Philosophy

BS English 4th Semester

What is Philosophy?
Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." In a broad sense, philosophy is
an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about
themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other.
Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their
answers to life’s most basic questions.
Philosophy from Greek origin philosophia Which means “love of wisdom” is the study of
general and fundamental questions, such as those
about reason, existence, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often
posed as problems to be studied or resolved. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras.
Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and
systematic presentation.
"Any clever man may sometimes see the truth in flashes; any scientific man may put some
aspect of the truth into technical words; yet all this hardly deserves the name of philosophy so
long as the heart remains unabashed, and we continue to live like animals lost in the stream of
our impressions, not only in the public routine and necessary cares of life, but even in our silent
thoughts and affections." --- George Santayana, "Ultimate Religion"
Excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The Greek word Sophia is ordinarily translated into English as "wisdom," and the compound
philosophia, from which "philosophy" derives, is translated as "the love of wisdom." But Sophia
had a much wider range of application than the modern English "wisdom." Wherever
intelligence can be exercised -- in practical affairs, in the mechanical arts, in business -- there is
room for Sophia; Homer used it to refer to the skill of a carpenter. Furthermore, whereas
modern English draws a fairly sharp distinction between the search for wisdom and the attempt
to satisfy intellectual curiosity, Herodotus used the verb philosophein in a context in which it
means nothing more than the desire to find out. Briefly, then, philosophia etymologically
connotes the love of exercising one's curiosity and intelligence rather than the love of wisdom.
Although philosophers have often sought to confine the word "philosophy" within narrower
boundaries, in popular usage it has never entirely lost its original breadth of meaning."

Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the West:

"In itself philosophy sets out neither to solve our troubles nor to save our souls. It is, as the Greeks put it,
a kind of sightseeing adventure undertaken for its own sake. There is thus in principle no questions of
dogma, or rites, or sacred entities of any kind, even though individual philosophers may of course turn
out to be stubbornly dogmatic. There are indeed two attitudes that might be adopted towards the
unknown. One is to accept the pronouncements of people who say they know, on the basis of books,
mysteries or other sources of inspiration. The other way is to go out and look for oneself, and this is the
way of science and philosophy."
1“Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence,
especially when considered as an academic discipline.”
2.“Philosophy is thinking really hard about the most important questions and trying to bring
analytic clarity both to the questions and the answers.”

3.“Philosophy is the successful love of thinking.”

Historically, philosophy encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as
a philosopher. From the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, "natural
philosophy" encompassed astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics.
In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other
disciplines to professionalize and specialize. Since then, various areas of investigation that were traditionally
part of philosophy have become separate academic disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, linguistics,
and economics.
Today, major subfields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, which is concerned with the
fundamental nature of existence and reality; epistemology, which studies the nature
of knowledge and belief; ethics, which is concerned with moral value; and logic, which studies the rules of
inference that allow one to derive conclusions from true premises. Other notable subfields
include philosophy of science, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of
mind.

Branches of Philosophy
Philosophical questions can be grouped into various branches. These groupings allow philosophers to focus
on a set of similar topics and interact with other thinkers who are interested in the same questions.
These divisions are neither exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. (A philosopher might specialize
in Kantian epistemology, or Platonic aesthetics, or modern political philosophy). Furthermore, these
philosophical inquiries sometimes overlap with each other and with other inquiries such as science, religion
or mathematics.

Aesthetics
Aesthetics is the "critical reflection on art, culture and nature. It addresses the nature
of art, beauty and taste, enjoyment, emotional values, perception and with the creation and appreciation of
beauty.It is more precisely defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes
called judgments of sentiment and taste.Its major divisions are art theory, literary theory, film
theory and music theory. An example from art theory is to discern the set of principles underlying the work of
a particular artist or artistic movement such as the Cubist aesthetic.

Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, studies what constitutes good and bad conduct, right
and wrong values, and good and evil. Its primary investigations include how to live a good life and identifying
standards of morality. It also includes investigating whether or not there is a best way to live or a universal
moral standard, and if so, how we come to learn about it. The main branches of ethics are normative
ethics, meta-ethics and applied ethics.
The three main views in ethics about what constitute moral actions are

• Consequentialism, which judges actions based on their consequences. One such view is utilitarianism,
which judges actions based on the net happiness (or pleasure) and/or lack of suffering (or pain) that they
produce.
• Deontology, which judges actions based on whether or not they are in accordance with one's moral duty.
In the standard form defended by Immanuel Kant, deontology is concerned with whether or not a choice
respects the moral agency of other people, regardless of its consequences.
• Virtue ethics, which judges actions based on the moral character of the agent who performs them and
whether they conform to what an ideally virtuous agent would do.

Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge. Epistemologists examine putative sources
of knowledge, including perceptual experience, reason, memory, and testimony. They also investigate
questions about the nature of truth, belief, justification, and rationality.
Philosophical skepticism, which raises doubts about some or all claims to knowledge, has been a topic of
interest throughout the history of philosophy. It arose early in Pre-Socratic philosophy and became
formalized with Pyrrho, the founder of the earliest Western school of philosophical skepticism. It features
prominently in the works of modern philosophers René Descartes and David Hume, and has remained a
central topic in contemporary epistemological debates.
One of the most notable epistemological debates is between empiricism and rationalism
Empiricism places emphasis on observational evidence via sensory experience as the source of knowledge.
Empiricism is associated with a posteriori knowledge, which is obtained through experience (such as scientific
knowledge). Rationalism places emphasis on reason as a source of knowledge. Rationalism is associated
with a priori knowledge, which is independent of experience (such as logic and mathematics).
One central debate in contemporary epistemology is about the conditions required for a belief to constitute
knowledge, which might include truth and justification. This debate was largely the result of attempts to
solve the Gettier problem.Another common subject of contemporary debates is the regress problem, which
occurs when trying to offer proof or justification for any belief, statement, or proposition. The problem is that
whatever the source of justification may be, that source must either be without justification (in which case it
must be treated as an arbitrary foundation for belief), or it must have some further justification (in which
case justification must either be the result of circular reasoning, as in coherentism, or the result of an infinite
regress, as in infinitism).
Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality, such as existence, time, objects and
their properties, wholes and their parts, events, processes and causation and the relationship
between mind and body. Metaphysics includes cosmology, the study of the world in its entirety
and ontology, the study of being.
A major point of debate is between realism, which holds that there are entities that exist independently of
their mental perception and idealism, which holds that reality is mentally constructed or otherwise
immaterial. Metaphysics deals with the topic of identity. Essence is the set of attributes that make an object
what it fundamentally is and without which it loses its identity while accident is a property that the object
has, without which the object can still retain its identity. Particulars are objects that are said to exist in space
and time, as opposed to abstract objects, such as numbers, and universals, which are properties held by
multiple particulars, such as redness or a gender. The type of existence, if any, of universals and abstract
objects is an issue of debate.

Logic
Logic is the study of reasoning and argument.
Deductive reasoning is when, given certain premises, conclusions are unavoidably implied. Rules of
inference are used to infer conclusions such as, modus ponens, where given “A” and “If A then B”, then “B”
must be concluded.
Because sound reasoning is an essential element of all sciences, social sciences and humanities disciplines,
logic became a formal science. Sub-fields include mathematical logic, philosophical logic, Modal
logic, computational logic and non-classical logics. A major question in the philosophy of mathematics is
whether mathematical entities are objective and discovered, called mathematical realism, or invented, called
mathematical antirealism.

Other subfields
Mind and language
Philosophy of language explores the nature, origins, and use of language. Philosophy of mind explores the
nature of the mind and its relationship to the body, as typified by disputes between materialism and dualism.
In recent years, this branch has become related to cognitive science.
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science explores the foundations, methods, history, implications and purpose of science.
Many of its subdivisions correspond to specific branches of science. For example, philosophy of biology deals
specifically with the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical issues in the biomedical and life sciences.
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals (or families and clans) to
communities including the state.It includes questions about justice, law, property and the rights and
obligations of the citizen. Political philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics are traditionally linked subjects, under
the general heading of value theory as they involve a normative or evaluative aspect.
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion deals with questions that involve religion and religious ideas from a philosophically
neutral perspective (as opposed to theology which begins from religious convictions). Traditionally, religious
questions were not seen as a separate field from philosophy proper, the idea of a separate field only arose in
the 19th century.
Issues include the existence of God, the relationship between reason and faith, questions of religious
epistemology, the relationship between religion and science, how to interpret religious experiences,
questions about the possibility of an afterlife, the problem of religious language and the existence
of souls and responses to religious pluralism and diversity.

