The ‘Oriental’ Character of Islamic Philosophy in Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Lorella Ventura
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
General View ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel characterizes Arabic/Islamic philosophy as ‘Oriental’. The meaning and motivation of this characterization are not obvious. In this paper, I address his treatment and outline the key ideas that lead Hegel to describe Islamic philosophy as ‘Oriental’. By highlighting similarities and differences in relation to Oriental philosophy, I shed light on Hegel's approach to Islamic philosophy, which is connected to his view of Oriental philosophy, the East and Islam in its various aspects, and to his more general view of the history of philosophy and of the Absolute as spirit.

The socio-political situation and the spiritual environment impacting on the formation of the weltanschauung of the Nasiruddin Tusi

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qushshayeva Nafisa
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Indelible Mark ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
History Of

In this article, the socio-political environment and the mystic-philosophical worldview of Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Hasan Nasiruddin Tusi, who lived in the 13th century, recognized as the greatest philosopher in the history of philosophy and mysticism, left an indelible mark on the development of Islamic philosophy. The factors that have been shown are analyzed.

Hegel's Dialectic in Historical Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 15 (59) ◽  
pp. 243-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. O. Wisdom
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Necessary Truth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interesting Correlation ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Psychological Truth ◽  
A Chain

Conflicting Systems in the History of Philosophy. Hegel's logic consists, as is well known, in a chain of categories, connected by a relation of dialectic, which proceeded from the featureless Being, Nothing, and Becoming through more important ones such as Substance, Cause, and Reciprocity to the highest category of all, the Absolute Idea. Now Hegel also pointed to an interesting correlation between the categories of his logic and the dominant concepts of those philosophies that preceded his own: that is to say, the logical order of categories given by him corresponded to the temporal order of the history of philosophy. Such connexion was not, however, to be regarded as an accident but as a necessary truth: for the Absolute manifested itself temporally in the form of the history of philosophy. Seeing that this contention probably contains some psychological truth and is probably assumed in Marxian interpretations of Hegel, it may be of some interest to see how far it can be substantiated.

The Playfair enigma

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert D. Biderman
Keyword(s):  
Physical Science ◽  
Prior Learning ◽  
Statistical Graphics ◽  
Mathematical Functions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Data Graph ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Diagrammatic Representations ◽  
Cartesian Coordinate ◽  
Shed Light

The invention of statistical graphics is generally, if inaccurately, attributed to William Playfair His initial innovation, along with his subsequent invention of most of the major repertoire of statistical graphics, is in many ways an enigma of the history of science: (1) Given their apparent obviousness, why had these graphic forms not been previously used for plotting statistics? {2} Why was the Cartesian coordinate system, during a century ami a half from its invention, not regularly applied to the kinds of data which Playfair plotted? (3) Why were the symbolic schematics used by Playfair apparently understood by contemporaries without need for prior learning of his 'conventions'? (4) Why did serious scholarly attention to Playfair'$ innovations occur earlier on the continent than in England? (5) Why subsequently have there been waves of popularity and of neglect of Playfair's forms? (S) Why were statistical graphics invented by a political pamphleteer and business adventurer rather than a scholar or scientist? (7) Why did statistical graphics develop first for social data applications rather than for natural or physical science purposes? Addressing these questions may shed light on developments in schematic representation of statistics from the beginnings of cultural numeracy to the present day The primary explanations of the enigma are: (1) the similarities and differences between the purely empirical data graph and diagrammatic representations of pure or applied mathematical functions; (2) the association of utility of pure data graphs with a statistical orientation toward phenomena, Playfaiťs innovations were facilitated by bis association with science during a time when science was particularly hospitable to highly pragmatic endeavors. His innovations were also facilitated by bis marginality with regard to the science of bis contemporaries.

Carthage—Rome—Milan

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Fuhrer
Keyword(s):  
Real Space ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Abstract Spaces

In the autobiographical narrative of Confessions 3 to 9, Augustine stages his early years in the urban spaces of Carthage, Rome, and Milan, which are among the most important cities of the late antique world. Each of these cities is assigned the role of a transit point on the way to moral and theological purification, associated with events and experiences that are subsequently assigned a particular significance which is transferred onto the place. Augustine’s Bildungsroman is thus also a kind of travel novel in a landscape defined by emotions and intellectual achievements; that is, in a psychogeography that leads ever further into the ‘inner person’, and reveals what is often interpreted in the history of philosophy as the discovery of subjectivity and interiority. Augustine’s narrative thus produces a series of imaginary or—according to Henri Lefebvre—‘abstract spaces’ which overlay, but do not erase, the ‘absolute’ or ‘real space’.

