西方哲学史-英文版(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：弗兰克·梯利

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Preface to the Revised Edition

THE FIRST edition of the late Professor Thilly’s A History ol Philosophy appeared over thirty-five years ago. Few books in the fields of philosophy or history have maintained undiminished popularity as texts and usefulness as reference works over so long a period. The remarkable vitality of Professor Thilly’s work may be traced to its original conception and execution.

Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of Professor Thilly’s approach to the history of philosophy was the objectivity and impartiality of his historical attitude, which escaped the distorting effect of a dogmatic interpretation of historical development. Professor Thilly allowed the philosophers to speak for themselves and, in the conviction that the later systems in the history of philosophy provide the criticism of earlier schools, kept his own criticism to a minimum.

Professor Thilly’s own two major philosophical commitments were to idealism and rationalism, but he did not allow his own philosophical biases to obtrude in his account of the historical figures with whom he dealt. Indeed, if anything, he was frequently more successful in the presentation of historical theories with which he was in disagreement than of those with which he was in sympathy. His idealism was not of the dogmatic Hegelian variety, but was closer to the critical idealism of Kant. Professor Thilly considered mind an indubitable fact whose existence was guaranteed by introspective experience. His idealism was, however, not a subjectivism which denied the external world or reduced it to the status of mere appearance, and his rationalism insisted that experience, or nature, has rational structure and coherence which render it intelligible to man’s rational mind. His was not a dogmatic rationalism of the Cartesian variety which posits innate, self-evident truths, but rather a critical rationalism, which considers the basic truths of mathematics and the underlying assumptions of science and philosophy to be indispensable presuppositions of an intelligible world.

A second feature of the book which explains its sustained success is the sense of proportion displayed in the presentation of thinkers in their place in philosophical movements. Without adopting an Hegelian dialectic of the history of philosophy, Thilly discerned an inner logic in historical development. Individual thinkers were integrated to movements, and the movements in their turn formed parts of a larger historical pattern. His recognition of the inner logic of the historical process did not, however, prevent his giving due recognition to the social, political, cultural, and personal or temperamental factors which influence individual philosophers. Thilly’s assimilation of philosophers to movements was particularly skillful in his organization of the modern period. Bacon and Hobbes were grouped together as two relatively independent figures who, while not properly part of the British empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, prepared the way for it. Descartes and Spinoza were considered together as the founders of continental rationalism, and Leibniz, instead of being included, as was customary, as the third in the triumvirate of rationalists, was introduced after British empiricism as a philosopher of the enlightenment.

A third feature was the clarity and simplicity of Professor Thilly’s style. In discussing with me the composition of his history Professor Thilly told me that the book grew out of a study of the history of philosophy written with no intention of publication, but solely for the purpose of clarifying his own understanding of the historical philosophers and their relations to one another. This clarification which Thilly achieved for himself pervades the entire exposition.

Professor Thilly’s interest in the history of philosophy was not that of the historical antiquarian who seeks merely to record the achievements of the past, nor was it primarily that of the historian of ideas who merely traces the continuous history of ideas and conceptions. It was that of the philosopher who seeks philosophical illumination in the history of his subject. He thought of the history of philosophy as a repository of philosophical ideas from which the philosopher draws his materials and his insights. He rejected the study of the history of philosophy merely for its own sake, but at the same time deplored the pseudo-originality of those who are ignorant of the philosophical achievements of the past. The study of the history of philosophy, he said in his introduction, “serves as a useful preparation to philosophical speculation, passing, as it does, from the simpler to the more complex and difficult constructions of thought... The man who tries to construct a system of philosophy in absolute independence of the work of his predecessors cannot hope to rise very far beyond the crude theories of the beginnings of civilization.” This Professor Thilly conceived to be the value of this historical study for himself, and this is the value he hoped it would have for his readers.

I have tried in the present revision to preserve the objective and impartial attitude of the original, and have retained the basic organization except when modification seemed to be indicated by the altered historical perspective. Considerable new material has been introduced, particularly in introductory and transitional sections. In section I the religious sources of Greek philosophy have been traced, in the light of the work of such histories as Cornford’s and Jaeger’s, to indicate more clearly both how Greek philosophy emerged from Greek religion and the essential differences between philosophy and the religion from which it arose. The organization of sections 5 and 6 has been recast so as to emphasize the differences between qualitative and quantitative theories and to give greater prominence to the quantitative atomism of Democritus.

