WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION :
1. Nature and value of philosophy
Content by (Russel's Book)
(History of philosophy)
(History of philosophy)
THE NATURE OF THE PHILOSOPHY
THE purpose of this work is to acquaint the reader with principal arguments,concepts and questions of modern philosophy ,as this subject is taught in english -speaking universities. some times words like ,analytic , are used to describe this kind of philosophy, though that implies a greater unity of method than really exists.let us say merely that contemporary english philosophy is modern in the true sense of the word the sense in which science ,mathematics and the comman law are modern .
IT attempts to build on past results and,where they are inadeuate to supersede them.Hence English philosophy pays scrupulous attention to arguments,the validity of the which it is constantly assessing it is ,like science ,a collective endeavour,reognising and absorbing the contributions of many different workers in the field its problems and solutions too are collective ,emergig often by an invisible hand from the procsess of debate and scholarship
The word ,modern, is used in other ways, of which two are important:
TO DENOTE the modern ,as opposed to the ancient or medieval.era of our civilisation. The modern era is held to be contemporaneous with the rise of natural science, and the decline of the centralising tendency in christendom.
Hence DESCARTES: is described as a modern philosopher ,while aquinas is not. with in the modern period certain cultural and intellectual episodes are marked out as particularly important notably the Enlightment by which is meant the irresistible current of secularisation ,scepticism and political aspiration and which culminated in the profoundly unenlightened follies of the FRENCH REVOLUTION.
TO DENOTE the modern ,as opposed to the ancient or medieval.era of our civilisation. The modern era is held to be contemporaneous with the rise of natural science, and the decline of the centralising tendency in christendom.
Hence DESCARTES: is described as a modern philosopher ,while aquinas is not. with in the modern period certain cultural and intellectual episodes are marked out as particularly important notably the Enlightment by which is meant the irresistible current of secularisation ,scepticism and political aspiration and which culminated in the profoundly unenlightened follies of the FRENCH REVOLUTION.
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