romanticism which emphasised individualism and freedom from rules.
By individualism is understood the negation of any principle higher than individuality, and the consequent restriction of civilisation, in all its provinces, to purely human elements. (Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World, London, 1942, 80).
Aristotle talked of intellect and reason but he intermingled them. This lack of distinction between the two gave rise to such an ambiguity that till the beginning of the 18th century rationalism completely gripped European mind.
Aristotle argued that human mind thinks with the help of pictures (Noesis). This is also called visual thinking. This means he made thinking and imagination same. That is the reason that today West is unable to understand the absolute intelligence and disparages pure thinking. As society, and not this life and the life hereafter, stands at the centre of Greek philosophy, materialism is innate in the Western mind.
Since the Greeks were habitual of seeing everything through the prism of man, therefore, when later Europe took to philosophy in the 15th and the 16th century, they called it Humanism and later, after the Renaissance, Individualism as a result of which, it was argued that happiness lies in the fulfilment of desires.
This mindset landed man into a mesh of mental stress by putting before him unending desires that can never be fulfilled. The Greeks philosophers were not clear about the reality of soul (Rūḥ). Therefore, they used to intermix soul with self (Nafs), and misunderstand both. As a result, after the 17th century, the West could not make any difference between soul and intellect (‘Aql).
They thought self as same as the soul. The Greek called soul or Absolute Intellect (‘Aql Kullī) as Nous, and self as mind. Today psyche is same as mind. For soul the Latin word was spiritus. Today the word spirit is considered synonymous with the English word soul which to them means self.
It means, for last three hundred years the West has been misunderstanding self as soul. Such gross ambiguities of Greek thought later proved very harmful for the Western mind and subsequently spread to the whole world through Western system of education.
To be continued…
Dr Nazir Ahmad Zargar, Coordinator, Department of Religious Studies, Central University of Kashmir, Ganderbal
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.