Philosophy

Boethius teaching, from a 14th century Italian manuscript

Philosophy, until the advent of Christianism, along with myths and religions, tried to answer to those fundamental questions that man is aking about his own life, death, the Universe, or the world around. Christianism definitively brought an answer of authority to those. That brought to a whole attitude concerning, thence, the possibilities of the Christians to keep on questioning

From India to the Patristic

Above all, it's in the Western and Indo-European worlds (India, and Greece) that philosophy developed. Philosophy, on the other hand, holds a lesser importance among the people of the Middle East, the Arab world included. India, first, developed a firm system answering to the questions about the world, as it was based on thie idea of a unique being who was at the origin of all what occurs in the physical world. That was amplified through a whole corpus of metaphysics, cosmology, psychology and ethics. Buddhism, which is a pessimism, derived from hinduism only as it further combined, in China, with taoism and confucianism. Then came the Greek philosophers. They transitioned from a philosophy focusing unto thinking upon the physical workd (stability, change, etc.) to a questioning about man (morals, the Plato's idealism, with the ideas of men being the reflection of a superior world; Aristotle, who thinks that any data comes to man's consciousness through the senses only), and then to varied schools of thought based on morals (like the Stoicism, for example). Greek philosophy, at last, ends with the neo-platonists, in Alexandria, Egypt by the beginning of the Christian era. Those are developing a mysticism, with astrologial tendencies. When Christianity arises, the Church, concerning the philosophy, builds upon that the Fathers of the Patristic, albeit belonging to their Greek surroundings, where neo-Platonism is reigning, are getting distant from it throught the Christian idea that the world is due to a Creation and that any being has his identity. St. Augustine then, is melting intellectualism and the neo-Platonist mysticism. The neo-Platonism, as adapted to Christianism- is perpetuated further, in the 5th century, by the pseudo-Dyonisius. The Christian East, and Byzantium, as far as they are concerned, did yield few philosophers only

The Basic Question of the 'Universals'

In the West, then, Aristotle and Plato were lost until the 12th century, at the exception of some works of them, like the Logics of Aristotle. The main question, largely determining the whole history of thought in the Christian West, on the other hand, is the one of the 'universals', unfolding between the 9th and the 11th centuries. This basic question, in philosophy, resides into knowing whether the mental representation of one given object -which are allowing for a generalization of the real world- have any link -and what for a link- with the real objects of the real world (those objects having an individuality). For example, when one speaks of the flowers, generally, like a concept, what does that mean in terms of when one considers a flower in particular? That question was a classical one in philosophy, long before the Middle Ages, and, among the Greek philosophers, it had already gotten varied -mainly 4- answers. Platon did think that there was a correspondance between the world of concepts and the one of the real world and that both were identical in terms of generality, the objects of the real world being no less general than the concepts (that theory is called the 'Exaggerated Realism'); other philosophers, rallying about a theory called 'Nominalism', did think that the just inverted parallelism existed between the world of the concepts and of the one of the real world, as, at the opposite, both were marked with the quality of identity (bringing to that there was no any generality, but diversity instead, as far as the concepts were concerned). The Stoicism, as a current of thought, did think, on the other hand, that, as the concepts and ideas really had an existence, the relation they had with the real world were uncertain and nowhere to be known (that theory was called the 'Conceptualism'). Aristotle, at last, as far as he is concerned, thought -and that was of a more scientific character- that there reigned an harmony between the concepts giving a representation of the world -with their generality- and the objects of the real world -with their diversity (the theory of Aristotle was called the 'Moderate Realism')

Such that philosophical debate about the 'universals' was not without importance, and practical consequences. If one considers that any concept, any mental representation of the reality of the world, are impossible, this, eventually, leads to that any theoretical apprehension -thus any scientific approach- of the world is impossible -and even any metaphysics. This, ultimately, leads to a world filled with an infinite individualism and lacking any general idea, concept and representation! Thus any principe becomes impossible. In terms of religion, the denial of the universals might forbid any solid basis to any religion and dogma, submitting them to a perpetual variability, a relativism and to subjectivism

