This article presents the history of philosophy, for the article on the history of philosophy like disciplines to see Histoire of the philosophical discipline . ----------

The first encountered difficulty is that during the history name philosophy indicated various thought processes and knew various fortunes and multiple forms: born in the ancient Greece, at the philosophical pre-socratiques, like Physical, i.e. like rational study of nature, it was revolutionized with the invention of the Dialectique and the Maïeutique by Socrate, presupposing that the truth is hidden in the heart of each one and that the dialog makes it possible to reveal it, then its successors and its disciples (in particular Plato and Aristote) makes it inseparable from the political discussion. The dialectical one, while affirming, with the Theory of the Ideas, the existence of a “hidden immaterial reality”, from an imperishable world specific to the ideas, transcending significant reality, will center many philosophies towards an ontological reflection , i.e. on “the being in oneself”. Tripartite division by Plato of the heart (a concupiscible element, source of the desires, a heart valiant, courageous, intrepid, and a reasoning spirit) contributed to the design of the desire like obstacle to the freedom and the realization of the human nature. Even post-socratic philosophies materialists and sensualists (as various as the Cynicism, the epicureanism, the Stoicism, and the skepticism), rejecting the existence of an understandable world, exhorting the man to seek happiness on Earth, and being presented in the form of “practical philosophies” having for goal to guide the action by precepts ethical S, promoted the control of passions. At the conclusion of Antiquity, the theses aristotelicians will dominate the philosophical thought: metaphysics is “Philosophie first”, the physique bringing to conclude with the existence from a principle eternal and engine from the world: God. Under the influence of Thomas d' Aquin, the aristotelism has, during the Moyen-âge, allowed the subordination of philosophy the Christian theology. The political reflections are thus given up with the profit of work on logic.

Descartes, while returning its autonomy in the “natural lights” of philosophy with respect to the Truths revealed of the Bible, illustrates this new double logical and theological orientation well: shining mathematician, creator of the analytical Geometry, by this “ontological evidence of the existence of God” it introduces the Démonstration in metaphysics. Mathematics is thus presented like a model for the metaphysical company in the Discourse on Method. Leibniz, inventor of the Infinitesimal calculus proceeds in this way by defending the existence of innate ideas, placed by God in his creation, against the empiricism of Locke. Kant, rejecting the first this claim scientific of metaphysics, marks a new rupture: any use of the reason is limited by conditions a priori . Moreover it distinguishes moral and religious, with this same title the work of Machiavel, designing the policy, i.e. art to control, like art to seize and preserve the power, i.e. in terms of techniques amorales, is also remarkable. It makes reappear political philosophy. In parallel Spinoza advances, with its theory of the Conatus, that the desire is the engine of the human action, it is by him that we assign goals and that the reason is the means with the service of this end (happiness). Work of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will complete the rejection of the theses metaphysics inherited the platonicism.

As from the 18th century, philosophy is reorientated again by being detached very clearly positive Sciences, several of its branches become autonomous disciplines (the such Political science born from the political Philosophie or the Logique mathematics and the Biologie become of the entirely autonomous disciplines). This detachment of the applied sciences and formal allowed that philosophy, born of a criticism of the opinion, belief, and in particular of the myths and religions, as well as Sophistique, which Socrate reproached for not following the Reason and for not making it possible to precisely apprehend Truth, undergoes in return the same criticism, the Positivisme condemning metaphysics, heart historical of philosophy, for its lack of bases, its construction, certainly beautiful and clever, but especially a priori , compared to other sciences. The formation of the social sciences, definitively seems to condemn philosophy to be a discipline without object, and thus seriously lowers its original claim with being “supreme science” concerning with the Absolu, and by there with all the fields of knowledge. Originally, philosophy thus included the whole of the rational speeches, and in particular the natural science, the social sciences, and formal sciences, from the metaphysical point of view and although it continues to be influenced by the theories and methods of these disciplines being émancipées, that is not any more from this point of view of design and explanation of the world in its globality, that it has to some extent abandoned. The unit of philosophy on epistemological the history plans and is thus problematic. Contemporary philosophy, heiresses of these multiple and contradictory traditions, arises thus in varied forms. Schematically, one often opposes the analytical Philosophie born in the anglophone countries and applicant that it is by having a better comprehension and a logical use of the language that one can solve the philosophical problems, to the continental Philosophie, gathering various approaches, having as a whole continued the rejection of metaphysics, towards a “end of the Ideology”, like the tradition hermeneutics and postkantienne, the phenomenologic tradition , the Existentialisme, the Marxisme, the Déconstruction of Derrida and Heidegger, the Structuralisme, and the feminist Philosophie. Each one of these currents questions presupposed of the philosophical tradition, more or less calling it into question. Philosophy is thus plural, no method not having succeeded in imposing itself among the philosophers (as the experimental method imposed itself in physics and chemistry for example). One should not however see the instability of the philosophical methods like a weakness of the discipline, but rather like one of its characteristic features.