Origin and Evolution

Initially the term referred to any body of knowledge.[10] In this sense, philosophy is closely related to religion,
mathematics, natural science, education, and politics. Though it has since been classified as a book of
physics, Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) uses the term natural philosophy as
it was understood at the time, encompassing disciplines such as astronomy, medicine and physics that later
became associated with the sciences.

• Natural philosophy:

Was the study of the constitution and processes of transformation in the physical world.

• Moral philosophy

Was the study of goodness, right and wrong, justice and virtue.

• Metaphysical philosophy

Was the study of existence, causation, God, logic, forms, and other abstract objects.

Historical Overview
In one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture, and a search for knowledge.
In this sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions, such as "how are we to live" and
"what is the nature of reality." A broad and impartial conception of philosophy, then, finds a reasoned inquiry
into such matters as reality, morality, and life in all world civilizations.

Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the Western world, dating back to pre-Socratic thinkers
who were active in 6th-century Greece (BCE), such as Thales (c. 624 – c. 545 BCE) and Pythagoras (c. 570 –
c. 495 BCE) who practiced a 'love of wisdom'
Philosophy can be divided into three eras

1. Ancient (Greco-Roman).
2. Medieval philosophy (Muslim Philosophy).
3. Modern philosophy (beginning in the 17th century).

Ancient Greek philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, at a time when the inhabitants of ancient Greece
were struggling to repel devastating invasions from the east. Greek philosophy continued throughout
the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of
the Roman Empire. Philosophy was used to make sense out of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide
variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political
philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics.
Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead once
noted: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a
series of footnotes to Plato". Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic
philosophers to Roman philosophy, Early Islamic philosophy, Medieval Scholasticism, the
European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.
Greek philosophy was influenced to some extent by the older wisdom literature and
mythological cosmogonies of the ancient Near East, though the extent of this influence is debated. The
classicist Martin Litchfield West states, "contact with oriental cosmology and theology helped to liberate
the early Greek philosophers' imagination; it certainly gave them many suggestive ideas. But they taught
themselves to reason. Philosophy as we understand it is a Greek creation".
Subsequent philosophic tradition was so influenced by Socrates as presented by Plato that it is conventional
to refer to philosophy developed prior to Socrates as pre-Socratic philosophy. The periods following this, up
to and after the wars of Alexander the Great, are those of "Classical Greek" and "Hellenistic philosophy",
respectively.

Pre-Socratic philosophy
The convention of terming those philosophers who were active prior to the death of Socrates as the pre-
Socratics gained currency with the 1903 publication of Hermann Diels' . The term is considered useful
because what came to be known as the "Athenian school" signaled the rise of a new approach to
philosophy; Friedrich Nietzsche's thesis that this shift began with Plato rather than with Socrates has not
prevented the predominance of the "pre-Socratic" distinction. The pre-Socratics were primarily concerned
with cosmology, ontology, and mathematics. They were distinguished from "non-philosophers" insofar as
they rejected mythological explanations in favor of reasoned discourse.

Classical Greek Philosophy

Socrates
Socrates, believed to have been born in Athens in the 5th century BCE, marks a watershed in ancient Greek
philosophy. Athens was a center of learning, with sophists and philosophers traveling from across Greece to
teach rhetoric, astronomy, cosmology, and geometry. The great statesman Pericles was closely associated
with this new learning and a friend of Anaxagoras, however, and his political opponents struck at him by
taking advantage of a conservative reaction against the philosophers; it became a crime to investigate the
things above the heavens or below the earth, subjects considered impious. Anaxagoras is said to have been
charged and to have fled into exile when Socrates was about twenty years of age. There is a story
that Protagoras, too, was forced to flee and that the Athenians burned his books. Socrates, however, is the
only subject recorded as charged under this law, convicted, and sentenced to death in 399 BCE. In the version
of his defense speech presented by Plato, he claims that it is the envy he arouses on account of his being a
philosopher that will convict him.
Socrates' recorded conversations rarely provide a definite answer to the question under examination, several
maxims or paradoxes for which he has become known recur. Socrates taught that no one desires what is bad,
and so if anyone does something that truly is bad, it must be unwillingly or out of ignorance; consequently, all
virtue is knowledge. He frequently remarks on his own ignorance (claiming that he does not know what
courage is, for example). Plato presents him as distinguishing himself from the common run of mankind by
the fact that, while they know nothing noble and good, they do not know that they do not know, whereas
Socrates knows and acknowledges that he knows nothing noble and good.
The philosophic movements that were to dominate the intellectual life of the Roman Empire were thus born
in this febrile period following Socrates' activity, and either directly or indirectly influenced by him. They were
also absorbed by the expanding Muslim world in the 7th through 10th centuries AD, from which they
returned to the West as foundations of medieval philosophy and the Renaissance, as discussed below.

Plato
Plato was an Athenian of the generation after Socrates. Ancient tradition ascribes thirty-six dialogues and
thirteen letters to him, although of these only twenty-four of the dialogues are now universally recognized as
authentic; most modern scholars believe that at least twenty-eight dialogues and two of the letters were in
fact written by Plato, although all of the thirty-six dialogues have some defenders. A further nine dialogues
are ascribed to Plato but were considered spurious even in antiquity.
Plato's dialogues feature Socrates, although not always as the leader of the conversation. (One dialogue,
the Laws, instead contains an "Athenian Stranger.") Along with Xenophon, Plato is the primary source of
information about Socrates' life and beliefs and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two. While
the Socrates presented in the dialogues is often taken to be Plato's mouthpiece, Socrates' reputation
for irony, his caginess regarding his own opinions in the dialogues, and his occasional absence from or minor
role in the conversation serve to conceal Plato's doctrines. Much of what is said about his doctrines is derived
from what Aristotle reports about them.
The political doctrine ascribed to Plato is derived from the Republic, the Laws, and the Statesman. The first of
these contains the suggestion that there will not be justice in cities unless they are ruled by philosopher
kings; those responsible for enforcing the laws are compelled to hold their women, children, and property
in common; and the individual is taught to pursue the common good through noble lies; the Republic says
that such a city is likely impossible, however, generally assuming that philosophers would refuse to rule and
the people would refuse to compel them to do so.
Whereas the Republic is premised on a distinction between the sort of knowledge possessed by the
philosopher and that possessed by the king or political man, Socrates explores only the character of the
philosopher; in the Statesman, on the other hand, a participant referred to as the Eleatic Stranger discusses
the sort of knowledge possessed by the political man, while Socrates listens quietly. Although rule by a wise
man would be preferable to rule by law, the wise cannot help but be judged by the unwise, and so in
practice, rule by law is deemed necessary.

Aristotle
Aristotle moved to Athens from his native Stagira in 367 BC and began to study philosophy (perhaps even
rhetoric, under Isocrates), eventually enrolling at Plato's Academy. He left Athens approximately twenty
years later to study botany and zoology, became a tutor of Alexander the Great, and ultimately returned to
Athens a decade later to establish his own school: the Lyceum. At least twenty-nine of his treatises have
survived, known as the corpus Aristotelicum, and address a variety of subjects
including logic, physics, optics, metaphysics, ethics, rhetoric, politics, poetry, botany, and zoology.
Aristotle is often portrayed as disagreeing with his teacher Plato (e.g., in Raphael's School of Athens). He
criticizes the regimes described in Plato's Republic and Laws, and refers to the theory of forms as "empty
words and poetic metaphors." He is generally presented as giving greater weight to empirical observation
and practical concerns.
Aristotle's fame was not great during the Hellenistic period, when Stoic logic was in vogue, but
later peripatetic commentators popularized his work, which eventually contributed heavily to Islamic, Jewish,
and medieval Christian philosophy. His influence was such that Avicenna referred to him simply as "the
Master"; Maimonides, Alfarabi, Averroes, and Aquinas as "the Philosopher."

