Recapping the World History Seminar “What Was Philosophy? Rethinking the Early History of Western Thought” on 14 April 2026
On 14 April 2026, Prof. Christopher CELENZA from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University delivered a talk entitled “What Was Philosophy? Rethinking the Early History of Western Thought.” Drawing on his recent book, the talk challenged the modern tendency to define philosophy merely as a set of formal logical systems, recovering a broader, pre-modern landscape where it was fundamentally understood as a way of life.
The speaker highlighted that this narrow modern definition stems largely from René Descartes’s mind-body dualism and Johann Jacob Brucker’s 18th-century historiography. Brucker insisted that true philosophy must be reconstructed as a coherent “system” of principles. Institutionalized by 19th-century universities, this systemic approach created a rigid canon that largely excluded many late antique and medieval Christian thinkers from the history of Western philosophy.
Tracing the actual practices of early intellectuals, the presentation argued that pre-modern philosophy was a communal pursuit embedded in oral teaching and public genres like sermons and commentaries. Through examples including the Neoplatonist Plotinus and Pope Gregory the Great, he demonstrated that early thinkers valued dialogical interactions with followers as much as their written texts. Furthermore, reading was inherently a spiritual exercise designed to elevate the soul toward the divine.
Supporting this framework, the lecture emphasized ancient philosophy as a search for human wisdom guided by exemplary figures. Just as Socrates functioned as a moral guide rather than a mere logical debater, this tradition of exemplarity transitioned seamlessly into early Christianity, where Christ became the ultimate philosophical exemplar. Prof. CELENZA concluded that stepping back from rigid disciplinary boundaries to recognize philosophy as a lived, interpretive, and communal effort offers a much richer framework for understanding how Western thought developed and endured.