The thinkers and scholars, during the Early Middle Ages, as they were perpetuating the philosophical thinking, did not have however the mental and intellectual tools for such subtile debates. The question however remains in the thinking of the time, likely feeding most of the struggle between dogma and heretics. Most numerous authors of the time -in the Carolingian times, for example- are of the schools which thinks that the universals did really exist as any real world object come from that. Those scholars are termed 'Realists', like (Fredugisus, Rémy d'Auxerre, or John Scotus Eriugena), working on the basis of an author named Porphyry, and on Boethius. This dominating school of though of the era, with likely a tendency to neo-Platonism. The opposed thinkers are termed 'Nominalists', or 'anti-Realists': they do think that the real objects only have any existence, as concepts don't -which are theoretical only. Those thinkers, as far as they are concerned, likely, thus, are tending to a form of Materialism. That solution given by those anti-Realists, on the other hand, is generally considered like being what allowed for the evolution of the early medieval thought towards the apogee of the scholasticism in the 13th century. After those debates yielded heretic positions of a pantheistic type, or of the Albigenses. Then, through Abélard (about 1100 A.D.), who theorized the role of abstraction, and then John of Salisbury (in the 12th century, as part of the struggle of the pontife for the rights of the Church), scholasticism eventually, once an expurgated Aristotle (from the errors in translation of Averroes and Avicenna) admitted by the Church, in the 13th century, to build a definitive, and moderate solution to that question of the 'universals'! That's called the 'Aristotlean-Thomist moderate realism'. The revival of the Arab and Byzantine thinkers, by the end of the 12th century, first had brought a strong opposition to scholasticism (like Siger of Brabant, in Paris). At the reverse, in the 13th century, a current of neo-Platonist did still was extant (like Roger Bacon, or Lull)

For scholasticists, objects of our intellectual notions, or the famed Platonician 'ideas,' did not exist apart from individual data of sense but were considered the same reality. That reality altogether reveals itself under an abstract, universal, static aspect to the intellect, and under a concrete, manifold, dynamic aspect to the senses. The problem posed, in terms of the Christian religion, by such ultimate philosophical truths is that they lie partly along and partly beyond the confines of natural human knowledge as they eventually deeply question a men's life and apprehension of themselves and the world around. Men can reach some explanation only -or wisdom- through reasoning as the latter is of no more use when some point(s) is or are reached. That then necessarily leads to limits posed or to that metaphysics becomes necessary. As Christian Revelation had definitively come to give a answer to those fundamental questionings, Church always considered any independent philosophical endeavours like a questioning of herself

->Saint Bonaventure
Saint Bonaventure (1221, Viterbo-1274, Lyons), Doctor of the Church, bishop, cardinal is one of the most important theologians of Christianity in the Middle Ages. He was nicknamed the 'Doctor Seraphic' and was canonized in 1482. Giovanni da Fidanza, son of a doctor, was cured following his mother's vow to St. Francis, recently canonized. Sent to study the letters at the University of Paris, he entered the Franciscans and took the name Bonaventure. From 1257 onwards, he became Minister General of the Order and committed himself to enforce the rule of the latter throughout Europe. To do so, he gathered documents and testimonies about St Francis and he wrote the 'Legenda major,' a biography. The times were then, among Franciscans, of the quarrel between the Spirituals -- which were Franciscans supporting a literal observation of their rule (including Joachim of Flora, a kind of herestic) and the 'Relaxati' -- who were proponents of innovations. Bonaventure restored the balance in 1260. A teacher and a writer, defending the right of the Franciscans to teach against the secular masters of Paris, King St Louis considering him as a friend, he was appointed cardinal in 1273 by Pope Gregory X, as he had to prepare the 14th Ecumenical Council in Lyons, which was aimed at bringing Rome and Byzantium closer but he died in that city the following year. That council nevertheless led the Byzantines to recant their schism and a union was accepted in July 1274. Bonaventure was proclaimed saint as soon as by 1482. The four principal works of Bonaventure, the Commentary on the Sentences, the Breviloqiuim, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum and the De reductione Artium ad Theologiam, are constituting a philosophical system but they also testify to the mutual interpretation between theology and philosophy, the first being the natural centre of the latter. The Breviloqium is a form of quintessence of the 13th century theology and arguably the most remarkable summary of Christian dogma. For Bonaventure, everything comes from God and everything returns to Him. Bonaventure, against the classical scholasticists, remained a mystic in the tradition of Hugh and Richard of St-Victor, of Alexander of Hales, or of Bernard of Clairvaux and he remained faithful to St Augustine and Plato, against the other scholasticists. He did not totally reject Aristotle, of which he adds to Augustine certain principles relating to the intellect and the material and formal reality of man and other living creatures. But, contrarily to the optimism of the Thomism, he denied human reason to gain access to Truth without God's help. Denys the Areopagite, as a mystic, is also a influence and Bonaventure insists on the superiority of the movements of the heart on the intellect. For him, philosophy is only the 'praeparatio evangelica,' and as such, it is only the annunciation, or even the deviation, from the Revelation

