European Thought

I have read a lot of philosophy, and of course I edit philosophy. A little known philosopher who has made a big impression on me is Stephen Toulmin, a Cambridge graduate who knew Ludwig Wittgenstein (Stephen Toulmin is now 87). In particular, his thinking is expansive on what made European thought European thought. He argues that philosophers who were pivotal in Europe and beyond were hugely influenced by headline events: Thomas Hobbes by the Spanish Armada, René Descartes by the assassination of Henry IV, Gottfried Leibniz by the Thirty Years' War, and so on. Toulmin proposes to show how their thinking may, above all, have been a reaction to such things. One may, however, go further than Toulmin, searching wider than historical events. How did people react to the climate, disease, technology, and so on? OBSERVATION: When one then compares European thought with, say, African thought and the influences which shaped it, this becomes all the more interesting.