Western Philosophy
Western Philosophy from the ancient Greeks to modern thinkers tests whether you can state a philosopher's problem, method and central argument, then assess it. Expect comparison questions, not biographical detail.
Core map
- Pre-Socratics: Thales, Heraclitus and Parmenides ask about arche and change.
- Plato: Forms are eternal, non-spatial objects; knowledge is recollection; the cave illustrates levels of reality.
- Aristotle: forms are immanent; four causes-material, efficient, formal, final; virtue as habituated mean.
- Rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz): reason can yield substantive knowledge. Empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume): experience is the source and limit.
- Kant: synthetic a priori knowledge; phenomena are structured by space, time and categories; noumena unknowable.
- Modern themes: existentialism, phenomenology, pragmatism, analytic philosophy of language.
Worked example
Descartes doubts everything doubting can doubt, but cannot doubt that he is doubting. Reasoning: doubt is a form of thinking; if I think, I exist; therefore ‘cogito, ergo sum.’ The premise is not a syllogism from a general premise but a performative certainty: the act of doubt presupposes a doubter. This establishes only existence, not essence.
Traps
Do not say Plato denied the senses entirely; they occasion recollection. Do not confuse Aristotle's final cause with a temporal purpose only. Do not treat Hume's problem of induction as proof that induction is irrational in practice. Do not make Kant a subjective idealist: he distinguishes phenomena from noumena.