Having grasped, in outline, the past of philosophy in the West, we turn in our final week to the question of its future. A book released in 2012 by Leonard Peikoff, the preeminent teacher of Objectivism, analyses philosophic trends throughout Western history (from Thales to the present day) by tracking developments in four distinct cultural fields: literature, physics, education and politics.

Peikoff divides epistemological systems into three broad categories: Disintegration, Integration and Misintegration, hence the acronym D.I.M. The first and last of these also have two variants. Each civilisation, Peikoff argues, functions primarily on one of these epistemological systems. This view of knowledge informs the aforementioned cultural fields, which, in turn, reinforce the underlying epistemological base.

The question is: What’s next? What will tomorrow’s epistemology and culture bring?

Socialism? International dictatorship? Religious totalitarianism?

Peikoff concludes that we are in a transitionary stage today. The status quo, he says, is unstable and will, in all likelihood, turn for the worse.

But this is not guaranteed, and it’s up to those who understand philosophy to reverse the trend.