Spain 2º Bachillerato History of Philosophy
Chapters: 3
1. From the origins of Western philosophy in Greece to the end of Antiquity
Historicity of philosophical problems and methods · The birth of philosophy in Greece · Presocratics and the problem of reality · Sophists and Socrates · Plato and Aristotle on knowledge and reality · Anthropology in classical philosophy · Classical ethics and eudaimonia · Plato and Aristotle on politics · Hellenistic philosophy
- Ancient Philosophy: From the First Questions to Stoicism – Philosophy means 'love of wisdom'. Around 600 BCE Greek thinkers began to explain nature by reason (logos) instead of myth. The Presocratics searched for the first principle (arche): water, air, fire, unchanging being or atoms. Then the Sophists and Socrates turned to human life, and Socrates died for his questioning (told in Plato's Apology). Plato taught the theory of Forms; Aristotle built logic and science from observation. Later Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics, and Romans like Cicero and Seneca, asked how to live a good, calm life.
- Socrates: The Philosopher Who Asked Questions – Socrates (about 470–399 BCE) lived in Athens and wrote nothing. Unlike the paid Sophists, he questioned people for free to find the truth. He said his only wisdom was knowing that he did not know, and he took 'Know yourself' as his task. His method tests a definition with counter-examples until a better one appears. He taught that we must care for the soul (psyche), that a good life needs virtue (arete), and that virtue is knowledge: no one does wrong on purpose. He heard an inner warning voice (daimonion). Athens condemned him in 399 BCE; he chose to obey the law and die rather than stop philosophising.
- Plato and Aristotle: Two Answers to What Is Real – Plato (c. 427–347 BCE) taught that true reality is a world of perfect, unchanging Forms, that the soul is immortal and that learning is recollection. His student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) brought the Forms down to earth: every thing is matter plus form, change is potential becoming actual, and the soul is the form of a living body.
- Virtue Ethics: Becoming a Good Person – Virtue ethics asks "What kind of person should I be?" rather than only "Which rule should I follow?". An action has an intention, means, the act and consequences. Socrates taught that virtue is knowledge. Plato linked the three parts of the soul (reason, spirit, desire) to four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. Aristotle said every aim points to a final end, eudaimonia (living well), and that each moral virtue is a golden mean between two vices, learned by habit and guided by practical wisdom.
- Political Philosophy: The State, Power and Justice – Political philosophy asks big questions about living together: Why do we need a state? What makes power rightful (legitimate)? What is justice? How much freedom and equality should people have? Social contract thinkers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) explain the state as an agreement. Plato and Aristotle described the ideal state and the forms of government; Cicero saw the republic as the people's shared property under law. Rawls, Mill and thinkers from many traditions (Confucius, Kautilya, Ubuntu) help us weigh liberty, equality, property and community.
2. From the Middle Ages to European modernity
Medieval philosophy · Faith and reason · The birth of European modernity · Rationalism and empiricism: Descartes and Hume · Modern metaphysical debate · Origin of society and power: social contract
- Medieval Philosophy: Faith and Reason from Augustine to Ockham – Medieval philosophy covers roughly 400 to 1450 CE. Its big question was how faith (what religion teaches) and reason (what we can work out by thinking) fit together. Augustine taught that truth is found within, lit by God, and that faith seeks understanding. Boethius passed on Greek logic. Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonides studied Aristotle deeply, and their work reached Europe through Latin translations. In the new universities, scholasticism used a careful question-and-answer method. Anselm argued for God from the idea of the greatest possible being. Thomas Aquinas joined Aristotle with Christian faith: reason and faith are two floors of one house, and reason can show that a first cause exists (the five ways). In the 1300s William of Ockham urged simple explanations (Ockham's razor), and faith and reason began to separate, opening the way to the Renaissance and modern science.
- The Scientific Revolution: How Science Learned to Test Ideas – Between about 1540 and 1700, thinkers in Europe changed how people study nature. Copernicus put the Sun at the centre, Galileo used a telescope to collect evidence, Kepler found that orbits are ellipses, and Newton explained the sky and the Earth with one law of gravity. Bacon and Descartes described a new method based on observation, experiment, reason and maths. This is the Scientific Revolution.
