Author: Hans Joachim Störig
Reading time: 24 minutes
Synopsis
How can we live well? Is there a God? What is truth? And of course, the biggest question of all: What is the meaning of life? To find answers, A Short World History of Philosophy (1990) looks at the main ideas and thinkers in philosophy through time and around the world.
What’s Inside for You: A Short Journey to Philosophy’s Big Questions.
For thousands of years, people have asked the same questions: What is the meaning of life? What is true, and what is just perception? How can we live well and act fairly? Is there a God?
In A Short World History of Philosophy (1990), we explore these questions across the globe and through history. We visit great thinkers from Buddha to Sartre. We look at key ideas like Scholasticism and Marxism. Together, we ask what philosophy can do today for us and for the world.
Blink 1 – The Nature of Philosophy
If you ask what philosophy is about, what its features are, or what its goal is, you will quickly find there is no single answer. Every philosopher would answer this question differently. This is important: Philosophy is not a subject with clear limits. It does not give us ready-made right or wrong answers.
On the other hand, almost nothing is not part of philosophical thought. Philosophy deals with big and small questions. It looks at obvious things and strange ideas. It thinks about the whole world and everyday life. It is very simple in this way: Nothing is too common or too small to look at closely.
To manage this wide field, different parts of philosophy have developed over time. Metaphysics thinks about the whole world. Ontology thinks about being itself. Logic studies correct thinking. Ethics studies correct actions. Epistemology asks about knowledge. Aesthetics asks about beauty. There is also philosophy of nature, society, and culture. It is clear that these areas overlap.
Also, philosophy is never finished. It always changes. It is a constant attempt to make the world understandable. Immanuel Kant put this open process into three famous questions: What can we know? What should we do? What may we hope for? Which of these questions is most important depends on the time and culture. In ancient Indian philosophy, which we will learn about next, meaning, salvation, and immortality are key.
Blink 2 – Ancient Indian Philosophy – Searching for Freedom
Ancient Indian philosophy is one of the oldest ways of thinking for humans. Its oldest texts come from the Vedic Age. Experts say this time was from about 1500 to 500 BC. The Vedas are a large collection of hymns, songs, formulas, and magic spells. Together, they are six times longer than the Bible.
Later, the Upanishads appeared. These were philosophical teachings that changed the main focus. They moved from outer sacrifices to understanding a person’s inner self and what is called the “world-ground.”
Two ideas are key: Brahman means the world-ground that is everywhere. It is the One thing behind all differences, the start of all being. Atman means a person’s deepest self. The Upanishads say Atman and Brahman are the same at their core. If you know yourself, you also know the whole universe. So, wisdom is not just having a lot of knowledge. It is a deep unity with the true source of reality.
This teaching is closely linked to the idea of souls being reborn. Karma is important here. It is the effect of past actions. People are born again and again. But this is not seen as comfort. It shows that life always involves suffering. Freedom, called Moksha, is not living on in an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Instead, it is the final release from it. This means breaking free from the material world through simple living, meditation, and deep understanding.
From this way of thinking, one of the world’s most important movements began in the 6th century BC: Buddhism. Its founder, Siddhartha Gautama – later known as Buddha – left his rich life to search for understanding. He taught the main ideas of his teaching in the Four Noble Truths: 1. All life is suffering. 2. Suffering comes from wanting things. 3. Suffering can end if we stop wanting things. 4. The way to do this, and to Nirvana, is shown by the Eightfold Path. This path includes right belief, thinking, speech, action, living, effort, mindfulness, and meditation.
Indian thought focuses on practical things. Philosophy should not just explain, but change things. Knowledge from pure reason is less important. The real truth is beyond simple thinking. We can only reach it through inner experience. The goal is not to shape the world, but to free oneself from it.
Blink 3 – Ancient Chinese Thought – Harmony and Community Life
Unlike Indian thought, ancient Chinese thought is not about escaping suffering. It is about living well together. This focus shows the history and culture of China. Early on, China developed complex farming and ways to govern. Inventions like porcelain, paper, the compass, and gunpowder, plus a rich writing culture, created new ways of thinking. These greatly shaped China’s intellectual growth.
Classical Chinese philosophy, from the 6th to 2nd century BC, had three main schools: Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism. They discussed key topics like ethics, harmony, balance, and the common good.
In the second phase, around 1000 AD, Buddhism came from India to China. It became part of Chinese philosophy. It brought new ideas but did not replace the local teachings. The third phase, starting around 1000 AD, brought these ideas into Neo-Confucianism. This shaped the Chinese worldview until modern times.
The most important person in classical Chinese thought was Confucius. His philosophy focused on this life. He did not ask about the start of the world or the afterlife. Instead, he asked about how people should act. For him, knowledge was only valuable if it helped in action.
His teaching focused on moderation, seriousness, self-discipline, and respect for oneself and others. These are the keys to a good life. Confucius’s golden rule is: “Do not do to others what you do not want for yourself.” He also believed that order in the state must always start with each person. So, for Confucius, education meant learning good manners, customs, and responsibility.
