document_title: Galadriel

question_text: who played the queen of the elves in lord of the rings

text: Galadriel

text: Literature[edit]

text: Internal biography[edit]

text: Stories of Galadriel's life prior to The Lord of the Rings appear in both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. Galadriel was the only daughter and youngest child of Finarfin, prince of the Noldor, and of Eärwen, who was cousin to Lúthien. Her elder brothers were Finrod Felagund, Angrod, and Aegnor. She was born in Valinor during the Years of the Trees.

text: Galadriel is described as having been "blessed with the ability to peer into the minds of others and she judged them so fairly. But in Fëanor, she only sees darkness".[3] As one of the members of the royal house of Finwë and having the blood of the Vanyar from her paternal grandmother, Indis, she was often called the fairest of all Elves, either in Aman or Middle-earth.

text: According to the older account of her story, sketched by Tolkien in The Road Goes Ever On and used in The Silmarillion, Galadriel was an eager participant and leader in the rebellion of the Noldor and their flight from Valinor; in fact, she was the "only female to stand tall in those days". She had, however, long since parted ways with Fëanor and his sons, and did not participate in the Kinslaying at Alqualondë. In Beleriand she lived with her brother Finrod Felagund at Nargothrond and at the court of Thingol and Melian in Doriath. In this account she met Celeborn, a kinsman of Thingol, in Doriath.

text: After the War of Wrath, the Valar prohibited the leaders of the Exiles from returning to the Undying Lands, so as one of those leaders Galadriel remained an Exile in Middle-earth. At the end of the Third Age, when she refused the One Ring, she was finally allowed to return to Valinor.

text: Unfinished Tales gathers many other accounts of Galadriel and Celeborn. One of these highlights a second version of how Galadriel came to Middle-earth. She lived with her mother's kindred in the Telerin port of Alqualondë and there met Celeborn, who would become her husband and co-ruler. Celeborn, by this account, was Olwë's grandson. Galadriel and Celeborn sailed from the West and came to Beleriand separately from the two main hosts of the Noldor (one that Fëanor led in the ships of the Teleri, the other led by Fingolfin and Finrod that crossed the Helcaraxë). Galadriel was thus not directly involved in the revolt of the Noldorin princes in this version, and indeed fought against them at Alqualondë during the kinslaying; but she fell under the Ban of the Valar because she left the Undying Lands without permission. In Beleriand she and Celeborn were welcomed by Thingol and lived in Doriath. When the Noldor arrived in Beleriand, Galadriel re-established contact with her brothers. In this version of the story, she is offered a pardon by the Valar, but refused it out of pride and therefore remained under the Ban. In even later accounts from Unfinished Tales, written not long before Tolkien died, Galadriel was not even subject to the Ban, and remained in Middle-earth of her own volition.

text: In both versions Celeborn and Galadriel play no important role in the Battles of Beleriand, as they judge the War of the Jewels to be hopeless against Morgoth's strength. Little is told of their subsequent activities in the First Age, and they leave Beleriand before the War of Wrath.

text: Second Age[edit]

text: They travelled first to Lindon, where they ruled over a group of Elves, probably as a fiefdom under Gil-galad who was the last High King of the Noldor. According to Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn, they then removed to the shores of Lake Nenuial (Evendim), and were accounted the Lord and Lady of all the Elves of Eriador.

text: Later, around SA 700, they moved eastward and established (or were welcomed into) the realm of Eregion or Hollin. At this time they made contact with a Nandorin settlement in the valley of the Anduin, which later became Lothlórien. At some point Celeborn and Galadriel left Eregion (where Celebrimbor either had been or now became the ruler) and settled in Lothlórien. According to some accounts, they became rulers of Lothlórien for a time during the Second Age; but in all accounts they would return to Lórien to take up its rule after Amroth was lost in the middle of the Third Age.

text: Early in the Second Age, the Númenórean King Tar-Aldarion presented some Mallorn seeds to Gil-galad, High-King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, ruler of the Kingdom of Lindon, the westernmost realm in Middle-earth; but these did not take root in his kingdom, so Gil-galad gave them instead to Galadriel. "Under her power" the mellyrn had sprouted in the land of Lothlórien, but "they did not reach the height or girth of the groves of Númenor."[4]

text: Celeborn and Galadriel had a daughter, Celebrían, who later married Elrond Half-elven of Rivendell, thus making Galadriel and her husband Celeborn the grandparents of the twins Elladan and Elrohir and their younger sister Arwen Undómiel, future Queen of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor.

text: During the Second Age, when the Rings of Power were forged, Galadriel distrusted Annatar, the loremaster who taught the craft of the Rings to Celebrimbor and the other Noldor of Eregion. According to some accounts, Celebrimbor rebelled against her view and seized power in Eregion, so Galadriel departed to Lórien via the gates of Moria, though Celeborn stayed behind as he refused to enter the dwarves' stronghold. Her distrust was justified, for Annatar was revealed as Sauron pretending to be an emissary from the Vala Aulë. When Sauron attacked Eregion, Celebrimbor entrusted Galadriel with one of the Three Rings of the Elves, Nenya, the Ring of Water or the Ring of Adamant. Celeborn joined up with Elrond, whose force was unable to relieve Eregion but managed to escape back to Imladris. Celeborn was reunited with Galadriel after the war ended; according to one text, after some years in Imladris (during which Elrond first saw and fell in love with Celebrían) Galadriel's sea-longing became so strong that the couple removed to Belfalas and lived at the place later called Dol Amroth.[5]

text: With the fall of Gil-galad in the War of the Last Alliance, Galadriel, Elrond, and Círdan became the most prominent of the rulers among the elves in Middle-earth, and Galadriel the foremost of the remaining Exiles.

text: Third Age[edit]

text: Conscious of Sauron's power and wishing to thwart it, she did not use her Ring so long as the One Ring was in Sauron's hands. However, during the Third Age, when the One Ring was lost, she put hers to use in making Lothlórien a fair refuge for the Nandor. In the years after the departure and loss of Amroth and Nimrodel, Galadriel maintained constant vigilance against Sauron and often strove with him in thought. Sauron was said to have great desire to see into her mind, but could not so long as he did not have the One Ring. During the latter part of the Third Age, when Lothlórien was closed to outsiders, the Lord and Lady of the Galadhrim maintained communication with Imladris, but less so with the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood. She was the original convenor of the White Council.

text:
“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” [Galadriel] lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark... Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. “I pass the test,” she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tag: div

text: In The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel welcomed the Fellowship to Lothlórien after their escape from Moria. When she met the Fellowship in her tree-dwelling in Caras Galadhon, she gave each member a searching look, testing their resolve—though Boromir interpreted this test as a temptation. She was in turn tested when Frodo Baggins offered to place the Ring in her keeping. Knowing that its corrupting influence would make her "great and terrible", and recalling the ambitions that had once brought her to Middle-earth, she refused the Ring. She accepted that her own ring's power would fail and that her people would diminish and fade with the One Ring's destruction, and that her only escape from the fading of the Elves and the dominion of Men was to return at last to Valinor. There is the suggestion in the novel, backed up by other writings,[6] that in acknowledgement of this renunciation of power her personal ban from Valinor was lifted and she was finally given leave to return over the sea.

text: When the Fellowship left Lothlórien, she gave each member a gift and an Elven cloak, and outfitted the party with boats and supplies, both as practical support and as a symbol of faith, hope and goodwill.

text: On the day that the Fellowship left Lórien, Gandalf arrived, carried by the eagle Gwaihir. Galadriel healed his wounds and reclothed him in white, signaling his new status as head of the Istari. During the last battles of the War of the Ring, Lórien was reportedly besieged three times by the armies of Dol Guldur. It was stated that Lórien resisted the attacks due to the bravery of its inhabitants; but also that "the power that dwelt there was too great for any to overcome, unless Sauron had come there himself."[7]

text: After Sauron perished, Celeborn led the host of Lórien across the Anduin and captured Dol Guldur. Galadriel came forth and "threw down its walls and laid bare its pits", recalling the deeds of Lúthien Tinúviel, who did the same at Tol Sirion in the First Age.

text: Galadriel passed over the Great Sea with Elrond, Gandalf, and the Ring-bearers Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, marking the end of the Third Age. Celeborn remained behind, and Tolkien writes that "there is no record of the day when at last he sought the Grey Havens".[8] She is the only one of the leaders of the Noldorin exiles to return. She was well over 7,000 years old at that time.

text: Names and titles[edit]

text: Galadriel was originally named Artanis (Q. 'ar'=noble, 'nis'=woman, a name common to royal women of the Elves, most prominently as in the form Arwen, Galadriel's granddaughter), and Nerwen (Q. 'ner'=man, 'wen'=maiden, hence manly maiden), referring to her height and strength; Galadriel is the Sindarinized version of Telerin Quenya Alatáriel (Q. 'alatá'=radiance, 'riel'=maiden crowned with a garland), a name given her by Celeborn, referring to her silver-golden hair.[citation needed]

text: The name Galadhriel (S. 'galadh'=tree, 'riel'=crowned maiden) was used outside Lórien by the people who did not know the ancient days and Galadriel's history, confusing galad with the Sindarin word galadh and the name of the Galadhrim, the people of Lórien.[9]

text: As the ruler of Lothlórien, she was referred to by a variety of titles, including "Lady of Lórien", "Lady of the Wood", and (by Gimli)[10] "Queen Galadriel"[11]—although, according to Tolkien's account in Unfinished Tales, neither she nor Celeborn took royal titles themselves, as they considered they were but guardians of Lórien.[12] She was also referred to as "Lady of Light" (the translation of Galadriel) or as the "White Lady", as her fair skin and white cloaks made her seem to shine.

text: Characteristics[edit]

text: It was said (by the Dúnedain) that her height was two rangar (Quenya: 'strides'), or "man-high" – about 6 ft. 4 in., or 193 cm.[13] However, Galadriel's most striking feature is her beautiful long silver-golden hair. The Elves of Tirion said it captured the radiance of the Two Trees Laurelin and Telperion themselves.

text: Even among the Eldar she was accounted beautiful, and her hair is held a marvel unmatched. It is golden like the hair of her father and of her foremother Indis, but richer and more radiant, for its gold is touched by some memory of the starlike silver of her mother; and the Eldar say that the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, has been snared in her tresses.[14]

text: It was greatly admired by Fëanor and may have inspired him to create the Silmarilli.

text: Many thought that this saying first gave to Fëanor the thought of imprisoning and blending the light of the Trees that later took shape in his hands as the Silmarils. For Fëanor beheld the hair of Galadriel with wonder and delight.[14]

text: Nevertheless, she never repaid Fëanor's admiration with the generosity she showed to Gimli the Dwarf in The Fellowship of the Ring. Fëanor "had begged her thrice for a tress and thrice she refused to give him even one hair. It is said that these two kinsfolk, being considered the greatest of the Eldar of Valinor, remain unfriends forever."[14]:p. 230

text: Her character was similarly a blend of characteristics of the kindreds of the Eldar from whom she was descended. She had the pride and ambition of the Noldor, but in her they were tempered by the gentleness and insight of the Vanyar. She shared the latter virtues of character with her father Finarfin and her brother Finrod.

text: She was proud, strong, and self-willed, as were all the descendants of Finwë save Finarfin; and like her brother Finrod, of all her kin the nearest to her heart, she had dreams of far lands and dominions that might be her own to order as she would without tutelage. Yet deeper still there dwelt in her the noble and generous spirit of the Vanyar, and a reverence for the Valar that she could not forget. From her earliest years she had a marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others, but judged them with mercy and understanding, and she withheld her goodwill from none save only Fëanor. In him she perceived a darkness that she hated and feared, though she did not perceive that the shadow of the same evil had fallen upon the minds of all the Noldor, and upon her own.[14]

text: Her sympathy for Gimli the Dwarf in Lothlórien, when she rebuked her husband Celeborn for being tempted to regret his decision to admit the Dwarf to that land, won Gimli's heart forever.[15]

text: She was said to be a match for both the loremasters and athletes of the Eldar. She was the mightiest of the women of the Eldar.

text: House of Finarfin[edit]

text:
[show]

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The House of Finarfin

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Finwë

Indis

Olwë

Fingolfin

Finarfin

Eärwen

Finrod

Angrod

Eldalótë

Aegnor

Galadriel

Celeborn

Orodreth

Elrond

Celebrían

Gil-galad

Finduilas

Notes:

Orodreth is sometimes described as a son of Finarfin.

text: Adaptations[edit]

text: Galadriel was voiced by Annette Crosbie in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film of The Lord of the Rings, and by Marian Diamond in BBC Radio's 1981 serialisation. While she did not appear in the 1980 animated The Return of the King, she was mentioned by name when Frodo refers to Galadriel's phial.

text: In Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit prequel trilogy, Galadriel is played by Cate Blanchett.[16] In the movies, other than possessing the Ring Nenya, Galadriel displays an ability to communicate with others telepathically and to assume a radiant and terrifying appearance.

text: In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, as she was present at time, Galadriel narrates the events of prologue that explains the creation of the Rings of Power and the War of the Last Alliance. When the Fellowship enters the woods of Lórien, contacting Frodo via telepathy, Galadriel welcomes them to Lothlórien while using her power to tell Boromir that there is still hope despite Gondor's danger. When offered the Ring by Frodo after revealing it would eventually destroy his friends should he remain with them, Galadriel briefly assumed her horrific form before turning down the offer. Galadriel later gives Eärendil's Light to Frodo for his use. The gifts she gives to the rest of the Fellowship differ from the book's account, as is her absence from the coronation of King Elessar at the end of Return of the King.[clarification needed] At the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Galadriel departs with Celeborn accompanying her, Elrond, Gandalf, Frodo, and Bilbo.

text: In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, taking place sixty years before the events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Galadriel attends the White Council meeting at Rivendell with Elrond, Gandalf, and Saruman, to discuss the rising threat of the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. While Galadriel identifies the Morgul-blade that Radagast retrieved from Dol Guldur to belong to the Witch-King of Angmar, she also communicates telepathically with Gandalf during the meeting. After the meeting ends, Galadriel agrees with Gandalf's opinion that Smaug and the Necromancer must be dealt with, sympathetic to the wizard's reason for the presence of Bilbo Baggins. She offers her assistance, promising that if he should ever need her help, she will come. In the second film, The Desolation of Smaug, Galadriel telepathically convinces Gandalf leave the Company to investigate the tomb of the Nazgûl. Gandalf later sends Radagast to Lothlórien to report their findings of Sauron being the Necromancer before he enters Dol Guldur on his own. In the final film, The Battle of the Five Armies, Galadriel rescues Gandalf from captivity in Dol Guldur as he is about to be executed. She is weakened by the sudden appearance of the Nazgûl, but her hidden companions, Elrond and Saruman, engage them in combat. She seemingly uses the last of her strength to secure Gandalf's escape with Radagast. After the Nazgûl are defeated, Sauron himself appears, reviving his servants. Galadriel assumes a terrifying image (similar to her changed appearance when offered the One Ring by Frodo Baggins in Lothlórien) to confront him. Using Eärendil's Light, she banishes Sauron and the Nazgûl to Mordor, though at a great expenditure of power. Afterward, she is taken back to Lothlórien by Elrond to recover.

text: On stage, Galadriel was portrayed by Rebecca Jackson Mendoza in the three-hour-long Toronto stage musical production of The Lord of the Rings, which opened in 2006 and ran several months. The musical was revised and moved to London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, opening on 21 June 2007. Matthew Warchus directed Laura Michelle Kelly in the role. Abbie Osmon took over from Kelly on 4 February 2008, and played the role through the show's closing on 19 July 2008.

text: Galadriel appears in the video game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II and others.

text: Legacy in music[edit]

text: Tolkien wrote a poem "Namárië" that Galadriel sings in farewell to the departing Fellowship, and to Frodo in particular. The song is in Quenya, and "spoke of things little-known in Middle-earth," but Frodo is said to have remembered the words and translated them long afterward. It is a lament in which Galadriel describes her separation from the Blessed Realm and the Valar, her longing to return there, and at the end a wish or hope that even though she herself is forbidden (by the Ban) to return, that Frodo might somehow come in the end to Valinor (the song specifically refers to Valimar, the city of the Valar in Valinor).

text: The poem was set to music by Donald Swann with the help of Tolkien. The sheet music and an audio recording are part of the book The Road Goes Ever On. In a recording Tolkien sings it in a Gregorian manner.[17]

text: On their album Once Again, the band Barclay James Harvest featured a song called "Galadriel". It gained notability because guitarist John Lees played John Lennon's Epiphone Casino guitar on this track,[18] an event later recounted in a song on the band's 1990 album Welcome To The Show titled "John Lennon's Guitar".

text: Songwriter Terry Britten also wrote a song "Galadriel" which was recorded by Cliff Richard.

text: Sally Oldfield's suite "Songs of the Quendi" on her album Water Bearer (1978) describes the return of Galadriel to the Blessed Realm after seven millennia of exile.

text: Sydney-based progressive rock band Galadriel achieved minor success in the early 1970s, and continue to have a cult following around the world due to a revived interest in 1960s and 1970s Australian rock. Rare copies of their first album are much sought-after, particularly in Germany where they were signed to the local Polydor label in 1971. Singer John 'Spider' Sholten later joined the touring company of singer-songwriter Ross Ryan as stage manager and general comic relief for Ross during his performances.

text: In 2003, Fran Walsh, Howard Shore, and Annie Lennox co-wrote the Oscar-winning song "Into the West" for the closing credits of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Originally sung by Annie Lennox, the song was conceived as Galadriel's bittersweet lament for those who have sailed across the Sundering Seas. The lyrics include phrases from the final chapter of the original novel. The song has since been covered by Yulia Townsend and Will Martin.


document_title: San Antonio River Walk

question_text: where does the riverwalk start in san antonio

root

text: San Antonio River Walk

text: History[edit]

text: In September 1921, a disastrous flood along the San Antonio River took 50 lives.[1] Plans were then developed for flood control of the river. Among the plans was to build an upstream dam (Olmos Dam) and bypass a prominent bend of the river in the Downtown area (between present day Houston Street and Villita Parkway), then to pave over the bend, and create a storm sewer.

tag: p

text: Work began on the Olmos Dam and bypass channel in 1926; however, the San Antonio Conservation Society successfully protested the paved sewer option. No major plans came into play until 1929, when San Antonio native and architect Robert Hugman submitted his plans for what would become the River Walk. Although many have been involved in development of the site, the leadership of former mayor Jack White was instrumental in passage of a bond issue that raised funds to empower the 1938 “San Antonio River Beautification Project”, which began the evolution of the site into the present 2.5-mile-long (4 km) River Walk.

text: Hugman endorsed the bypass channel idea (which would be completed later that year) but, instead of paving over the bend, Hugman suggested 1) a flood gate at the northern (upstream) end of the bend; 2) a small dam at the southern (downstream) end of the bend; and 3) a Tainter gate in the channel to regulate flow. The bend would then be surrounded by commercial development, which he titled "The Shops of Aragon and Romula". Hugman went as far as to maintain his architect's office along the bend.

text: Hugman's plan was initially not well-received – the area was noted for being dangerous. At one point, it was declared off-limits to military personnel. People were warned of the threat of being "drowned like a rat" should the river flood. However, over the next decade support for commercial development of the river bend grew, and crucial funding came in 1939 under the WPA which resulted in the initial construction of a network of some 17,000 feet (5,200 m) of walkways, about twenty bridges, and extensive plantings including some of the bald cypress (others are several hundred years old) whose branches stretch up to ten stories and are visible from street level.

text: Hugman's persistence paid off; he was named project architect. His plan would be put to the test in 1946, when another major flood threatened Downtown San Antonio, but the Olmos Dam and bypass channel minimized the area damage. Casa Rio, a landmark River Walk restaurant, became the first restaurant in the area in 1946, opening next door to Hugman's office.

text: Through the following decades the network has been improved and extended. The first major extension of the Riverwalk was constructed by the joint venture of two general contractors Darragh & Lyda Inc. and H. A. Lott Inc. to Tower of the Americas as part of HemisFair '68. The expansion extended the Riverwalk beyond its natural banks at the horseshoe bend to the new convention center and theater by excavating much of the block bordered by Commerce, Bowie, Market and Alamo Streets. That was also the year the Hilton Palacio del Rio was built, the first of many downtown hotels that leverage their slice of urban "riverfront." A subsequent major expansion opened in 1988 that extended a branch from the 1968 extension to create a lagoon at the new Rivercenter Mall and the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel.

text: In 1981 the Hyatt Regency San Antonio opened with a new pedestrian connector that linked Alamo Plaza to the River Walk with concrete waterfalls, waterways and indigenous landscaping. Known as the Paseo del Alamo, this river "extension" actually flows from Alamo Plaza into the San Antonio River through the atrium of the hotel. This connector not only allows the hotel to market itself as being on Alamo Plaza and on the River Walk, but it provides the city with an urban park that connects the city's two largest tourist attractions.

text: Many downtown buildings like the Casino Club Building have street entrances and separate river entrances one level below. This separates the automotive service grid (for delivery and emergency vehicles) and pedestrian traffic below, and creating an intricate network of bridges, walkways, and old staircases. The San Antonio Spurs had their five NBA Championship victory parades/cruises along the river.

text: Growth and expansion[edit]

text: Expansion plans are planned for areas of the river north and south of Downtown. As chain restaurants and establishments have begun to flourish, now taking up about a third of commercial space, talk has begun at City Hall about limiting their existence on the River Walk and keeping a distinctively local flair. On May 30, 2009 the city opened the $72 million Museum Reach.[2] The Museum Reach features local attractions such as the San Antonio Museum of Art and The Pearl Brewery, which has become one of the most popular areas for locals.[3][4]

text: Two years later, in May 2011, the River Walk was extended by several miles to extend from Downtown to Mission Espada which is on the city's south side. This addition (named the "Mission Reach") is notable for its emphasis on ecological controls and improvements, as well as trail improvements to support both hiking and biking.[5] The Mission Reach has paddling trails[6] and biking trails which allow tourists to experience the UNESCO World Heritage Missions.[7][8]

text: The River Walk has inspired similar projects in other cities, such as the Little Sugar Creek Greenway in Charlotte, North Carolina,[9] the Cherry Creek Greenway in Denver, Colorado,[10] and the Santa Lucía Riverwalk in Monterrey, Mexico.[11]

text: After years of murmuring from locals and tourists about the water's quality, talk has also begun about cleaning up the water, although the muddy bottom and silt deposits make this difficult.[12] The muddy bottom does receive an annual cleaning during the Mud Festival.[13]

text: In early 2016, for the first time in its history, the River Walk was connected with another linear urban walkway, the San Pedro Creek Greenway. The greenway joins with the River Walk at the confluence of the San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River near Mission Concepción.

text: On May 25, 2017, Esperanza Andrade, a former Texas secretary of state, and Lisa Wong, her business partner in the company Go Rio San Antonio, prevailed in a 10-1 vote from the San Antonio City Council for the $100 million contract to operate the barges on the River Walk. The only dissenter on the council was the mayoral candidate Ron Nirenberg, who opposes Mayor Ivy Taylor in a runoff election on June 10. In selecting Andrade and Wong, the council rejected City Manager Sheryl Sculley's recommendation to award the contract instead to the Chicago-based Entertainment Cruises, the choice also of former Mayor Phil Hardberger. On receiving the contract, Andrade told Taylor and the council: "We not only know but we understand why the River Walk is indeed our crown jewel of our beautiful city. And we understand that the barge operation is the thread that weaves it all together."[14]


document_title: Western philosophy

question_text: the greek usually thought of as the first western philosopher was who

question_tokens: the greek usually thought of as the first western philosopher was who

text: Western philosophy

text: Ancient[edit]

text:
History of
Western philosophy

Western philosophy

By era

Pre-Socratic
Ancient
Medieval
Renaissance
Modern
Contemporary

By century

16th
17th
18th
19th
20th
21st

See also

Religious philosophy

Buddhist
Christian
Hindu
Islamic
Jewish
Sikh

Eastern philosophy

Chinese
Indian
Iranian
Japanese
Korean

Western culture
Western world

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tag: table

text: Pre-Socratic period[edit]

text: In the pre-Socratic period, ancient philosophers first articulated questions about the "arche" (the cause or first principle) of the universe. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor (Ionia) with Thales of Miletus, who was active c. 585 BC and was responsible for the opaque dictum, "all is water." His most noted students were respectively Anaximander (all is apeiron (roughly, the unlimited)) and Anaximenes of Miletus ("all is air"). Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, later lived at Croton in southern Italy (Magna Graecia). Pythagoreans hold that "all is number," giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation.

text: Socrates[edit]

text: A key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a branch of philosophy that is still pursued today. It is said that following a visit to the Oracle of Delphi he spent much of his life questioning anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to disprove the oracular prophecy that there would be no man wiser than Socrates. Socrates used a critical approach called the "elenchus" or Socratic method to examine people's views. He aimed to study human things: the good life, justice, beauty, and virtue. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations. He was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisting in drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 B.C.

text: Plato[edit]

text: Plato was a student of Socrates. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, which applied the Socratic method of inquiry to examine philosophical problems. Some central ideas of Plato's dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute true reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called "becoming".

text: Aristotle[edit]

text: Aristotle was a pupil of Plato. Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and scientist. He wrote about physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics and logic. Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great. He in turn conquered much of the ancient world at a rapid pace. Hellenization and Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all Western and Middle Eastern philosophers, including Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thinkers.

text: Medieval[edit]

text: Early and late medieval philosophy[edit]

text: Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the Christianization of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance.[3] Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate the then widespread sacred doctrines of Abrahamic religion (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) with secular learning. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the philosophy of Plato himself.

text: Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation. The prominent figure of this period was St. Augustine who adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it in the 4th century and whose influence dominated medieval philosophy perhaps up to end of the era but was checked with the arrival of Aristotle's texts. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers (including the great St. Anselm of Canterbury) up until the 13th century.

text: The foundations of many northern European universities were built in the Middle Ages by waves of Irish, Scottish & English monks from the Celtic Church begun by Columba, see Celtic Christianity. John of Ireland (Erigena) wrote an important synthesis of ancient learning in the 9th century -- De divisione naturae-- which has been called the final achievement of ancient philosophy, a work which "synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries." Erigena is said to have been stabbed to death by his students with their pens, and his works were later condemned as heresy. His theology would today be called "pantheistic," in keeping with Celtic resolutions of pagan and Christian philosophy. He also studied Greek texts in Athens, and uniquely among European philosophers, wrote in that language, calling The Division of Nature, the Periphyseon.

text: The Celtic Church's intellectual influence on European theology and imagination was later overthrown and down-graded, but would persist nonetheless. To complicate the Manichean conception of Heaven & Hell, for example, the Irish invented Purgatory, adding a spectrum of possibilities to the geography of binary thinking. Dante's Inferno was influenced by Irish literature, specifically, The Vision of Tondal or Visio Tnugdali. Similarly, European explorers were familiar with a New World called "Brazil" or Saint Brendan's Island or Brasil (mythical island) from Irish writings about an island far west in the Atlantic, which was translated across Europe in many languages as the Navigatio Brendanis or St. Brendan's Voyage.

text: The Renaissance of Charlemagne was fed by Celtic Church missionaries travelling from Ireland & Britain to France and Germany through the Dark Ages and lasted until the great Italian re-ordering took place of European institutions & thought in the 13th century by the "Doctor of the Church," Thomas Aquinas in Paris.

text: Thomas Aquinas, the father of Thomism, was immensely influential in Catholic Europe; he placed a great emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing.

text: Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Anselm, Gilbert de la Porrée, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhazen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer, Ibn Khaldūn, and Averroes. The medieval tradition of Scholasticism continued to flourish as late as the 17th century, in figures such as Francisco Suárez and John of St. Thomas.

text: Late medieval and Renaissance[edit]

text: The Renaissance ("rebirth") was a period of transition between the Middle Ages and modern thought,[4] in which the recovery of classical texts helped shift philosophical interests away from technical studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology towards eclectic inquiries into morality, philology, and mysticism.[5][6] The study of the classics and the humane arts generally, such as history and literature, enjoyed a scholarly interest hitherto unknown in Christendom, a tendency referred to as humanism.[7][8] Displacing the medieval interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists followed Petrarch in making man and his virtues the focus of philosophy.[9][10]

text: Modern[edit]

text: The term "modern philosophy" has multiple usages. For example, Thomas Hobbes is sometimes considered the first modern philosopher because he applied a systematic method to political philosophy.[11][12] By contrast, René Descartes is often considered the first modern philosopher because he grounded his philosophy in problems of knowledge, rather than problems of metaphysics.[13]

text: Modern philosophy and especially Enlightenment philosophy[14] is distinguished by its increasing independence from traditional authorities such as the Church, academia, and Aristotelianism;[15][16] a new focus on the foundations of knowledge and metaphysical system-building;[17][18] and the emergence of modern physics out of natural philosophy.[19]

text: Early modern[edit]

text: Some central topics of philosophy in this period include the nature of the mind and its relation to the body, the implications of the new natural sciences for traditional theological topics such as free will and God, and the emergence of a secular basis for moral and political philosophy.[20] These trends first distinctively coalesce in Francis Bacon's call for a new, empirical program for expanding knowledge, and soon found massively influential form in the mechanical physics and rationalist metaphysics of René Descartes.[21]

text: Other notable modern philosophers include Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.[22][23][24] Many other contributors were philosophers, scientists, medical doctors, and politicians. A short list includes Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, Nicolas Malebranche, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, Christian Wolff, Montesquieu, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Reid, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Adam Smith, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

text: The approximate end of the early modern period is most often identified with Immanuel Kant's systematic attempt to limit metaphysics, justify scientific knowledge, and reconcile both of these with morality and freedom.[25][26][27]

text: Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th century.[28]

text: German philosophy exercised broad influence in this century, owing in part to the dominance of the German university system.[29] German idealists, such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, transformed the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is constituted by a rational or mind-like process, and as such is entirely knowable.[30] Arthur Schopenhauer's identification of this world-constituting process as an irrational will to live influenced later 19th- and early 20th-century thinking, such as the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.

text: The 19th century took the radical notions of self-organization and intrinsic order from Goethe and Kantian metaphysics, and proceeded to produce a long elaboration on the tension between systematization and organic development. Foremost was the work of Hegel, whose Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit produced a "dialectical" framework for ordering of knowledge.

text: As with the 18th century, developments in science arose from philosophy and also challenged philosophy: most importantly the work of Charles Darwin, which was based on the idea of organic self-regulation found in philosophers such as Smith, but fundamentally challenged established conceptions.

text: After Hegel's death in 1831, 19th-century philosophy largely turned against idealism in favor of varieties of philosophical naturalism, such as the positivism of Auguste Comte, the empiricism of John Stuart Mill, and the materialism of Karl Marx. Logic began a period of its most significant advances since the inception of the discipline, as increasing mathematical precision opened entire fields of inference to formalization in the work of George Boole and Gottlob Frege.[31] Other philosophers who initiated lines of thought that would continue to shape philosophy into the 20th century include:

text:
Gottlob Frege and Henry Sidgwick, whose work in logic and ethics, respectively, provided the tools for early analytic philosophy.
Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, who founded pragmatism.
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, who laid the groundwork for existentialism and post-structuralism.

tag: ul

text: Contemporary approaches[edit]

text: The three major contemporary approaches to academic philosophy are analytic philosophy, continental philosophy and pragmatism.[32] They are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive.

text: The 20th century deals with the upheavals produced by a series of conflicts within philosophical discourse over the basis of knowledge, with classical certainties overthrown, and new social, economic, scientific and logical problems. 20th century philosophy was set for a series of attempts to reform and preserve, and to alter or abolish, older knowledge systems. Seminal figures include Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Edmund Husserl.

text: Since the Second World War, contemporary philosophy has been divided mostly into analytic and continental traditions; the former carried in the English speaking world and the latter on the continent of Europe. The perceived conflict between continental and analytic schools of philosophy remains prominent, despite increasing skepticism regarding the distinction's usefulness.

text: Analytic[edit]

text: In the English-speaking world, analytic philosophy became the dominant school for much of the 20th century.

text: The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress detailed argumentation, attention to semantics, use of classical logic and non-classical logics and clarity of meaning above all other criteria. Though the movement has broadened, it was a cohesive school in the first half of the century. Analytic philosophers were shaped strongly by logical positivism, united by the notion that philosophical problems could and should be solved by attention to logic and language.

text: Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore are also often counted as founders of analytic philosophy, beginning with their rejection of British idealism, their defense of realism and the emphasis they laid on the legitimacy of analysis. Russell's classic works The Principles of Mathematics,[33] On Denoting and Principia Mathematica with Alfred North Whitehead, aside from greatly promoting the use of mathematical logic in philosophy, set the ground for much of the research program in the early stages of the analytic tradition, emphasizing such problems as: the reference of proper names, whether 'existence' is a property, the nature of propositions, the analysis of definite descriptions, and discussions on the foundations of mathematics. These works also explored issues of ontological commitment and metaphysical problems regarding time, the nature of matter, mind, persistence and change, which Russell often tackled with the aid of mathematical logic.

text: Gottlob Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic was the first analytic work, according to Michael Dummett (Origins of Analytical Philosophy). Frege took "the linguistic turn," analyzing philosophical problems through language. Some analytic philosophers held that philosophical problems arise through misuse of language or because of misunderstandings of the logic of human language.

text: In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who studied under Russell at Cambridge, published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly "logical" account of linguistic and philosophical issues. Years later, he reversed a number of the positions he set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations was influential in the development of "ordinary language philosophy," which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others.

text: In the United States, meanwhile, the philosophy of Quine was having a major influence, with the paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In that paper Quine criticizes the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, arguing that a clear conception of analyticity is unattainable.

text: Notable students of Quine include Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The later work of Russell and the philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quine are influential exemplars of the naturalist approach dominant in the second half of the 20th century. But the diversity of analytic philosophy from the 1970s onward defies easy generalization: the naturalism of Quine and his epigoni was in some precincts superseded by a "new metaphysics" of possible worlds, as in the influential work of David Lewis. Recently, the experimental philosophy movement has sought to reappraise philosophical problems through social science research techniques.

text: Some influential figures in contemporary analytic philosophy are: Timothy Williamson, David Lewis, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett, Peter van Inwagen, Saul Kripke and Patricia Churchland.

text: Analytic philosophy has sometimes been accused of not contributing to the political debate or to traditional questions in aesthetics. However, with the appearance of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick, analytic political philosophy acquired respectability. Analytic philosophers have also shown depth in their investigations of aesthetics, with Roger Scruton, Nelson Goodman, Arthur Danto and others developing the subject to its current shape.

text: Continental[edit]

text: Continental philosophy is a set of 19th- and 20th-century philosophical traditions from mainland Europe. 20th-century movements such as German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, modern hermeneutics, critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism and others are included within this loose category. While identifying any non-trivial common factor in all these schools of thought is bound to be controversial, Michael E. Rosen has hypothesized a few common Continental themes: that the natural sciences cannot replace the human sciences; that the thinker is affected by the conditions of experience (one's place and time in history); that philosophy is both theoretical and practical; that metaphilosophy or reflection upon the methods and nature of philosophy itself is an important part of philosophy proper.

text: The founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, sought to study consciousness as experienced from a first-person perspective, while Martin Heidegger drew on the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl to propose an unconventional existential approach to ontology. In the Arabic-speaking world, Arab nationalist philosophy became the dominant school of thought, involving philosophers such as Michel Aflaq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, Salah al-Din al-Bitar of Ba'athism and Sati' al-Husri.

text: Phenomenologically oriented metaphysics undergirded existentialism (Heidegger, Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus) and finally post-structuralism (Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida). The psychoanalytic work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and others has also been influential in contemporary continental thought. Conversely, some philosophers have attempted to define and rehabilitate older traditions of philosophy. Most notably, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Alasdair MacIntyre have both, albeit in different ways, revived the tradition of Aristotelianism.

text: German idealism[edit]

text: Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the view that there are limits on what can be understood, since there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781–1787) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data—a framework including space and time themselves—he maintained that things-in-themselves existed independently of human perceptions and judgments; he was therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Kant's account of things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex. Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy.

text: The most notable work of this German idealism was G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas were not new, but that all the previous philosophies had been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between "being" and "not being"), and also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their compatibility at a higher level of examination ("being" and "not being" are resolved with "becoming"). This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as the "Hegelian dialectic".

text: Philosophers influenced by Hegel include Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, who coined the term projection as pertaining to humans' inability to recognize anything in the external world without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things; Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; and the British idealists, notably T. H. Green, J. M. E. McTaggart and F. H. Bradley. Few 20th-century philosophers have embraced idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic. Immanuel Kant's "Copernican Turn" also remains an important philosophical concept today.

text: Phenomenology[edit]

text: Edmund Husserl's phenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general.[34] An important part of Husserl's phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality.[35] Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses. Husserl's work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Göttingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.

text: Existentialism[edit]

text: Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[36][37] shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.[38] In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[39] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[40][41]

text: Although they did not use the term, the 19th-century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.[42][43][44]

text: Structuralism and post-structuralism[edit]

text: Inaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism sought to clarify systems of signs through analyzing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought. This led continental thought away from humanism, and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man.

text: Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its positivism soon came under fire by post-structuralism, a wide field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyze systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines. While the distinction between the signifier and signified was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to grasp the signified results in more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible.

text: Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan. Post-structuralism came to predominate from the 1970s onwards, including thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and even Roland Barthes; it incorporated a critique of structuralism's limitations.

text: Pragmatism[edit]

text: Pragmatism asserts that the truth of beliefs consists in their usefulness and efficacy rather than their correspondence with reality.[45] Peirce and James were its co-founders and it was later modified by Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as something established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion.[46]

text: Pragmatism attempted to find a scientific concept of truth that does not depend on personal insight (revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. It interpreted the meaning of a statement by the effect its acceptance would have on practice. Inquiry taken far enough is thus the only path to truth.[47]

text: For Peirce commitment to inquiry was essential to truth-finding, implied by the idea and hope that inquiry is not fruitless. The interpretation of these principles has been subject to discussion ever since. Peirce's maxim of pragmatism is, "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."[48]

text: Critics accused pragmatism falling victim to a simple fallacy: that because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is an appropriate basis for its truthfulness.[49] Pragmatist thinkers include Dewey, Santayana, Quine and Lewis. Pragmatism was later worked on by Rorty, Lachs, Davidson, Haack and Putnam.

text: Thomism[edit]

text: This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: Largely Aristotelian in its approach and content, Thomism is a philosophical tradition that follows the writings of Thomas Aquinas. His work has been read, studied and disputed since the 13th century, especially by Roman Catholics. Aquinas enjoyed a revived interest beginning in the late 19th century, among both atheists (Philippa Foot) and theists (Elizabeth Anscombe).[50] Thomist philosophers tend to be rationalists in epistemology, as well as metaphysical realists and virtue ethicists. They claim that humans are rational animals whose good can be known by reason that can be achieved by the will. Thomists argue that soul or psyche is real and immaterial but inseparable from matter in organisms. Soul is the form of the body. Thomists accept Aristotle's causes as natural, including teleological or final causes. In this way, although Aquinas argued that whatever is in the intellect begins in the senses, natural teleology can be discerned with the senses and abstracted from nature through induction.[51]

text: Contemporary Thomism encompasses multiple variants, from Neo-Scholasticism to Existential Thomism.[52]

text: The so-called new Natural lawyers like Grisez and George applied Thomistic legal principles to contemporary ethical debates, while Freeman proposed that Thomism's cognition was most compatible with neurodynamics. Analytical Thomism (Haldane) encourages dialogue between analytic philosophy and broadly Aristotelian philosophy of mind, psychology and hylomorphic metaphysics.[53] Other contemporary Thomists include Stump, MacIntyre and Finnis.

text: Marxism[edit]

text: Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis, originating from Marx and Engels. It analyzes class relations and societal conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation. Marxist analyses and methodologies influenced political ideologies and social movements. Marxist understandings of history and society were adopted by academics in archaeology, anthropology, media studies, political science, theater, history, sociology, art history and theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology and philosophy.

text: Western philosophical subdisciplines[edit]

text: Western philosophers have often been divided into some major branches, or schools, based either on the questions typically addressed by people working in different parts of the field, or notions of ideological undercurrents. In the ancient world, the most influential division of the subject was the Stoics' division of philosophy into logic, ethics, and physics (conceived as the study of the nature of the world, and including both natural science and metaphysics). In contemporary philosophy, specialties within the field are more commonly divided into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics (the latter two of which together comprise axiology, or value theory). Logic is sometimes included as a main branch of philosophy, sometimes as a separate science philosophers happen to work on, and sometimes just as a characteristically philosophical method applying to all branches of philosophy.

text: Within these broad branches there are now numerous sub-disciplines of philosophy. At the broadest level there is the division between analytic (the English-speaking world and Nordic countries) and continental philosophy (in the rest of Europe). For continental philosophy subdividing philosophy between "experts" is problematic for the very nature of the interdisciplinary task of philosophy itself; however, for most of analytic philosophy further divisions simplify the task for philosophers in each area.

text: The interest in particular sub-disciplines waxes and wanes over time; sometimes sub-disciplines become particularly hot topics and can occupy so much space in the literature that they almost seem like major branches in their own right. (Over the past 40 years or so philosophy of mind—which is, generally speaking, mainly a sub-discipline of metaphysics—has taken on this position within analytic philosophy, and has attracted so much attention that some suggest philosophy of mind as the paradigm for what contemporary analytic philosophers do).

text: Philosophy contrasted with other disciplines[edit]

text: Natural science[edit]

text: Originally the term "philosophy" was applied to all intellectual endeavours. Aristotle studied what would now be called biology, meteorology, physics, and cosmology, alongside his metaphysics and ethics. Even in the eighteenth century physics and chemistry were still classified as "natural philosophy", that is, the philosophical study of nature. Today these latter subjects are popularly referred to as sciences, and as separate from philosophy. But the distinction is not clear; some philosophers still contend that science retains an unbroken — and unbreakable — link to philosophy.

text: More recently, psychology, economics, sociology, and linguistics were once the domain of philosophers insofar as they were studied at all, but now have only a weaker connection with the field. In the late twentieth century cognitive science and artificial intelligence could be seen as being forged in part out of "philosophy of mind."

text: Philosophy is done primarily through self-reflection and critical thinking. It does not tend to rely on experiment. However, in some ways philosophy is close to science in its character and method; some analytic philosophers have suggested that the method of philosophical analysis allows philosophers to emulate the methods of natural science; Quine holds that philosophy does no more than clarify the arguments and claims of other sciences. This suggests that philosophy might be the study of meaning and reasoning generally; but some still would claim either that this is not a science, or that if it is it ought not to be pursued by philosophers.

text: All these views have something in common: whatever philosophy essentially is or is concerned with, it tends on the whole to proceed more "abstractly" than most (or most other) natural sciences. It does not depend as much on experience and experiment, and does not contribute as directly to technology. It clearly would be a mistake to identify philosophy with any one natural science; whether it can be identified with science very broadly construed is still an open question.

text: This is an active discipline pursued by both trained philosophers and scientists. Philosophers often refer to, and interpret, experimental work of various kinds (as in philosophy of physics and philosophy of psychology). But this is not surprising: such branches of philosophy aim at philosophical understanding of experimental work. It is not the philosophers in their capacity as philosophers, who perform the experiments and formulate the scientific theories under study. Philosophy of science should not be confused with science it studies any more than biology should be confused with plants and animals.

text: Theology and religious studies[edit]

text: Like philosophy, most religious studies are not experimental. Parts of theology, including questions about the existence and nature of gods, clearly overlap with philosophy of religion. Aristotle considered theology a branch of metaphysics, the central field of philosophy, and most philosophers before the twentieth century have devoted significant effort to theological questions. So the two are not unrelated. But other parts of religious studies, such as the comparison of different world religions, can be easily distinguished from philosophy in just the way that any other social science can be distinguished from philosophy. These are closer to history and sociology, and involve specific observations of particular phenomena, here particular religious practices.

text: The empiricist tradition in modern philosophy often held that religious questions are beyond the scope of human knowledge, and many have claimed that religious language is literally meaningless: there are not even questions to be answered. Some philosophers have felt that these difficulties in evidence were irrelevant, and have argued for, against, or just about religious beliefs on moral or other grounds.

text: Mathematics[edit]

text: The philosophy of mathematics is a branch of philosophy of science; but in many ways mathematics has a special relationship to philosophy. This is because the study of logic is a central branch of philosophy, and mathematics is a paradigmatic example of logic. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, logic made great advances, and mathematics has been proven to be reducible to logic (at least, to first-order logic with some set theory). The use of formal, mathematical logic in philosophy now resembles the use of mathematics in science, although it is not as frequent.


document_title: Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!

question_text: first president to say live from new york on snl

text: Origin[edit]

text: During the show's first season, the show was known simply as NBC's Saturday Night, due to the existence of an ABC show titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. This is how the phrase received its wording. The phrase was kept intact even after ABC's SNL was canceled and NBC's Saturday Night adopted the SNL name for itself.

text: Instances used[edit]

text: The phrase is typically spoken by a host, cast member(s), and/or musical guest, and has been used in every season except one (the 1981-1982 season, the first full season with Dick Ebersol as producer). It was first said live on air by Chevy Chase, on SNL's first show on October 11, 1975. For all but two of the first season's 24 episodes, Chase delivered the phrase after a pratfall of some kind. Even when the show is not aired on a Saturday—such as the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday specials aired from 2008 to 2012, and again in 2017—the traditional line is used.

text: The person delivering the phrase usually breaks character and the fourth wall, in that the phrase is normally not spoken to other cast members as part of the regular dialogue in the opening sketch. Instead, the person suddenly turns (if not already facing downstage) and delivers the phrase directly to the audience and the camera with a full-throated shout. At the same time, the camera zooms in for a tight close-up shot of the person's face, followed by a dissolve to the show's opening montage and titles.

text: Readings by special guests[edit]

text: The line has occasionally been given to a non-host/non-cast member for cameo purposes. This could be for stars like Brad Pitt and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, or for more unusual celebrities like Monica Lewinsky, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire winner John Carpenter, WWE chairman Vince McMahon (on March 18, 2000), Carolyn Kepcher (on April 3, 2004), and Al Sharpton (on November 2, 2013).

text: Presidents and Presidential hopefuls[edit]

text: Gerald Ford opened the show with the phrase on April 17, 1976, which came during his presidency. A series of Presidential and Vice Presidential hopefuls have also announced the phrase on their appearances on the program, beginning with Bob Dole on November 16, 1996 (coming after the 1996 election). It was announced by Barack Obama on November 3, 2007, by Hillary Clinton on March 1, 2008, by Sarah Palin on October 18, 2008, and by John McCain on November 1, 2008.