1. Can we view philosophical
movements as
‘boom-and-bust’
Dr Rahman Khatibi
Swindon Philosophy
11 November 2011
Raphael's School of Athens

2. Summary
• Setting the scene
• How it began
• Timeline of Ideas and Intellectual Movements
• Overview of Indian/Chinese/Greek philosophies
• Overview of Islamic Philosophy
• Intellectual Movements in the making of European
Philosophy
• European Philosophy
• Features of European Philosophy
• Conclusion

3. Setting the scene: The Conduits of Ideas
3

4. Setting the scene: Timeline of Ideas
Shamanism
Myth
Mind
Religions
Governance
Theosophy: Greek, Christian and Islamic
Reason: Sumerians
and Babylonians
Rationalism
Reason: Greek Philosophy
Reason: Indian Philosophy
Reason: Chinese Philosophy
Reason: Islamic Philosophy
European Philosophy
Now
1300
4000
2600
6000
1800
Timeline – years ago 300 4

5. Setting the scene: science, philosophy, religion
Politics
Sociology Religion
Anthropology
Governance
psychology
Philosophy
5
Subatomic

6. How it began: Migration 50,000 Years Ago
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7. How it began Migration 40,000 Years Ago
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8. How it began Migration 40,000-25,000 Years Ago

9. How it began: Migration 12,400-10,000 Years Ago

10. How it began: Migration 12,400-10,000 Years Ago

11. How it began: Migration 10,000-8,000 Years Ago

12. Timeline of Ideas
Shamanism
Myth
Mind
Religions
Governance
Reason: Sumerians Theosophy: Greek, Christian and Islamic
and Babylonians
Rationalism
Reason: Greek Philosophy
Reason: Indian Philosophy
Reason: Chinese Philosophy
Reason: Islamic Philosophy
European Philosophy
Science
Now
1300
4000
2600
6000
1800
Timeline – years ago 300 12

13. Landscapes of World Philosophies
Islamic
Chinese
Philosophy Philosophy

14. Overview of Indian Philosophy
• Hindu Philosophies and Religion: Vedic intellectual traditions
are the roots for all Hindu Philosophies, emerged before 2500
years ago and include:
– Nava, the school of logic
– Vaisheshika: the atomist school
– Samkhya, the enumeration school
– Yoga, the school of Patanjali (some sort of metaphysics)
– Purva Mimamsa: Vedic exegesis, with emphasis on Vedic ritual
– Vedanta, with emphasis on Vedic philosophy
• Shramana philosophical schools: ascetic traditions of
wandering monk in ancient India
– Represented by Buddhism, Jainism
– Not considered as part f the Vedic Religions
– Also emerged before 2500 year ago

15. Overview of Indian Philosophy

16. Overview of Chinese Philosophy
• Major philosophies of China emerged around 500 BCE
• The classic period: 100 Years after the Confucius death (481 BC): the period is
known as: Hundred Schools of Thought
• The four most influential ones were:
– Taoism: (Daoism) both philosophy and religion: a meta-physical approach
describing a force encompassing the entire universe but cannot be
described nor felt.
– Confucianism: developed from the teachings of the sage collected in the
Analects of Confucius.: a system of moral, social, political, religious thoughts
– “Practise Confucianism on the outside, Taoism on the inside."
– Mohism: founded by Mozi, who promotes universal love with the aim of
mutual benefit – this philosophy parallels utilitarianism
– Legalism: it upholds the rule of law and is thus a theory of jurisprudence
but encouraged creating a totalitarian society
– Naturalists: explain the universe in terms of basic forces in nature: yin
(dark, cold, female, negative) and yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the
Five Elements or Five Phases (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth) 16

17. Timelines of Chinese Philosophy

18. Greek Philosophy: How it began
• Absorbed Sumerian/ Mesopotamian, Egyptian
& Hellenic roots
• Was cemented by the Homeric poetry
• Many rival city states acted as conduits of ideas
• Generated diverse schools of philosophy
• Academia, peripatetic, Stoic, Neo-Platonism,
sceptics
• And many doctrines of philosophy
18

