An Overview of Western Philosophy

• Western philosophy originates from Greek philosophy in the 6th century BC.
• Its origins begin with Ancient Greece and Rome.
• It extends through central and western Europe.
• It extends to the Americas after Columbus.
• According to Western philosophy, the history of Western philosophy can be divided into ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary periods.
• Ancient philosophy includes Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman philosophy.
• Major figures in ancient philosophy include Thales and Aristotle.
• Medieval philosophy or scholasticism occurred from the fifth to fifteenth century.
• Modern philosophy includes the renaissance from the 15th to the 17th century, the period of enlightenment from Locke to Kant, and German philosophy from Kant to Hegel.
• Contemporary philosophy began from 1860 to the present, also known as 20th century - Postmodernism.
• Western philosophy focuses on the fundamental principles of the universe, man, society, and values.
• The main questions are what is the highest good for man and the justification behind notions of right and wrong.
• Philosophical anthropology is the study of man himself, regarding the question about man as a fundamental question.
• Man is the subject and object of knowledge in philosophical anthropology.
• Martin Bubber studied philosophical anthropology.
• Bubber was a Jewish religious existentialist philosopher.
• Socrates and Plato believed man must live according to their nature.
• They defined man as a soul, where the soul is the essence of human nature.
• The soul is considered spiritual and can not be characterized by properties of matter.
• Man by nature is spiritual according to Socrates and Plato.

Theory of Forms

• Plato states that reality exists on two specific levels.
• The visible world is made up of sights and sounds, called the Material World/World of the Senses.
• The intelligible world gives the visible world its being, called the Spiritual World.
• The Spiritual World is metaphysical and exists somewhere out there.
• Forms/Ideas are templates for all beings in the material world.
• The soul as spiritual in nature resides in the intelligible world.
• Platonic Dualism refers to the separation between the soul and the body.
• The Soul has pre-existence over the body.
• The Soul has coexisted with the body.
• The Soul animates the body in the material world and is the source of life, being inside the body like a prison.
• Man is simply the soul; therefore, man by nature is soul not the body.
• The body is just a receptacle or container.
• Soul in Greek is Psychē.
• Soul is also the mind and the thinking and willing subject, or the true self.
• Virtue is knowledge, the basic propensity of man, and the act of knowing.
• Propensity is an inclination or natural tendency to behave in a particular way.
• Virtue is the central point of human life.
• Only the virtuous can govern correctly and virtue makes a man free, while vice enslaves them.
• According to Socrates, virtue is the chief aspect of life and the greatest good.
• He believed that the ultimate goal of human existence is not just to live but to live a good, meaningful and virtuous life.
• He defined a good life as one living according to virtue.
• A good life is guided by reason, virtue, and moral principles.
• Pursuing knowledge, self-improvement, and personal growth are essential to living a good life.
• Virtue is not simply a matter of doing good things but also knowing what is good and acting accordingly.

Plato’s Tripartite Soul

• The soul is composed in three parts.
• Reason is concerned with what is true and good for the person.
• Spirit seeks honor and competitive values.
• Spirit governs a person's emotions.
• Appetite is drawn to food, drinks, and sex.
• Different parts of the soul carry out their functions appropriately.
• A person must seek to balance and control the desires of these 3 parts of the soul to gain a happy, harmonious, and productive life.
• The good life is one of inner harmony, well-being, and happiness.
• For all things that exist, there must be an appropriate form that causes it to exist.
• Socrates and Plato concede a mysterious form that grounds all beings.
• Form of the Good refers to the ultimate source of all knowledge and value, considered the highest reality beyond the physical world.
• The Spiritual World's Forms/Ideas are templates of all beings that exist in the material world or Essence.
• The Spiritual World's Form is the true essence of a thing.
• The Spiritual World's Soul resides as spiritual in nature in the intelligible world.
• The material world consists only of particulars, which are imperfect representations of the essences or Forms.
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE) believed the truth resides in the world around us.
• Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira in northern Greece.
• Both of his parents were members of traditional medical families.
• At age 17, Aristotle was sent to Athens to enroll in Plato's Academy.
• His intellectual range was vast and covers most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology.
• Plato questions if there exists a realm of Forms or a perfect Form of Man on which earthly men are modeled.
• Plato questions that to have any conceivable content, this Form would have to be based on a Form of the Form of Man.
• Plato questions that this would have to be based on a higher Form on which the Forms of the Forms are based, and so on ad infinitum.
• It was unnecessary to assume that there is a hypothetical realm of Forms when the reality of things can already be seen here on Earth, inherent in everyday things.