The Philosophical School of Thoughts After the Scholasticism

As the question of the universals, which had come from the Antiquity, and which through the Early Middle Ages had found its solution with the moderate realism of the Scholastic school of thought of the 13th century, it kept thus defining all the ensuing schools of thoughts as far as philosophy is concerned. When thinkers, on the one hand, did wander from the moderate realism on the side of the Conceptualism and Nominalism (of them the people thinking like the Stoicists), they just came to Scepticism and Agnosticism, and thence to a radical questioning of any religion and, eventually too, to Empiricism and to the Materialism. On the other side, thinkers which headed to the Exaggerated Realism in the Platonist style, did come to a false Idealism and to Pantheism

The end of the Middle Ages saw struggles opposing varied schools of thought, like the Scholastics, the Scottists (from Dun Scott), the Occamians (from William of Occam, defending a strict Conceptualism -with the concepts existing albeit not in nature and through a representation of the mind only, being useful for the mind only), the Averroists, etc. Then the Renaissance had appearing a whole of miscellaneous currents of thought, like the humanist dialecticians (Valla, Vivès), the revival of currents of the Antiquity (Platonism, Aristotelicism, Stoicism), naturalists like Giordano Bruno or Campanella, or thinkers who theorized about the natural, or social, laws (Thomas More, or Grotius). The only common ground for all of those is that they were all bound against the scholasticism and the Roman catholicism. All the schools of thought of the Renaissance, thus, are negativist ones, developing a 'posture against'. The evolution of that period also concerned astronomy, with well-known stages. While the novel ideas of canon Copernicus about the solar system could still be admitted by Church, Galileo collided with it head on by tending to 'absolutize' his theories. In addition, the Galileo Affair was utilized in the 19th and 20th centuries for the purpose of propaganda agains the so-called retrograde character of the Church. The scholasticism, as far as it is concerned, did survive in Spain, during the 16th century only as the scholars there, unluckily did not really master the concepts anymore, and it eventually disappear during the 17th century

The Renaissance, destructive stance, was continued, in the 17th century through the emancipative stances towards the dogma, and through the individualism, with Descartes (a spiritualism bases on data coming through consciousness), Malbebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Sensualism of Francis Bacon (where data of knowledge are apprehended through the senses only). That Sensualism became the dominant philosophy in the 18th century, and for the philosophy of the Enlightenments, like for Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Condillac, the Encyclopedists, or Voltaire. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, eventually, would generalize that philosophy among the masses. All such developments led to a definitive undermining of the Roman Catholicism and, eventually, to the great liberal revolutions of the time. Kant, on the other hand, was the next main modern philosophical current, with his 'critical philosophy', where anything is bringing back to the structure of the mind. From him, are appearing Fichte, Hegel, pantheists, Schopenhauer, or individualist thinkers. Kantianism, mainly, is a conceptualism, stating that there is no link between concepts and the real world. Kant, eventually, in England, during the 19th century, was forgotten to the benefit of the Positivism (Auguste Comte, Hume, Mill, Taine), which is a nominalism

The Question of the Relation Between Philosophy and Religion

After that philosophers in India had linked religion and philosophy and that the Greeks had variously solved that question (with Socrates tending to be independent from religion, Plato coming back to it and Aristotle mainly back to independency, with God just the 'first motor of the world'), and that the neo-Platonism, as the religion had become a fashion again during 300 B.C. and 300 A.D., again melted the philosophy into religion (as philosophy had to aim to unite the soul with God, through mystical practices), Christianity, eventually determined a whole new logics. Christianity does bring the fundamental answers to those questions that the philosophers had asked until then as, technically, it's not a philosophy. Thus the main turn in the history of throught is brought in, with the Fathers of the Church -being Greek- influenced by neo-Platonism and a strong link between philosophy and religion but with philosophy now just a way to meet polemic needs, allowing for the defense of Christianity during the main ideological struggles against the heretics. Such a view thence remained the one of the Early Middle Ages, that is the one of the neo-Platonism serving religion (to what even Eriugena would rally

