Western philosophy
philosophical tradition of Western civilization
Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought, traditions, and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophía), literally, 'the love of wisdom', from Ancient Greek: φιλεῖν (phileîn), 'to love', and σοφία (sophía), 'wisdom'.
Western philosophy stands in contrast to other cultural and regional traditions like Eastern philosophy.
History
Ancient
The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics).
Pre-Socratics
The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e. dogma gave way to reason. They were specifically interested in the arche (the cause or first principle) of the world. The first recognized philosopher, Thales of Miletus (born c. 625 BC in Ionia) identified water as the arche (claiming "all is water"). His use of observation and reason to derive this conclusion is the reason for distinguishing him as the first philosopher.
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This entry incorporates text from “Western philosophy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.