Maimonides and Eretz Yisrael: Halakhic, Philosophic, and Historical Perspectives

1991 ◽  
pp. 257-290
Author(s):  
Isadore Twersky
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Indirect Approach ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter describes Maimonides’ attitude and attachment to Eretz Yisrael. The difficulty of a discussion concerning Maimonides and Eretz Yisrael is threefold: the complexity of the man and the problematic nature of his teaching; the delicacy of the subject and the importance of its implications; and the scarcity or fragmentation of sources. The chapter then suggests an indirect approach to the subject, via consideration of a number of central topics in Maimonides’ thought, topics which are, in any case, central to Jewish thought in general, and specifically to see what place Eretz Yisrael holds and what its function is in the formation of Maimonides’ attitudes. A wide range of topics that are worthy of consideration and will shed light on the subject may be noted. These topics include the history of religion — the principle focus being the spread of monotheism — and the history of the halakhah, particularly the appearance of controversy in the Oral Law and the growth of custom, as well as the compilation of the Mishnah and the Talmud despite the prohibition against writing down the Oral Law. Other topics are the history of philosophy, prophecy, prayer, the Hebrew language, and the religious establishment. In all of these, the influence of the territorial dimension, or the lack thereof, and its replacement by another historical dimension, needs to be investigated.

Philosophy in Italy

Philosophy ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 223-227
Author(s):  
Guido De Ruggiero
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Process Change ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute

Among the studies on the history of philosophy recently published in Italy, one that may be of some interest to the English reader is by DR. Abbagnano, a young pupil of Aliotta, and is devoted to the new English idealism.1 Truthfully speaking, the term ‘ new ’ is inappropriate, or partly so, because Abbagnano dedicates the greater part of his study to what we might call the ‘ old ’ idealism in England, represented by Stirling, the two Cairds, Wallace, Green, and Bradley. However, he does also pass in review the more recent doctrines, particularly those of J. H. Muirhead, G. H. Howison, D. G. Richtie, J. E. Creighton, J. B. Baillie, J. S. Mackenzie, H. Jones, W. E. Hocking, A. S. Pringle Pattison, and G. P. Adams. Abbagnano regards as a distinctive trait of English idealism inspired by Hegel as opposed to Hegel himself, this, that “for Hegel the absolute is essentially process, change and becoming; it is thought which differentiates itself and becomes articulate in a life of its own, in the threefold rhythm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in which each moment passes into the next. For Green, Bradley, and Royce, the absolute is on the other hand immutability, completeness, static perfection, in which each process and becoming is overcome and resolved.” At any rate, Abbagnano is equally unsympathetic towards Hegel and towards his followers, against whom he opposes, not without scholastic ingenuity, his own irrationalistic views, set out in another book whose contents are sufficiently expressed in the title.1

Transitions to and from Nature in Hegel and Plato

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary K Browning
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material World ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Organic Community ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

The philosophical understanding of nature is a key concern of both Plato and Hegel. Their elaborations of the identity and status of nature within their respective philosophies exhibit significant affinities to which Hegel himself draws attention in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Hegel and Plato, indeed, are fundamentally at one in theorizing nature as both displaying and obscuring the principles of reason which they take as providing the foundations of a coherent explanation of reality. In his lectures on the History of Philosophy Hegel takes great pains to emphasize the profundity of Plato's idealism as residing in its identification of the objectively real with the rational. Plato, according to Hegel, is to be revered, above all, for having “… grasped in all its truth Socrates' great principle that ultimate reality lies in consciousness, since according to him the absolute is in thought and all reality is thought.” The Timaeus, for Hegel, articulates how the world of nature is necessarily structured by reason, just as the Republic is seen by Hegel as providing a philosophical explanation of the rationality of the traditional, organic community of the Greek polis. Hegel's recognition of the Platonic foundations of his own version of “absolute” idealism in which the universality of thought assumes an explanatory priority over the material phenomena of nature as well as informing the spiritual activities of human beings has been noted, rightly, by a number of subsequent commentators. Michael Rosen, for instance, in his book, Hegel's Dialectic and Its Criticism, while carefully distinguishing between aspects of Hegel's and Plato's conceptions of nature, intimates the continuity of Hegel's idealism with Plato's by observing how Hegel's language in effecting a transition from the categories of pure thought in the Logic to the material world of nature constitutes an “… echo of Plato's Timaeus.” Certainly, Hegel's cryptic account of the transition from the Absolute Idea, the categorial terminus of the Logic's interrogation of the determinations of pure thought, to the externality and materiality of nature evokes Plato's construal of the construction of the world in the Timaeus, both by the indeterminate character of the God which is invoked, as well as by the clear subordination of material phenomena to a separately articulable order of reason. In the account of the construction of the world developed in the Timaeus, Plato deploys the image of the divine demiurge imparting order to the world by referring to a pre-existing pattern of ideas. Hegel conceives of the Absolute Idea which at the outset of the Philosophy of Nature he likens to God, as, “… freely releasing itself…” into the externality of space and time, in which movement the Idea is seen as suffering neither a transition within nor a deepening of its character such as the mediated categories of the Logic incur in the process of their integration within the Absolute Idea.

