Introduction to Philosophy

Tuesday, January 10.

We will be using Donald Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, 3^rd Edition. (Fourth will be tolerated, but the pagination is off by 4 pages (subtract 4 from that edition’s pagination).

Distribution of syllabi.

The general approach of this course: A compromise between the purely conceptual and the purely historical, with a little more weight given to the historical. The textbook is titled “Looking at Philosophy.” Therefore it is somewhat focused on the history (or story) of philosophy itself, a bit narcissistic. (The various disciplines differ a bit on this score: the object of the study of history is “history” but the object of biology is not biology itself: it is the study of living entities. History can take itself as its own object: historiography, or the way history has been and/or is written.)

Notice also the importance of language in philosophy. Language is important in all varieties of philosophy, though in some varieties, e.g. linguistic philosophy, it is all there is so to speak. “Distinuo” (Latin was the language of Western philosophy throughout the Middle Ages and into the 17^th century even.), I distinguish. The making of distinctions, or classification, has been an important preoccupation of philosophy.

You will find at the end of your textbook a glossary of important philosophical terms. Words in bold type in your textbook are keyed to this glossary. For example, you will find the wordcosmogony (from kosmos world + gonos creation), theories and stories about the origin of universe, distinguished from cosmology, theories about the nature of the universe. Speaking of the importance of language in philosophy, etymology, or the study of the origins of words, has often been used by philosophers as well, since it is something like a record of the origins of thought: the way concepts and ideas evolved. Universe, uni-versum. Cosmos vs. chaos. (The Greeks by and large didn’t believe the universe had a beginning. It was always there.) The notion of the creation of the universe is widespread: mythical accounts of various types. The Popol Vuh, the ancient account of the Mayan Indians of what is now the Yucatán (Southern Mexico) and Guatemala. (Read short excerpts from the Popol Vuh, p. 23. “Ésta es la relacción de cómo todo estaba en suspenso, todo en calma, en silencio; todo inmóvil, callado, y vacía al extensión del cielo.” … el Corazón del Cielo,… el nombre de Dios. Asi contaban.” (This is the store of how all was in suspense, all in calm, in silence; all immobile, mute, and empty the expanse of the sky. The Heart of the Sky… the name of God. This is what they say.) After the creation of the animals, there were several unsuccessful attempts at making man. A parliament of gods discussed it. They tried earth, or mud (notice how closely this resembles the Hebrew account that begins the Torah, or Old Testament), but those people lacked the strength to survive and serve God. The first men were made of corn (maize).

Our own Judeo-Christian tradition has many obvious parallels. And even one that an Israeli women saw in her reading of Bereschit (Genesis): Man was created first and then woman, because He (She?) didn’t get it entirely right the first time.

Speaking of women, I would ask you not to neglect Palmer’s Preface to your textbook, as it will contribute to a future discussion on the changing role of women in the field of philosophy, and the reasons for their relative absence in the past.

What we have been discussing thus far would fall under what Donald Palmer, the author of the textbook we are using, calls Mythos. Traditional explanations of the way things are now, by means of a story of how they were. Often involving the supernatural. Logos comes a bit lator. The word is Greek, and means Word or logical disposition of things in Greek. (Whence, e.g. “bio-logy” and other –logies.) Logos develops in Greece, in the 6^th and 5^th centuries BCE.

With the help of my assistant Kenneth Wells you will be reading and discussing the Pre-Socratic philosophers in my absence (I return on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at which time we will take up the discussion with chapter 2, The Athenian Period (5^th and 4^th centuries).

My last remarks concern the traditional divisions of philosophy, into ontology (“first philosophy), axiology (including aesthetics and ethics) and logic (correct inference).

Another important topic that will be taken up from time to time during this course will be the relationship between science and philosophy (as well as between science and the Humanities).