In more recent times, a comparable attitude was discernible beneath Arnold Toynbee’s uncompromising repudiation of the idea that history is “a chaotic, disorderly, fortuitous flux, in which there is no pattern or rhythm of any kind to be discerned.” Thus, it has been the object of a long line of theorists, representative of widely divergent outlooks, to demonstrate that such pessimism is unjustified and that the historical process can, when appropriately viewed, be seen to be both rationally and morally acceptable. The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, spoke of the “repugnance” that is inevitably experienced if the past is viewed. Contingency means the outcome was the result of events that might have occurred differently, whereas necessity means the outcome could only ever have gone one way. Evidence of the development of an answer to this question comes from tomb paintings c. 4000 BCE instructing people on where they came from, why they existed, and how to live well and attain paradise. The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in China were times of chaos as the Zhou Dynasty was declining, and Chinese philosophy was developed in response to this disorder. Around 600 BCE, a social and religious reform movement in the region resulted in the development of other philosophical systems which rejected orthodox Hinduism. People’s existential questions traditionally have been answered by the development of religious systems which assured them of the existence of supernatural entities (gods, divine spirits, one’s departed ancestors) who created them, cared for them, and watched over them. Mark, J. J. Chinese philosophy was initially a response to social disorder as well as the failure of religious belief to explain the world & reassure people of a divine plan. Ancient History Encyclopedia. In India, philosophy develops during the Vedic Period between c. 1500 - c. 500 BCE with the Upanishads. A necessary fact is one that hasto be the case, whereas contingent facts could have been different. The term philosophy may apply to a formalized secular or religious system of thought, a personal construct, or a communal understanding of proper attitude and conduct, but in each case, the purpose of the system is to answer such questions. Epistemological questions do not seem to have concerned the ancients until the subject is addressed by the Pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece and Plato after them. "Philosophy." Chinese philosophy, then, was initially a response to social disorder as well as the failure of religious belief to explain the world and reassure people of a divine plan. In India, philosophy developed in response to the Vedas, the scriptures of Hinduism (known as Sanatan Dharma, “Eternal Order”, to adherents), in the form of the Upanishads (the earliest written c. 800-500 BCE). The term was coined by French philosopher Voltaire. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2020) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Co-authored by Steven Umbrello and Tina Forsee It is very... Indian scholars of the so-called Vedic Period commit, Life of the Chinese Relativist Philosopher, Life of Antisthenes, found of the Cynic school of, The Burning of the Books and the Burying of Philosophers Period in, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, Mesopotamia by c. 2150 BCE: written form of the philosophical narrative of. The areas of interest of modern-day philosophy apply equally to the East and West but the names by which they are known were developed by the Greeks. Aesthetics concerns itself with the study of beauty, perception of beauty, culture, and even nature, asking the fundamental question, “What makes something that is beautiful or meaningful 'beautiful' or 'meaningful'?” Both Plato and Aristotle give answers to this question attempting to standardize objectively what is 'beautiful' while the famous Greek Sophist Protagoras (l. c. 485-415 BCE) argued that if one believes something to be 'beautiful' then it is beautiful and that all judgments are and must be subjective because any experience is relative to the one experiencing it. Zoroaster conceived of a new religious paradigm of a single god, Ahura Mazda, creator and sustainer of the universe, whose supernatural adversary was Angra Mainyu (also known as Ahriman), the lord of darkness and chaos. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/philosophy/. The idea of an order or design in history, Secular approaches: the Enlightenment and beyond, History as a process of dialectical change: Hegel and Marx, https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-history, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Feminist History of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Philosophy of History. Here attention is focused not upon the actual sequence of events themselves but, instead, upon the procedures and categories used by practicing historians in approaching and comprehending their material. Although various schools may break some into sub-sections, the branches of study are: Metaphysics – The Study of Existence, so named for Aristotle’s work on the subject. In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between speculative philosophy of history and critical philosophy of history, now referred to as analytic. At about the same time, Zoroaster (c. 1500-1000 BCE) was developing his philosophic vision in ancient Persia while, in China, philosophy is first committed to writing during the time of the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) and later developed during the Spring and Autumn Period (c. 772-476 BCE) and the Warring States Period (c. 481-221 BCE) in the time associated with the Hundred Schools of Thought. The Offering of Ma'atby Terry Feuerborn (CC BY-NC-SA). Thales of Miletusby Peter Paul Rubens (Copyright). Thales seems to have avoided problems with the religious authorities by never denying the existence of gods, but this does not explain his initial impulse. Whether Plato’s work accurately reflects Socrates’ teachings is unknown and will never be known, but scholars generally believe that it does, more or less, and that Socrates is the foundational figure of Western Philosophy. Mark, Joshua J. Traces of this approach are to be found in the conception of the past developed in the 4th century by St. Augustine in his De civitate Dei (City of God) and elsewhere; it is, for example, compared on one occasion to “the great melody of some ineffable composer,” its parts being “the dispensations suitable to each different period.” Yet the cautious subtlety of Augustine’s suggestions and the crucial distinction he drew between sacred and secular history make it important not to confuse his carefully qualified doctrines with the cruder positions advanced by some of his self-proclaimed successors. Aesthetics – The Study of Art (from the Greek aisthetikos, sense/sentience, or aisthanomai, to perceive or feel). Web. 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