The Branches of Philosophy and their Questions.
The purpose of a philosophy course is to "do philosophy." Wonder is central to philosophy, not only as a starting point but also as a principle and foundation from which everything else proceeds.Philosophy is a radicalization of wonder in all directions. But radicalization is a slow process and we are obliged to work the same ground over and over again. Only in this way can the process continue and only thus can it realize its total potential.To do philosophy is to conscientiously immerse ourselves in the process and product of seeking meaning in the world. Our primary concern is for the personal dimension which plays/works in the creation and criticism of all claims to knowledge and understanding. We will use "content" and "information", however our concern is the context for transformation.
Philosophy is about asking questions and questioning any answers. You need to have a reasonable defensible argument for any claim or assertion made. Philosophical questions are baffling by their nature. They are baffling because you do not know what criteria to apply in an attempt to answer a philosophical question or were to search for the standards to judge. Any answer to any philosophical question has many implications to many areas of human concern. All answers to any questions are suspect, (including your own answers) because of conscious and unconscious biases.
Contemporary Branches of Philosophy
If you pick up the catalog of a typical four-year college or university in the United States and look under the "Philosophy" heading, you will find courses offered in the following areas, among others: epistemology, ontology (or metaphysics), logic, ethics (or moral philosophy), political philosophy,and aesthetics, along with the group of courses whose titles begin with the words "philosophy of ________," for example, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of sport. Let’s take a look at what you would study if you signed up for these courses.
Epistemology
Epistemology is theory of knowledge. It concerns questions like: What is knowledge, and how does it differ from opinion? Does knowledge require certainty, or can something be known without being known for certain? Does knowledge, in fact, exist or must we be satisfied with mere opinion? If there is knowledge, how do we come by it?
Ontology
Ontology is theory of being. (Some writers prefer to call this Metaphysics.) It concerns the following questions: What is it for something to be real? What is the nature of existence? What is the difference between appearance and reality?
Logic
Logic is the most specialized branch of philosophy. It is sometimes defined as the science of valid inference. This science, which was founded by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E., is a purely formal study. That is to say, it wants to know what forms of argumentation are valid, and it does not concern itself with the truth status of the arguments’ conclusions or with their supporting statements. Look, for example, at the argument:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
This is a valid argument. That means that the first two statements (the argument’s premises) logically entail the third statement (the argument’s conclusion). The argument would still be valid even if it turned out the first or second premise of the argument was false. Even if we discovered that some men are immortal and that Socrates was actually a fish, the argument would be valid purely because of its form, which is the following:
All As are Bs.
S is an A.
Therefore, S is a B.
This brief summary has not done justice to the breath and depth of the influence that logic has had on contemporary philosophy. There were great advancements in the field in the nineteenth century, and in the first decades of the twentieth century a lexicon of symbols (signs) had been developed that gave logic a precision it had formerly lacked. Once the relation between logic and mathematics had been carefully studied, logic or symbolic logic, as its new form is called, became almost a branch of calculus and provided a powerful tool of analysis and criticism that finds a home in most other fields of philosophy.
The next three branches of philosophy - ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics - all overlap the concept of axiology, the study of value. Ethics is moral philosophy and as such is interested in moral value. It deals with concepts like goodness, duty, and right and wrong. Political philosophy studies social value and explores the justification of political institutions and political relations. Aesthetics studies the value of beauty and related qualities that produce judgments about art and nature. It encompasses the Philosophy of art, which is the major part of aesthetics, and also the value of natural beauty.
Ethics
Ethics, or moral philosophy, ask questions like these: What is the good life? Are there such things as moral duties and obligations that bind us? That is, is there something we truly ought to do? Are some moral arguments "better" than others, or are all of them equally valid or invalid? Are values absolute, or are they relative to time and place?
Again notice that these questions are not experimental or empirical. Psychologist may be able to tell us why people hold the moral values they do hold. Sociologist and anthropologist may tell us whether any values are held by all cultures and what the social consequences are of holding certain values. But these questions are not the same ones philosophy ask, though empirical information about value is provided by the social sciences may be pertinent to philosophical questions about morality.
Political and Social Philosophy
Political and social philosophy ask questions about the state's legitimate authority over its members and about social values such as justice. Types of questions are: Can the idea of government be rationally justified, or must all governments be irrational? Do humans have any political duties or social obligations? Under what conditions? Are there such things as natural social rights? Can such rights be justifiably overridden as a form of punishment?
