Abstract
From classical antiquity until well after the dawn of modernity, the classical conception of philosophy enjoyed wide currency, if not hegemony. Not only was it well known throughout this period, it was more or less openly espoused by practically all the major philosophers. From the fifth century CE onwards, however, the conception acquired a largely Christian inflection. Just how dominant the conception was during this period may be seen from the following brief survey of philosophy from the Greeks up to modernity.
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Notes
Epictetus, Moral Discourses, trans. E. Carter (London: Dent, 1966), p. 15.
A. H. Armstrong (ed.), Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 1.
Ibid., p. 9.
Porphyry, ‘Life of Plotinus’ quoted in Armstrong, Cambridge History, p. 14.
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 45.
Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., p. 52.
Ibid., p. 53.
St Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. H. Bettenson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 313.
Ibid., pp. 375–6.
Ibid., p. 414.
Ibid., p. 430.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. V. E. Watts (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 35.
Ibid., pp. 35–6.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., pp. 97–8.
M. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 620–1.
Ibid., pp. 624–38 passim.
T. Aquinas, ‘Debated Questions’, VIII, q 9, a.19,c, quoted in An Aquinas Reader, ed. M. T. Clark (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), p. 347.
T. Aquinas, ‘Prologue to the Commentary on the Causes’, quoted in Clark, An Aquinas Reader, pp. 82–3.
See B. P. Copenhaver and C. B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 24–37.
D. Hamlyn, The Penguin History of Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), p. 123.
O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 59.
M. Ficino, from Preface to Platonic Theology in Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, ed. J. Kraye, vol. 1, Moral Philosophy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 148–9.
Ibid., pp. 149–51.
D. Erasmus, The Praise ofFolly, trans. John Wilson (New York: Prometheus Books, 1994), pp. 178–80.
Ibid., pp. 185–7.
R. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), vol. 1, pp. 202–8 passim.
Letter to Chanut, Letter CDLXVIII, 1 Feb. 1647, in Descartes: His Moral Philosophy and Psychology, trans. J. J. Blom (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester, 1978), p. 206.
Ibid., pp. 206–7.
B. Spinoza to I. Orobio, Letter XLIV, 1671, in Chief Works of Spinoza, [trans.] R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1955), vol. II, p. 365.
B. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in Chief Works, vol. II, pp. 59–60.
G. W. Leibniz, ‘Principles of Nature and Grace, Founded on Reason’ (1714) in G.W. Leibniz, Philosophical Writings, ed. G. H. R. Parkinson (London and Melbourne: Everyman, 1973), pp. 202–4 passim.
B. Whichcote, ‘The Use of Reason in Matters of Religion’ in CambridgePlatonists, ed. C. A. Patrides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 57.
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 75.
I. Newton, Mathematical Principles ofNatural Philosophy, vol. ii, The System of the World, trans. A. Motte (1729) revised F. Cajori (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1962), pp. 544–6 passim.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, The Moralists in Characteristics ofMen, Manners, Opinions and Times (originally published 1711), ed. J. M. Robertson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), pp. 97–8.
F. Hutcheson, Illustrations on the Moral Sense in An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections with Illustrations on the Moral Sense, first published 1728 (Mentors Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1972), p. 328.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976), p. 385.
Ibid., pp. 385–6.
D. Hume, ‘The Epicurean’, in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 100.
D. Hume, ‘The Platonist’ in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, pp. 115–18 passim.
E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 64.
Reported in the editorial introduction of R. Wollheim, Hume on Religion (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1963), p. 28.
David Hume to Gilbert of Minto (10 March 1751), quoted in a footnote in T. H. Huxley, Hume (Macmillan: London, 1879), p. 147.
L. Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 43.
I. Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. L. Infield (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), p. 7.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 78.
I. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), Bxxxiv.
Ibid.
Ibid., Bxxx.
G. Rabel, Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. vi.
For a convincing objection to Kant’s argument here, see A. W. Wood, Kant’s Rational Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 24. Wood observes (p. 24), ‘In the same way as Kant acknowledged morality can coincide with self-interest, and that when they do, we should be moved by moral considerations, so even if we knew good acts would be rewarded we could still be motivated to perform them from moral reasons.’
Quoted ibid., p. 23.
Quoted in W. Wallace, Kant (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1905), p. 188.
A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1958), vol. 1, p. 510.
A. Schopenhauer, ‘Fragments for the History of Philosophy’ in Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 110.
D. Hume, Dialogues ConcerningNatural Religion (1779) in Hume on Religion, ed. R. Wollheim (London and Glasgow: Fontana, 1963), pp. 161–2.
D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), Book 1, Part III, sec. III, pp. 79–80.
J. Haldane, ‘Atheism and Theism’ in J. J. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Atheism andTheism (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), p. 138.
Hume, Dialogues, p. 164.
Ibid., pp. 162–3.
Haldane, ‘Atheism and Theism’, p. 50.
J. Sadowsky, ‘The Cosmological Argument and the Endless Regress’, International Philosophical Quarterly, 20 (1980), 465. Quoted in Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, p. 90.
J. Haldane, ‘Atheism and Theism’ in J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Atheism and Theism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 155–6.
See, for example, W. W. Fletcher, Modern Man Looks at Evolution (Redhill: Fontana, 1974), esp. pp. 77–8.
R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (Harlow: Longman Scientific and Technical, 1986), pp. 5–6 passim. These passages by Dawkins are quoted in J. A. Sadowsky, ‘Did Darwin Destroy the Design Argument?’, International Philosophical Quarterly, XXVIII (1988), 95–104, p. 95. The present author is deeply indebted to this article.
For this argument, I am deeply indebted to the work of Richard Swinburne. See, especially, R. Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), ch. 4.
F. Nietzsche, Gay Science, trans. W. Kauffmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), aph. 359, p. 315.
F. Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1982), aph. 42, pp. 42–3.
Ibid., aph. 43, p. 43.
F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols in F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 29.
Ibid., pp. 106–7.
F. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 96–7.
Ibid., pp. 133–4.
R. Schacht, Nietzsche (London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).
Ibid., p. 130.
Ibid., p. 126.
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Conway, D. (2000). The Decline and Fall of the Classical Conception. In: The Rediscovery of Wisdom. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597129_4
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