The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [280]
• The idea of progress grew from the Renaissance, spreading to all of Europe and its offshoots in America and elsewhere.
• World Wars I and II, the most destructive in history, threw the Western World into chaos and made the dream of progress questionable.
• WWI & WWII smashed Western Europe and Russia, and this changed the outlook of Western Europe. America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and others maintained a more positive outlook; however, as time progressed, the gloom of the two World Wars, plus unsolvable new problems, overwhelmed even these areas. Victory in the Cold War did not eliminate the depressive effects of the 20th Century.
• Capitalism, and economic freedom, including private property rights are hallmarks of the Western world. They are major reasons behind the prosperity of the West because they open the door for vast rewards to the person who can innovate. Capitalism requires individual freedom and the protection of private property. Without political freedom capitalism cannot work. Whatever the problems, the economic and political freedoms granted by capitalism far outweigh any downside. Beyond the West, such economic and political freedoms are only dreams.
All these events make the Western world and anyone growing up in it unique. From this alone, we can see how history may determine mind-sets and thus decisions made by differing cultures. The West is unique, as each individual is unique, and the decisions by Western governments and individuals raised in the West show this difference.
Modern Philosophy—of the west
Please understand that all the philosophies examined here are grossly oversimplified and do not in any way explain the true complexity of the ideas involved.—AD2
As stated in our chapters on ancient history, Greek philosophy covered all the basic ideas found in Western philosophy. As time marched on, Western philosophy began to get bogged down in definitional problems and finally came to rest on the jagged rocks of epistemology.[387] David Hume effectively argued that what we call knowledge is only a set of experiences which cannot be depended upon to be true. For example, just because one has been adequately sustained by eating bread does not mean that one will always be so sustained. He even went so far as to prove that just because we have watched the sun come up every morning for fifty years does not mean it will come up tomorrow; thus, there is no knowledge of any kind. Finally, Hume proposed that he did not exist and went on to prove it to his own satisfaction. Most philosophers wished Hume had not existed. His form of philosophy is termed skepticism, and in Hume’s case extreme skepticism.
British empiricism argued all knowledge came from experience alone. Empiricism was opposed to the philosophical position of rationalism, which stressed innate ideas—ideas that come from the brain alone without sensory input—were all that was true. Since Hume destroyed the idea of knowledge coming from experience he put a hammerlock on innate ideas as well as sensory ideas. Oh well . . . since Hume proved he did not exist we can safely move on. By the way, empiricism and rationalism both survived Hume.
Compare empiricism to Descartes (I think therefore I am) who thought he was, and therefore he really was, and this means the brain can think without sensory input. Descartes’ reasoning might be hard to follow, but at least he thought he existed, or because he thought he thought, thus he existed . . . or some such thing. Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am.” This was the classic statement allowing Descartes to prove his existence, and from that he built up his understanding of the world and all he experienced in it. The German idealist agreed with Descartes that the mind, its thoughts and ideas, was most important rather than the unreliable world of sensory perception. As the reader can ascertain, these arguments hearken