I could use some assistance/input from anyone who has some knowledge of philosophy. As part of my world building, I'm trying to organize 4 major groupings of philosophy: call them "philosophical spheres". Why? Basically to have some coherence to the motivations & beliefs associated w/ the races and (more importantly) magical traditions in the world. I'm basing what I have so far on 2 sources.
That should provide an idea of what I'm after. I'd like to have 1 or more related/similar schools of thought about metaphysics in each quadrant, and then the same thing for epistemology. One of the things that is a bit confusing so far is that my sources ( Wikipedia & Philosophy Basics.com in addition to the above sources) tend to mix branches of metaphysics & epistemology together in 1 chart. I realize that the distinction in some branches might be fuzzy, or that a branch might cover both. Still, it makes it hard to get a grip on the topic.
Here's what I have so far:
absolute/objective
relative/subjective
spiritual
Idealism/Essentialism
Rationalism
Phenomenalism/Voluntarism
Constructivism
material
Realism/Naturalism
Empiricism / Pragmatism
Existentialism
Maybe I'm completely off base here. Maybe the entire exercise is a fool's errand. That said, I'd appreciate input. I'll try to get back to this in the next few days & provide a bit more info on why I organized that chart like I did.
I'd say these are pretty useless for conworlding-- unless your aim is to reproduce or parody contemporary Western philosophy. The philosophies named are all Western and modern, and the axes mostly just raise questions. (Like, what is objectivity and what is spirit.)
The thing is, there are no eternal axes in philosophy. Philosophies don't exist in a void, but in history, and every school is basically a reaction against some other school, or schools. E.g. existentialism isn't the pole of some eternal verities; it's a specific 20th century movement that reacts against earlier, more rationalist or authoritarian ideologies. Sartre and Heidegger wouldn't have come up with the exact same ideas if they'd lived a hundred years before, or if they grew up reading Hindu or Chinese philosophy.
I don't think you'd go far wrong if you came up with some primordial philosophy, then come back every 200 years with a thinker who profoundly hates some of its ideas and goes in a new direction. All the better if the new ideas respond better to the current political and religious environment. After a few cycles, opinions should get pretty complicated, as each theory responds not only to its immediate predecessor, but to all of them.
It'll also tend to be the case that, no matter how much one thinker believes that they've completely repudiated the past, the next thinker will find many ways in which they didn't question enough assumptions and actually had substantial agreements with past thinkers. Thus early thinkers often set the terms of debate for a millennium, even if all the later schools think they disagree with them. (E.g. it can be said that Western philosophy has been fascinated for 2000 years with the individual and how they decide what is Good.)
I'd also note that very few thinkers would consent to being placed in one quadrant of a diagram... of any diagram. A philosophy aspires to be universalistic! To use your axes, everybody thinks their theory addresses both mind and matter, and properly allocates all experience between objectivity and subjectivity. And to get all meta about it, these schemas are themselves tied to a particular time and viewpoint. E.g. the whole spirit/matter distinction is itself a philosophical position! That is, the schema presupposes that these are two different (or at least oppositional) things, and thus has no place for monism (e.g. positions that there is no spiritual/mental world at all, or positions that there is no material world...)
Agree with zompist, especially about existentialism. Very, very strange that it shows up in both of your diagrams. Empiricism and rationalism aren't much better---of some use (but it's complicated) telling the history of modern western philosophy, no use that I know of talking about any other traditions.
(Also, I don't know what essentialism is supposed to represent. Platonism? And it's weird to put pragmatism on the "absolute/objective" side. And...)
Agreeing again with zompist, I think it's a mistake to start out with a grid that you'll fit everyone into. At any given time in the histories of your traditions, you'll have people dividing up the ideological space, but not necessarily all in the same way, or in ways that have long-term validitiy. And you're pretty sure to have people retrospectively dividing up earlier philosophies in terms of their own concerns. But it's very unlikely that a single grid will do much good to characterise the divisions in any of your traditions, let alone all of them at once.
(Would you plan out your languages that way? I don't think so, I think you'd want a picture where you start out with a variety of initial languages---initial in the sense that you've got to start somewhere, not that in-universe they come out of nowhere---and you think about how they develop and split and interact. Do the same thing with philosophy and other intellectual traditions.)
I think the closest thing to those grids that I think might have some sort of use is a very broad and imprecise decision between traditionalists and iconoclasts---which would certainly take different shapes in different cultural and philosophical contexts. I mean, you're very likely going to have some people who're pretty serious about defending traditional ideas and institutions (probably idealised / made up to one degree or another), and others who want to throw the whole thing out (at least given their conception of the whole thing).
It seems you've decided that metaphysics and epistemology will be central to the traditions you're constructing. That's fair, though if these are genuinely distinct traditions, you might expect some variation. (And that's an opportunity for some fun once the traditions come into contact.) Early Indian and Greek philosophers cared about these things (Indian more than Greek), early Chinese philosophers not so much.
You might expect politics or ethics to be important in some of the traditions.
Whatever their focus, you'll want to think about the relevant ideas and institutions that are current in their cultures. Like, if there's a widespread belief in reincarnation, then there's likely to be lots of thinking about reincarnation. (What's the nature of the self such that you can be born as another person? What if anything can be know about other lives? Does the cycle go forever? What's the point? Is there a reward/punishment system built in? If so, what explains that, and how do we know?)
If there are any especially developed/respected areas of knowledge in the culture, these are very likely to have an impact. (I'm thinking of the place of the study grammar in the development of Indian philosophy, or the importance of Euclidian geomatry for Greek philosophy.)
Are there any traditional authorities (texts, priests, supposed revelations) that your traditionalists are going to want to defend or rationalise?
At least if they're thinking about ethics or politics, then facts about the social and economic context are going to loom large. (Like, even the most reductionist of vulgar Marxist accounts tying English utilitarianism to early capitalism are likely to have something to say for them.)
I want to say something about the importance of meditation for Indian philosophy, but I'm not sure what. But it seems worth thinking about.
You'll also want to think of the social and institutional situations of your philosophers. Like, if they mostly earn their keep by offering advice to rulers, then probably they're going to care a fair bit about politics. (And there might be limits to the sorts of things they can say---in public at least!)
Do their philosophies get written down, and if so by whom and for what purpose and in what genre of text? Is a broader reading/philosophical public part of their audience? What sorts of interactions do they have with opponents? Face to face?---in what situations? Mediated by texts?---what sorts of texts?
...That ended up a bit free-associative, I hope it's useful. Disclosure: this is stuff I'm going to want to sort out for myself someday, but (in-world) that's still a millenium or so in the future.
Oh, one thing I forgot. If there's anything you're thinking of as a religious tradition, it's worth thinking about how important doctrinal orthodoxy is to that tradition---and especially to take seriously the idea tat it might not be especially important. (Like, as I understand it, the early history of Mahayana is hard to tell because new Mahayana ideas---even in someone as out there as Nagarjuna---didn't require any institutional schisms, because doctrine just didn't matter much for that sort of thing.)
Right - you have to figure out what the concerns of the tradition are. Generally speaking, pre-Socratic Greek philosophy was about metaphysics and Warring States-era Chinese philosophy was about the proper ordering of the state. These concerns can go in a lot of directions - see Zeno of Elea, Heraclitus, and Laozi - but they're still going to be there. And if there's anything that precedes the emergence of those concerns, they could be brought into the discourse over those concerns, like how the Legalists used Laozi.
It might also help to think in terms of... not quite punctuated equilibrium, but that's close enough. A philosophical scene develops, produces some things, and then fades away, and not much of interest happens for a while, rinse and repeat.
Finally getting back to this. Work + commute + grad school = not enough time for hobbies!
I have some amorphous thoughts about the various points, but haven't had enough time to distill them into coherent ideas to express. Suffice to say that I appreciate the feedback, so thanks for the replies!
I will ask, though, is there any guide somewhere that discusses the creation of con-philosophies? I haven't found anything as of yet.