In the section on Plato I have prepared new material on the “Hierarchy of the Sciences,” “Cosmology,” and the “Doctrine of Immortality,” and in the section on Aristotle, material on “The Four Causes” and “Aristotle’s Genius and Influence” has been added. Sections 17, 20, and 22 have been entirely rewritten, so as to provide a more adequate transition from the ancient to the medieval period, and also to afford a preliminary survey of scholasticism.

The most extensive changes and additions have been made in Part Three, on Modern Philosophy. The sections on the “Philosophy of the Renaissance,” which, in Professor Thilly’s arrangement, were appended to “The Decline of Scholasticism” in Part Two, have been reoriented and transferred to Part Three. In the section on Kant I have added material on “The Transcendental Method,” “Preliminary Analysis of Experience,” and “The Unity of SelfConsciousness,” in order to clarify Kant’s philosophical method and to differentiate it more sharply from the methods of empiricism and rationalism. A comprehensive account of Nietzsche is presented in section 66; it considers Nietzsche in the historical context of German philosophy rather than, as did Professor Thilly’s treatment, in the context of contemporary pragmatism.

The concluding section of the original edition on “Rationalism and Its Opponents,” which gave expression to Professor Thilly’s estimate of the philosophical situation just before World War I, becomes section 74 of the revised edition where it serves as an introduction to recent and contemporary philosophy. These concluding sections (sections 75-81) are—with the exception of some passages drawn from Professor Thilly’s discussions of Mach, Avenarius, James, Dewey, and Bergson—entirely new. All bibliographies have been brought up to date and, compared to the original edition, the relative number of French and German tales has been considerably reduced.L.W.

Princeton, New Jersey

May 15, 1951

Acknowledgments

THE ENTHUSIASTIC assistance of colleagues, friends, and members of my family, which I have received at every stage in the preparation of the revised edition, have made it in a very real sense a cooperative volume. Most of all, I appreciate the constant encouragement of Mrs. Thilly, who felt that I was especially qualified to undertake the revision because of my close personal association with Professor Thilly, an association which began during my undergraduate years at the University of California, and continued while I was a graduate student at Cornell. In the revision of Parts One and Two, on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Professor Edward Pols, my former colleague at Princeton, now of Bowdoin College, prepared a new sub-section, “The Religious Origins of Greek Philosophy,” as well as the sections, “Transition to Medieval Philosophy,” “The Development of Christian Theology,” and “Scholasticism: Its Nature and Problems.” My colleague Professor Walter A. Kaufman wrote the new section on Nietzsche, which incorporates the interpretation of Nietzsche contained in his highly suggestive volume, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, published by the Princeton University Press in 1950. The paragraph on Herder’s nationalism was introduced at the suggestion of Mr. W. W. Carson, one of my former students in the undergraduate course in the history of modern philosophy, and was prepared with his assistance. I am especially grateful to my colleague Professor Robert M. Scoon, Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Princeton, who used the first edition as a text in his course in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy, and made invaluable suggestions for strengthening the sections on ancient philosophy, particularly those on Stoicism and Epicureanism.

My wife undertook the arduous task of typing the new material of the revised edition and Mrs. Harley Funk, former secretary of the Princeton philosophy department, spent many tedious hours during the summer of 1950 assembling the manuscript. In the reading of both the galley and page proof and in the preparation of the index I was fortunate in having the painstaking assistance of Mrs. Don R. Conner. My daughter, Ellen Elizabeth Wood, a student at Middlebury College, spent part of her summer vacation checking the revised bibliographies.

The excerpts from my essay, “The Transcendental Method,” are included in the chapter on Kant with the kind permission of the Princeton University Press, and the paragraphs on American New Realism are reproduced by permission of the Philosophical Library.L.W.

