Philosophy Module 1

Introduction

 Philosophy comes from the Greek word “philo” which means love and “Sophia” which
means wisdom; literally love of wisdom or love of knowledge.
 Socrates – the father of western philosophy; claims that philosophy is the endless quest
for truth. A philosopher is a lover of truth. A philosopher abhors falsity, lies, and evil. A
philosopher keeps on asking, discovering, creating, innovating, and improving
 The implication of the socratic concept of philosophy entails that no one should
immediately accept any proposed idea w/o examining the truth of any idea.
 Aristotle – defines philo as the science of all things and their ultimate causes known by
the light of natural alone. This means that philo studies everything and seeks to know and
understand the causes and explanation of all things using their intellect or reason alone i.e
without the help of faith and sacred scriptures.
 Placing everything through the rigors of philosophical process requires the use of reason
freed from other biases or prejudgement. Reason clutched in preconceived notions leads
to falsity and fallacies. Furthermore, it is through that reality is comprehended. Reality
cannot comprehend itself, for it is in continual change. So it is only through reason,
guided by abstraction, that ultimate understanding can be attained.
 Philosophy is considered as the mother of all sciences.
 Before philosophy came into existence, everything is explained through myths. What
differentiates philosophy from myths is its use of reason in explaining phenomena/reality.
 Because man has reason, he is by nature a philosopher. He is capable of thinking, asking
questions, searching for the truth, what is right and what is good.
The Six Blind Men

 As a standard procedure in any discussion, definition of terms is a necessary phase to

undertake to level-off intellectual expectation, establish a common understanding of
words, or test theories based on the definitions agreed.
 In Philosophy, man is defined as a “human being endowed with reason.”
 To define is to “give limit to something;” we give it a sphere or area of operation; we
outline the boundaries and the scope of comprehension.
 In its rationality, the exercise of reason, the discernment of good and evil, virtue and
vice, freedom and slavery are the manifestations of rationality. Rationality
distinguishes the animality in and of human beings, it is also a property of man. If the
defined exhibits the properties as required in the definition of the definer, then the
defined surrenders to the definition.
 The contentious scenario among philosophers is how to define philosophy and other
interesting philosophical topics. To limit our understanding of philosophy is similar to
limiting our breath. As it is understood, philosophy is all about life and how we live
our lives. In this case, the debate on the definability of philosophy has become
intriguing on the basis that the definition on philosophy is also philosophy.
Philosophy: its meaning, branches, founders, and proponents

 Philosophy originally meant “love of wisdom.”

 Philosophy is also defined as the science that by natural light of reason studies the first
causes or highest principles of all things.
 Science
- It is an organized body of knowledge
- It is systematic
- It follows certain steps or employs certain procedures.
 Natural Light of Reason
- It uses a philosopher’s natural capacity to think or human reason or the so-called
unaided reason.
 Study of all Things
- It makes philosophy distinct from other sciences because it is not one dimensional or
partial.
- A philosopher does not limit himself to a particular object of inquiry.
- Philosophy is multidimensional or holistic.
 First Cause or Highest Principle
- Principle of Identity: whatever it is; whatever it is not. Everything is its own being,
and not being is not being.
- Principle of Non-Contradiction: it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the
same time.
- Principle of Excluded Middle: a thing is either is or is not; between being and not-
being, there is no middle ground possible.
- Principle of Sufficient Reason: nothing exists without sufficient reason for its being
and existence.

*Early Greek philosophers studied aspects of the natural and human world that later became
separate sciences—astronomy, physics, psychology, and sociology.

* Basic problems like the nature of the universe, the standard of justice, the validity of
knowledge, the correct application of reason, and the criteria of beauty have been the domain of
philosophy from its beginning to the present.
*These basic problems are the subject matter of the branches of philosophy.

 Branches of Philosophy
1. Metaphysics
 It is an extension of a fundamental and necessary drive in every human being to know
what is real.
 A metaphysician’s task is to explain that part of our experience which we call unreal in
terms of what we call real.
 We try to make things comprehensible by simplifying or reducing the mass of things we
call appearance to a relatively fewer number of things we call reality.
 Thales – claims that everything we experience is water (“reality”) and everything else is
“appearance.” We try to explain everything else (appearance) in terms of water (reality)
2. Idealist and Materialist
 Their theories are based on unobservable entities: mind and matter
 They explain the observable in terms of the unobservable
 Plato – nothing we experience in the physical world with our five senses is real.
- Reality is unchanging, eternal, immaterial, and can be detected only by the
intellect.
- Plato calls these realities as ideas of forms.
3. Ethics
 It explores the nature of moral value and evaluates human actions
 It is a study of the nature of moral judgements
 Philosophical ethics attempts to provide an account of our fundamental and ethical ideas.
 It insists that obedience to moral law be given a rational foundation
 Socrates – to be happy is to live a virtuous life.