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of aesthetic objects and of aesthetic judgments. That definition does not help much of course, unless we have some idea what these latter two terms mean. Historically, the main component of the concept of aesthetic objects has been beauty, and the central theme of aesthetic judgments has been judgment about beauty. However, other qualities that are occasionally discussed as subjects of aesthetic judgment are the sublime, the ugly, and the comic. Therefore, aesthetics is wider than the philosophy of art because many of its objects are associated both art and nature. Nevertheless, in terms of both the history of philosophy and the contemporary scene, most discussions within aesthetics relate to art. In the mid-eighteenth century, the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten coined the term "aesthetics" from a Greek word having to do with sensation. Yet what we call aesthetics goes back at least as far as Plato in the fourth century B.C.E., and some historians claimed that he originated it. Contemporary aestheticians ask, just as Plato did, about the nature of artistic or aesthetic value. They want to know the source of and justification for aesthetic judgment and whether certain necessary features of art or perception exist that make some art work or perceptions objectively more valuable than others. Aestheticians also want to see how artistic activity fits in conceptually with the rest of human activities.
Schools, People, and Ideas
Bibliography
Books on Philosophical Method
or
books that demonstrate Philosophical Method
The Sophists
The Sophists secularized inquiry as nonreligious and nonphilosophical. They moved the metaphysical debates from the unseen structure of the universe to the unseen nature of human beings, from understanding of nature to the nature of understanding. See The Presocratics by Wheelwright
The Sophist applied this technique to truth. Both sides of an issue (smoking does or does not cause cancer) could be developed have equal strength and plausibility and thus be true. These are the two-sided arguments, a primary exercise for the Sophists' students. The goal was to convince someone on either side of an issue that the opposite of what she initially believed was true. This was done for the display and in jest, as when Gorgias proves Helen was not to blame for the Trojan War, or for work, as when he convinced his brother's medical patients to permit some painful procedure.
Plato
(428 B.C.E.-348 B.C.E.)
Plato's Theory of Knowledge:
The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato
Translated with commentary,
by Francis M. Cornford, 1934/57
'Dialectical' method in Plato's dialogues means a co-operative inquiry carried on in conversation between two or more minds that are equally bent, not on getting the better of the argument, but on arriving at the truth. A tentative suggestion put forward by one speaker is corrected and improved until the full meaning is clearly stated. The criticism that follows may end in complete rejection or lead on to another suggestion which (if the examination has been skillfully conducted) ought to approach nearer to the truth.
Plato's Analytic Method
by Kenneth M. Sayre, 1969
Translated, with Notes, An Interpretive Essay, and a New Introduction
by Allan Bloom, 1991
Plato Republic
Translated from the New Standard Greek Text, with Introduction
by C. D. C. Reeve, 2004
Plato's Symposium
Translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1948/56
The Library of Liberal Arts
Aristotle
(384 B.C.E.-322 B.C.E.)
Metaphysics
Translated with Commentaries and Glossary
by Hippocrates G. Apostle, 1966
Nicomachean Ethics
Translated by Martin Ostwald, 1962
The Library of Liberal Arts
A less familiar feature of dialectic is the treatment of current views, whether popular or philosophic. Aristotle regularly begins his treatises with a review of received opinions, proceeding on the avowed assumption that any belief accepted by common sense or put forward by wise men is likely to contain some measure of truth, however faultily expressed. It is the business of dialectic, by sympathetic comparison and criticism, to elicit these contributions and to make the best that can be made of them.
Stoicism
Distinguishing between What we can and cannot Control
Stoicism as a school of philosophy founded by Zeno (334-262 B.C.E.) who assembled his school on the Stoa (Greek for porch, hence the term stoic), this philosophical movement attracted Cleanthes (303-233 B.C.E.), and Aristo in Athens and latter found such advocates in Rome as Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.), Epictetus (60-117 C.E.), Seneca (4 B.C.E.-65 C.E.), and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 C.E.). Zeno had been inspired as a youth by the ethical teachings and particularly by the courageous death of Socrates. This influence helped to fix the overwhelming emphasis of Stoic philosophy upon ethics, although the Stoics addressed themselves to all three divisions of philosophy formulated by Aristotle's Lyceum, namely, Logic, physics, and ethics.
Stoic Theory of Knowledge
The Stoics went into great detail to explain how human beings are able to achieve knowledge. They did not entirely succeed in doing this, but their theory of knowledge was nevertheless important for at least two reasons. First, it laid the foundations for their materialistic theory of nature, and secondly, it provided the basis for their conception of truth or certainty.
Both of these consequences of the Stoics' theory of knowledge stem from their account of the origin of ideas. Words, they said, express thoughts, and thoughts are originated by the impact of some object upon the mind. The mind is blank at birth and builds up its store of ideas as it is exposed to objects. These objects make impressions upon the mind through the channel of the senses.
Seneca
(4 B.C.E.?-65 C.E.)
Letters from a Stoic,
Translation by Robin Campbell, 1969
Marcus Aurelius
(121 C.E.-180 C.E.)