Medieval era
Medieval philosophy (5th–16th centuries) is the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and
was dominated by the rise of Christianity and hence reflects Judeo-Christian theological concerns as well as
retaining a continuity with Greco-Roman thought. Problems such as the existence and nature of God, the
nature of faith and reason, metaphysics, the problem of evil were discussed in this period. Some key
medieval thinkers include St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Anselm and Roger Bacon. Philosophy for
these thinkers was viewed as an aid to Theology (ancilla theologiae) and hence they sought to align their
philosophy with their interpretation of sacred scripture. This period saw the development of Scholasticism, a
text critical method developed in medieval universities based on close reading and disputation on key texts.
The Renaissance period saw increasing focus on classic Greco-Roman thought and on a robust Humanism.
Modern era

Early modern philosophy in the Western world begins with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and René
Descartes (1596–1650).Following the rise of natural science, modern philosophy was concerned with
developing a secular and rational foundation for knowledge and moved away from traditional structures of
authority such as religion, scholastic thought and the Church. Major modern philosophers
include Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.
19th-century philosophy (sometimes called late modern philosophy) was influenced by the wider 18th-
century movement termed "the Enlightenment", and includes figures such as Hegel a key figure in German
idealism, Kierkegaard who developed the foundations for existentialism, Nietzsche a famed anti-
Christian, John Stuart Mill who promoted utilitarianism, Karl Marx who developed the foundations
for communism and the American William James. The 20th century saw the split between analytic
philosophy and continental philosophy, as well as philosophical trends such
as phenomenology, existentialism, logical positivism, pragmatism and the linguistic turn (see Contemporary
philosophy).
Middle Eastern philosophy
Pre-Islamic philosophy
Islamic philosophy refers to philosophy produced in an Islamic society. Because it is not necessarily
concerned with religious issues, nor exclusively produced by Muslims, many scholars prefer the term "Arabic
philosophy."
Islamic philosophy is a generic term that can be defined and used in different ways. In its broadest sense it
means the world view of Islam, as derived from the Islamic texts concerning the creation of the universe and
the will of the Creator. In another sense it refers to any of the schools of thought that flourished under the
Islamic empire or in the shadow of the Arab-Islamic culture and Islamic civilization. In its narrowest sense it is
a translation of Falsafa, meaning those particular schools of thought that most reflect the influence of Greek
systems of philosophy such as Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism.
Some schools of thought within Islam deny the usefulness or legitimacy of philosophical inquiry. Some argue
that there is no indication that the limited knowledge and experience of humans can lead to truth. It is also
important to observe that, while "reason" ('aql) is sometimes recognized as a source of Islamic law, it has
been claimed that this has a totally different meaning from "reason" in philosophy.
The historiography of Islamic philosophy is marked by disputes as to how the subject should be properly
interpreted. Some of the key issues involve the comparative importance of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn
Sina (Avicenna) and of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, and also whether Islamic philosophy can be read
at face value or should be interpreted in an esoteric fashion. Supporters of the latter thesis, like Leo Strauss,
maintain that Islamic philosophers wrote so as to conceal their true meaning in order to avoid religious
persecution, but scholars such as Oliver Leaman disagree.

Early Wisdom Literature from the Fertile Crescent was a genre which sought to instruct people on ethical
action, practical living and virtue through stories and proverbs. In Ancient Egypt, these texts were known
as sebayt ('teachings') and they are central to our understandings of Ancient Egyptian philosophy. Babylonian
astronomy also included much philosophical speculations about cosmology which may have influenced the
Ancient Greeks.
Jewish philosophy and Christian philosophy are religio-philosophical traditions that developed both in the
Middle East and in Europe, which both share certain early Judaic texts (mainly the Tanakh) and monotheistic
beliefs. Jewish thinkers such as the Geonim of the Talmudic Academies in
Babylonia and Maimonides engaged with Greek and Islamic philosophy. Later Jewish philosophy came under
strong Western intellectual influences and includes the works of Moses Mendelssohn who ushered in
the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), Jewish existentialism, and Reform Judaism.

Islamic philosophy
Islamic philosophy is a development in philosophy that is characterised by coming from an Islamic tradition.
Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa (literally:
"philosophy"), which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and physics; and Kalam (literally
"speech"), which refers to a rationalist form of Islamic theology.
Early Islamic philosophy began with al-Kindi in the 2nd century of the Islamic calendar (early 9th century CE)
and ended with Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in the 6th century AH (late 12th century CE), broadly coinciding with
the period known as the Golden Age of Islam. The death of Averroes effectively marked the end of a
particular discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Islamic school, and philosophical
activity declined significantly in Western Islamic countries such as Islamic Iberia and North Africa.
Islamic philosophy persisted for much longer in Muslim Eastern countries, in particular Safavid Persia,
Ottoman and Mughal Empires, where several schools of philosophy continued to flourish: Avicennism,
Averroism, Illuminationist philosophy, Mystical philosophy, Transcendent theosophy, and Isfahan philosophy.
Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah, made important contributions to the philosophy of history. Interest in
Islamic philosophy revived during the Nahda ("Awakening") movement in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, and continues to the present day.
Islamic philosophy had a major impact in Christian Europe, where translation of Arabic philosophical texts
into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with
a particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy, psychology and
metaphysics

Islamic philosophy is the philosophical work originating in the Islamic tradition and is mostly done in Arabic. It
draws from the religion of Islam as well as from Greco-Roman philosophy. After the Muslim conquests,
the translation movement (mid-eighth to the late tenth century) resulted in the works of Greek philosophy
becoming available in Arabic.
Early Islamic philosophy developed the Greek philosophical traditions in new innovative directions. This
intellectual work inaugurated what is known as the Islamic Golden Age. The two main currents of early
Islamic thought are Kalam, which focuses on Islamic theology, and Falsafa, which was based
on Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. The work of Aristotle was very influential among philosophers such
as Al-Kindi (9th century), Avicenna (980 – June 1037) and Averroes (12th century). Others such as Al-
Ghazali were highly critical of the methods of the Islamic Aristotelians and saw their metaphysical ideas as
heretical. Islamic thinkers like Ibn al-Haytham and Al-Biruni also developed a scientific method, experimental
medicine, a theory of optics and a legal philosophy. Ibn Khaldun was an influential thinker in philosophy of
history.
Islamic thought also deeply influenced European intellectual developments, especially through the
commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle. The Mongol invasions and the destruction of Baghdad in 1258 is
often seen as marking the end of the Golden Age. [35] Several schools of Islamic philosophy continued to
flourish after the Golden Age however, and include currents such as Illuminationist philosophy, Sufi
philosophy, and Transcendent theosophy.
The 19th- and 20th-century Arab world saw the Nahda movement (literally meaning 'The Awakening'; also
known as the 'Arab Renaissance'), which had a considerable influence on contemporary Islamic philosophy.

Schools of Islamic Philosophy

Farabism
Al-Farabi (Alfarabi) was a founder of his own school of Islamic philosophy but which was later overshadowed
by Avicennism. Al-Farabi's school of philosophy "breaks with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and moves
from metaphysics to methodology, a move that anticipates modernity", and "at the level of philosophy,
Alfarabi unites theory and practice and in the sphere of the political he liberates practice from theory".
His Neoplatonic theology is also more than just metaphysics as rhetoric. In his attempt to think through the
nature of a First Cause, Alfarabi discovers the limits of human knowledge".
Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries, and was widely considered
second only to Aristotle in knowledge (alluded to by his title of "the Second Teacher") in his time. His work,
aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Ibn Sina (Avicenna).

Avicennism
Due to Avicenna's (Ibn Sina's) successful reconciliation between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism along
with Kalam, Avicennism eventually became the leading school of Islamic philosophy by the 12th century.
Avicenna had become a central authority on philosophy by then, and several scholars in the 12th century
commented on his strong influence at the time:
"People nowadays [believe] that truth is whatever [Ibn Sina] says, that it is inconceivable for him to err, and
that whoever contradicts him in anything he says cannot be rational."

Avicennism was also influential in medieval Europe, particularly his doctrines on the nature of the soul and
his existence-essence distinction, along with the debates and censure that they raised in scholastic Europe.
This was particularly the case in Paris, where Avicennism was later proscribed in 1210. Nevertheless,
his psychology and theory of knowledge influenced William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus, and
his metaphysics influenced the thought of Thomas Aquinas.

