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First American paperback edition published in 2006
by Enchanted Lion Books, 45 Main Street, Suite 519,
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Copyright ©2002 Philip Stokes/Arcturus Publishing Limted
26/27 Bickels Yard, 151-153 Bermondsey Street,
London SE1 3HA
Glossary ©2003 Enchanted Lion Books All Rights Reserved.
The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier hardcover
edtion of this title for which a CIP record is on file.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59270-046-2
ISBN-10: 1-59270-046-2
Printed in China
Edited by Paul Whittle
Cover and book design by Alex Ingr
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Philip Stokes
ENCHANTED LION BOOKS
A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3 New York
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Contents
The Presocratics The Scholastics The Liberals
Thales of Miletus . . . . . . . . . . .8 St Anselm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Adam Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Pythagoras of Samos . . . . .10 St Thomas Aquinas . . . . . . .50 Mary Wollstonecraft . . . .108
Xenophanes of Colophon 12 John Duns Scotus . . . . . . . . .52 Thomas Paine . . . . . . . . . . . . .110
Heraclitus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 William of Occam . . . . . . . . .54 Jeremy Bentham . . . . . . . . .112
John Stuart Mill . . . . . . . . . .114
The Eleatics The Age of Science Auguste Comte . . . . . . . . . . .116
Parmenides of Elea . . . . . . .16 Nicolaus Copernicus . . . . . .56
Zeno of Elea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 NiccolòMachiavelli . . . . . . .58 The Evolutionists
Desiderus Erasmus . . . . . . . .60 Charles Darwin . . . . . . . . . . .118
The Academics Thomas More . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Henri Louis Bergson . . . .120
Francis Bacon . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 A.N. Whitehead . . . . . . . . . .122
Socrates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Galileo Galilei . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
Plato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Aristotle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 Thomas Hobbes . . . . . . . . . . . .68 The Pragmatists
Sir Isaac Newton . . . . . . . . . .70
Ernst Mach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124
The Atomists Charles Peirce . . . . . . . . . . . .126
Democritus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 The Rationalists William James . . . . . . . . . . .128
Epicurus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 René Descartes . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 John Dewey . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130
Antoine Arnauld . . . . . . . . . .74
The Cynics Nicolas Malebranche . . . . .76 The Materialists
Benedict de Spinoza . . . . . .78
Diogenes of Sinope . . . . . . .30 Gottfried von Leibniz . . . . .80 Karl Marx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132
Friedrich Engels . . . . . . . . . .134
The Stoics Vladimir Lenin . . . . . . . . . . .136
The Empiricists Sigmund Freud . . . . . . . . . . .138
Marcus Tullius Cicero . . . .32 John Locke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 Carl Jung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140
Philo of Alexandria . . . . . . .34 David Hume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 John Maynard Keynes . .142
Lucius Annaeus Seneca . .36 Thomas Reid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86
Marcus Aurelius . . . . . . . . . . .38 Voltaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 The Existentialists
Jean-Jacques Rousseau . .90
The Sceptics Denis Diderot . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Søren Kierkegaard . . . . . . .144
Friedrich Nietzsche . . . . . .146
Sextus Empiricus . . . . . . . . . .40 Edmund Husserl . . . . . . . . .148
The Idealists Martin Heidegger . . . . . . . .150
The Neoplatonists George Berkeley . . . . . . . . . . .94 Jean-Paul Sartre . . . . . . . . .152
Plotinus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Immanuel Kant . . . . . . . . . . . .96 Albert Camus . . . . . . . . . . . . .154
The Christians Johann Schiller . . . . . . . . . . . .98 Simone de Beauvoir . . . . .156
Frederick Schelling . . . . . .100
St Augustine of Hippo . . .44
George Hegel . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
Boethius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Arthur Schopenhauer . . .104
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Introduction
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
The Linguistic Turn than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Gottlob Frege . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 Hamlet, I.v.
Bertrand Russell . . . . . . . . .160 W
hen Shakespeare’s Hamlet utters those
Ludwig Wittgenstein . . . .162
memorable lines, he is worrying about the
Ferdinand de Saussure . .164
spirit of his dead father haunting both the
George Edward Moore . .166
battlements of the castle and his own troubled mind.
Moritz Schlick . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Shakespeare was writing in the time of Bacon and
Lev Vygotsky . . . . . . . . . . . . .170
Galileo, in a world already shaped by the ideas of
Rudolph Carnap . . . . . . . . . .172
Machiavelli and Copernicus. Ever the social
A.J. Ayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174
commentator, he was more than likely using Hamlet
Alfred Tarski . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176
to offer a riposte to the pronouncements of the new
J.L. Austin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178
‘age of science’, the philosophy of his time, which
Gilbert Ryle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180
was moving away from the spiritual and ever-closer
Noam Chomsky . . . . . . . . . .182
to a wholly materialist conception of the world.
Hamlet’s pronouncement nevertheless provides a
The Postmodernists
useful characterisation of the aim of the philosophers
Claude Levi-Strauss . . . . .184 in this book. Exactly what more is there to ‘heaven
Michel Foucault . . . . . . . . . .186 and earth’ that is not represented in the knowledge
Jacques Derrida . . . . . . . . . .188 we already possess? There is little unity to the answers
provided by the thinkers you will find here, but that
The New Scientists is only to be expected. On the one hand philosophy is
like any other human endeavour, situated within and
Emile Durkheim . . . . . . . . . .190
confined by the context of its day and yet on the other
Albert Einstein . . . . . . . . . . .192
hand, it tries to wrestle with and expand the
Karl Popper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .194
boundaries of current thought. It is neither a science,
Kurt Gödel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196
interested in the collection and organisation of new
Alan Turing . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198
information, nor an art, representing a reaction to the
B.F. Skinner . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200
world as perceived. Philosophy, then, is an altogether
Thomas Kuhn . . . . . . . . . . . .202
unique activity. With this in mind, the thoughts of the
Paul Feyerabend . . . . . . . . .204
great philosophers explored in the following pages
W.V.O. Quine . . . . . . . . . . . . .206
will be all the clearer if we approach them with some
understanding of the nature and value of their
enterprise.
