I am starting a series of short blog entries on philosophy, which happens to be my other favourite subject in addition to computer science. I really need to submit quite a few blog entries so that I can finish my community bootcamp program. I am in the process of finalizing my last programming project, but I will not be allowed to “graduate” unless I do my blog posts. Wow! Way to go Flatiron, blog posts! I am definatelly off at the end of this month… Anyway on to philosophy, which is actually very closely related to computer science and programming.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The word comes from Greek and it literally means “friend/love of wisdom”.
Some classic philosophical questions are: “Is it possible to know anything and to prove it?”, “What is real?”, “Is there a best way to live?”, “Do humans have free will?”. My next few blog posts will mainly summarize my favourite philosophers and their ideas. I plan to delve in mostly on what is categarized as western philosophy, however if I have some time and blog posts to spare, I will present bits of the eastern tradition.
Western philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the Western world and dates to Pre-Socratic thinkers who were active in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE such as Thales and Pythagoras. Socrates was a very influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom.
Ancient Greek philosophical schools which arose out of the various pupils of Socrates, such as Plato, who founded the Platonic Academy and his student Aristotle, founding the Peripatetic school, were both extremely influential in Western tradition. Other traditions include Cynicism, Stoicism, Greek Skepticism and Epicureanism. Important topics covered by the Greeks included metaphysics, cosmology, the nature of the well-lived life (eudaimonia), the possibility of knowledge and the nature of reason (logos). With the rise of the Roman empire, Greek philosophy was also increasingly discussed in Latin by Romans such as Cicero and Seneca.
Early modern philosophy in the Western world begins with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes. Following the rise of natural science, Modern philosophy was concerned with developing a secular and rational foundation for knowledge and moved away from traditional structures of authority such as religion, scholastic thought and the Church. Major modern philosophers include Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. 19th-century philosophy is influenced by the wider movement termed the Enlightenment, and includes figures such as Hegel a key figure in German idealism, Kierkegaard who developed the foundations for existentialism, Nietzsche a famed anti-Christian, John Stuart Mill who promoted Utilitarianism, Karl Marx who developed the foundations for Communism and the American William James.
In the following next few blog posts I will be presenting my favourite philosophers and their basic ideas in a bit more detail.