Abstract
The present-day philosophical landscape is dominated by two comparatively recent, still growing edifices of thought. Following precedent, I shall refer to them respectively as positivistic naturalism, or naturalism for short, and anti-realism. 1 The former viewpoint is more prevalent within the English-speaking world; the latter, in one of its many contemporary guises, is more prevalent in continental Europe and in other non-Anglophonic regions of the world. Together, these two viewpoints overshadow a third, much older viewpoint which once enjoyed philosophical pre-eminence. This third viewpoint was that which was erected to elaborate and to defend the Christian faith. It is from within one or other of these three mutually contending citadels of thought that practically all philosophical enquiry and debate is conducted today.
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Notes
P. Masterson, Atheism and Alienation: a Study of the Philosophical Sources of Atheism (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 103.
A. Plantinga, ‘Augustinian Christian Philosophy’, Monist, 75 (1992), 291–320, p. 296.
Ibid., p. 296.
Ibid., p. 300.
Ibid., p. 301.
Ibid.
The account given here of what anti-realists understand by the terms objectification and scientism owes much to the discussions of these topics in D. E. Cooper, ‘Modern European Philosophy’ in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, eds N. Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 702–22.
C. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 39.
‘Wisdom’, Encyclopaedia ofPhilosophy, ed. P. Edwards (New York: Simon and Schuster/Macmillan, 1967), vol. 8, pp. 322–4.
Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 216–26, p. 216.
A Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. A. Flew (London: Macmillan, 1979).
The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. S. Blackburn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. R. Audi (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. G. H. R. Parkinson (London: Routledge, 1988).
Philosophy: a Guide through the Subject, ed. A. C. Grayling (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, eds N. Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996).
The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, eds J. O. Urmson and J. Ree, new edition (London and New York: Routledge, 1989).
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. T. Honderich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), vol. 9, pp. 752–5.
Ibid., p. 912.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 752.
R. Nozick, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
Ibid., p. 269.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 276.
Ibid., pp. 269–70.
Ibid., p. 270.
A. Kenny, Aristotle on the Perfect Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., pp.106–10 passim.
R. Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
Ibid., pp. 73–4.
Franz Brentano to Carl Stumpf in a letter written New Year’s Eve, 1867, quoted in C. Stumpf, ‘Reminiscences of Franz Brentano’, in The Philosophy of Brentano, ed. L. L. McAlister (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 13–14.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., pp. 74–5.
Ibid., p. 354.
Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, 9.13, quoted in L. P. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology (London and New York: Routledge 1990), p. 170.
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© 2000 David Conway
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Conway, D. (2000). Philosophy without Wisdom. In: The Rediscovery of Wisdom. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597129_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597129_2
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