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The
Entire History
of
Western
Philosophy
in
Fifty Minutes
“… if (the best
philosophy)
doesn’t seem
peculiar you
haven’t
understood it”
Edward Craig
The Entire History of Western Philosophy in 50 Minutes
Philosophy: the “love of Wisdom”
especially questions about ultimate reality
why things are the way they are
making sense of life
thinking about thinking
Bertrand Russell
“ … the no-man’s land
between science and
theology, exposed to attack
from both sides”
The Entire History of Western Philosophy in 50 Minutes
… as soon as you start to comment on
philosophy …
… you have started
to philosophise!
The Entire History of Western Philosophy in 50 Minutes
Much of the story of philosophy is in
dialogue with Christian faith.
Can you prove that God exists?
Why is there evil in the world?
Can miracles happen?
Is there life after death?
Is experience useful evidence?
What is good?
Can we describe ultimate reality
with ordinary words?
The question
of miracle
The existence
of God
The question of
life after death
Three
important
themes
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Era or “school”
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
Philosopher
 Key point
 Key point

 Key point
2000 CE
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
Presocratic
1500 CE
2000 CE
Thales
c. 620 – 540 BCE
Philosophical thinking before Socrates
 Thinking about the
world without first
thinking about gods

 Water the 1st
Principle from
which everything
came
 God in all things
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
Presocratic
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Pythagorus
570 – 480 BCE
Philosophical thinking before Socrates
 First systematic
step-by-step
reasoning
 Ultimate reality in
number


1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
“The unexamined
life is not worth
living”
Academics
Socrates
c. 470 - 399 BCE
Because Plato started an Academy
 Wrote nothing recorded by pupil
Plato
 Concerned with
ethics: what is good
 knowledge = virtue
ignorance the cause of evil

 dialectic argument
proposal, answer, counter answer
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Plato
Academics
Aristocles aka Fatso
c. 427 - 347 BCE
Because Plato started an Academy
 Human being is
really soul that fell
from the stars
 Theory of ideas
remembered - on earth,
there is only the imperfect
 Ideal forms e.g.
beauty

 Ideal city-state:
“The Republic”
Plato’s allegory of the cave
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
“Nature does not
act without a goal”
Academics
Aristotle
384 - 322 BCE
Because Plato started an Academy
 member of Plato’s
“academy”
 systematic.
scientific, diverse
Classification of knowledge
 teleology: purpose
 God as “Prime
mover”

 revered by Church
scholars
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
Into the Christian era
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
 Cynics: ascetic,
minimise emotion
 Stoics: virtue
based on good, be
indifferent to
suffering
 Neo-platonists
body bad, spiritual good
 Augustine 354 – 430
“Believe in order to
understand”
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Scholastics
Thinking based in Christian monasteries
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Anselm
1033 - 1109
 the first ontological
argument

 God “something than
which nothing
greater can be
thought”
 an argument simply
from thinking, not
from observation
The Ontological Argument
 from Greek for “to be”, so
“concerned with being”
 God’s definition entails his
existence
What is the better gift: “virtual” roses ..
or the real thing?
The Ontological Argument
 God is “that than which nothing
greater can be thought”
 the concept of God exists in the
understanding
Anselm
(1033-1109)
 God is a possible being
 if God exists only in the mind and is only a
possible being, then if he existed in reality
he would have been greater
 if so, God is a being than which a greater
can be thought … which is impossible!
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Scholastics
Thomas Aquinas
Thinking based in Christian monasteries
 Favoured by RCs
1225 - 1274
 Influenced by
Aristotle
 “Five Ways” or
“Five arguments
for the existence
of God”


 a cosmological
argument (4 of the 5)
 a teleological
argument (the 5th)
Thomas Aquinas’s “Five Ways”
1. Everything is changing – but
something must have caused it.
2. Every effect must have a cause
3. Things come into existence, and
cease to exist. There must be a cause.
4. Excellence must come from perfection
5. The harmony of things suggests design.
This all must be God!
The Cosmological Argument
 cosmos - the world or universe
 based on what can be seen
 concept of contingency dependent on something that
may or may not happen
The Cosmological Argument
The Unmoved Mover
 Thomas Aquinas’ “First Way”
 everything that is in motion (changed) is
moved by something else
 infinite regress is impossible
 emphasis on dependency
 “… it is necessary to arrive at a first
mover, moved by no other, and this
everyone understands to be God”.
1
The Cosmological Argument
The Uncaused Causer
 Thomas Aquinas’ “Second Way”
 everything that happens has a cause
 infinite regress is impossible
 emphasis on agency
2
 “There is no case known … in which a thing is
found to be the efficient cause of itself … it
is necessary to admit a first efficient cause,
to which everyone gives the name of God”
The Cosmological Argument
Possibility and Necessity
 Thomas Aquinas’ “Third Way”
 things come into being and later cease to
exist
 some contingent beings exist
 if any contingent beings exist, then a
necessary being must exist
3
(the cause of the universe must be external to it and must
always have existed)
The Cosmological Argument
Excellence
 Thomas Aquinas’ “Fourth Way”
 in this world there is a scale of more good
and less good
 this cannot be an infinite scale
4
 there must therefore exist “perfection” at
one end of the scale - which is what
everyone knows as God
The Teleological Argument
 telos - end or purpose
 focus on order, regularity,
benefit and purpose
 uses analogy
 recalls Plato: all things ordered
by the mind
 based on what can be seen
The Teleological Argument
The Argument from Design
 Thomas Aquinas’ “Fifth Way”
 everything works to some purpose
Thomas Aquinas
1225-1274
 observed beneficial results suggest there is
a pattern of direction behind this
 modern example - animal migration
 this must be God!
5
The Teleological Argument
The Argument from Design
Thomas Aquinas
1225-1274
“… whatever lacks knowledge cannot move
towards an end, unless it be directed …
therefore some intelligent being exists by
whom all natural things
are directed to their end;
and this being we call God”
Summa Theologica
The Question of Miracle
1. God does what nature
could never do
2. God does what nature
could do, but in a
different sequence or
connection
3. God does what nature can
do, but from his power
Thomas Aquinas
1225-1274
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Scholastics
Thinking based in Christian monasteries