- Virtue is an awakening of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in the
mind and heart of a person which can be achieved through self-knowledge.

- True knowledge = wisdom = virtue

- Courage as virtue is also knowledge

 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois – an African-American who wanted equal rights
for the blacks
- His philosophy uses the same process as Hegel’s dialectic (thesis -> antithesis ->
synthesis).
4. Epistemology
 It deals with nature, sources, limitations, and validity of knowledge
 It explains: (1) how we know what we claim to know; (2) how we can find out what we
wish to know; and (3) how we can differentiate truth from falsehood.
 It addresses varied problems: the reliability, extent, and kinds of knowledge; truth;
language; and scientific knowledge.
 Sources of knowledge
a. Induction – gives importance to particular things seen, heard, and touched.

- forms general ideas through examination of particular facts.

- Empiricist – advocates of induction method.

- Empiricism is the view that knowledge can be attained only through

sense experience.

b. Deduction – gives importance to general law from which particular facts are
understood or judged.

c. Rationalist – advocates of deduction method – for a rationalist, real knowledge

is based on logic, the laws, and the methods that reason develops.

5. Pragmatism
 The meaning and truth of an idea are tested by its practical consequences.
 Aristotle – first philosopher to device a logical method
- truth means the agreement of knowledge with reality
- logical reasoning makes us certain that our conclusions are true.
 Zeno of Citium – one of the successors of Aristotle and founder of stoicism.
 Other influential authors of logic – Cicero, Porphyry, and Boethius
 - Philoponus and Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and
Averroes
6. Aesthetics
 It is the science of the beautiful in its various manifestations—including the sublime,
comic, tragic, pathetic, and ugly
 It is important because of the following:
- It vitalizes our knowledge. It makes our knowledge of the world alive and useful.
- It helps us to live more deeply and richly. A work of art helps us to rise from purely
physical existence into the realm of intellect and spirit.
- It brings us in touch with our culture. The answers of great minds in the past to the
great problems of human life are part of our culture.
 Hans-Georg Gadamer – A German philosopher who argues thatour tastes and
judgement regarding beauty work in connection with one’s own personal experience and
culture.
- Our culture consists of the values and beliefs of our time and our society.
7: Domains of Philosophy
1. Metaphysics – seeks to answer the nature of reality; asks questions about what makes
things as they are.
2. Epistemology – science of human knowledge. deals with origin, process, validity of
human knowledge
3. Ethics or moral philosophy – deals with the morality of human action. “what makes
human action good or evil?” It studies different norms and standards of human
action across cultures.
4. Theodicy or Natural Theology – Studies the existence and nature of God through
human reason alone without the aid of faith and sacred scriptures.
5. Cosmology – study of the nature of matter/corporeal entities. It is also the study of
the origin and nature of the universe. It asks questions like, “what makes up
matter?
6. Aesthetics or the Philosophy of Beauty and Art - studies the nature of beauty and
art. It ask the questions, “what makes a thing or a work of art beautiful?
7. Rational Psychology or Philosophical psychology - studies the origin of life, the
nature of the soul as the principle / cause / source of life.
8. Logic – the science and art of correct thinking
9. Axiology – study of human values
10. Deontology – study of duty
11. Semantics – study of meaning of words and sentences
12. Philosophy of the human person - study of the nature of human person. It asks the
question, “what makes man truly human?
13. Political philosophy - tudy of how society should be organized and gorverned. It
asks the questions, “who should rule?
14. Philosophy of science – branch of philosophy that is concerned with the foundation of
science, its epistemology, and methods of inquiry, and the reliability of scientific theories
generated.
15. Philosophy of religion – study of religion or religions and its concepts and beliefs
through philosophical enquiry or criticism
16. Philosophy of technology - is a branch of philosophy that is dedicated to the
influence of technology to human lives and social effects.
17. The philosophy of the environment - is a branch of philosophy that is concerned
with the implication of man’s exploitation of the natural resources and the
methods of its exploitation.
11. Doing Philosophy: Holistic Approach

 Four Fundamental Questions

A. What is there?
B. What can be known?
C. How could life be lived?
D. What is good reasoning?

A. What is there?
 This question belongs to metaphysics
 Metaphysics deals with the fundamental nature of reality and being
 It seeks to answer what constitutes a thing. Its causes and effects; hence, what causes a
cause.
 The “what is there?” question does not merely inquire about the externalities,
rather it wants to inquire the “what is in it” of the object or of an external
reality.
 Kleptomania is defined as “mental illness in which one has a strong desire to
steal things; “ (Merriam Dictionary). If kleptomania stems from a strong desire,
can human beings exist without desire? If desire is part of the humanity of the
human person, is he answerable to his actions that he has no control of?