The Essential Marcus Aurelius
Newly Translated and Introduced
By Jacob Needleman and John Piazza, 2008
Skepticism
How to behave without a Criterion of Truth
Today we refer to skeptics as those whose basic mood is that of doubt. But the old Greek word, skeptikoi, from which skeptics is derived, meant something rather different, namely, "seekers" or "inquirers". To be sure, the Skeptics were doubters, too. They doubted that Plato and Aristotle had succeeded in discovering the truth about the world, and they had these doubts about the Epicureans and Stoics. But for all their doubt, they were nevertheless seekers after a method for achieving a tranquil life.
The Skeptics were greatly impressed by the fact the "appearances" call forth such a variety of explanations from those who experience them. They discovered also, says Sextus, that arguments opposed to each other seem to have equal force. By equality of force he meant equality in respect of the credibility of alternative explanations. Accordingly, the Skeptics were led to suspend judgment and to refrain from denying or affirming anything. From this suspension of judgment they hoped to achieve an undisturbed and calm mental state.
Pyrroh
(361 - 270 B.C.E.)
The Cynics
They were called Cynics, not because of their “cynical” attitude toward human motives, but because cynos is the Greek word for dog, and they were thought to be doglike in their indifference to the niceties of life. Since poverty, pain, suffering, and death obviously can and do come to good men, the Cynics reasoned that none of these is really bad. The truly virtuous man will be indifferent to everything that really happens to him. They were extreme and held that manners, customs, all the small decencies and proprieties of social intercourse, as well as larger matters of political relationship, are without value and should be ignored.
Antisthenes – the founder of the Cynic school
He held classes in a gymnasium outside Athens and catered to the poor, the illegitimate, and the foreign born. He taught without fees, lived simply, and dressed shabbily.
Diogenes – His most famous pupil who tried banking in Asia Minor and failed, and came to Athens. He was forced to beg, and Antisthenes helped him rationalize his condition into a philosophy. He gathered the accouterments of a beggar—old clothes, a bowl, and a staff—and lived in a large tub in the courtyard of an Athenian temple. His only companions were dogs.
Rene Descartes
(1596-1650 C.E.)
Discourse on Method and Meditations
Translated with an introduction by Laurence J. Lafleur,1960
Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)
Critique of Pure Reason
Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, 1965
G.W.F. Hegel
(1770-1831)
Hegel's Science of Logic
Translated by A. V. Miller, 1969
The Phenomenology of Mind
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by J. B. Baillie, 1967
Karl Marx
(1818-1883)
Manifesto, and Das Kapital
Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
Twilight of the Idols:
How one Philosophizes with a Hammer,
John Dewey
(1859-1952)
Experience and Nature, 1929/1958
See Chapter I. Experience and Philosophic Method
Logic:
The Theory of Inquiry, 1933
How We Think, 1971
R. G. Collingwood
(1889-1943)
An Essay on Philosophical Method, 1970
An Autobiography, 1970
See Chapter V. Question and Answer
Edmund Husserl
(1859-1938)
Cartesian Meditations:
An Introduction to Phenomenology
Translated by Dorion Cairns, 1970
Ideas:
General introduction to Pure Phenomenology
Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson, 1931/1972
Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976)
Being and Time
Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, 1962
Michael Polanyi
(1891-1976)
Personal Knowledge:
Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, 1958
Knowing and Being: Essays, 1969
Herbert Marcuse
(1898-1979)
Reason and Revolution:
Hegel and the rise of Social Theory, 1960
From the Preface:
A Note on Dialectic
This book was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated: the power of negative thinking. As Hegel defines it: 'Thinking is, indeed essentially the negation of that which is immediately before us.' What does he mean by 'negation,' the central category of dialectic?
Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)
Being and Nothingness
Translated and with an introduction
by Hazel E. Barnes, 1956
Nausea
Translated from the French by Lloyd Alexander, 1964
J. L. Austin
(1911-1960)
Philosophical Papers, 1961/1970
A. R. Louch
Explanation and Human Action, 1966
From the Preface:
I should claim as my own the attempt to outline a view of the nature of explanation and description of human action which brings together questions of fact and of value. I believe that a coherent account of human action cannot be given by separating these interests, though much of epistemology and ethical theory has had the effect of dividing them irrevocably. Observation, according to a prevailing orthodoxy, is one thing, appraisal quite another. Consequently, the activity of appraisal or evaluation gives us no new information about the world. I shall maintain against this view that observation, description and explanation of human action is only possible by means of moral categories. The concept of action itself, I hope to show, is in a broader sense a moral concept. I shall thus be involved in argument against two prevailing philosophical views, that observation is to be defined in terms of the perception of physical events or sense-data, and that explanation is a matter of bringing a particular event under a general law or theory. And I shall be arguing, further, that a study of human behavior construed along these philosophical lines or supported by analogies to the science of mechanics is radically misconceived.
This book was written with J. L. Austin's "A Plea for Excuses" in mind,
told to me by the author, A. R. Louch.
Philosophical Methodology:
The Armchair or the Laboratory?
Edited by Matthew C. Haug, 2014
| Last Updated: 10/19/22 |