Aristotle's Account of the Origins of Philosophy

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Frede
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
General View ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Evidential Value ◽  
History Of

This article sheds light on Aristotle's own understanding of philosophy. It tries to give an account of how Aristotle seeks to determine and to explain the origin of philosophy and to account for its early development. It focuses on his account of the history of philosophy from its beginnings down to his own time in Metaphysics 1.3–10, in particular 1.3–6. It derives a good deal of knowledge about early Greek philosophy directly from Aristotle. A great deal of the information provided by later ancient sources itself is derived from Aristotle and his students, like Theophrastus or Eudemus. The evidential value of this information is rather high. It also is clear that Aristotle had his own particular perspective on the history of early Greek philosophy, and that his students largely shared his general view of the early history of Greek philosophy.

Philosophy, Religion, and the End of Hegel

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
John Walker
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Objective World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
As If

I want to begin with two of Hegel's endings, one well known, the other less so. First, some words from the closing paragraphs of Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy:A new epoch has arisen in the world. It seems as if the world spirit has succeeded in casting off everything in objective reality which is alien to itself, in order to comprehend itself as absolute spirit: to produce its own objective world from itself and to keep that world serenely in its own power. The struggle of the finite self-consciousness with the absolute self-consciousness, which once appeared as an alien reality, is now coming to an end. The finite self-consciousness has ceased to be finite; and, by the same token, the absolute self-consciousness has achieved the reality which it formerly lacked. The whole of world history and especially the history of philosophy is the representation of this conflict. History now seems to have achieved its goal, when the absolute self-consciousness is no longer something alien; when the spirit is real as spirit. For spirit is this only when it knows itself to be absolute spirit; and this it knows in speculative science (Wissemchaft).

Port-Royal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Mental Operation ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
Port Royal ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Antoine Arnauld ◽  
Influential Theory

Port-Royal-des-Champes was an abbey in France, initially located near Versailles, but later moved to Paris. Its importance to the history of philosophy is due primarily to a group of Augustinian-Cartesian thinkers who developed an influential theory of mental and linguistic representation. This theory is found in the 1660 Port-Royal Grammaire générale et raisonnée (General and Rational Grammar) by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, and the 1662 Port-Royal La logique ou l’art de penserLogic (Logic or the Art of Thinking) by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole. The aim of the Grammar is to identify the universal structures of thought underlying all languages, and thereby explain the similarities and differences among languages. The aim of the Logic is to understand the natural operations of the human mind in order that we might learn to employ our faculties better. A fundamental presupposition of both works is that words are signs used to indicate to others what is taking place in the speaker's mind. This leads the Port-Royalists to regard the structure of language as reflective of the structure of thought, and vice versa. The most important aspect of this structure is the manner in which ideas are put together into propositions and words are put together into sentences. According to the Port-Royalists, a proposition is constructed by a special mental operation, which they call judging. It is this operation that gives rise to truth and falsity. Affirmation, or taking two ideas to belong together, is one species of judging; denial, or taking two ideas not to belong together, is another. These acts of judging are signified by verbs, while nouns signify ideas. The Port-Royal theory had an enormous influence on Locke's approach to mind and language. It was also regarded by Chomsky as a predecessor to his own linguistic theories.

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