Introduction

The history of philosophy aims to give a connected account of the different attempts which have been made to solve the problem of existence, or to render intelligible to us our world of experience. It is the story of the development of reasoned human thought from its earliest beginnings down to the present time; not a mere chronological enumeration and exposition of philosophical theories, but a study of these in their relation to one another, the times in which they were produced, and the thinkers by whom they were offered. While every system of thought is more or less dependent on the civilization in which it arises, the character of preceding systems, and the personality of its author, it in turn exercises a potent influence on the conceptions and institutions of its own and succeeding ages. The history of philosophy must, therefore, endeavor to insert each world-view in its proper setting, to understand it as part of an organic whole, to connect it with the intellectual, political, moral, social, and religious factors of its present, past, and future. It must also attempt to trace the line of progress in the history of human speculation, to show how the mental attitude called philosophy arises, how the different problems and the solutions that are offered provoke new questions and answers, and what advance has been made, at each different stage, toward reaching the goal.

In dealing with the different systems, we shall be careful to let the authors present their ideas without extensive criticism on our part. It will be found that the history of philosophy is, in a large measure, its own best critic; that a system is continued, transformed, supplemented, or superseded by its successors, that the errors and inconsistencies contained in it are brought to light; and that it is often made the starting-point of new lines of thought. The historian should assume, so far as he can, an impartial and objective attitude in his study, and guard against injecting his own philosophical theories into the discussions. It is, however, impossible to eliminate the personal element altogether; to some extent the historian’s preconceptions are bound to shine through his work. They manifest themselves in many ways: in the emphasis which he lays on particular philosophies, in his conception of what constitutes progress and decline—even in the amount of space devoted to different thinkers. All this is unavoidable. The philosopher, however, should be permitted to tell his own story without being interrupted by constant objections before he has had the opportunity of stating his case completely. And we should not criticize a system solely in the light of present achievement, that is, measure it by present standards to its detriment. Compared with modern theories, the early Greek world-views seem naïve, childish, and crude, and it would be no great mark of intelligence to ridicule them; whereas, regarded in the context of their times, as the first efforts of a people to understand the world, they may well stand out as epoch-making events. A system of thought must be judged in the light of its own aims and historical setting, by comparison with the systems immediately preceding and following it, by its antecedents and results, by the development to which it leads. Our method of study will, therefore, be historico-critical.

The value of the study of the history of philosophy should be apparent to everyone. Intelligent persons are interested in the fundamental problems of existence, and in the answers which the human race has sought to find for them at the various stages of civilization. Besides, such a study helps men to understand their own age and other times; it throws light on the ethical, religious, political, legal, and economic conceptions of the past and the present, by revealing the underlying principles which they presuppose. It likewise serves as a useful preparation for philosophical speculation; passing, as it does, from the simpler to the more complex and difficult constructions of thought, it reviews the philosophical experience of the race and trains the mind in abstract thinking. The study of past theories is an indispensable aid in working out our own views of the world and of life. The man who tries to construct a system of philosophy in absolute independence of the work of his predecessors cannot hope to rise very far beyond the crude theories of the beginnings of civilization.

Science and philosophy may be said to have had their origin in religion, or rather, science, philosophy, and religion were originally one. Mythology is the primitive attempt to understand the world. Man at first interprets in terms of his crude, everyday experiences the phenomena which, for various reasons—largely practical—attract his attention. He projects his own nature into them, fashions them after his own image, animates them, regards them as somehow alive and “ensouled.” Among many peoples such vague and indefinite animistic notions are transformed into clear and distinct conceptions of personalities of a higher order than human beings, yet essentially resembling them. Theological explanation of this type is known as anthropomorphic polytheism—the conception of a plurality of gods of glorified human form. None of these mythological creations, however, can be regarded as the work of single individuals or as the product of logical thought; they are expressions of the collective soul, in which imagination and will play the decisive rôles.

A universal history of philosophy would include the philosophies of all peoples. Not all peoples, however, have produced real systems of thought, and the speculations of only a few can be said to have had a history. Many do not rise beyond the mythological stage. Even the theories of Oriental peoples, the Hindus, Egyptians, and Chinese, consist, in the main, of mythological and ethical doctrines, and are not complete systems of thought: they are pervaded with poetry and faith. We shall, therefore, limit ourselves to a study of the Western countries, and begin with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, on whose culture our own civilization, in large part, rests. We shall follow the customary classification of historical periods and divide our field into Ancient Philosophy, Medieval or Christian Philosophy, and Modern Philosophy.