Although Boethius had made known the categories attributed to philosophy by Aristotle (of them the one of the sciences of theory), the Early Middle Ages, mostly, did not know anything else, in that matter, but the divisions of Plato (in fact of neo-Platonism) instead, logics, ethics, and physics that is. As it had been theoretically summarized like the science of dialectics only, forming one of the 7 liberal arts, philosophy soon came to crown those, and even becoming a fashion during the Carolingian times -up to the point to side becoming a pure technique- as some thinkers (like Gottschalk, for example) even give it an attribute value and eventually fall into heresy. Some theological questions, on the other hand are leading, necessarily, to philosophical ones (like the question of the transsubstantiation leading to the question of substance). Theology, however, in those times, is of course remaining the fundamental field of thinking with philosophy and sciences then included into Church and religion only (the question of the 'universals' however was treated as a question for itself however, for example, likely for cause of a question of theoretical tools). Intellectual struggles do occur, since the end of the 11th century, between those who oppose to the dialecticains (like Pierre Damian, or the reformers of the monastic orders) and those who still dare to use the tools of the philosophical reasoning like a help for the theological one (like Lanfranc, or St. Anselm of Canterbury). Scholasticism reaching its apogee in the 13th century did definitively define the relations which must exist between philosophy and religion, as the reasoning is just secondary and used just like a support of second level to a truth defined as such from a theological, and authoritative point of view first. The arguments of authority are defined first, and then possibly further demonstrated through reasoning. This was meaning a strict and obvious return to the time of the apologetics of the early Fathers. The fact that Aristotle hold such a large role in that apogee of the Church in the 13th century certainly is due to that the Greek philosopher was giving the first place, among his philosophical categories, to metaphysics. The great theological 'summae' of the time technically are theological treaties, and not philosophical works. That precise statement, of a pure St. Augustine nature, was softened however as the Scholastics did accept that philosophy has a form of a independent value, allowing it to be studied for itself. That led to that were distinguished between the scholastical theology (the science of the religious dogma as based on Scriptures) and the scholastical philosophy (the science like based on rational investigation). For the Church, philosophy is a science which must dig its object, its principles and method from its own ressource only, and not from any other science. That the mainstream current of the realistic, moderate stance of the Church

How did the things evolve then (with, for example, Dun Scott or William of Occam) brought on an increase of the independency of the philosophy in regard to the religion. Such a school of thought, like the 'Latin Averroists', in the 13th and 14th centuries, had even perpetuated an Averroistic Aristotelism, further stressing that independency, to the limit of unrespecting theology (those scholars however did remain far behind the original, Arab Averroists who, for example, did think that the Islamic religion was just good enough for the masses only). The Renaissance eventually destroyed completely that delicate bond that the Middle Ages had finely crafted between philosophy and religion. That was made through theism, a form of naturalism applied even to religion, through a kind of ill-understood first oecumenism, or through the indifferentism which even was adopted by the Roman Catholics of the time, from the Protestants. That indifferentist stance in the Renaissance, in turn, eventually triggered, in the 17th and the 18th century, an active contempt against the Church, which was brought through theism and deism (with that sense that an innate religion allowed to build a 'natural religion' as limited to the idea of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Bayle, a scholar, in France, added to that a real hatred towards the Church, and then Voltaire). All that brought to atheism and to the liberal revolutions of the modern era

Supplemental Some Basic Notions About non-Western Philosophies

The Western world, mostly through the trade routes, likely took contact into varied ideas or concepts belonging to the schools of thought of the other regions in the world. Here are following some basics:

• possible influential philosophies on the Greeks, the Arabs and other systems: the Babylonian philosophy, which is mostly a moral and then, about the 8th century B.C., a tendency to science via the astrology, might have influenced the Greeks of the hellenistic period (mostly the Sophists, and even Plato or Socrates). In Sumer, 'modern' scriptures like archives, sacred texts, chronicles, etc. only appear by about 4000 B.C. as until then the first texts written upon cuneiform tablets were counts of economic goods only. A place, among that Greek philosophy, is to be made for the correspondances Plato established between the basic elements, 8 spirals constituting the solar system each with a planet, a color and a mermaid singing a note, 8 basics volumes and music, or the musical frequencies, a form of universal harmony which would be found from the stars down to the plants at the Earth. Such view were taken back later by the astronomer Kepler and applied to his theory of the planets' orbits and by the German philosopher and writer Goether who found that the quint interval was extant among any sacred music. That quint, on a other hand, is characteristical too of the Gregorian chant as some contend that gothic cathedrals or Egyptian temples were built on the basis of the sacred geometry theories and the harmonic acoustics. For Plato, the world is a living being and moved by a soul. The order of heavens, according to Plato, is founded mathematically from a astronomical point of view and he does not dig further into its metaphysical principles as he voluntarily lets to myths to answer the questions raised by science. World however remains the work of a demiurge, which Plato sometimes calls a god, or 'the one which institutes a genesis.' That demiurge however is more of a craftsman. And soul itself, as far as it is concerned, is constituted function of arithmetical and harmonical relations which make it, if not a harmony, at least a harmonies maker in the heavens it moves. Plato also states that God placed intelligence into the soul, which was in turn placed into the body. The Indian philosophy was few influential, eventually, and largely focused on the Indian subcontinent and the regions of Indian influence. It had a tendency to the syncretism and the universalism. Yoga developed by the 6th century A.D. like the fact of dissidents to the main Indian thought which stressed sacrifices and 'external' feats. Yogis thence stressed internal peace and purity. The Indian ayurveda medicine (from 'ayur', life and 'veda', science, knowledge) is basing upon a philosophy in which the Universe is composed of 5 elements (earth, water, fire, air, space) and a balance between 3 humors (wind, spirit, or air. Fire, bile. Earth, water, mucus). Each individual is dominated by one or more of such humors. The ayurveda therapy is aiming to consider man in his entirety, like his alimentation, lifestyle, etc. The ayurveda techniques comprise varied therapeutical disciplines, like surgery, pediatrics, medicine, aphrodisiacs science, immunity building, toxicology (with detoxication cures) or questions of demonial possession. The University of Nalanda, current state of Bihar, eastern India was a famed Buddhist center of learning between the 5th and 12th centuries A.D. with 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students, 100 fields of teaching, of which philosophy, theology, arts and science. The fame of that among the oldest center of teaching turned such that attending students came from China, Corea, Tibet, Mongolia, Sri Lanka or Turkey as it eventually terminated by 1193. The width of the walls allowed to cool air as large open spaces allowed to interactivity. The classical Persian philosophy -the Zoroastrism- is based on the famed opposition between the forces of the Good and the Evil, which was renewed, at the time of the last Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, by the Manicheism, of which it was the official religion. The Mazdakism was then a form of proto-communism. The Manicheism was considered a Christian heresy and fought by St. Augustine who had converted to it. Zoroastrianism was founded in Persia, in the 6th century B.C. by Zoroastre. That religion is basing upon the dualism of good and evil which are performing a perpetual fight against each other. The body and spirit of faithfull, as far as they are concerned, are united into their fight against evil, even if soul only is immortal however. Those who will have lived a righteous life are to reach a pleasant afterlife. Their dead are left to vultures unto the 'silence towers.' Once Persia passed into the Islamic world by the 7th century A.D., Zoroastrianists eventually emigrated into India where they turned the parsis
• the Arab world: the Arab philosophy started based upon the techniques of the 'ijtihad', that method which first allowed for the interpretation of the points remained obscure in the Revelation of Muhamad, the Muslim prophet. The main philosophical such school, in the Arab world, was the 'Motazilism', which became the official doctrine of the Abassid empire since 827 A.D. (the 'Dar Al-Hikma', or 'House of Wisdom' was founded in Bagdad in 832, with Christian translators translating Greek works). Those Arab and Persians intellectuals were acquainted to the philosophies of the Greeks (of them the neo-Platonism), of the Persians and of India under the leadership of a Nestorian Christian named Hunayn ibn Ishaq, in the 870s, giving a basis to all the following works of the 9th and 10th centuries (Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes). The 'Kalâm' was