500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
William of
Occam d. 1347
 “Occam’s Razor”:
“Entities are not to
be multiplied
beyond necessity”
 All being equal,
accept the simplest
answer
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
The Age of Science
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Thomas Hobbes
1588 - 1679
 materialist: God is
matter

 natural state of
human beings = war
 society prevents a
falling back to this
state (social contract)
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Cogito ergo sum
“I
think, therefore I am”
Rationalists
Knowledge comes from logical deduction

Descartes
1596-1650
 “the father of
modern philosophy”
 a philosophical
framework for the
natural sciences
 a mathematician
 deduction (from the
reality of the mind), not
perception (from senses)
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Rationalists
Knowledge comes from logical deduction

500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Spinoza
1632 - 1677
 the Universe is One
 mind and body just
different ways of
conceiving this one
Reality
 everything is a
necessary part of
that Reality
 therefore there is
no free will
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
The mind is furnished
with ideas by
experience alone
Empiricists
Knowledge is based on sense experience
 
John Locke
1632 - 1704
 everything we know
is derived from
experience
 the mind at birth is a
“tabula rasa”
(a blank slate)
 primary (objective - really
exist) & secondary
(subjective – ideas in the mind)
qualities of objects
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Empiricists
Knowledge is based on sense experience

500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
David Hume
1711 - 1776
 anything not given in
experience is to be
discarded
 therefore there is
no God, self,
causation, inductive
knowledge
 “I am nothing but a
bundle of
perceptions”
 “miracles” violations
of laws of nature
Arguments against miracles
David Hume
1711 - 1776
 Hume described miracles as violations of the
laws of nature
 he said that claims of miracles came from
ignorant and barbarous people …
 … with poor quality of testimony …
 … who might gain from their accounts …
 … many religions cite miracle as support for
their beliefs - but they could not all be right
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
A response to Hume
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
William Paley
1743 - 1805
 evidence in
creation of design

 the “Clockmaker”
analogy
 an argument from
design
(teleological argument)
The Teleological Argument
The Argument from
Design
William Paley
(1743-1805)
“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my
foot against a stone … I might possibly answer
that … it had lain there for ever … But
suppose I found a watch upon the ground … I
should hardly think of the answer which I had
given before …when we come to inspect the
watch we perceive … that its several parts are
framed and put together for a purpose …”
Natural Theology
The Teleological Argument
The Argument from Design
Purpose
Regularity
William Paley
(1743-1805)
 analogy of watch
found on heath
 regularity, order,
rule in universe
 could not say
“always there”!
 motion of planets,
gravity, in solar
system
 human eye “design”
 must be a designer
 designing principle
at work
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
“Two things fill the mind with ever new
and increasing admiration and awe – the
stary heavens above and the moral law
within”
Idealists
2000 CE
Immanuel Kant
1711 - 1776
Rationalism + empiricism

 “categories” for
incoming sensedata
 “categorical
imperative” – a
universal moral law
 a moral argument
for the existence
of God
The Moral Argument for the Existence of God
 we recognise an obligation to achieve the highest
standard of goodness …
 … and that this goodness should be rewarded by
happiness
 good and happy - the “summum bonum”, the
highest good - ought to happen …
 … so it has to be possible
 BUT while we can achieve good, we can’t always
ensure happiness as well
 THEREFORE there must be a God who can do this
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
Idealists
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Hegel
1770 - 1831
Rationalism + empiricism

 “dialectic” – thesis,
antithesis,
synthesis
 a progression
towards absolute
truth
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Materialists
Everything is made of matter

500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Karl Marx
1818 - 1883
 atheistic dialectical
materialism
 socialism the
necessary outcome
of economic
conflict
 religion keeps the
oppressed quiet
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
Materialists
Everything is made of matter
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Ludwig
Feuerbach
1804-1872
 people are scared to
face up to the fact
that there is nothing
after death …

 … so they make up
the father-figure
they would like to be
real
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
To the present day
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
God is
dead!
 Existentialists: the
human predicament
(Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Sartre)
 Linguistic
philosophy:
(Wittgenstein)
religious
statements not
open to truth or
falsity
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
To the present day
1000 CE
1500 CE
2000 CE
Paul Tillich
1883-1965
Philosophy
frames the
questions to
which theology
brings the
answers
1000 BCE
500 BCE
0
500 CE
1000 CE
1500 CE
To the present day
Freud:
“projected” order
Coplestone:
self-causing universe
Russell:
“just there”
Dawkins:
The God Delusion
Wiles:
Auschwitz > God
not involved
Hartshorne:
memory in the
mind of God
Holland:
perception
Hick:
replica
Swinburne:
good testimony
Vardy:
reprint
2000 CE
Does Philosophy offer Proof of the Existence of God?
No - but some more recent
philosophers have argued that there is
a demonstrable weight of probability
that makes belief in God an
intellectually defensible claim
How much can the discipline of philosophy
help us develop better analytical skills?
How much can we know about God by
thinking, rather than by revelation?
How can philosophical thinking prepare the
human heart to understand the human
predicament, and so be open to the Good
News of Jesus?
How can addressing philosophical issues
create opportunities for dialogue
with today’s youth?