Averroism
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) is most famous for his commentaries on Aristotle's works and for writing The
Incoherence of the Incoherence in which he defended the falasifa against al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the
Philosophers. While he had very little influence in the Islamic world, which was then dominated by
Avicennian philosophy and Ash'ari theology, Averroism became very influential in medieval Europe,
especially among the Scholastics. Averroism eventually led to the development of modern secularism, for
which Ibn Rushd is considered as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe.
The concept of "existence precedes essence", a key foundational concept of existentialism, can also be found
in the works of Averroes, as a reaction to Avicenna's concept of "essence precedes existence"

Logic in Islamic law and theology

Early forms of analogical reasoning, inductive reasoning and categorical syllogism were introduced
in Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), Sharia (Islamic law) and Kalam (Islamic theology) from the 7th century with
the process of Qiyas, before the Arabic translations of Aristotle's works. Later during the Islamic Golden Age,
there was a logical debate among Islamic philosophers, logicians and theologians over whether the
term Qiyas refers to analogical reasoning, inductive reasoning or categorical syllogism. Some Islamic scholars
argued that Qiyas refers to inductive reasoning, which Ibn Hazm (994-1064) disagreed with, arguing
that Qiyas does not refer to inductive reasoning, but refers to categorical syllogism in a real sense and
analogical reasoning in a metaphorical sense. On the other hand, al-Ghazali (1058–1111) (and in modern
times, Abu Muhammad Asem al-Maqdisi) argued that Qiyas refers to analogical reasoning in a real sense and
categorical syllogism in a metaphorical sense. Other Islamic scholars at the time, however, argued that the
term Qiyas refers to both analogical reasoning and categorical syllogism in a real sense.

Aristotelian logic
The first original Arabic writings on logic were produced by al-Kindi (Alkindus) (805–873), who produced a
summary on earlier logic up to his time. The first writings on logic with non-Aristotelian elements was
produced by al-Farabi (Alfarabi) (873–950), who discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and
relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms
of inference. He is also credited for categorizing logic into two separate groups, the first being "idea" and the
second being "proof".
Averroes (1126–98) was the last major logician from al-Andalus, who wrote the most elaborate
commentaries on Aristotelian logic.

Avicennian logic
Avicenna (980-1037) developed his own system of logic known as "Avicennian logic" as an alternative to
Aristotelian logic. By the 12th century, Avicennian logic had replaced Aristotelian logic as the dominant
system of logic in the Islamic world.
The first criticisms of Aristotelian logic were written by Avicenna (980–1037), who produced independent
treatises on logic rather than commentaries. He criticized the logical school of Baghdad for their devotion to
Aristotle at the time. He investigated the theory of definition and classification and the quantification of
the predicates of categorical propositions, and developed an original theory on "temporal modal" syllogism.
Its premises included modifiers such as "at all times", "at most times", and "at some time".
While Avicenna (980-1037) often relied on deductive reasoning in philosophy, he used a different approach in
medicine. Ibn Sina contributed inventively to the development of inductive logic, which he used to pioneer
the idea of a syndrome. In his medical writings, Avicenna was the first to describe the methods of agreement,
difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method.

Eastern philosophy
Indian philosophy refers to the diverse philosophical traditions that emerged since the ancient times on
the Indian subcontinent. Indian philosophical traditions share various key concepts and ideas, which are
defined in different ways and accepted or rejected by the different traditions. These include concepts such
as dhárma, karma, pramāṇa, duḥkha, saṃsāra and mokṣa.
Some of the earliest surviving Indian philosophical texts are the Upanishads of the later Vedic period (1000–
500 BCE), which are considered to preserve the ideas of Brahmanism. Indian philosophy is commonly
grouped based on their relationship to the Vedas and the ideas contained in
them. Jainism and Buddhism originated at the end of the Vedic period, while the various traditions grouped
under Hinduism mostly emerged after the Vedic period as independent traditions. Hindus generally classify
Indian philosophical traditions as either orthodox (āstika) or heterodox (nāstika) depending on whether they
accept the authority of the Vedas and the theories of brahman and ātman found therein.
The "Hindu" and "Orthodox" traditions are often contrasted with the "unorthodox" traditions
(nāstika, literally "those who reject"), though this is a label that is not used by the "unorthodox" schools
themselves. These traditions reject the Vedas as authoritative and often reject major concepts and ideas that
are widely accepted by the orthodox schools (such as Ātman, Brahman, and Īśvara). These unorthodox
schools include Jainism (accepts ātman but rejects Īśvara, Vedas and Brahman), Buddhism (rejects all
orthodox concepts except rebirth and karma), Cārvāka (materialists who reject even rebirth and karma)
and Ājīvika (known for their doctrine of fate).
Jain philosophy is one of the only two surviving "unorthodox" traditions (along with Buddhism). It generally
accepts the concept of a permanent soul (jiva) as one of the five astikayas (eternal, infinite categories that
make up the substance of existence). The other four being dhárma, adharma, ākāśa ('space'),
and pudgala ('matter'). Jain thought holds that all existence is cyclic, eternal and uncreated.
Some of the most important elements of Jain philosophy are the Jain theory of karma, the doctrine of
nonviolence (ahiṃsā) and the theory of "many-sidedness" or Anēkāntavāda. The Tattvartha Sutra is the
earliest known, most comprehensive and authoritative compilation of Jain philosophy.
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophy begins with the thought of Gautama Buddha (fl. between 6th and 4th century BCE) and
is preserved in the early Buddhist texts. It originated in the Indian region of Magadha and later spread to the
rest of the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, Tibet, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. In these regions, Buddhist
thought developed into different philosophical traditions which used various languages
(like Tibetan, Chinese and Pali). As such, Buddhist philosophy is a trans-cultural and international
phenomenon.
The dominant Buddhist philosophical traditions in East Asian nations are mainly based on
Indian Mahayana Buddhism. The philosophy of the Theravada school is dominant in Southeast
Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand.
After the death of the Buddha, various groups began to systematize his main teachings, eventually
developing comprehensive philosophical systems termed Abhidharma. Following the Abhidharma schools,
Indian Mahayana philosophers such as Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu developed the theories
of śūnyatā ('emptiness of all phenomena') and vijñapti-matra ('appearance only'), a form of phenomenology
or transcendental idealism. The Dignāga school of pramāṇa ('means of knowledge') promoted a sophisticated
form of Buddhist epistemology.
After the disappearance of Buddhism from India, some of these philosophical traditions continued to develop
in the Tibetan Buddhist, East Asian Buddhist and Theravada Buddhist traditions.

Women in philosophy
Although men have generally dominated philosophical discourse, women philosophers have engaged in the
discipline throughout history. Ancient examples include Hipparchia of Maroneia (active c. 325 BCE) and Arete
of Cyrene (active 5th–4th centuries BCE). Some women philosophers were accepted during
the medieval and modern eras, but none became part of the Western canon until the 20th and 21st century,
when many suggest that G.E.M. Anscombe, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, and Susanne
Langer entered the canon.
In the early 1800s, some colleges and universities in the UK and US began admitting women, producing more
female academics. Nevertheless, U.S. Department of Education reports from the 1990s indicate that few
women ended up in philosophy, and that philosophy is one of the least gender-proportionate fields in
the humanities, with women making up somewhere between 17% and 30% of philosophy faculty according
to some studies.

Modern Period of Philosophy

Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity. It is not a
specific doctrine or school, although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to
distinguish it from earlier philosophy.
The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy. How much
of the Renaissance should be included is a matter for dispute; likewise modernity may or may not have
ended in the twentieth century and been replaced by postmodernity. How one decides these questions will
determine the scope of one's use of the term "modern philosophy."
Modern Western Philosophy
How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed:
The Early Renaissance is often considered less modern and more medieval compared to the later High
Renaissance. By the 17th and 18th centuries the major figures in philosophy of mind, epistemology,
and metaphysics were roughly divided into two main groups. The "Rationalists," mostly in France and
Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain "innate ideas" in the mind. Major rationalists
were Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas Malebranche. The "Empiricists," by contrast,
held that knowledge must begin with sensory experience. Major figures in this line of thought are John
Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume (These are retrospective categories, for which Kant is largely
responsible). Ethics and political philosophy are usually not subsumed under these categories, though all
these philosophers worked in ethics, in their own distinctive styles. Other important figures in political
philosophy include Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In the late eighteenth century Immanuel Kant set forth a groundbreaking philosophical system which claimed
to bring unity to rationalism and empiricism. Whether or not he was right, he did not entirely succeed in
ending philosophical dispute. Kant sparked a storm of philosophical work in Germany in the early nineteenth
century, beginning with German idealism. The characteristic theme of idealism was that the world and the
mind equally must be understood according to the same categories; it culminated in the work of Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who among many other things said that "The real is rational; the rational is real."