Indeed, behind their multiple oppositions the philosophical theories are born each one of a critical glance on their predecessors, in particular as regards metaphysics, of a “amazement” to take again Schopenhauer and Aristote. This continuity in the questioning and the requirement of a justification increasingly more rational, brings to define philosophy more as one rational frame of the mind in the questioning, a know-how, that a corpus of knowledge. It is there that the formula of Kant “one does not learn philosophy, one does not learn that to philosophize” takes all its direction.

Second characteristic of philosophy: the delimitation of its methods and its field of competence forms integral part of itself. Each philosopher must indicate which problems it wishes to light, and which will be the method most adapted to solve these problems. It should indeed well be seen that in the absence of a unit of approach, and thus of answer, philosophy presents a major unity of its interrogations, certain philosophical problems pretense timeless. Thus, philosophy is a kind of return critical, knowledge on itself, or more precisely a rational criticism of all knowledge (scientific opinions, beliefs, art, reflections, etc), including philosophical - since to reflect on the role of philosophy is to start a philosophical reflection.

Chronological plank

Ancient philosophy

See also: ancient Philosophy

See also: Origin of philosophy

Greek philosophy knew three large periods:

• the Présocratiques, regarded as the founders of the Western philosophical tradition and credits in the Ionian islands;
• the traditional Greek philosophy (5th century), which starts with Socrate with Athens and continues with Plato, Diogène and Aristote.
• after the conquests of Alexandre Large the, hellenistic philosophy: Épicure, the stoical ones or the skeptics who are the most important thinkers of this time.

Is Greek philosophy characterized by the fact that it is dominated by the ethical , by the question “ how of living well? ” and more particularly by that of the Virtue and the Happiness. The importance of this topic appears obvious with the reading of the dialogs of Plato, of the texts of Aristote, the Stoïciens or Épicure. The consequence of this tendency is that philosophy was included/understood like a way of living and not only as one theoretical speech (even if this last could not be been unaware of naturally) what is particularly striking at a Socrate, a Diogène or at the stoical .

Two other large fields of research of thinkers ancient are on the one hand Cosmology and physics (what one named a long time natural philosophy), on the other hand the Théorie of knowledge sometimes related to the Logique. Thus, the fundamental question which occupied the presocratic philosophers was the question of the principle of any thing. Through a mixture of empirical observations and speculations, they tried to include/understand nature and its phenomena. Thus the first known philosopher, Thalès, held water for the principle of any thing. Plato in the Timée (of which the influence was paramount during the history of philosophy) also seeks him to explain the birth of the world, and imagines a Démiurge which would have created our universe. Lastly, Physics of Aristote, just like the Letter in Hérodote of Épicure or stoical physics show the lively interest of old for the knowledge of nature (φυσις).

The Theory of knowledge and the Logique were they also essential for the philosophers of Antiquity. In the Théétète , Plato tries to define the nature of the knowledge, and the theory of the Ideas is itself one of the bases of the theory of the knowledge of Plato. Épicure, as for him, develops a whole theory empirist of knowledge in order to determine the criteria which a knowledge must fill to be true. Lastly, as well Aristote as the stoical founded a formal logic, in the form, respectively, of the Syllogistique and a Logique of the proposals.

Medieval philosophy