Philosophy Notes
Essay by Rachel Feghali • October 31, 2018 • Course Note • 3,024 Words (13 Pages) • 1,016 Views
Page 1 of 13
- Philosophy is a conceptual/logical analysis of reality
- What is the nature of reality? → one source
- Thales- water → natural philosopher
- Anaximenes-air
- Heraclitus- fire/ eternally in a process of change → absolute truth
- Problems given by the natural philosophers—The Sophists
- Became suspicious of philosophy
- Specialized in rhetoric—learning to speak well
- Discouraged the presuit of philosophy
- Supernatural philosophies
- Platos- the eternal: non temporal, immutable-unchanging, simple, the one, impassable—without passions, necessary vs. contingent,
- Metaphysics- (after physics) attempt to explain reality and how it fits together. → the theory of everything
- Necessary vs. contingent
- Eternal vs. temporal
- Simple vs. complex
- Plato was concerned with the establishment of truth
- Heraclitus- Fire/Change → flux
- Apriori- (inate) before experience, knowledge that is with us before we experience anything
- Aposteriori- after experience, knowledge after experiencing something
- Immortal soul—no beginning and no end.
- The Sophists—“philosophers” Reality is derived from the eternal, believe we don’t know who was in the beginning.
- Rhetoric
- Spoke well—parents would hire to teach children to speak
- No Truth
- Help in an expedient way—whatever works/ works well
- Socrates
- Philosophy is instruction in virtue
- See’s himself as a midwife→ 1) indirect communication, and an “occasion” for truth. 2) conceptual analysis
- Never answered a question with an answer, rather with another question
- External Relations: “who you are is not important”
- “are the lights on”—Go check
- Internal Relations: “who you are is important”
- “is life a gift from God?”—Go check
- Midwife philosophy—Socrates
- Indirect communication
- Answering the question with another question
- Parables
- Neighbor—conceptual analysis
- Internal relation between the concept and the person—the idea of a conviction, who you are is important between the concept and the person
- Holiness for Socrates—remaining faithful to the concepts of virtue justice VS. Expediency—whatever works is right or true
- Plato
- Metaphysical realism
- The Theory of Forms
- Good—God
- Forms—forms emanating from God—universals/ concepts
- Copies—
- Ontology—study of being
- Epistemological knowledge
- Allegory of the Cave
- Aristotle vs. Plato
- Inductive –bottom → up Deductive—top → down
- Reptiles/mammals Ontology/ being
- Telcology/purpose→ End(goal)
- Human beings= social/valuing
- Laws: necessary(no choice) vs. contingent
- Freedom/ rational
- Aristotle
- Virtues—practice
- Learned such as grammar and music.
- Virtue Ethics—Eudaimonia: possessing a genius spirit, understanding what is worth while
- Ancient Tradition-
- Ethics: expression of ones nature
- “Who should I be?”
- Modern Tradition-
- Ethics: expression of ones choice
- “What should I do?”
- The focus of virtue training:
- 1. The passions/ feelings (not primary focus)
- 2. Faculty—ability to experience feelings (not primary focus)
- 3. Character ( primary focus)
- Epicurus—Hedonism: avoidance of pain
- One philosopher that moderns quote with approval
- Very materialistic understanding of ethics
- Believes our fear of death makes us anxious
- Defining “good and evil” in terms of “pleasure and pain”
- “its irrational to fear something you’re not going to experience”
- “death is an empty pain of anticipation”
- we seek immortality “the desire of the flesh” “the desire of blind flesh”
- Social compact
- Epictetus-
- Stoicism—belief that an alternative to seeking satisfaction in happiness they line their lives with “logos” (the word logic) of universe.
- Focus on the good—what is constant and unchanging
- Your only concern/focus is what is in your power, if it is on what is not in your power you cannot find peace.
- Enchridion—hand book on life
- “You can’t control the events that happen to you, but you can control how you respond to them.”
- DEPARTMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY
- 1. First department—don’t lie, be honest—the most necessary
- 2. Second department—why should we be honest? Demanding a demonstration- presenting a picture, values are their own reason
- Third department—establishing and analyzing the departments, abstract, why is this a good explanation?
- Augustine- Enchiridion on faith, hope, and love.
- The unchangeable God, made all things good
- To be (exist) is to be good—if it exist it is good.
- Evil logically is therefore nothing
- Evil exists as a corrupted good—good that has gone bad
- Manicheans—astrology; fate
- Dualism- good and evil
- Two things that have being, the force of good (spirit) and the force of evil (flesh/body)
- Aquinas
- Aristotle-teleology
- Perfection/ completion- “happiness”-goal
- Virtues are not the goal of human living—they are the means to achieve a further end
- Human- rational capabilities—God/truth
- Modernity
- 1. Individual thinker
- 2. Fact/ Value or “is”/ “ought”
- 3. No ontology, no teleology, no bible
- 4. Rational basis- Epicurus
- 16th- 19th century
- Rene Desartes—wrote meditations on first philosophy- book on epistemology
- Radical doubt
- “I think therefore I am”
- cause/effect
- Ancient: World/ us
- Modern: I/ world—thinking thing
- Validation of an argument
- Is it formally true
- Is it sound
- Butler—jews
- Revelation/ nature
- Church/state
- Social cohesion
- David Hume—first shall be last, the last shall be first.
- Empiricism
- Habit
- Impressions/perceptions/reason
- 2 kinds of reason: establish true/false (fact-inert)
- empirical—
- matters or real existence
- There is an elm tree- parent tree- sapling- death of parent tree
- real relation of ideas
- abstract—
- matters of abstract existence
- triangle
- abstract relation of ideas
- object with 3 sides
- Apriori—before experience
- Aposteriori—after experience
- Feel correctly
- REASON: Establish facts—true/ false
- Facts are by nature inert (none moving)
- Ethics- feelings and passion
- Emanuel Kant
- Teacher in Prussia—mathematics& metaphysics
- Hume: human beings are interesting animals, nothing more—hopelessly shaped by their environment
- Human beings are hybrids of a phenomenon—physical world, but also members of noumena—intellectual world (existence of noumena is only suggested)
- Anthropology of freedom
- Reason/ freedom
- Hybrid—dual citizens of 2 realms
- 2 “oughts”- imperative
- 1- hypothetical imperative—if/then quality
- 2- categorical—based on who you are, hybrid (moral)
- Utilitarianism—utility: workability
- Good- pleasurable
- No goodness for goodness sake—private standard for morality (fideism)
- Bentham
- Utility
- 1- greatest amount of pleasure for greatest number
- 2-impartiality—no one is special
- problems with utilitarianism
- disrupts personal relationships
- distorts traditional ethical concepts
- 19th century—end of modernity
- optimism/progress
- Kierkegaard—Christian
- Nietzsche—Athiest
- Feuerbach
- The essence of religion
- Academic Discipline
- History
- Epistemological relativism
- Kant: humans are thinking things, dual beings of noumena and phenomena
- Christianity- ethics
- Social gospel
- Protestant Liberalism
- GFW Hegel
- Considered most important philosopher of 19th century
- Refers to himself as the last philosopher
- Dialectical thinking-truth happens when opposition occurs (truth is a result of the encounter of opposites
- Absolute truth is attainable—possible to know
- Epistemological relativism of history—peoples views change over time
- History is “geist”(mind/spirit) coming to know itself
- The phenomenology of spirit—book
- Reason in history—book
- Terrible writer
- Ancient conception of God
- God has all knowledge
- God creates the world
- Truth preexists the world
- Hegel conception of God
- God creates world in order to know what truth is
- God/ideas
- God has an idea for justice, but justice isn’t true in the abstract
- God needed the world in order for truth to be made real
- Thesis—antithesis—synthesis
- Kierkegaard
- Monstrous illusion
- Existing individual
- Romanticism
- Mood
- Nietzsche—God is dead and we (western culture) have killed him
- “on the Genealogy of morals”
- Hermeneutics (lens with which you are reading a specific text) of suspicion