You can find another way to harmony in the teachings of Laozi, who lived at the same time as Confucius. His thinking focused more on the world’s origin, the basic source of all being. The idea of Tao is central. It means both “way” and “law of heaven.” The Tao is the root of all things and cannot be understood by words or ideas. So, the highest form of knowledge is knowing what you do not know. This idea will appear again later with Socrates in a different way.
But back to Laozi: From knowing what you do not know, comes an ethic of “non-action.” But this is not the same as doing nothing. Acting through non-doing means working without force, ambition, or wanting to own things. The key word of this philosophy is simplicity. If you live simply, you avoid fake needs, selfishness, and too much of anything. The soft, said Laozi, overcomes the hard, just as water shapes stone.
This idea also applies to ruling. The ideal ruler leads not by laws or punishments, but by being calm and setting a good example. All Chinese schools of thought seek harmony, balance, and simplicity. Being one-sided and extreme are seen as dangerous. Instead of an “either-or” attitude, Chinese thought prefers a “both-and” approach. The individual person is not the main focus. Instead, people are part of the social group.
Blink 4 – Ancient Greek Philosophy – The Birth of Argument
Greek philosophy still shapes Western thought today. Unlike in India or China, Greek philosophy did not focus on freedom from suffering or social harmony. Instead, it was about how to find truth through thinking and discussion.
The first period was the natural philosophy of the Pre-Socratics. From the 6th century BC, thinkers like Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes looked for a basic principle from which everything came. They turned away from myths and towards reason. Heraclitus was very important. His main idea was change. You might know his saying that you cannot step into the same river twice. For Heraclitus, behind this constant change was the Logos. This was a single law of order within change. We can see it in how opposites work together, like day and night, or war and peace.
In the 5th century BC, Socrates focused on humans. Socrates loved to talk. With his endless questions, he found doubts and contradictions in what people said. So, he did not give ready-made lessons. Instead, he helped people of his time find new ideas through discussion. His famous saying “I know that I know nothing” was not about giving up. It was the start of critical, independent thinking.
His student Plato wrote down and organized this method. In his dialogues, philosophy becomes a lively debate. His famous cave allegory describes people who are chained in a cave since birth. They only see shadows on the wall. They believe these shadows are real. But for Plato, real reality is in the Ideas. These are unchanging standards behind the world we can experience with our senses. For Plato, education meant turning away from simple sensory appearances. It meant focusing on the essential nature of the world of Ideas.
Plato’s most important student – and also his main critic – was Aristotle. With Logic, he created the first tool for systematic thinking. Logic is a system with clear terms, definitions, judgments, and conclusions. It still shapes science and philosophy today.
When ancient times ended, Greek philosophy remained one of the great intellectual pillars of the West. We will look at the second pillar, Christianity, in the next section.
Blink 5 – Medieval Philosophy – Between Faith and Doubt
In the Middle Ages, Christianity became the main spiritual force in Europe. Thinking focused on God, grace, and salvation. This also influenced philosophy. Philosophy became closely linked to faith. Its main goal was to connect Christian beliefs with ancient reason.
Suddenly, God became the main part of existence. The role of humans became less active. Salvation was no longer something people earned. It was a gift of God’s grace.
The early part of medieval philosophy is called Patristics. Augustine was its most important thinker. He combined Christian teaching with Plato’s ideas. Augustine studied memory, awareness of time, and free will. For him, thinking itself became a firm certainty: I may doubt everything, but I cannot doubt that I am thinking and doubting. The French philosopher René Descartes later used this idea with his “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).
From the 9th century, the second important period of medieval philosophy began with Scholasticism. In monasteries and new universities, people thought in a structured way. Their goal was always to explain truths of faith using reason and to defend them against doubts. Thomas Aquinas marked the peak of Scholasticism. He aimed to combine Christian theology with Aristotle’s philosophy. For him, faith and reason did not conflict. Instead, they supported each other. He believed that God’s existence could be proven by reason.
Next to Scholasticism, Mysticism developed. Its followers, especially Meister Eckhart, looked for God not through ideas, but through inner experience.
As you can see, the Middle Ages was not an era against thought or a dark time, as we often imagine. It was a time of deep study of what human reason could do and what faith offered.
Blink 6 – Renaissance and Enlightenment – The Value of Reason and the Limits of Knowledge
In modern times, the focus of philosophy changed greatly again. God was removed from the center. Human reason took His place in thought.
Humanism started this change. Scholars like Petrarch and Erasmus of Rotterdam developed a new view of humans. We humans are no longer sinful beings. Instead, we are people who can learn and take responsibility. We have a new quality: dignity.
The discoveries, new technologies, and science of the Renaissance changed how people saw the world. They led to many different ways of thinking. For example, Niccolò Machiavelli created a political philosophy that was very realistic. He believed that humans are naturally selfish and want power. So, a strong state is needed. All methods are fine to keep the state safe. Deception, violence, breaking agreements: Anything that keeps order is allowed.