Renaissance philosophy
Renaissance humanism emphasized the value of human beings (see Oration on the Dignity of Man) and
opposed dogma and scholasticism. This new interest in human activities led to the development of political
science with The Prince of Niccolò Machiavelli.[3] Humanists differed from Medieval scholars also because
they saw the natural world as mathematically ordered and pluralistic, instead of thinking of it in terms of
purposes and goals. Renaissance philosophy is perhaps best explained by two propositions made
by Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks:

• All of our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions

• There is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those
which are based upon the mathematical sciences.
In a similar way, Galileo Galilei based his scientific method on experiments but also developed mathematical
methods for application to problems in physics. These two ways to conceive human knowledge formed the
background for the principle of Empiricism and Rationalism respectively.

Renaissance philosophers

• Pico della Mirandola

• Nicolas of Cusa
• Giordano Bruno
• Galileo Galilei
• Niccolò Machiavelli
• Michel de Montaigne
• Francisco Suárez
Rationalism
Modern philosophy traditionally begins with René Descartes and his dictum "I think, therefore I am". In the
early seventeenth century the bulk of philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism, written by theologians
and drawing upon Plato, Aristotle, and early Church writings. Descartes argued that many predominant
Scholastic metaphysical doctrines were meaningless or false. In short, he proposed to begin philosophy from
scratch. In his most important work, Meditations on First Philosophy, he attempts just this, over six brief
essays. He tries to set aside as much as he possibly can of all his beliefs, to determine what if anything he
knows for certain. He finds that he can doubt nearly everything: the reality of physical objects, God, his
memories, history, science, even mathematics, but he cannot doubt that he is, in fact, doubting. He knows
what he is thinking about, even if it is not true, and he knows that he is there thinking about it. From this
basis he builds his knowledge back up again. He finds that some of the ideas he has could not have originated
from him alone, but only from God; he proves that God exists. He then demonstrates that God would not
allow him to be systematically deceived about everything; in essence, he vindicates ordinary methods of
science and reasoning, as fallible but not false.

Rationalists

• Christian Wolff
• René Descartes
• Baruch Spinoza
• Gottfried Leibniz

Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge which opposes other theories of knowledge, such as
rationalism, idealism and historicism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes (only or primarily) via
sensory experience as opposed to rationalism, which asserts that knowledge comes (also) from pure thinking.
Both empiricism and rationalism are individualist theories of knowledge, whereas historicism is a social
epistemology. While historicism also acknowledges the role of experience, it differs from empiricism by
assuming that sensory data cannot be understood without considering the historical and cultural
circumstances in which observations are made. Empiricism should not be mixed up with empirical research
because different epistemologies should be considered competing views on how best to do studies, and
there is near consensus among researchers that studies should be empirical. Today empiricism should
therefore be understood as one among competing ideals of getting knowledge or how to do studies. As such
empiricism is first and foremost characterized by the ideal to let observational data "speak for themselves",
while the competing views are opposed to this ideal. The term empiricism should thus not just be understood
in relation to how this term has been used in the history of philosophy. It should also be constructed in a way
which makes it possible to distinguish empiricism among other epistemological positions in contemporary
science and scholarship. In other words: Empiricism as a concept has to be constructed along with other
concepts, which together make it possible to make important discriminations between different ideals
underlying contemporary science.
Empiricism is one of several competing views that predominate in the study of human knowledge, known as
epistemology. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in
the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or tradition in contrast to, for example, rationalism
which relies upon reason and can incorporate innate knowledge.

Empiricists
• Francis Bacon
• John Locke
• George Berkeley
• David Hume

Modern or Contemporary Islamic Philosophy

Contemporary Islamic philosophy revives some of the trends of medieval Islamic philosophy, notably the
tension between Mutazilite and Asharite views of ethics in science and law, and the duty of Muslims and role
of Islam in the sociology of knowledge and in forming ethical codes and legal codes, especially the fiqh (or
"jurisprudence") and rules of jihad (or "just war"). See list of Islamic terms in Arabic for a glossary of key
terms used in Islam.

South Asia
• Muhammad Iqbal sought an Islamic revival based on social justice ideals and emphasized traditional
rules, e.g. against usury. He argued strongly that dogma, territorial nationalism and outright racism, all of
which were profoundly rejected in early Islam and especially by Muhammad himself, were splitting
Muslims into warring factions, encouraging materialism and nihilism. His thought was influential in the
emergence of a movement for independence of Pakistan, where he was revered as the national poet.
Indirectly this strain of Islam also influenced Malcolm X and other figures who sought a global
ethic through the Five Pillars of Islam. Iqbal can be credited with at least trying to reconstruct Islamic
thought from the base, though some of his philosophical and scientific ideas would appear dated to us
now. His basic ideas concentrated on free-will, which would allow Muslims to become active agents in
their own history. His interest in Nietzsche (who he called 'the Wise Man of Europe') has led later Muslim
scholars to criticise him for advocating dangerous ideals that, according to them, have eventually formed
in certain strains of pan-Islamism. Some claim that the Four Pillars of the Green Party honor Iqbal and
Islamic traditions.
• Muhammad Hamidullah belonged to a family of scholars, jurists, writers and sufis. He was a world-
renowned scholar of Islam and international law from India, who was known for contributions to the
research of the history of Hadith, translations of the Qur'an, the advancement of Islamic learning, and to
the dissemination of Islamic teachings in the Western world.
• Syed Zafarul Hasan was a prominent twentieth-century Muslim philosopher. From 1924 to 1945 he was
professor of philosophy at the Muslim University, Aligarh – where he also served as Chairman of the
Department of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. There, in 1939, he put forward the 'Aligarh
Scheme'. From 1945 until the partition of the sub-continent, Dr Hasan was Emeritus Professor at Aligarh.
Dr. Zafarul Hasan was born on 14 February 1885. He died on 19 June 1949.
• M. A. Muqtedar Khan is a Professor of Islam and International Relations at the University of Delaware.
He is a prominent Muslim intellectual and philosopher and commentator on Islamic Thought and Global
Politics. He organized the first contemporary Islamic Philosophers conference at Georgetown University
in 1998. His work is on the subject of the philosophy of identity and rationality, Ijtihad, Islam and
democracy and Islamic reform.
• Akbar S. Ahmed is an anthropologist, filmmaker and an outstanding scholar on Islam, international
relations/politics and contemporary Islamic philosophy from Pakistan. He is Ibn Khaldun chairman
of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington DC and was the High
Commissioner of Pakistan to UK. He has advised Prince Charles and met with President George W.
Bush on Islam. His numerous books, films and documentaries have won awards. His books have been
 translated into many languages including Chinese and Indonesian. Ahmed is "the world's leading
authority on contemporary Islam" according to the BBC.
• Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a well-known Pakistani Islamic scholar, exegete, and educator. A former
member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, he has extended the work of his tutor, Amin Ahsan Islahi. He is
frequently labeled a modernist for his insistence on the historical contextualization of Muhammad's
revelation in order to grasp its true moral import.
• Feisal Abdul Rauf is a well-known proponent of cultural reconciliation between the Muslim World and
the West, basing his views on Classical Islamic governance's similarity to Western governance models in
terms of religious freedoms and democratic inclination. Abdul Rauf is a highly visible American-Egyptian
Imam at New York's Masjid al-Farah in addition to being Founder and Chairman of Cordoba Initiative, a
non-profit organization seeking to bridge the divide between the Muslim world and the West.

