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Food for Thought
The Burden of the History of Philosophy
We’re delighted to announce the birth of a new column by Tim Madigan.
Alfred North Whitehead once remarked that all of Western Philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. While this is surely not literally true, no one can dispute the powerful influence that Socrates’ friend has had on much subsequent philosophical work. Countless volumes have been devoted to examining his basic ideas and their impact throughout the ages. It may well be that one cannot truly understand philosophy without somehow trying to come to grips with Plato.
But if impact is an important criterion for understanding a figure’s importance in the history of philosophy, and if one should be familiar with the most influential figures of the past before attempting to ‘do’ philosophy oneself, then what would constitute the list of such individuals whose works must be reckoned with? To whom must attention be paid? Aquinas, Descartes, Kant and Marx? Or Berkeley, Hume, Mill and Dewey? And what about such thinkers as Bruno, Fichte, Vico and Feuerbach, who are considered by some to be major figures that helped to shape the very nature of philosophical inquiry, and yet are dismissed by most cognoscenti as being at best minor figures in the history of the field? What level of knowledge, if any, should one have of their works? Must one immerse oneself into the numerous volumes produced by ‘the Big Names’ or is it enough to have a nodding familiarity with their various views? Certainly a deep knowledge and association with as many viewpoints as possible in the thousands-year old history of philosophy would be a beneficial attribute.
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