The Philosophy Book

by DK Publishing

  See also: Henri Bergson • Michel Foucault

  NIKLAS LUHMANN

  1927–1998

  Born in Lüneburg, Germany, Niklas Luhmann was captured by the Americans during World War II, when he was just 17. After the war he worked as a lawyer until, in 1962, he took a sabbatical to study sociology in America. He went on to become one of the most important and prolific social theorists of the 20th century. Luhmann developed a grand theory, to explain every element of social life, from complex well-established societies to the briefest of exchanges, lasting just seconds. In his most important work, The Society of Society (1997), he argues that communication is the only genuinely social phenomenon.

  See also: Jürgen Habermas

  MICHEL SERRES

  1930–

  The French author and philosopher Michel Serres studied mathematics before taking up philosophy. He is a professor at Stanford University in California and a member of the prestigious Académie Française. His lectures and books are presented in French, with an elegance and fluidity that is hard to translate. His post-humanist enquiries take the form of “maps”, where the journeys themselves play an major role. He has been described as a “thinker for whom voyaging is invention”, finding truths in the chaos, discord, and disorder revealed in the links between the sciences, arts, and contemporary culture.

  See also: Roland Barthes • Jacques Derrida

  DANIEL DENNETT

  1942–

  Born in Beirut, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett is an acclaimed expert on the nature of cognitive systems. Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, Massachusetts, he is noted for his wide-ranging expertise in linguistics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and psychology. Using memorable and creative labels, such as “Joycean machine” for stream of consciousness, he argues that the source of free will and consciousness is the brain’s computational circuitry, which tricks us into thinking we are more intelligent than we actually are.

  See also: Gilbert Ryle • Willard Van Orman Quine • Michel Foucault

  MARCEL GAUCHET

  1946–

  The French philosopher, historian, and sociologist Marcel Gauchet has written widely on democracy and the role of religion in the modern world. He is the editor of the intellectual French periodical Le Débat and a professor at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. His key work, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (1985), explores the modern cult of individualism in the context of man’s religious past. As religious belief declines across the Western world, Gauchet argues that elements of the sacred has been incorporated into human relationships and other social activities.

  See also: Maurice Merleau-Ponty • Michel Foucault

  MARTHA NUSSBAUM

  1947–

  Born in New York City, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She has published numerous books and papers, mainly on ethics and political philosophy, where the rigor of her academic enquiry is always informed by a passionate liberalism. Her exploration of ancient Greek ethics, The Fragility of Goodness (1986), first brought her acclaim, but she is now equally well-known for her liberal views on feminism, as expressed in Sex and Social Justice (1999), which argues for radical change in gender and family relationships.

  See also: Plato • Aristotle • John Rawls

  ISABELLE STENGERS

  1949–

  Isabelle Stengers was born in Belgium and studied chemistry at the Free University of Brussels, where she is now Professor of Philosophy. She was awarded the grand prize for philosophy by the Académie Française in 1993. A distinguished thinker on science, Stengers has written extensively about modern scientific processes, with a focus on the use of science for social ends and its relationship to power and authority. Her books include Power and Invention (1997) and The Invention of Modern Science (2000), and Order Out of Chaos (1984) with the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine.

  See also: Alfred North Whitehead • Edgar Morin

  GLOSSARY

  the Absolute Ultimate reality conceived of as an all-embracing, single principle. Some thinkers have identified this principle with God; others have believed in the Absolute but not in God; others have not believed in either. The philosopher most closely associated with the idea is Georg Hegel.

  Aesthetics A branch of philosophy concerned with the principles of art and the notion of beauty.

  Agent The doing self, as distinct from the knowing self; the self that decides or chooses or acts.

  Analysis The search for a deeper understanding of something by taking it to pieces and looking at each part. The opposite approach is synthesis.

  Analytic philosophy A view of philosophy that sees its aim as clarification—the clarification of concepts, statements, methods, arguments, and theories by carefully taking them apart.

  Analytic statement A statement whose truth or falsehood can be established by analysis of the statement itself. The opposite is a synthetic statement.

  Anthropomorphism The attribution of human characteristics to something that is not human; for instance to God or to the weather.

  A posteriori Something that can be considered valid only by means of experience.

  A priori Something known to be valid in advance of (or without need of) experience.

  Argument A process of reasoning in logic that purports to show its conclusion to be true.

  Category The broadest class or group into which things can be divided. Aristotle and Immanuel Kant both tried to provide a complete list of categories.