Picture Credits . . . . . . . . . . .208
If there is one thing that characterises both the
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
method and the results of philosophical inquiry, it
must be the general lack of consensus that precedes
the whole process, and often remains even after the
work is complete. The reason for this lies in the kinds
of questions philosophers are interested in. Many
questions outside of philosophy seem to have answers
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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers
that command widespread agreement; this is typical, for instance,
of science subjects. In the sciences, many answers enjoy a general
consensus because people agree both on the assumptions upon which
the questions are based and on the application of certain concepts
within that discipline. Nonetheless, there are some questions that
arise, both in science and elsewhere, where none of the suggested
answers command widespread acceptance, even given shared
assumptions and an agreement about concepts. These are the sorts
of questions in which philosophers are typically interested.
The reason philosophers have trouble agreeing, then, is partly
because that is the nature of the subject (philosophy deals in questions
that people in general don’t agree on) and partly because philosophers
go about their business by challenging assumptions and concepts in
order to generate new perspectives on recalcitrant problems.
Despite the inherent difficulty of philosophy, its value should not
be underestimated. As recent discoveries in genetics and
biotechnology have shown, it is impossible to know what to do with
scientific discoveries without reflecting on what sort of a society we
want to live in and what duties we owe each other, our descendants
and the environment. Answers to all these questions depend on what
conception we have of ourselves as human beings and what we think
that means for the best way to live. None of these issues are
questions for science or for art, but for philosophy.
Since philosophers are engaged in exploring every avenue of
thought, it should cause no surprise that many of their conclusions
strike us as unacceptable in some way or another. At least one of the
merits of such work is that it can indicate what we should notbelieve.
But it should be equally appreciated that the conclusions of
philosophers have also had profound effects. The two great
superpowers of the twentieth century, the USA and the USSR, were
born of the philosophical writings of Tom Paine and Karl Marx
respectively. The modern information age would never have been
possible without the work of the great logician Frege. Female suffrage
was taken seriously only after Wollstonecraft. The Enlightenment
stood in need of a Voltaire, Einstein needed Newton and Newton, in
turn, relied on Aristotle. The history of social, political and
technological change is inextricably bound to the history of thought.
To some it has often seemed that modern philosophy is both
undervalued and overlooked. They should not be so concerned. In
the wider sense philosophical reflection is a natural enterprise
concomitant with our inquiries on any level. It is not solely the
province of specialists, but an intrinsic and indispensable part of a
person’s navigation through life. If Hamlet is right, Horatio’s only
response is to continue to expand the limits of his thought, in other
words, to continue to dream.
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100
Essential Thinkers
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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers
Thales of Miletus
c.620–?540BC
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The Presocratics: Thales of Miletus
The first natural scientist and analytical
philosopher in Western intellectual history
C
redited as the first philosopher of According to his metaphysics, water was
Ancient Greece, and therefore the the first principle of life and the material world.
founder of Western philosophy, Thales Seeing that water could turn into both vapour by
hailed from the Ionian seaport of evaporation and a solid by freezing, that all life
Miletus, now in modern Turkey. required and was supported by moisture, he
Miletus was a major centre of development for postulated that it was the single causal principle
both science and philosophy in Ancient Greece. behind the natural world. In a crude anticipation
Thales, probably born somewhere around 620 BC of modern plate tectonics, Thales professed that
is mainly remembered as the presocratic the flat earth floated on water. Aristotle tells us
philosopher who claimed that the fundamental that Thales thought the earth had a buoyancy
nature of the world is water. Aristotlementions much like wood, and that the earth floated on
him, as does Herodotus, and these are really our water much like a log or a ship. Indeed, many
only accounts of Thales’ background. However, floating islands were said to be known to the
his significance as a philosopher is not so much sea-farers of Miletus, which may have served as
what he said, but his method. Thales was the first either models or evidence for Thales’ theory. He
thinker to try to account for the nature of the even accounted for earthquakes as being due to
world without appealing to the wills and whims the rocking of the earth by subterranean waves,
of anthropomorphic, Homerian gods. Rather, he just as a ship may be rocked at sea. From the port
sought to explain the many diverse phenomena he of Miletus he would have been familiar with the
observed by appealing to a common, underlying phenomenon of sedimentation, possibly believing
principle, an idea that is still germane to modern it to be the spontaneous generation of earth from
scientific method. He is also credited by Herodotus water, an idea held as recently as the 18th century.
with correctly predicting that there would be a Having sought to give a naturalistic
solar eclipse in 585 BC during a battle between explanation of observable phenomena, rather
the Medes and the Lydians. As such, Thales can than appealing to the wills of gods, Thales
with some justification be thought of as the first claimed that god is in all things. According to
natural scientist and analytical philosopher in Aetius, Thales said the mind of the world is god,
Western intellectual history. that god is intermingled in all things, a view that
Thales had other modern traits, for it also would shortly appear contemporaneously in a
seems that he was something of an entrepreneur. number of world religions, most notably
According to one story, Thales made a fortune Buddhism in India. Despite his metaphysical
investing in oil-presses before a heavy olive crop speculations being clearly mistaken, it seems
– certainly he would have had to be wealthy in that Thales was a modern thinker in more ways
order to devote time and thought to philosophy than one, pre-empting many ideas in religion,
and science in seventh century BC Ancient philosophy and science.
Greece.
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