HISTORIA DE LA FILOSOFÍA

INTRODUCCIÓN

FILOSOFÍA-Por filosofía se han entendido principalmente dos
cosas: una ciencia y un modo de vida. La palabra filósofo ha envuelto
en si las dos significaciones distintas del hombre que posee un cierto
saber y dei hombre que vive y se comporta de un modo peculiar.
Filosofía como ciencia y filosofía como modo de vida, son dos maneras
de entenderla que han alternado y a veces hasta conmovido. Ya desde
los comienzos, en la filosofía griega, se ha hablado siempre de una
cierta vida teórica, y al mismo tiempo todo ha sido un saber, una
especulación. Es menester comprender la filosofia de modo que en la
idea que de ella tengamos quepan, a la vez, las dos cosas. Ambas son,
en definitiva, verdaderas, puesto que han constituído la realidad
filosófica misma. Y sólo podrá encontrarse la plenitud de su sentido y la
razón de esa dualidad en la visión total de esa realidad filosófica; es
decir, en la historia de la filosofía.

Hay una indudable implicación entre los dos modos de entender
la filosofía. El problema de su articulación es, en buena parte, el
problema filosófico mismo. Pero podemos comprender que ambas
dimensiones son inseparables, y de hecho nunca se han dado totalmente
desligadas. La filosofia es un modo de vida, un modo esencial que
justamente, consiste en vivir en una cierta ciencia y, por tanto, la
postula y exige. Es, por tanto, una ciencia la que determina el sentido
de la vida filosófica.

Ahora bien: ¿qué tipo de ciencia? ¿Cuál es la índole del saber
filosófico? Las ciencias particulares la matemática, la fisica, la
historia- nos proporcionan una certidumbre respecto a algunas cosa
una certidumbre parcial, que no excluye la duda fuera de sus propios
objetos; y, por otra parte, las diversas certezas de esos saberes
articulares entran en colisión y reclaman una instancia superior que...

First published in 1941, derived from the notes taken by a young girl in a class taught by a 19 year old peer in his junior year, as a study to help pass the examen intermedio. In a moving "Preface", the author explains that he obtained his degree in philosophy in 1936, one month before the Civil War. When the War ended in 1939, his job possibilities were "extremely limited and uncertain": "I was forced to undertake unusually significant tasks because the lesser jobs were all closed to me." [xi] One of the girls in his classes urged him to write "History of Philosophy". She was the one who had done such great notes on their class. By this time I am in tears. Marias dedicated the book to her, and they married in 1941.

This book by an unknown twenty-six year old Spaniard basically supplanted almost entirely the German works that had dominated the intellectual marketplace and universities of the Spanish-speaking world. It appears that the effort to speak with clarity and accuracy, forced by the smiling young girls, resulted in a product, a total clarification, a justification of everything and every philosopher, which is invaluable to all of us.

The following Sections:

GREEK - Pre-Socratics: Milesian, Pythagorean, Parmenides, Eleatics, Heraclitis and Democritus. Socrates and the Sophists. Plato - ideas, man and city. Aristotle - knowledge, metaphysics, being, logic, physics, soul, ethics, politics. Ideals - ethics, stoics, Epicureans, skeptic, eclectics. Neoplatonism.

CHRISTIANITY - Patristic, St. Augustine.

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY - Scholasticism, themes of the middle ages, the philosophers (Scotus Erigena, St Anselm, St Bonaventure, Bacon, Duns Scotus, Occam, Meister Eckart).

MODERN PHILOSOPHY - Renaissance, Humanist, Nicolas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Physics, Spanish Scholasticism; Descartes - man, God, world, rationalism and idealism; Cartesian France - Malebranche. Spinoza - ethics, being as a desire to survive. Leibniz - knowledge, theodicy. British - Bacon, Hobbes, Deism, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Scottish school. The Enlightenment "Aufklarung"; Modern Epoch/loss of God; German Idealism - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Romantics - literary, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer; 19th century - sensationalism - Biran. Comte - positivism; Kierkegaard, Nietzsche; return to tradition - Gratry.

Contemporary Philosophy - Brentano, Dilthy, Simmel, Bergson, Blondel, Unamuno; English pragmatism, personalism; Husserl's phenomenology; Value Theory; Heidegger's existentialism; Ortega and "vital reason" - school of Madrid.

Follows the entire history of Western philosophy century by century, from Greece to Ortega. Professor Marias's book is better at explaining Kant, than Kant is. After all, Marias had to explain the Critique to a classroom of smiling girls who accepted nothing in verba magistri. This makes it stand alone. In addition, while he covers the major figures, he also includes the contributions of lesser figures and those unfamiliar to the English-speaking world. For example, Auguste Gratry, and Georg Simmel are reprised. However, inexplicably he mentions the journalier Montaigne, without the giant memoirist, Marmontel. And while at times, the insights and links are brilliant, the sense of this just being notes flown quickly by is tiring.

Above all, the author practices what his teacher taught - the central concept in Ortega Y Gasset's work, the philosophy of vital reason [442]-- to take into account the total setting of each philosopher. The historicity of ideas - "historical reason" [xii]. The past is never discarded for its errors, but acknowledged for its roots. ( )