B. What is known?
 This is the core question of epistemology—the branch that deals with the nature and
grounds of knowledge.
 How is knowledge of one thing applies to other thing? Or is universal knowledge
possible? Can my knowledge of myself be replicated to other selves? If it is
possible, can the self be replicated? In its final form, can there be a universal
self? Or how can we account the portability or applicability of knowledge? In the
case at hand, what is the basis of kleptomania? Is our measurement used valid?
What constitutes is validity?
C. How should life be lived?
 This is the area of ethics.
 Ethics is the area of philosophy that defines the principle of goodness of an act.
 It is not to enough say that stealing, graft and corruption is wrong. What makes
stealing, graft and corruption wrong. If virtue is desirable, what makes it
desirable?
 Human beings living with other human beings are governed by certain principles
that regulate their quality of living. We cannot do things deliberately at will. We
have other considerations to assess, and by assessing them, we should be guided
by ethical principles.

D. What is good reasoning?

 This is the area of logic.
 Logic, a branch of philosophy, deals with the principles validating our reasoning.
 It is not enough that our reasoning is correct, but most of all, it should also be
valid. Aside from good reasoning, philosophers are also examining how meaning
of something relates to truth and the world. This is the area on the Philosophy of
Language which examines how language works, how meaning refers to the world
and limits or structures our experiences of the worlds.

 The study of philosophy:

a. Enables us to think carefully and clearly about important issues
b. Focusses on not what to believe but how to think
c. Sharpens analytical abilities, enabling us to identify and evaluate strengths and
weaknesses in any position
d. Develops our ability to work independently
13. On the Nature of the Human Person: A Philosophical and Historical Perspective

A. Human Nature on the Western Thoughts

 our goal is to establish the connecting between the thought of existence and the
experience of existence. If we can establish what connects the thought of
experience, then our understanding of the human person can be thought of to be
grounded in reality; otherwise, our understanding would remain as an ideal.
 Human Nature According to Ancient Greek - The early Greeks conceived man as
part of nature. Water, (Thales 624-546 BC), air (Anaximenes – 585-525 BC), fire
(change) (Heraclitus 540-475 BC), the boundless (Anaximander – 610-547 BC), and
as a composite of body and soul (Pythagoras – 582-507 BC) were the first
principles concerning human nature of the human person.
 Protagoras (490-421 BC) maintained that man is a center of all things and thus,
the measure of everything. Hence, for Protagoras, centrality is the requirement
which strengthens human person’s existence.
 Socrates (469-399 BC) advocated the knowledge of the self as the foundation of
knowing. Furthermore, he argued that the “unexamined life is not worth living.”
 For Plato (427-347 BC), man is an embodied soul. He believed that man has its
existence first in the world of ideas of which his existence is embodied in the
physical world. For him, man is basically a soul. Being a soul, man possesses a
priori knowledge. Prior to his existence on the physical world, man already knows
something for he has already contemplated the ideas in the world of ideas. Thus,
the human drama first began in the World of Ideas of which this physical drama
only participates in the drama happening in the world of Ideas.
 Aristotle (384-322 BC) foremost emphasized good reasoning as the foundation of
knowledge. For instance, in his Ethics he identified the highest good with
intellectual virtue, i.e. a moral person is one who cultivates certain virtues based
on sound and valid reasoning.
 Human Nature according to the Medieval Era. With the dominance of Medieval
Christianity in Europe (12th – 18th century), philosophy per se was regarded as
 the handmaid of theology – ancilla theologiae. In other words, reason was seen as
a companion of or complementary to faith i.e. to make faith reasonable.
 Rationalism and the Human Nature. Rene Descartes’ (1596 – 1650) “Cogito, Ergo
Sum” – I Think, Therefore I Exist – demands for a rigorous method for the secure
and accurate attainment of truth. This rigorous method which he termed
Methodical Doubt – everything can be reduced to doubt, except doubt itself –
ensures the utilization or proof on the exercise of the rational nature of a man.
This rigorous method, known as scientific method, would liberate the rational
nature of man from the clutches of faith and nature.
 For Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), man’s existence is defined by the ability of the
intellect to know a prior. In his “Critique of Pure Reason,” he opined : “The
human intellect, even in an unphilosophical state, is in possession of certain
cognitions a priori.”
 This principle can be found in Arthur Shopenhauer’s (1788 – 1860) work, on the
Fourfold Root of the Principle of sufficient Reason maintaining that nothing is
without sufficient reason. He reasoned that the world of experience is the
phenomenal world. For him, “science signifies a system objects known,” not just
groups of presentations.

 Existentialism and Human Nature

 A strong reaction was made by Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) on the
philosophy of Hegel. Known as the father of existentialism, Kierkegaard argued
that man cannot placed as a “cog in a machine” or a part of a system. He is not
a robot or an automaton who can be programmed to do tasks as scheduled.

 Heidegger and the Meaning of Life

 To illustrate Heidegger’s phenomenology, a student is not just a student, for a
pure student does not exist after all. What we have is a student who wants to be
somebody else.