19. Overview of Greek Philosophies

20. Overview of Greek Philosophies

21. Collapse of Greek Philosophy
• Greek Philosophy had “holes:”
• Gorgias (485-380 BC): “there is no truth, only argument;
the art of rhetoric”.
• B. Russell states that: Greek Sceptics argued that “there
could never be a rational ground for preferring
one course of action over another”
• Greek Philosophy injected an Aristotelian
component to Christianity and collapsed!
• Christianity emerged by synthesising a new order: Roman Law
– The Aristotelian component from Greek philosophy Jewish Sacred
– A Sacred component from the Jewish tradition
– The Roman rule of law
Aristotelian
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22. A Model for Islamic Philosophy
• The Model: Kalam + Shariat + Philosophy
• Philosophy was brought later to smoothen
Governance and help theology
• But Islamic philosophy
embraced some
freethinking to
condition theology!
• Note the difference:
Christianity turned
away from freethinking
right at the beginning!
22

23. Islamic Philosophies
Asharis Theosophy
Asceticism
Mind
Existentialism
Sufism
Stoicism
Rationalism
Dehriyyun
Peripatetic (Meshaiyyun)
Muteziles and Asharis
Qadarites and Jabarites
The emergence of sects
2000
1300
1400
1200
661
750
661
622
Timeline – A.D. 23

24. The Rise of European Philosophy
• At the time of besieging Vienna in 1683 Europe was in
par with Middle east but the underlying dynamics in
the respective worlds were already diverging
• Rationalism collapsed in the Middle East by 14th-15th
century
• Europe was at the abyss of medieval dogma
• Italy was the theatre for interplay of dogma, power,
hypocrisy and the people who were fed up
• Italy was also fragmented, wealthy Raphael's School of Athens
due to commerce, like ancient Greece
• So, Italy gave rise to new movements 24

25. Timeline of European Philosophies
Science
Humanism
Classicism
Romanticism
Realism
Existentialism
Explosion of
Movements Postmodernism
Dogma
2000
19th
18th
17th
15th
Timeline: century 25
25

26. Timeline of European Philosophers

27. Cladistics of Philosophical Activities
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28. Timeline of Religions
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29. Science
Subato
mic

30. Conclusion
• So, science is helping us to rationalise our model of
Politics
being human endeavour
• Science is not a mind game Sociology
Anthropolog
• Religion is a mind game
Governance
• When philosophy acts like a religion
It becomes fixated psychology
• When philosophy aims to do problem-solving, either
it collapses or goes through boom-and-bust cycles
• This is because philosophy is mistakenly in search of
the universal truth but there is none
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31. Thank you

32. Appendices
32

33. Humanism
• Revival of supposed values lost in medieval times
• Rediscovery of the unity of human beings and nature
• Renewal of pleasure of life
• Emphasised on human welfare and dignity
• Encouraged optimism on the power of individuals
• The term humanity came into currency in 19th cen. As
in the 15th cen humanity was the study of: grammar,
rhetoric, history, literature and moral philosophy
• Humanities were then inspired by rediscovery of the
ancient Greeks and just translated Plato Spain
France
England
Italy
Germany 33

34. Classicism
• Respect for the classics (Greek and Romans) grew
• Admirations to aesthetics, harmony, balance,
maturity, order – AND Descartes’ philosophy of mind
amplified all these
• More friendly to the authorities and ignorant
humanistic mindset
• The ongoing corruption was ignored France
Germany
France
Italy
France
France
34

35. Romanticism
• A reaction to classicism and its extravagance and stiff
rationality
• Promoted: spontaneity, the unfettered, the
subjective, the imaginative, emotional, the
inspirational and heroic
• The rise of nationalism
• Appealed to exaggeration, imagination, metaphor
• They abandoned simplicity
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