- Power
- Superman—will to power
- Marx
- Motivation for human life is money
- Freud—sex
- The first people to use the word “Good”
- Nietzsche says—the noble class (a noble is not noble by choice but by nature)
- Self referential
- Bad—unfortunate people
- Servant class (morality)—birthed in resentment/ revenge
- God—Good & Evil
- God calls servant class good
- God calls noble class evil
- Repentance—theological idea
- free will
- bad conscience
- love your neighbors/ equality
- Zizek
- Political philosopher
- Ideology—Big other
- Making sure you don’t over step your bounds when speaking to others
- Violence
- Adolf Von Harnack
- Protestant Liberal Theology
- “what is Christianity?”—famous book he wrote
- Rejects gospel of John
- Jesus was a teacher of ethics
- Love your neighbor as yourself
- Karl Barth (one of Harnack’s students)
- Ethics of Jesus
- Masters of divinity—became pastor in Switzerland
- “nein”—no. A book he wrote
- Suggested that if we apply historical criticism we will find the real Jesus
- The motives of the historian and the motives of a believer are not the same
- Historian—research/interview people. Assign percentage based on their research
- Believer—percentage on your findings doesn’t translate to your faith
- Martin Heidegger
- Everyday-ness
- Culture/media
- We live under the dictates of culture around us
- Unreflectively assuming the way things are in the world we live is covering over a fundamental approach we should have to reality
- Human Being—“Dasein” being there
- Sartre
- For born
- Existence preceeds essence
- Burden of freedom
- Camus
- Lucidity—seeing clearly
- The absurd
- Metaphysical revolt
- Self discovery
- Continental Philosophy—prescriptive
- British Philosophy—like criticism of Hume
- Analytic Philosophy
- Descriptive
- G.E. Moore— understand the concept of “good” and how it is to be defined
- Suggests that the way we use to word good in ordinary language will offer a clue as to what the word good means
- **Most fundamental question in ethics
- complex idea
- the idea of good is simple
- Naturalistic Fallacy
- utility is good
- god is utility
- AJ Ayer
- Addresses the question “can an ethical claim be true?”
- Uses scientific or empirical language—true or false
- NO. an ethical claim is nonsense
- Passions/feelings
- Ethical Emotivist
- Statements of preference
- John Rawls
- You can think disembodiedly
- Book: “a theory of justice”
- Collectively think together of the best possible foundation for the best possibly society
- Justice understood in terms of fairness
- The veil of ignorance
- The original position of equality
- (Someone else will choose your starting place)
- Wolf
- “Moral Saints” book she wrote
- Loving Saints
- Rational Saints
- Being as good as possible is her dominant passion/hobby
- A person may be perfectly wonderful without being perfectly moral
- Meta-moral assumption:
- Values
- Family
- Friends
- Jobs
- Applied Ethics (taking ethics out of the classroom and becoming public policy)
- The social contract theory—(framework in which public ethics does its work)
- Judith Thompson—written 1971 (abortion was illegal)
- Argument—in favor of abortion, links abortion issue with self defense (abortion and self-defense is key to her argument)
- Angered pro-choice advocates
- Essay is famous for her examples, used (quoted) in many abortion cases
- Supererogatory actions—refer to actions of a saint
- Abortional self defense
- Don Marquis (argues against Judith Thompson)
- Argument: the claim that abortion except in rare instance is extremely wrong
- “Abortion is wrong for the same reason as killing the person reading this essay is wrong”
- “Killing a fetus is wrong for the same reason that killing an adult is wrong”
- antiabortion conception of the fetus is too broad—killing human tissue, if its human you cant kill it
- proabortion conception of the fetus is too narrow—to be a member of the moral community (to have rights) you have to have rational consensus
- FLO theory—what the fetus shares with an adult human being is a future
- FLO= Future Like Ours
- Argues that the FLO theory understanding is that abortion is seriously wrong because we are robbing them of a future
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