René Descartes, on the other hand, made radical doubt the starting point for all knowledge. Everything could and should be doubted. This should continue until only one certainty remained: “I think, therefore I am.” From here, knowledge should be built again in a strictly logical way. Reason became the key measure of truth.
Other thinkers developed this idea of rationalism in different ways. For Spinoza, for instance, everything follows fixed laws. We can understand these laws through logical thinking. Understanding how things must be makes us happy. We are then in harmony with nature and God.
Meanwhile, the Englishman John Locke presented an idea based more on human experience. His claim: We have no inborn ideas. We only gain knowledge from experience. David Hume went further. He concluded that feelings and habits were much more important than people had thought.
Immanuel Kant was in the middle of this debate. For him, knowledge does not come only from experience or only from reason. It comes from both working together. We do not know things as they are in themselves. We know them as they appear to us. Kant saw humans as moral beings in this tension. From this, he created the famous Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that rule whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
With Kant, the Enlightenment reached its highest point. Humans had freed themselves from immaturity – and this new freedom brought new questions for philosophy.
Blink 7 – Philosophy in the 19th Century – Breaking Old Certainties
In the 19th century, philosophy faced a major setback. Instead of reason, freedom, and progress, people saw political changes, social divides, and feeling lost because of industrialization. So, philosophy became more about conflict and human existence. It was no longer just about knowledge. It was about what knowledge meant for humans and their freedom.
The starting point was German Idealism, led by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel’s works are among the most difficult in philosophy. His main work, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), is seen by many as both a masterpiece and a challenge. But behind his abstract language, complex ideas, and strict style, there is a clear main idea: Reality is not a finished state. It is a historical process.
It does not develop in a straight line. Instead, it develops dialectically. This means it moves through a play of opposites. When these opposites are solved, they create a new level of awareness. History is not just a series of events. It is a mental process where thought becomes aware of itself. According to Hegel, history happens in stages. All these stages are needed and finally lead to the world spirit developing.
Karl Marx turned Hegel’s theory around. For him, not spirit, but material conditions of life shape history. History is marked by class struggles. With Marx, philosophy gained a new feature: It became political and gave clear calls to action. The working class should create a classless society through revolution.
Arthur Schopenhauer struck a very different, but also radical, tone. For him, the world is not ordered by reason. It is ruled by will. In this view of the world, reason is not a ruler. It is a tool of the tireless will. Sadly, this also means we cannot be happy forever, because new desires always appear. So, need, boredom, loneliness, and struggle define human existence.
We meet the most radical philosopher so far in Friedrich Nietzsche. His famous phrase “God is dead” marked the collapse of the old order. It threw thought into a deep crisis of systems and meaning. Religion, truth, morals – for Nietzsche, these were all just things made by humans. In their place, he put the will to power.
Blink 8 – Philosophy in the 20th Century – Existence and Reality
The 20th century brought great shocks. Two World Wars, financial crises, big social changes, the danger of nuclear war, fights for freedom, and the end of old certainties also challenged philosophical thought. Big systems of thought lost their power. Instead, people became the focus. So did single topics like language, power, or whether reality can even be known.
A key movement of this time was Existentialism. Thinkers like Karl Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre saw humans as free but also fragile beings. For Sartre, humans are “condemned to be free.” There is no fixed nature for humans and no higher certainties. Each person carries full and heavy responsibility for their actions. Meanwhile, Albert Camus showed the absurdity of it all. Humans search sadly for meaning in a world that has no meaning. This is a contradiction we must live with.
At the same time, Phenomenology began with Edmund Husserl. It asks how the world appears to us. It focuses on the structures of experience itself. Martin Heidegger took this idea further. He described humans as beings “thrown into the world.” This “thrownness” leads to dealing with one’s own being and death.
Language and knowledge were Ludwig Wittgenstein’s topics. He believed that language and what can be said set the limits of our thinking. Constructivism argued in a similar way. Its followers believed that we do not objectively know reality. Instead, we build it from what we perceive. In contrast, Bertrand Russell gave us at least one reliable source of knowledge: the natural sciences.
Many other philosophers are not mentioned here. But the trend is clear: Without final certainties, humans are left to themselves. Therefore, one of philosophy’s most important tasks today is to encourage us. It asks us to check our own views often, to live with contradictions, and to see when we fool ourselves.
Conclusion
So, we have reached the end of this insightful Blink.
Philosophy will surely not become jobless. New basic questions always come up, such as: Is it okay to eat animal products? Should we leave a ruined planet for future generations? Or: Are there fair wars?
Philosophy helps us avoid quick and purely emotional judgments. It makes our thinking sharper. It shows conflicts in values. It encourages us to question our views and actions again and again. So, it has great value not only for us as individuals, but also for society.
We hope we could show you some of this value. Thank you for being here, and see you next time!
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