Shia World
• Morteza Motahhari was a lecturer at Tehran University. Motahhari is considered important for
developing the ideologies of the Islamic Republic. He wrote on exegesis of the Qur'an, philosophy, ethics,
sociology, history and many other subjects. In all his writings the real object he had in view was to give
replies to the objections raised by others against Islam, to prove the shortcomings of other schools of
thought and to manifest the greatness of Islam. He believed that in order to prove the falsity
of Marxism and other ideologies like it, it was necessary not only to comment on them in a scholarly
manner but also to present the real image of Islam.
• Ali Shariati was a sociologist and a professor of Mashhad University. He was one of the most influential
figures in the Islamic world in the 20th century. He attempted to explain and provide solutions for the
problems faced by Muslim societies through traditional Islamic principles interwoven with and
understood from the point of view of modern sociology and philosophy. Shariati was also deeply
influenced by Mowlana and Muhammad Iqbal.
• Musa al-Sadr was a prominent Shi'a Muslim intellectual and one of the most influential Muslim
philosophers of 20th century. He is most famous for his political role, but he was also a philosopher who
had been trained by Allameh Tabatabaei. As Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr said: "his great political
influence and fame was enough for people to not consider his philosophical attitude, although he was a
well-trained follower of long living intellectual tradition of Islamic Philosophy". One of his famous
writings is a long introduction for the Arabic translation of Henry Corbin's History of Islamic Philosophy.
• Hossein Nasr, a political ecologist, argues that the concept of the Khilafah (not the political concept, but
the cosmoanthropological principle of Divinely-vested stewardship) is fundamentally compatible with
ideals of the ecology movement and peace movement, more so than expressed through conventional
interpretations of Islam. He argues for an ecology-based ecumenism that would seek unity among the
faiths by concentrating on their common respect for life as a Creation, i.e. the Earth's biosphere, Gaia, or
whatever name. Pope John Paul II has made similar suggestions that "mankind must be reconciled to the
Creation", and there is a Parliament of World Religions seeking a "global ethic" on similar grounds.
• Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was an Iraqi Shi'a cleric, a philosopher, and ideological founder of Islamic Dawa
Party born in al-Kazimiya, Iraq. Mohammad Baqir Al-Sadr's political philosophy, known as Wilayat Al-
Umma (Governance of the people), set out his view of a modern-day Islamic state. His most famous
philosophical works include: Falsafatuna (Our Philosophy), in which he refutes modern Western
philosophical schools and asserts an Islamic view, Iqtisaduna (Our Economy), consisting of an exegesis of
Islamic economics coupled with a critique of Western political economy as manifested in the Soviet
Union on one hand and the United States on the other, and Al-Usus al-Mantiqiyyah lil-Istiqra' (The
Logical Basis of Induction) in which he develops a theory which allows one to reach certainty through
inductive methods.
Arab world
• Ismail al-Faruqi looked more closely at the ethics and sociology of knowledge, concluding that
no scientific method or philosophy could exist that was wholly ignorant of a theory of conduct or the
consequences a given path of inquiry and technology. His "Islamization of knowledge" program sought to
converge early Muslim philosophy with modern sciences, resulting in, for example, Islamic
economics and Islamic sociology.
• Nader El-Bizri a British–Lebanese philosopher, historian of science, and architectural theorist. He is a
Professor of philosophy and the chair of the Civilization Studies Program at the American University of
Beirut. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge, the University of Nottingham, the University
of Lincoln, and Harvard University. He is affiliated with the French CNRS in Paris, and with the Institute of
Ismaili Studies in London. He published and lectured widely on Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, Ikhwan al-Safa',
and also on Heidegger and on phenomenology as well as architectural theory. He served on various
editorial boards with academic publishers like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press,
Springer, Brill, I.B. Tauris. He acted as consultant to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva, the Science
Museum in London, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He contributed also to various BBC radio
and TV programs on Islamic philosophy and the history of the exact sciences in Islam. He is also a
recipient of the prestigious Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Prize in 2014, and he
recently joined the Oxford and Durham research team on medieval science in Britain. [1][2]. Nader El-
Bizri's approach to Islamic philosophy is historical and at the same time informed at the interpretive
levels by readings from contemporary Continental Thought and Anglo-American Analytic Philosophy,
with a special emphasis on ontology and epistemology. El-Bizri's philosophical writings aim at renewing
the impetus of philosophy in the contemporary Islamicate milieu. He is partly impacted in this
by Heidegger and the reception of Heideggerian thought in the Islamicate world.
• Abu Abd al-Rahman Ibn Aqil al-Zahiri is a retired Saudi Arabian polymath and member of the Academy of
the Arabic Language in Cairo. His work has primarily dealt with the reconciliation of reason and
revelation, especially in regard to issues surrounding the existence of God and theodicy. He has
published bibliographies, anthologies and journal articles and lectured at conferences regarding logic in
Islamic philosophy, showing especially strong interest in the work of Ibn Hazm and Ibn Rushd.[1][2] Various
academic endeavors on his part have received UNESCO support in the past.
• Taha Abdurrahman is a Moroccan philosopher known for his formulation of an Islamic form
of modernity.
• Hassan Hanafi, leading modern Islamic thinker, a philosopher and chair of the philosophy department at
the University of Cairo.

Modern Period
Rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of
knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification". More formally,
rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but
intellectual and deductive".
In an old controversy, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has
an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued that certain truths exist and that the
intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to say, rationalists asserted that certain rational principles
exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics that are so fundamentally true that denying them causes
one to fall into contradiction. The rationalists had such a high confidence in reason that empirical proof and
physical evidence were regarded as unnecessary to ascertain certain truths – in other words, "there are
significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience".
Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints, from the
moderate position "that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge" to the more
extreme position that reason is "the unique path to knowledge" Given a pre-modern understanding of
reason, rationalism is identical to philosophy, the Socratic life of inquiry, or the zetetic (skeptical) clear
interpretation of authority (open to the underlying or essential cause of things as they appear to our sense of
certainty). In recent decades, Leo Strauss sought to revive "Classical Political Rationalism" as a discipline that
understands the task of reasoning, not as foundational, but as maieutic.
In the past, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, the term 'rationalist' was often used to refer to free
thinkers of an anti-clerical and anti-religious outlook, and for a time the word acquired a distinctly pejorative
force (thus in 1670 Sanderson spoke disparagingly of 'a mere rationalist, that is to say in plain English an
atheist of the late edition...'). The use of the label 'rationalist' to characterize a world outlook which has no
place for the supernatural is becoming less popular today; terms like 'humanist' or 'materialist' seem largely
to have taken its place. But the old usage still survives.

Background
Rationalism — as an appeal to human reason as a way of obtaining knowledge — has a philosophical history
dating from antiquity. The analytical nature of much of philosophical enquiry, the awareness of apparently a
priori domains of knowledge such as mathematics, combined with the emphasis of obtaining knowledge
through the use of rational faculties (commonly rejecting, for example, direct revelation) have made
rationalist themes very prevalent in the history of philosophy.
Since the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of mathematical methods
into philosophy as seen in the works of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. This is commonly called continental
rationalism, because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in
Britain empiricism dominated.
Even then, the distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period and would not
have been recognized by the philosophers involved. Also, the distinction between the two philosophies is not
as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested; for example, Descartes and Locke have similar views about the nature
of human ideas.
Proponents of some varieties of rationalism argue that, starting with foundational basic principles, like the
axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive the rest of all possible knowledge. Notable philosophers
who held this view most clearly were Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, whose attempts to grapple with
the epistemological and metaphysical problems raised by Descartes led to a development of the fundamental
approach of rationalism. Both Spinoza and Leibniz asserted that, in principle, all knowledge, including
scientific knowledge, could be gained through the use of reason alone, though they both observed that this
was not possible in practice for human beings except in specific areas such as mathematics. On the other
hand, Leibniz admitted in his book Monadology that "we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions
History
Rationalist philosophy in Western antiquity
Although rationalism in its modern form post-dates antiquity, philosophers from this time laid down the
foundations of rationalism.In particular, the understanding that we may be aware of knowledge available
only through the use of rational thought.
Pythagoras (570–495 BCE)
Pythagoras was one of the first Western philosophers to stress rationalist insight. He is often revered as a
great mathematician, mystic and scientist, but he is best known for the Pythagorean theorem, which bears
his name, and for discovering the mathematical relationship between the length of strings on lute and the
pitches of the notes. Pythagoras "believed these harmonies reflected the ultimate nature of reality. He
summed up the implied metaphysical rationalism in the words "All is number". It is probable that he had
caught the rationalist's vision, later seen by Galileo (1564–1642), of a world governed throughout by
mathematically formulable laws"t has been said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or
lover of wisdom.
Plato (427–347 BCE)
Plato held rational insight to a very high standard, as is seen in his works such as Meno and The Republic. He
taught on the Theory of Forms (or the Theory of Ideas) which asserts that the highest and most fundamental
kind of reality is not the material world of change known to us through sensation, but rather the abstract,
non-material (but substantial) world of forms (or ideas).For Plato, these forms were accessible only to reason
and not to sense. In fact, it is said that Plato admired reason, especially in geometry, so highly that he had the
phrase "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter" inscribed over the door to his academy.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
Aristotle's main contribution to rationalist thinking was the use of syllogistic logic and its use in argument.
Aristotle defines syllogism as "a discourse in which certain (specific) things having been supposed, something
different from the things supposed results of necessity because these things are so." Despite this very general
definition, Aristotle limits himself to categorical syllogisms which consist of three categorical propositions in
his work Analytics these included categorical modal syllogisms.
Middle Ages
Although the three great Greek philosophers disagreed with one another on specific points, they all agreed
that rational thought could bring to light knowledge that was self-evident – information that humans
otherwise could not know without the use of reason. After Aristotle's death, Western rationalistic thought
was generally characterized by its application to theology, such as in the works of Augustine, the Islamic
philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and Jewish philosopher and theologian Maimonides.
One notable event in the Western timeline was the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas who attempted to merge
Greek rationalism and Christian revelation in the thirteenth-century.

