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Originally Posted by Dark Messiah We have records of Chinese and Indian philosophy going back further than the Greeks, actually, Dyshade. Buddha and Confucius were both dead and ash before Socrates was ever born.
Derdy is actually right, even if her arguments aren't very eloquent. All evidence and logic indicates that philosophy is a natural aspect of the human condition. Once we get past the stage where we have enough to eat, we naturally start asking "Why?" Now, the Greeks were certainly influential to Western philosophy and theology for thousands of years to come, and they codified much, but to claim that without them philosophy would not exist is simply wrong.
Hell, the first written text we have, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is nothing if not a philosophical tale- What is life? What is love? What is friendship? Why do we struggle if all comes to nothing? Gilgamesh's struggle to obtain immortality, his noble quest where his prize is taken at the end by a snake as he sleeps, is as apt a metaphor for life as any that has been made in the four thousand years since. When he invites Urshanabi to look upon his city at the end of the tale, that is his answer; he's saying "I will die. My city will die. But once, this was here. Once, I was here." And this centuries before Troy was even built, much less destroyed. |
All of what you wrote amounts to nothing. Especially because what I was saying is that what we refer to as Modern Western Philosophical Thought was born in Greece. Eastern Philosophy was born in China and yes many years before Western Philosophy BUT it was word of mouth and there-fore different from the written Greek Texts of Philosophy.
By the way DM Confucius died in 471 BC and Socrates was born two years later in 469 BC AND AS such there was really no difference between the two besides a small generation gap. One was of Eastern Philosophy and the other Western.
Lets look at the Socratic method of Philosophy. Socrates would ask give-and-take questions which would probe and probe until eventually he would appear to find a truth or something which was as close to the truth as possible. Once he exhausted all possible avenues what was left was Socratic truth. His philosophical mode of thought persists to this day unchanged. His first pupil was Plato who in turn educated Aristotle. Thiers was the foundation upon which all philosophic principles are founded upon in western idealogy and philosophy.
SO we are left where I began which was expostulating that Greece and her children were the creators of Modern Western Philosophical Thought. I have yet to hear anything factual which rebukes this or in any way even debates this fact.
If you wish to discuss eastern Philosophy we can and we would be at the same turning ground and churning in the mud because I would expostulate that a little over 30 years before the Greeks the Chinese were laying the groundworks of Modern Eastern Philosophical Thought and Derdy would be denying what is known as fact yet again I am sure.
Before that were superstitions and bogus religious ideaologies which ruled human thought. Those are not philosophies.
Philosophy is not a natural human condition. It is only in evidence in Societies that are advanced enough to support casual thought. The babylonian mythos are just that, mythos. They are not philosophical works.
Gilgamesh is an epic tale. It is not a philosophical work. That is not to say that there were not philosophers in Babylon or Sumeria perhaps there were but we have yet to see any evidence of such. Until than I remain correct in my expostulation.