- Rationalism and Empiricism: Reason or Experience? – In the 1600s and 1700s European thinkers argued about the source of knowledge. Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) said the surest knowledge comes from reason and that some ideas are inborn. Descartes doubted everything until he reached one certainty, "I think, therefore I am", and rebuilt knowledge from clear and distinct ideas. Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) said all ideas come from experience: the mind starts as a blank slate. Hume showed that we never perceive cause itself, only one event following another, so our belief in causes comes from habit. Kant later combined both views.
- Metaphysics: What Is Really Real? – Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that asks what reality is like at the deepest level. Ontology asks what exists: concrete things, abstract things like numbers, or both. Metaphysics studies substance and properties, change and identity (the Ship of Theseus), mind and body (dualism, materialism, idealism), time and causation, and free will versus determinism. It also asks big questions about the cosmos, nature and life. Thinkers from Parmenides and Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Hume and Kant, to Indian schools like Nyaya and Advaita Vedanta, gave different answers.
- Social Contract Theory: Why Do People Obey a Government? – Social contract theory says that a government gets its power from an agreement among the people, not from God or force. Thinkers imagine a 'state of nature' with no government, then ask what people would agree to. Hobbes said people give almost all power to a strong ruler for safety. Locke said government is limited and must protect life, liberty and property, or people may replace it. Rousseau said the people together are sovereign and the 'general will' should make the law.
3. From modernity to postmodernity
The Enlightenment project · Kant's critical philosophy · Ethics of happiness and ethics of duty · Critiques of capitalism and totalitarianism · Nietzsche and postmodernism · Analytic philosophy and language · Existentialism and Spanish thought · Contemporary feminism: Simone de Beauvoir
- The Enlightenment – The Enlightenment (about 1680–1800) was a movement in Europe that said people should use reason and evidence, not only tradition, to understand the world and to run society. It grew out of the Scientific Revolution. Thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft argued for natural rights, separation of powers, freedom of speech and religion, and government by consent. Ideas spread through books, newspapers, salons and the Encyclopédie. Some monarchs tried reforms (enlightened absolutism); the ideas also fed the American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions and later movements everywhere, including reformers in India.
- Immanuel Kant: What We Can Know and What We Must Do – Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), a German thinker, asked two big questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? On knowledge, he joined rationalism (reason) and empiricism (experience): knowledge needs both concepts and sense data. In his Copernican turn, objects must fit the forms of our mind (space, time, categories such as cause). So we know phenomena (things as they appear), never noumena (things in themselves). Reason cannot prove God, the soul or freedom, so old metaphysics is not knowledge, though maths and science give synthetic a priori knowledge. On ethics, only a good will acting from duty has moral worth. The categorical imperative tests a rule: act only on rules you could will as universal law, and treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.
- Friedrich Nietzsche: Breaking Old Values, Creating New Ones – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German thinker who attacked the traditional values of Europe. In art he saw two forces: Apollonian (order, form) and Dionysian (wild energy). His phrase "God is dead" means modern people no longer really live by faith, so the old values lose their base and nihilism (the feeling that nothing matters) threatens. In his genealogy of morals he said values have a history: "master morality" praised strength and pride, while "slave morality", which he linked to Christianity, praised meekness out of resentment. His answer is the will to power (the drive to grow and overcome), the overman who creates new values, and loving one's life enough to want it again forever (eternal return). In the same century, Comte's positivism trusted only facts tested by science (three stages: theological, metaphysical, positive), later sharpened by the Vienna Circle. Nietzsche's perspectivism ("no facts, only interpretations") instead inspired postmodern thinkers like Foucault and Derrida.
- Existentialism: You Are What You Choose – Existentialism is a 19th–20th century way of thinking about human life. Its main idea: for a person, existence comes before essence. A tool is designed for a purpose first; a human is born first and then makes a self through choices. So we are free, and with freedom comes anxiety and full responsibility. Jaspers showed that limit situations (death, suffering, struggle, guilt) wake us up to ask what matters. Hiding behind the crowd or fate is bad faith; owning one's choices is authenticity. Key thinkers: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus; in Spanish thought Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset.