Philosophy for Beginners

By Max Charlesworth

Philosophy is a fascinating discipline that encourages us to think about the BIG questions. What is life? What is space? Who are we, and why are we here? Where do we belong, and how should we relate to one another? Philosophy gives us access to the wisdom of the great philosophers, who thought long and hard about these questions. It then allows us to judge it for ourselves, against what we believe to be true. In Philosophy for Beginners, Max Charlesworth draws on a lifetime's study to bring philosophy to life. In an uncomplicated way, he guides the reader through the various forms of philosophy, and looks at some of the men and women who explored them. He shows that the way we apply philosophy can bring understanding and meaning to our modern lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780702256912

Book preview

Introduction

This book is about some of the main ideas and questions in philosophy. The special kind of thinking that is called ‘philosophy’—which means the love (philia) of wisdom (sophia)—began with the great Greek thinkers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, about 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. These thinkers claimed that we could investigate the big and deep questions about the world, and about human beings, simply by using our reason, without appealing to myths (stories about heroes or ancestors) or to religious beliefs. All that you had to do was to sit down, concentrate, and think!

Philosophy was further developed through the Middle Ages (800 to 1400 AD) by Persian (now Iraqi and Iranian) thinkers such as Ibn Sina and European thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, who had been influenced by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. After the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, brought about by the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and others, philosophy took a new direction through French, British and German thinkers such as René Descartes, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Today, philosophy is still alive and well.

Many people think that philosophy is a very special business that can be done only by special people or experts. Others think that philosophy is airy-fairy nonsense and concerned about useless puzzles that no ordinary person would ever be worried about: for example, can I be sure that things really exist? how do I know that I am the same person that I was five years ago? can I be sure that I am not dreaming all the time?

However, philosophy is not a special business that can be done only by special people. And it is not concerned with useless puzzles. The questions of philosophy concern everyone, and anyone who can think at all can think about those questions. In fact, philosophy goes into the deepest and most important questions there are: questions that any human being can’t avoid asking. Here are some of them:

Is the world about us all that there is, or are there other beings, like God for example, or angels, or spirits?

How do we know things?

Can we be sure or certain about anything ?

Can I know what other people are thinking or feeling?

What does it mean to have a mind, in other words, to be conscious?

Are our minds the same as our brains?

What happens when I die?

What is it to be a good person?

What is a good society and how do we tell which laws are just?

Where do moral rules like ‘You should always be honest’ come from?

Are humans special, or are they just like other animals?

Most of us think about these questions without realising that we are doing ‘philosophy.’ We are like the man who discovered that he had been speaking prose all his life!

In many cultures people have thought about the world, and our place in it, in religious terms. The great monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—provide an account of the creation of the world, of how evil came into the world, and of how human beings can achieve ‘salvation’ or ‘enlightenment’ by following a particular way of life.

The same is true of the much older Asian religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism—and the various indigenous religions, such as those of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, which can be traced back to about 50,000 BC. The Australian Aborigines believe that the world was shaped and formed by Ancestor Spirits and that the moral Law, which tells them how to live, has been laid down by the same Ancestor Beings of the ‘Dreaming’.

Philosophy and religion are not necessarily in conflict with each other, since philosophy is concerned with the natural world around us, whereas religions are concerned with the supernatural world. Religions are concerned with things that we cannot know by reason. The religious person believes, or has faith in, a revelation that has been made to a prophet or sage such as Moses, or Jesus, or Mohammed, or the Buddha.

At the same time, there is a connection between philosophy and religion, since religious beliefs have to be intelligible or understandable to some extent, otherwise the believer wouldn’t know what he or she was believing. If, for example, a Christian believer were to say, ‘I believe that there are three Gods’, this would be a self-contradictory and unintelligible statement, since, if God is a supreme being, there cannot be three distinct supreme beings. In other words, if God is defined as a supreme (the greatest, most perfect) being, there can only be one God. A belief in three Gods is therefore unintelligible; we can’t grasp what it means; it’s like trying to believe in the existence of square circles!

Of course, you may think that the idea of a supreme being is itself unintelligible, because we cannot have any experience of, or ideas about, what such a being might be like. In this case, you would say that religious belief in a supreme being makes no sense at all, and you would be an atheist. (The word a-theos, in the Greek, means ‘no God’.)

Although I have put things as clearly as I can, I can’t promise you that philosophy is easy. If you want to discover what philosophy is all about you have to do some philosophical thinking, and there is no easy or simple way of doing this. Thinking is hard, and thinking carefully and deeply is especially hard. But anyone can do this kind of thinking if they try. Remember that we are all philosophers, even if we don’t know that we are!

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