Pictorial History of Philosophy [antikvár]

Philosophy, Man and Morals A WORD TO THE READER Liké all introductions, this one is written at the end of making the book, and not at the beginning. Looking back after a necessarily hasty journey through the main roads and byways of philosophy, one wishes to resolve the multiple impressions and experiences into somé definite form of judgment. What is this metaphysical world, inhabited by so com-plicated and divergent a population, all about? There are kings and beggars, sinners, saints, and monks, teachers, shoemakers, and esthetes, physicians, and va-grants all imbued with a yearning for the unknowable. Of course, we can judge philosophy only by those who spoke of it or wrote of it. It may be that the most profound philosophers of all have never uttered a blessed word about what moved them most deeply. For those who look to philosophy for a solution of problems in scientific methodology, I can find none that was ever applied by any scientist of note. The scientists seem to have gone their own way, wherever the poli-ticians and the churchmen permitted it. The history of scientific and technical discoveries fails to provide a single clue proving the influence of philo-sophical methodology in the making of their numerous findings. Much of scientific accomplishments—for in-stance, in the fields of electricity, medicine, and chemis-try—is due to experimentalists who never opened a philosophic treatise in their lives. Somé of the modern physicists, already resting on laurels plucked in their specific realm, have dabbled a bit in metaphysical cogita-tions, but more as a matter of frills than fundamentals. If one expects to find in philosophy the key to theo-logical verities, I can only offer this discouraging state-ment: throughout the history of the Western and Eastern world, philosophy has often served as the handmaiden of theology, but never was the relationship reversed. Maimonides and Aquinas used Aristotelianism to bol-ster their dogmas, even as Philo Judaeus and Albertus Magnus used Plató. The same, of course, holds good for the Arabic philosophers serving Mohammedanism and the writers of Upanishads serving Hinduism. Always the Ve-dantas followed the Vedas with their intricate ritual— never the other way round. If one seeks in philosophy a solution for social and political problems, there too, I would say, a mere glimpse of the intellectual facts of the past points clearly to philosophy having been used as the "great rationale" by reform-ers as well as reactionaries, by usurpers as well as tradi-tionalists, by kings and conquerors, to make vile and The Golden Rule Confucianism What you don't want done to yourself, don't do to others. —Sixth Century b.c. Buddhism Hurt not others with that which pains thyself. —Fifth Century b.c. Jainism In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflict-ing upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves. —Fifth Century b.c. Zoroastrianism Do not do unto others all that which is not well for oneself. —Fifth Century b.c. Classical Paganism May I do to others as 1 would that they should do unto me. piato—Fourth Century b.c. Hinduism Do naught to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain. Mahabharata—Third Century b.c. Judaism What is hateful to yourself, don't do to your fellow man. Rabbi /fi/W—.First Century b.c. Christianity Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. Jesus of Nazareth—First Century a.d. Sikhism Treat others as thou wouldst be treated thyself. —Sixteenth Century a.d. Perhaps the oldest ethical proposition of distinctly universal character devious acts appear to be God-ordained or a plan of public welfare. For Philip and Alexander, as a preamble to their bloody conquests, Aristotle wrote a touching thesis on the Divine division of men into free persons and slaves. From Plató to Hegel, from Hobbes to Stalin's Alexandrov, there stand the giant metaphysical bulwarks, defending the political atrocities of their scepter-wielding benefactors!