[relaxatorium]

So by this logic are we also removing Augustine, Aquinus, Decartes, Kant and the dozens of other canonical western philosophers whose arguments were substantially religious in nature?

I suppose we could, but this leaves a pretty thin curriculum.

[skwirl]

The big difference is the method. The people you cite made arguments based on premises and those arguments taken together (to their belief) were consistent. When people attacked the arguments and premises, they defended them. When the arguments or premises were eventually found to be indefensible, they were abandoned. Their premises, when based on religious texts, were bad - but the very method that they championed is what exposed that.

The scientific method itself is a product of Western Philosophy. The very fact that you know these philosophers were wrong about many things is thanks to the very tradition they were upholding.

My brief exposure to "Eastern Philosophy" in college was interesting as it did not really feel like philosophy. It seemed to be nuggets of so-called wisdom presented without argument. It very much reminded me of some books in the old testament and even some pre-Socratic philosophy. It came across basically as religious/mystic dogma.

[ricksplat]

> Augustine, Aquinus

> nuggets of so-called wisdom presented without argument

I think P-1 is half right in that Augustine and Aquinas are similar to the Eastern philosophy described by P.

These great catholic philosophers were of a scholastic [0] tradition, relying on syllogistic reasoning alone - deriving from certain axioms similar to the "nuggets" of eastern wisdom.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to lump Descartes and Kant into this category as they were far more of the inductive tradition. The former was writing at a time when to write about such a thing could be considered heresy, so he had to work around some of these "axioms". The latter wasn't so much religious as informed by his cultural context.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism

[Malarkey73]

And forget Plato and ~half of Greek Philosophy.

[tomp]

Admittedly I only studied philosophy in high school, but according to the version of Categorical Imperative that I was taught, Kant's philosophy was highly rational and almost perfectly logical.

[eli_gottlieb]

> So by this logic are we also removing Augustine, Aquinus, Decartes, Kant and the dozens of other canonical western philosophers whose arguments were substantially religious in nature?

That would be very nice, actually. If your philosophizing requires the supernatural to make sense, it's not very good.