History of the philosophical discipline

See also: History of philosophy (homonymy)

The history of philosophy is a philosophical discipline with whole share. It occupies a great place in the French university education. This importance was attached to him at the beginning of the XIXe century by Victor Cousin, Philosophe and Minister for the State education in 1840.

One can also find elements on the history of philosophy in the article devoteds to with each large branch of philosophy and in the article history of the method:

Logical
Metaphysical | History of Ethical metaphysics
History of the method

The continental tradition and analytical philosophy

The legitimacy and the place of such a discipline are problematic, if one remembers that the Philosophie is supposed to raise fundamental questions, that one could qualify timeless : it does not seem necessary to study the Histoire Philosophie, and it would be enough to simply study the questions which arise for us today.

The continental philosophy (expression which designates the French and German philosophers, and more especially those who claim phenomenology) privileges the tradition of the authors, in particular by a work of interpretation which very often constitutes the essence of the university formation. To have a point of comparison, it should be known that the Anglo-Saxon philosophers are rather trained according to precise philosophical problems (language, body and spirit, etc) and are undoubtedly more critical than the " continentaux" towards the " classiques" .

One can very schematically say that an opposition was constituted between a rather relativistic philosophy (post-modernism for example), which does not believe any more in the Vérité (which would be an illusion, or the instrument of a religious or political capacity), and whose principal activity is especially to elucidate the history of the thought (hypothetical end of metaphysics for example); and a more or less logical philosophy, pushed towards a Neo-scholasticism kind of by its rationalist tendency ; this last current of thought oscillates between realism and nominalism, and the philosophical problems that it arises attach it particularly to authors like Aristote (cf for example Anscombe) or Guillaume d' Ockham.

It is thus seen that the problems arising from becoming to it thought are not solved at all.

Several points of view

At the beginning of the Antiquité puts the question of the history of the Philosophie. Two opposite points of view can be released:

Go towards the truth

For Aristote, the Philosophy, in spite of its wanderings, always goes towards the Vérité, because the Réalité us constrained to correct the errors of our precursors. Aristote thus examines the thoughts of the first philosophers (see Métaphysique , delivers A), but it deforms them to emphasize its own system. This not very scrupulous practice will remain the rule at least until the XVIIIe century. The coherence of philosophy from the point of view of its history is thus particularly suspect, because it is a coherence manufactured afterwards.

Philosophical Relativism

If one takes Conscience diversity of the systems and their differences often irreducible, it seems that one is constrained to discredit all Pensée and that one is tiny room to the most extreme relativism. This argument was used very early by the first Sceptique S; the reasoning is that one could not decide dogmatically which Philosophe rightly, because there is always another which supported, which supports or which will support the opposite. From where one should conclude that all are mistaken and that there is no Vérité in becoming to it historical Humanité. This argument would also carry against all the religious dogmas. The simplicity of the reasoning and its clearness appear irreproachable. The argumentation would however be fallacious, as one will further see it with the Philosophie of the history of Hegel

Problems of this discipline

Can one think a Devenir Pensée which is not self-destroying? The Philosophy and the can Histoire be thought together without one or the other not disappearing? Is it necessary to choose between a Philosophie eternal of Platonic type and a historical relativism nihilist skeptic or ?

Such a setting in question is directed against the Concept of Vérité, and not against the Cohérence and the development of a Discours (of type philosophical or religious), or of a Théorie (of scientific type). For example, a system Logique can be coherent; but according to which criterion can it be known as truth?

One of the traps in which one falls often losqu' one writes the Histoire, it is to interpret one period, especially remote, with our mentalities of today. The lapse of memory, conscious or unconscious, of an event, can denature our Perception historical reality. This is even truer in the history of philosophy. It is thus important at the same time to put in perspective the characters and the sequence of the events in their historical context, and to have a panoramic vision which is not unaware of any the periods of the history, and sticks to all the aspects of history the one period (art, sciences, technology, modes of information circulation, beliefs, policy…) without what one is likely to fall into the Historicisme.

The obstacles which one frequently meets are prejudices, or erroneous popular beliefs (see Doxa), who, taking part in the social representations, are not less one deforming mirror of reality.

To arrive until the depths of the origins of philosophy is another difficulty, because often the sources miss (see Présocratiques).

Another risk is that of the contingency: one will forget a character or a key event who could have been determining in the historical evolution. For example, Gerbert d' Aurillac, Averroès, on later acquisitions of knowledge.

One can also interpret the thought of a philosopher in a free-centered way, or involuntarily employ ambiguous terms.

Contemporary prospects

Various answers were brought to these questions:

To include/understand the History philosophy, it is necessary to start by pointing out how this discipline was constituted.

For Hegel, the relativism is an ordinary pretext, which makes it possible to neglect serious philosophical work. According to him, the reasoning skeptic is false: “ Only one philosophy can thus be true. Out, as philosophies are varied, one concludes from it that the others are necessarily erroneous . ” What is remarkable, it is that this reasoning supposes that there is a single Vérité, in other words, its starting point denies its conclusion. Also, the thesis which “philosophy is the objective science of the truth” is it paradoxically allowed by the relativist.

Marx and Engels thinks at the same time that the Histoire obeys Lois (laws of the Dialectique), and that sciences and the Culture belong to the superstructures of the company. This apparent contradiction is criticized by Popper, but Sartre tries in the Criticism of the dialectical reason to solve it by giving a direction to the quotation: “They are the men who make their history”.

See too

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