a concurrential school of thought. The debates, in the Arabic world, were mostly about between the free will and the fatalism as the Mutazilist thinkers did defend the free will and the rationalism and whith the 'orthodox' Muslims fighting their way of thinking. Mu'tazilism was a theological school of thougt which appeared in Basra' (currently in southern Iraq) by the 8th century A.D. At the opposite of the preeminence of the concept of fatalism in Islam, Mu'tazilists stood like the defensors of the view that human freedom is extant and that Allah is respectful of that. The Arab philosophy, due to the geography of the Arab world, is under the converging influence of Jews, Christians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians. After having reached its apogee in the 12th century (Al-Ghazali, Juda Halevi), the intellectual prosperity of the Arab world vanished as the Muslim orthodoxs -by the 13th century, when Mu'tazilists vanished- attacked the philosophers and had their books burnt, as the ijtihad too is closed due to the Mongol invasions, or the Crusades. Sufism is a mystical tendency in Islam, as it appeared about 800 A.D.
• Jews: Philo, in Alexandria, Egypt, by the beginning of the Christian era, is personnifying the acceptation of the hellenic influence unto the Jews as he develops the idea that philosophy is a good way to defend the truths of the religion, or, to make converts. The latter Jews then are acquainted with the influence of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and the neo-Platonism, passing in Spain. Varied schools exist at the time of the Western Middle Ages, mainly the one of Juda Halevi (in the 12th century) defending judaism against its detractors; the one of Abraham ibn Dawd Halevi (about the year 1150) who is an Aristotelist, and the one, above all, of Maimonide (by the end of the 12th century) who is trying, on the same basis of Aristotle, to solve the contradictions between some trivial content of the Bible and an intellectual approach, showing how the former has a spiritual meaning however
• Buddhism: the Buddhism had been born in the 5th century B.C. from a rejection of Hinduism. Prince Siddharta Gautama, when he was 29, left for the quest of how getting rid from the world of pain as, by 35 years old, he reached the 'nirvana' (or the 'state of full conscience') and turned the 'Buddha,' 'the Awakened.' Against the strictness of Hunduism, he criticized the castes system and reverence to gods, asking his disciples to search truth through their own experience. According to Buddha one has to get rid from pain, which is born from covetousness, through getting rid from desires via the 'Octuple Path.' The soundness of knowledge, intention, speech, action, way of life, effort, attention and concentration brings to the nirvana. Buddhism spread in several countries, from Afghanistan to Japan, thus yielding a large number of schools of thought (as much as in the West). Two schools only however survived, with the 'Cittamatra' ('the spirit only') in the 4th century A.D. which is an idealism stressing that anything in the real world are just artefacts of the minds for the non-freed from the sufferings path. And the 'Madhyamaka' ('the path of the middle'), in the 2nd century A.D., which is a more radical school still, rejecting the real world further, with any philosophy being nothing but negative and rejecting about everything. Philosophy, in Buddhism, never get distant from the religious aims of it
• Jainism: Jainism had been born by the 6th century B.C. in India as it was founded by Mahavira against the castes systems and rituals of Hinduism. Freeing is obtained through the total purification of the soul which is delivered that way from 'karman,' a matter generated by actions. That is performed through ascetism as disciples must have also a sound behavior with the 'ahimsa' ('non-violence') in terms of thoughts and deeds toward any creature. Jainism features both laypersons and monks, of which 'sadhus' who are giving up any material property, meditate, study the sacred texts, mortify and make pilgrimages to bring their spiritual quest to its end
• China: like the case with Buddhism, China doesn't make easily the difference between religion and philosophy. The Chinese way of writing doesn't easily allow the 'logos', the reasoning, like the Greeks had. Chinese scholars are more about fluidity of mind and practice than about theory and strength of the argumentation. When Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary came in China by the 17th century, he used data from the Stoicism in his endeavour to have Chinese to better understand the Roman Catholicism. Voltaire, a French philosopher of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, on the other hand, was found of all what was China. The influence of Confucius, or 'Kongfuzi,' 'Master K'ong' (551-479 B.C.) in the Far East reached to such a importance that it may be compared to that of Plato or even the Church in the West. A Confucius based upon the elements of philosophy which existed already by his time, he postulated that the start of everything in the social order is scholarship and wisdom, which are parts of a spiritual nobility adding to the nobility by the blood. From that, like a waterfall, the social order is unfolding with thought, the nobility of heart, the person, family, and, at last the State. The wise man is wise because he has found the 'li,' a harmony between man and the general organization of the world. Music is playing a important role in Confucianism as it is a symbol of order and harmony. The Confucean man also is worshipping divinities and ancestors. The 'ren' is the other pilar to Confucianism, which is a benevolence exerted by the wise men. That benevolence however may not exerted out a very strict familial and social hierarchy. Confucianism thus, in the Far East, allowed to a very strong hierarchical organization of societies and the supremacy of men over women. The Confucianist wise always are involved into society and the world's order. 