The sources of our study will be: (1) The works of the philosophers themselves or the fragments of their writings, in cases where only the latter are extant: primary sources. (2) In the absence of either of these, we have to depend for our knowledge of their teachings on the most trustworthy and accurate accounts of them by others. Among the sources which will help us here are expositions of the lives and doctrines of particular philosophers, general and special treatises on the history of philosophy, criticisms of certain teachings, and references to them in various books. Such secondary sources are indispensable where the primary sources have disappeared. But even when the primary sources are available, the secondary sources are of great value in so far as they may throw light on the systems with which they deal. The historian of philosophy will seek help from all works that contribute to his knowledge of the subject, and among these the secondary sources play an important part. He will also appeal to whatever fields of research may give him an understanding of the spirit of the times under examination: to the history of all human activities, such as science, literature, art, morals, education, politics, and religion.

General Works on the History of Philosophy

Introductory works: K. Fischer, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, Bk. I, trans. by J. P. Gordy, 1887; W. Windelband, A History of Philosophy, trans, by J. H. Tufts, 2nd ed., 1901; W. Turner, History of Philosophy, 1903; H. E. Cushman, A Beginner’s History of Philosophy, 1920; V. Ferm, ed., A History of Philosophical Systems, 1950; Martin, Clark, Clarke and Ruddick, A History of Philosophy, 1934. A. K. Rogers, A Student’s History of Philosophy, 1926; C. C. J. Webb, A History of Philosophy, 1915; A. Weber, History of Philosophy (trans. by F. Thilly), with Philosophy since 1800, by R. B. Perry, 1925; H. W. Dresser, A History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, 1926; G. Boas, The Major Traditions of European Philosophy, 1929; B. A. G. Fuller, A History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, 1938; S. G. Martin, A History of Philosophy, 1941; B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 1945; F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1947.

More advanced works: J. E. Erdmann, A History of Philosophy, 3 vols., trans, by W. S. Hough, 1910; F. Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, 3 vols., trans, by G. S. Morris, 1905; G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3 vols., trans, by E. S. Haldane, 1892.

Histories of special subjects: Logic and Psychology: K. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, 4 vols. (from the beginnings to the Renaissance), 1855-70; R. Adamson, Short History of Logic, 1911; R. Hoenigswald, Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie, 1933; L. W. Keeler, The Problem Of Error from Plato to Kant, 1934; B. Rand, The Classical Psychologists (selections from writers from Anaxagoras to Wundt), 1912. Esthetics: B. Bosanquet, History of Aesthetics, 1892; M. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik, 1871. Ethics: F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, ed. and trans, by F. Thilly (contains survey of history of ethics, pp. 33-215), 1899; H. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, 1892; R. A. Rogers, Short History of Ethics, 1911; W. Wundt, Ethics, Vol. II, 1897; J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2nd ed., 1886; B. Rand, Classical Moralists (selections from writers), 1909; J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories from Aristippus to Spencer, 1895; P. Janet, Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique, 1858. Politics: F. Pollock, History of the Science of Politics, 1883; W. A. Dunning, History of Political Theories, 1902-23; C. H. McIlwain, The Growth of Political Thought in the West, 1932; G. H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 1937; C. M. Andrews, Famous Utopias, 1937; H. Cairus, Legal Philosophies from Plato to Hegel, 1949. Science: F. A. Lange, History of Materialism, 3 vols., trans, by E. C. Thomas, 1925; W. Whewell, History of Inductive Sciences, 3 vols., 1837; H. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, 1894; E. Clodd, Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley, 1897; W. Libby, An Introduction to the History of Science, 1917; B. Ginsburg, The Adventure of Science, 1930; L. Thorndike, History of Magic and the Experimental Sciences, 1941; M. P. Rousseau, Histoire de la Science, 1945.

Dictionaries of philosophy: J. M. Baldwin, 2 vols., 1901-05; D. D. Runes, ed., Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942. Consult also articles in encyclopedias, especially the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1930.

Selections from the writings of philosophers: I. Erdman and H. W. Schneider, Landmarks for Beginners in Philosophy, 1941; T. V. Smith, ed., Philosophers Speak for Themselves, 1935.

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