Classical rationalism
Early modern rationalism has its roots in the 17th-century Dutch Republic, with some notable intellectual
representatives like Hugo Grotius,[ René Descartes, and Baruch Spinoza.
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Descartes was the first of the modern rationalists and has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy.'
Much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day.
Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths – including the truths of mathematics, and the
epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences – could be attained by reason alone; other
knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He
also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons
with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience
itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every
belief about sensory reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on the
Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to
attain truths according to which nothing that cannot be recognised by the intellect (or reason) can be
classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience," according to Descartes.
Truths that are attained by reason are broken down into elements that intuition can grasp, which, through a
purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.
Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this
could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum or "I think,
therefore I am", is a conclusion reached a priori i.e., prior to any kind of experience on the matter. The simple
meaning is that doubting one's existence, in and of itself, proves that an "I" exists to do the thinking. In other
words, doubting one's own doubting is absurd. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to
ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the
substances of the human body ("res extensa") and the mind or soul ("res cogitans"). This crucial distinction
would be left unresolved and lead to what is known as the mind-body problem, since the two substances in
the Cartesian system are independent of each other and irreducible.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)

In spite of his early death, Spinoza exerted a profound influence on philosophy in the Age of Reason. He is often
considered one of three most remarkable rationalists of modern Western thought, along with Descartes and Leibniz.

The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is a systematic, logical, rational philosophy developed in seventeenth-
century Europe. Spinoza's philosophy is a system of ideas constructed upon basic building blocks with an
internal consistency with which he tried to answer life's major questions and in which he proposed that "God
exists only philosophically." He was heavily influenced by Descartes, Euclid and Thomas Hobbes,[61] as well as
theologians in the Jewish philosophical tradition such as Maimonides.But his work was in many respects a
departure from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many of Spinoza's ideas continue to vex thinkers today and
many of his principles, particularly regarding the emotions, have implications for modern approaches
to psychology. To this day, many important thinkers have found Spinoza's "geometrical method" difficult to
comprehend: Goethe admitted that he found this concept confusing[His magnum opus, Ethics, contains
unresolved obscurities and has a forbidding mathematical structure modeled on Euclid's geometry. ] Spinoza's
philosophy attracted believers such as Albert Einstein[] and much intellectual attention.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
Leibniz was the last major figure of seventeenth-century rationalism who contributed heavily to other fields
such as metaphysics, epistemology, logic, mathematics, physics, jurisprudence, and the philosophy of
religion; he is also considered to be one of the last "universal geniuses". [68] He did not develop his system,
however, independently of these advances. Leibniz rejected Cartesian dualism and denied the existence of a
material world. In Leibniz's view there are infinitely many simple substances, which he called "monads"
(which he derived directly from Proclus).
Leibniz developed his theory of monads in response to both Descartes and Spinoza, because the rejection of
their visions forced him to arrive at his own solution. Monads are the fundamental unit of reality, according
to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and animate objects. These units of reality represent the universe,
though they are not subject to the laws of causality or space (which he called "well-founded phenomena").
Leibniz, therefore, introduced his principle of pre-established harmony to account for apparent causality in
the world.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Kant is one of the central figures of modern philosophy, and set the terms by which all subsequent thinkers
have had to grapple. He argued that human perception structures natural laws, and that reason is the source
of morality. His thought continues to hold a major influence in contemporary thought, especially in fields
such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.
Kant named his brand of epistemology "Transcendental Idealism", and he first laid out these views in his
famous work The Critique of Pure Reason. In it he argued that there were fundamental problems with both
rationalist and empiricist dogma. To the rationalists he argued, broadly, that pure reason is flawed when it
goes beyond its limits and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the realm of every
possible experience: the existence of God, free will, and the immortality of the human soul. Kant referred to
these objects as "The Thing in Itself" and goes on to argue that their status as objects beyond all possible
experience by definition means we cannot know them. To the empiricist he argued that while it is correct
that experience is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that
experience into coherent thought. He therefore concludes that both reason and experience are necessary for
human knowledge. In the same way, Kant also argued that it was wrong to regard thought as mere analysis.
"In Kant's views, a priori concepts do exist, but if they are to lead to the amplification of knowledge, they
must be brought into relation with empirical data".

Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory
experience. It is one of several views of epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism
emphasizes the role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions.
However, empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sense
experiences.
Historically, empiricism was associated with the "blank slate" concept (tabula rasa), according to which the
human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through experience.
Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a
fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against
observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.
Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that
"knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification".Empirical research,
including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method.

Background
A central concept in science and the scientific method is that conclusions must be empirically based on the
evidence of the senses. Both natural and social sciences use working hypotheses that
are testable by observation and experiment. The term semi-empirical is sometimes used to describe
theoretical methods that make use of basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental
results in order to engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry.
Philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from
one's sense-based experience. This view is commonly contrasted with rationalism, which states that
knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses. For example, John Locke held that
some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning
alone. Similarly Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, held that we have innate
ideas.
The main continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz) were also advocates of the empirical
"scientific method".

Early empiricism

Aristotle
Between 600 and 200 BCE
Between 600 and 200 BCE, the Vaisheshika school of Hindu philosophy, founded by the ancient Indian
philosopher Kanada, accepted perception and inference as the only two reliable sources of knowledge. This is
enumerated in his work Vaiśeṣika Sūtra.
The earliest Western proto-empiricists were the Empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners,
founded in 330 BCE. Its members rejected the three doctrines of the Dogmatic school, preferring to rely on
the observation of phantasiai (i.e., phenomena, the appearances). The Empiric school was closely allied
with Pyrrhonist school of philosophy, which made the philosophical case for their proto-empiricism.
The notion of tabula rasa ("clean slate" or "blank tablet") connotes a view of mind as an originally blank or
empty recorder (Locke used the words "white paper") on which experience leaves marks. This denies that
humans have innate ideas. The notion dates back to Aristotle, c. 350 BC:
What the mind (nous) thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet (grammateion) which
bears no actual writing (grammenon); this is just what happens in the case of the mind. (Aristotle, On the
Soul, 3.4.430a1).
Aristotle's explanation of how this was possible was not strictly empiricist in a modern sense, but rather
based on his theory of potentiality and actuality, and experience of sense perceptions still requires the help
of the active nous. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the human mind as an entity that pre-
existed somewhere in the heavens, before being sent down to join a body on Earth (see
Plato's Phaedo and Apology, as well as others). Aristotle was considered to give a more important position to
sense perception than Plato, and commentators in the Middle Ages summarized one of his positions as "nihil
in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu" (Latin for "nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses").
This idea was later developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school, from about 330 BCE. Stoic
epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the outside world
is impressed upon it. The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as "When a man is born, the Stoics say,
he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon."