  Concept A thought or idea; the meaning of a word or term.

  Contingent May or may not be the case; things could be either way. The opposite is necessary.

  Contradictory Two statements are contradictory if one must be true and the other false: they cannot both be true, nor can they both be false.

  Contrary Two statements are contrary if they cannot both be true but may both be false.

  Corroboration Evidence that lends support to a conclusion without necessarily proving it.

  Cosmology The study of the whole universe, the cosmos.

  Deduction Reasoning from the general to the particular—for instance, “If all men are mortal then Socrates, being a man, must be mortal.” It is universally agreed that deduction is valid. The opposite process is called induction.

  Determinism The view that nothing can happen other than what does happen, because every event is the necessary outcome of causes preceding it—which themselves were the necessary outcome of causes preceding them. The opposite is indeterminism.

  Dialectic i) Skill in questioning or argument. ii) The idea that any assertion, whether in word or deed, evokes opposition, the two of which are reconciled in a synthesis that includes elements of both.

  Dualism A view of something as made up of two irreducible parts, such as the idea of human beings as consisting of bodies and minds, the two being radically unlike.

  Emotive Expressing emotion. In philosophy the term is often used in a derogatory way for utterances that pretend to be objective or impartial while in fact expressing emotional attitudes, as for example in “emotive definition.”

  Empirical knowledge Knowledge of the empirical world.

  Empirical statement A statement about the empirical world; what is or could be experienced.

  Empirical world The world as revealed to us by our actual or possible experience.

  Empiricism The view that all knowledge of anything that actually exists must be derived from experience.

  Epistemology The branch of philosophy concerned with what sort of
thing, if anything, we can know; how we know it; and what knowledge is. In practice it is the dominant branch of philosophy.

  Essence The essence of a thing is that which is distinctive about it and makes it what it is. For instance, the essence of a unicorn is that it is a horse with a single horn on its head. Unicorns do not exist of course—so essence does not imply existence. This distinction is important in philosophy.

  Ethics A branch of philosophy that is concerned with questions about how we should live, and therefore about the nature of right and wrong, good and bad, ought and ought not, duty, and other such concepts.

  Existentialism A philosophy that begins with the contingent existence of the individual human being and regards that as the primary enigma. It is from this starting point that philosophical understanding is pursued.

  Fallacy A seriously wrong argument, or a false conclusion based on such an argument.

  Falsifiability A statement, or set of statements, is falsifiable if it can be proved wrong by empirical testing. According to Karl Popper, falsifiability is what distinguishes science from nonscience.

  Humanism A philosophical approach based on the assumption that mankind is the most important thing that exists, and that there can be no knowledge of a supernatural world, if any such world exists.

  Hypothesis A theory whose truth is assumed for the time being because it forms a useful starting point for further investigation, despite limited evidence to prove its validity.

  Idealism The view that reality consists ultimately of something nonmaterial, whether it be mind, the contents of mind, spirits, or one spirit. The opposite point of view is materialism.

  Indeterminism The view that not all events are necessary outcomes of events that may have preceeded them. The opposite is point of view is determinism.

  Induction Reasoning from the particular to the general. An example would be “Socrates died, Plato died, Aristotle died, and each other individual man who was born more than 130 years ago has died. Therefore all men are mortal.” Induction does not necessarily yield results that are true, so whether it is genuinely a logical process is disputed. The opposite process is called deduction.

  Intuition Direct knowing, whether by sensory perception or by insight; a form of knowledge that makes no use of reasoning.

  Irreducible An irreducible thing is one that cannot be brought to a simpler or reduced form.

  Linguistic philosophy Also known as linguistic analysis. The view that philosophical problems arise from a muddled use of language, and are to be solved, or dissolved, by a careful analysis of the language in which they have been expressed.

  Logic The branch of philosophy that makes a study of rational argument itself—its terms, concepts, rules, and methods.

  Logical positivism The view that the only empirical statements that are meaningful are those that are verifiable.

  Materialism The doctrine that all real existence is ultimately of something material. The opposite point of view is idealism.

  Metaphilosophy The branch of philosophy that looks at the nature and methods of philosophy itself.

  Metaphysics The branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of what exists. It questions the natural world “from outside”, and its questions cannot be answered by science.

  Methodology The study of methods of enquiry and argument.

  Monism A view of something as formed by a single element; for example, the view that human beings do not consist of elements that are ultimately separable, like a body and a soul, but are of one single substance.

  Mysticism Intuitive knowledge that transcends the natural world.