'Analects,' or 'The Discussions' by Confucius and their interpretation, along with the 'Five Classics,' are Confucianism's foundations. As Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China has based his regime upon Legalism and Taoism, yielding his state to work upon penal law and not humanism, a synthesis eventually was born which made Confucianism, by the 7th century A.D., the basis to the mandarinal examination system in China. Confucianism eventually, since the 3rd century A.D. had turned a state philosophy and had share its fate with other Chinese philosophies like the Legalism or the Taoism. Under the Han dynasty (beginning in 200 A.D.), each town which was a administration center feature a temple dedicated to Confucius, a 'wénmiào' which also added with a library. That was a evolution of Confucianism, the 'Neo-Confucianism,' which turned the official philosophy between the 2nd and 8th centuries A.D. (definitively by the 9th century A.D.). That took place thus partly under the Tang as that move was influenced with Taoism and Buddhism. The reference to Neo-Confucianism was Mencius, a Confucianist writer of after Confucius. Neo-Confucianism is focusing confucianism back to morality, after a era of Buddhism's influence. It awarded a role to Nature and considered that each organism was playing its part inside a organism of a larger size. Heavens, the Earth and society this way, were linked together. By the beginnings of the Tand dynasty new schools for scholars were created, a officiel corpus of Confucianist Classics was written as Confucianists rites were re-established. That move turned the 'Neo-Confucianism' and it was deepened under the Song as, in turn, it became the state philosophy under the Yuan, by the 13th century A.D. The 'Four Books" and the 'Mencius' became the foundings to imperial examinations since the 12th century A.D. That Neo-Confucianism was imprinted with science on the basis of its thought which was considering that a 'taiji,' the general source to everything, was reflecting into each individual 'li" of the miscellaneous beings, animals and things of the world. Those thus have to be the objects of studies. Neo-Confucianism then got back to the introspection of the wise by themselves because the 'qi,' a force which is permeating the Universe, can darken the 'li.' Chinese philosophy this way, at least as far as its beginnings are concerned, is very dynamic and pragmatic indeed. As far as Taoism is concerned, which had been born about the year 0, it was both a way of life and a a religion, focusing unto liberty, mystics and medicinal practices; it was renewed by the neo-Taoism since about 300 A.D. Taoism is a religion and a way of thinking at the same time as the quest of immortality is the ultimate target of taoism. Philosophy, poetry, pragmatism, mysticism or superstition are parts too. To live well, to live long and to become immortal is the main desire of taoists. Taoism eventually is a ensemble of comportments and beliefs which conjugate every aspects of living and non-dying. Meditation with concentration and visualization into a interior alchemy, the martial art of tai-chi-chuan, the breath exercises of qigong are helping too to live in a society without hurting nor being hurt. The Universe, according to taoism was undifferentiated by the origins and developed from unicity to multiplicity without any external intervention as the Great Dipper and the Polaris, in the middle of the sky, are dispensating the primordial breath or yuanqi which turns into the opposite and complementary ying and yang energies. Taoism thus is also a quest of a harmonious agreement between man and the Universe as it is a naturalism at the same time. Laozi was the foundor of taoism as he should have lived between the 6th and 5th century B.C. at the court of the Zhou. He was a historian and archivist there as he had chosen to leave the court which he deemed was decadent, riding a buffalo. He was convince to halt at the western border of the kingdom and to write down his teachings, which were the 'Book of the Way and Virtue'. Laozi was finally turned into a god. Taoism became too part of the curriculum of the Chinese civil servants, who had to endure a long training and a series of grades. Taoism remained a living and open tradition which kept evolving. About 300 A.D., the White Tiger of the West, the Vermilion Bird of the South, the Black Turtle of the North and the Azure Dragon of the East were the figures to each horizon. Shintoism, a naturalistic religion, in Japan could welcome, through Korea, the Confucianism and Buddhism and Japan developed too the pecular, Buddhist-zen (a synthesis between Buddhism and Taoism) way of the martial arts. In Korea, an old philosophical and shamanist tradition too accepted the Confucianism and Buddhism and developed too a tradition of the martial arts
• Africa: the philosophy there mostly was linked to the influence of the Arabs, from North Africa to the kingdoms in the Sahel
• Precolombian Americas: the systems of thought there display some links with Hinduism, with the idea of the unicity of a superior being, or with Plato. Incas are the most away from this scheme