Islamic Golden Age and Pre-Renaissance (5th to 15th centuries CE)

During the Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 15th century CE) Aristotle's theory of tabula rasa was developed
by Islamic philosophers starting with Al Farabi (c. 872 – 951 CE), developing into an elaborate theory
by Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037) and demonstrated as a thought experiment by Ibn Tufail.[20] For Avicenna (Ibn
Sina), for example, the tabula rasa is a pure potentiality that is actualized through education, and knowledge
is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal
concepts" developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning in which observations lead to propositional
statements which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts". The intellect itself develops from
a material intellect (al-'aql al-hayulani), which is a potentiality "that can acquire knowledge to the active
intellect (al-'aql al-fa'il), the state of the human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of
knowledge".So the immaterial "active intellect", separate from any individual person, is still essential for
understanding to occur.
In the 12th century CE the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and novelist Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail (known as
"Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) included the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in
his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral
child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through
experience alone. The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus,
published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula
rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and
physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century. It also dealt with the theme of empiricism through the story of a
feral child on a desert island, but departed from its predecessor by depicting the development of the
protagonist's mind through contact with society rather than in isolation from society.
During the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to
mind into scholasticism. Bonaventure (1221–1274), one of Aquinas' strongest intellectual opponents, offered
some of the strongest arguments in favor of the Platonic idea of the mind.

Logical empiricism

Logical empiricism was an early 20th-century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism
(e.g. a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights
from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some of the
key figures in this movement were Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along
with A.J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach.
The neopositivists subscribed to a notion of philosophy as the conceptual clarification of the methods,
insights and discoveries of the sciences. They saw in the logical symbolism elaborated by Frege (1848–1925)
and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) a powerful instrument that could rationally reconstruct all scientific
discourse into an ideal, logically perfect, language that would be free of the ambiguities and deformations of
natural language. This gave rise to what they saw as metaphysical pseudoproblems and other conceptual
confusions. By combining Frege's thesis that all mathematical truths are logical with the early Wittgenstein's
idea that all logical truths are mere linguistic tautologies, they arrived at a twofold classification of all
propositions: the analytic (a priori) and the synthetic (a posteriori). On this basis, they formulated a strong
principle of demarcation between sentences that have sense and those that do not: the so-called verification
principle. Any sentence that is not purely logical, or is unverifiable is devoid of meaning. As a result, most
metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and other traditional philosophical problems came to be considered
pseudoproblems.
In the extreme empiricism of the neopositivists—at least before the 1930s—any genuinely synthetic
assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set of ultimate assertions) that expresses direct
observations or perceptions. In later years, Carnap and Neurath abandoned this sort of phenomenalism in
favor of a rational reconstruction of knowledge into the language of an objective spatio-temporal physics.
That is, instead of translating sentences about physical objects into sense-data, such sentences were to be
translated into so-called protocol sentences, for example, "X at location Y and at time T observes such and
such." The central theses of logical positivism came under sharp attack after World War II by thinkers such
as Nelson Goodman, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and Richard Rorty. By the late 1960s, it had
become evident to most philosophers that the movement had pretty much run its course, though its
influence is still significant among contemporary analytic philosophers such as Michael Dummitt and
other anti-realists.

Pragmatism
In the late 19th and early 20th century several forms of pragmatic philosophy arose. The ideas of
pragmatism, in its various forms, developed mainly from discussions between Charles Sanders
Peirce and William James when both men were at Harvard in the 1870s. James popularized the term
"pragmatism", giving Peirce full credit for its patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the
movement was taking, and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of "pragmatics".
Along with its pragmatic theory of truth, this perspective integrates the basic insights of empirical
and rational thinking.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Peirce (1839–1914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's empirical scientific
method.[42] Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he
did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most
importantly the idea that rational concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily
go beyond the data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-driven
side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in part to counterbalance
the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism under the "data-driven" strict-empiricist
view.
Among Peirce's major contributions was to place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a
complementary rather than competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the
educated since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive
reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual foundation for the
empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach "presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge
are real things, (2) the characters (properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and
(3) everyone who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According to
Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific
method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued
application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the
discovery of truth".

Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early
modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth
century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of
Kant’s “critical philosophy” – especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781,
1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790)
– is human autonomy. He argues that the human understanding is the source of the general
laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral
law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific
knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all
rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature
according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the
theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system.

1. Life and works

Immanuel Kant was born April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, near the southeastern shore of the
Baltic Sea. Today Konigsberg has been renamed Kaliningrad and is part of Russia. But during
Kant’s lifetime Konigsberg was the capital of East Prussia, and its dominant language was
German. Though geographically remote from the rest of Prussia and other German cities,
Konigsberg was then a major commercial center, an important military port, and a relatively
cosmopolitan university town.
Kant was born into an artisan family of modest means. His father was a master harness
maker, and his mother was the daughter of a harness maker, though she was better
educated than most women of her social class. Kant’s family was never destitute, but his
father’s trade was in decline during Kant’s youth and his parents at times had to rely on
extended family for financial support.
After college Kant spent six years as a private tutor to young children outside Konigsberg. By
this time both of his parents had died and Kant’s finances were not yet secure enough for
him to pursue an academic career. He finally returned to Konigsberg in 1754 and began
teaching at the Albertan the following year. For the next four decades Kant taught
philosophy there, until his retirement from teaching in 1796 at the age of seventy-two.

2. Kant’s project in the Critique of Pure Reason

The main topic of the Critique of Pure Reason is the possibility of metaphysics, understood
in a specific way. Kant defines metaphysics in terms of “the cognitions after which reason
might strive independently of all experience,” and his goal in the book is to reach a
“decision about the possibility or impossibility of a metaphysics in general, and the
determination of its sources, as well as its extent and boundaries, all, however, from
principles” Thus metaphysics for Kant concerns a priori knowledge, or knowledge whose
justification does not depend on experience; and he associates a priori knowledge with
reason. The project of the Critique is to examine whether, how, and to what extent human
reason is capable of a priori knowledge.
3. Transcendental idealism
Perhaps the central and most controversial thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason is that
human beings experience only appearances, not things in themselves; and that space and
time are only subjective forms of human intuition that would not subsist in themselves if
one were to abstract from all subjective conditions of human intuition. Kant calls this thesis
transcendental idealism. One of his best summaries of it is arguably the following:
Kant introduces transcendental idealism in the part of the Critique called the
Transcendental Aesthetic, and scholars generally agree that for Kant transcendental
idealism encompasses at least the following claims:

• In some sense, human beings experience only appearances, not things in

themselves.
• Space and time are not things in themselves, or determinations of things in
themselves that would remain if one abstracted from all subjective conditions of
human intuition.. It is at least a crucial part of what he means by calling space and
time transcendentally ideal
• Space and time are nothing other than the subjective forms of human sensible
intuition.
• Space and time are empirically real, which means that “everything that can come
before us externally as an object” is in both space and time, and that our internal
intuitions of ourselves are in time
But scholars disagree widely on how to interpret these claims, and there is no such thing as
the standard interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Two general types of
interpretation have been especially influential, however. This section provides an overview
of these two interpretations, although it should be emphasized that much important
scholarship on transcendental idealism does not fall neatly into either of these two camps.

4.Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age
shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think
autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences
between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on
the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point
for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no
one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground
for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's
presence empirically.
Thus the entire armament of reason, in the undertaking that one can call pure philosophy, is in fact directed
only at the three problems that have been mentioned [God, the soul, and freedom]. These themselves,
however, have in turn their more remote aim, namely, what is to be done if the will is free, if there is a God,
and if there is a future world. Now since these concern our conduct in relation to the highest end, the
ultimate aim of nature which provides for us wisely in the disposition of reason is properly directed only to
what is moral.

The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a
thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it
is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the
practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a
real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but
we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a
practical concern, for
Morality in itself constitutes a system, but happiness does not, except insofar as it is distributed precisely in
accordance with morality. This, however, is possible only in the intelligible world, under a wise author and
regent. Reason sees itself as compelled either to assume such a thing, together with life in such a world,
which we must regard as a future one, or else to regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain

Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental
philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":

• the epistemology of transcendental idealism and

• the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds.
Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental
accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of
the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts,
but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the
objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes,
the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called, "synthesis." There is much discussion among Kant
scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we
are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself".
However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human)
understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility.
Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a
separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone –
this is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that because
the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to
an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real," as did the German Idealists, another
group arose to ask how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were
actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder
was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside
the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one
that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely
gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity – understood as rational agency, and represented through
oneself as well as others – as an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might
hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The
specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his theses – that
the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is
transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted
in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles – have all
had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.

5.Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a
psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of
successive things or states from itself is to be assumed"and the practical concept of freedom as the
independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a
source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but
for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental
meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the
question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed
speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never
given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral
laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws
given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical
meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be
experienced.