  Naturalism The view that reality is explicable without reference to anything outside the natural world.

  Necessary Must be the case. The opposite is contingent. Hume believed that necessary connections existed only in logic, not in the real world, a view that has been upheld by many philosophers since.

  Necessary and sufficient conditions For X to be a husband it is a necessary condition for X to be married. However, this is not a sufficient condition—for what if X is female? A sufficient condition for X to be a husband is that X is both a man and married. One of the commonest forms of error in thinking is to mistake necessary conditions for sufficient conditions.

  Noncontradictory Statements are considered noncontradictory if their truth-values are independent of one another.

  Noumenon The unknowable reality behind what presents itself to human consciousness, the latter being known as phenomenon. A thing as it is in itself, independently of being experienced, is said to be the noumenon. “The noumenal” has therefore become a term for the ultimate nature of reality.

  Numinous Anything regarded as mysterious and awesome, bearing intimations from outside the natural realm. Not to be confused with the noumenal; see noumenon above.

  Ontology A branch of philosophy that asks what actually exists, as distinct from the nature of our knowledge of it, which is covered by the branch of epistemology. Ontology and epistemology taken together constitute the central tradition of philosophy.

  Phenomenology An approach to philosophy which investigates objects of experience (known as phenomena) only to the extent that they manifest themselves in our consciousness, without making any assumptions about their nature as independent things.

  Phenomenon An experience that is immediately present. If I look at an object, the object as experienced by me is a phenomenon. Immanuel Kant distinguished this from the object as it is in itself, independently of being experienced: this he called the noumenon.

  Philosophy Literally, “the love of wisdom.” The word is widely used for any sustained rational reflection about general principles that has the aim of achieving a deeper understanding. Philosophy provides training in the disciplined analysis and clarification of arguments, theories, methods, and utterances of all kinds, and the concepts of which they make use. Traditionally, its ultimate aim has been to attain a better understanding of the world, though in the 20th century a good deal of philosophy became devoted to attaining a better understanding of its own procedures.

  Philosophy of religion The branch of philosophy that looks at human belief systems and the real or imaginary objects, such as gods, that form the basis for these beliefs.

  Philosophy of science A branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of scientific knowledge and the practice of scientific endeavor.

  Political philosophy The branch of philosophy that questions the nature and methods of the state and deals with such subjects as justice, law, social hierarchies, political power, and constitutions.

  Postmodernism A viewpoint that holds a general distrust of theories, narratives, and ideologies that attempt to put all knowledge into a single framework.

  Pragmatism A theory of truth. It holds that a statement is true if it does all the jobs required of it: accurately describes a situation; prompts us to anticipate experience correctly; fits in with already well-attested statements; and so on.

  Premise The starting point of an argument. Any argument has to start from at least one premise, and therefore does not prove its own premises. A valid argument proves that its conclusions follow from its premises—but this is not the same as proving that its conclusions are true, which is something no argument can do.

  Presupposition Something taken for granted but not expressed. All utterances have presuppositions, and these may be conscious or unconscious. If a presupposition is mistaken, an utterance based on it may also be mistaken, though the mistake may not evident in the utterance itself. The study of philosophy teaches us to become more aware of presuppositions.


  Primary and secondary qualities John Locke divided the properties of a physical object into those that are possessed by the object independently of being experienced, such as its location, dimensions, velocity, mass, and so on (which he called primary qualities), and those that involve the interaction of an experiencing observer, such as the object’s color and taste (which he called secondary qualities).

  Property In philosophy this word is commonly used to mean a characteristic; for example “fur or hair is a defining property of a mammal.” See also primary and secondary qualities.

  Rational Based on, or according to, the principles of reason or logic.

  Proposition The content of a statement that confirms or denies whether something is the case, and is capable of being true or false.

  Rationalism The view that we can gain knowledge of the world through the use of reason, without relying on sense-perception, which is regarded by rationalists as unreliable. The opposite view is known as empiricism.

  Scepticism The view that it is impossible for us to know anything for certain.

  Semantics The study of meanings in linguistic expressions.

  Semiotics The study of signs and symbols, in particular their relationships with the things they are meant to signify.

  Social contract An implicit agreement among members of a society to cooperate in order to achieve goals that benefit the whole group, sometimes at the expense of individuals within it.

  Solipsism The view that only the existence of the self can be known.

  Sophist Someone whose aim in argument is not to seek the truth but to win the argument. In ancient Greece, young men aspiring to public life were taught by sophists to learn the various methods of winning arguments.