The Experience of Thinking John B Thomson

The theory of forms. The world of spirit accessible to heightened awareness endures. The sense world is transient, a world of becoming. The dialectical method of Socrates.

The idea is imminent in the sense object. Things are actualised in the sense world. This world of becoming is teleological (goal –oriented).

The prophet of personality. In his book ‘The City of God’ there are two cities, (1) love of self, contempt of god and (2) love of god, contempt of self. The way of freedom is through the soul’s abyss.

Philosophy as religion culminated with the Scholastics the greatest of whom was Aquinas. He was a Realist (ideas are real) as distinct from the Nominalists (ideas, names are just labels we apply to everything in the world).

The 17th century rejected the world views derived from the Greeks. Bacon emphasised a practical not a contemplative approach to nature. He proposed torturing nature to obtain her secrets. Descartes’ statement ‘I think therefore I am’ includes all the inner life, feelings and willing etc. The source of all knowledge is in the mind. Like Descartes Spinoza’s thought was shaped by the New Science. But for him philosophy begins with what is ontological and logical prior I.e. with the divine and nature. These are one.

Locke maintained that all knowledge is acquired and initially from the senses. All forms of nature can be explained mechanically by matter in motion and the impact of one body on another. Berkeley opposed this by denying the existence of inanimate matter and demonstrating that nothing exists save spiritual activity in God’s infinite mind and in human minds. Hume is the supreme sceptic. All our ideas are copied from our impressions. It is not reason which connects our ideas buts habits of mind. However hard we try we can never get away from ourselves and our perceptions.