The Essentials of Form

• The evidence is in the world around us and perceptible through the senses.
• The essential form makes something what it is.
• Aristotle believes that things in the material world are not imperfect copies of some ideal Form of themselves.
• Aristotle argues that the essential form of a thing is actually inherent in each instance of that thing.
• Essence refers to the fundamental nature or what something "truly is ".
• The "truly is" refers to the essential qualities that make it what it is and without which it would not be that thing.
• Essence can be understood as the "what it is" of a thing.
• Potentiality is the capacity or possibility of a thing to be or become something else.
• Actuality is the realization or fulfillment of a thing's potential.
• Actuality and the state of a thing actually being what it has the potential to be.
• A seed has the potential to become a tree, for example.
• A tree is actual when it has grown from the seed and reached maturity.
• Man is a composite of body and soul.
• Man is a rational animal.
• Rational refers to the unique ability of humans to think, reason, and make decisions.
• Animal refers to biological creatures.
• Knowledge comes from senses, which all animals possess.
• Appetency is also called instinct, which are the natural biological drives of animals.
• The drive is to seek or strive for something.
• It is man's rational being that makes him a unique grade of animal.
• Through intellect, man knows and can know right or wrong and is capable of understanding.
• Through his will, man can choose between good or bad actions and is capable of doing his choice, either good or bad actions.
• De Anima: On the Soul argues that the soul is the source of all movement and the essence of all life on earth.
• De Anima examines life in terms of growth, arguing that the soul drives all living creatures to feed themselves and reproduce.

Aristotle’s Three Types of the Soul

• The Nutritive Soul is the basic life force shared by all living organisms, including plants.
• The Nutritive Soul governs basic functions like growth, reproduction, and nutrition.
• The Sensitive Soul is the aspect of the soul found in animals.
• The Sensitive Soul is responsible for perception, movement, and basic emotions.
• The Rational Soul is the unique aspect of human beings.
• The Rational Soul is responsible for reasoning, thought, and intellectual understanding.
• The Rational Soul is the highest level of soul in humans and gives them their distinctively human capabilities.

Aristotle's "Four Causes"

• Matter/material cause is determined by the matter that composes the changing things.
• Form/formal cause is due to the arrangement, shape, or appearance of the thing changing.
• Numerical relationships are of this nature.
• Agency/efficiency consists of things apart from the thing being changed, which interact so as to be an agency of the change.
• End/purpose is the final cause for the sake of which a thing is changing.
• Aristotelian conceptions of the highest good are "the source or condition of the goodness of other goods".
• Aristotle's highest good is not something that can be maximized; rather, it is the end for the sake of which all other goods are chosen - eudaimonia.

Thomas Aquinas

• Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274), of Aquino, Italy, was an Italian philosopher and theologian known as the Angelic Doctor.
• Man is created in the image of God.
• Human beings possess a special dignity and value that is not shared by other creatures.
• Aquinas believed that man's purpose is to know and love God.
• Doing this is the ultimate goal of human existence.
• Human nature is composed of two essential parts: the body and the soul.
• The body is the material aspect of human nature, while the soul is the immaterial aspect.
• The soul is the principle of life and consciousness in the human person.
• The soul enables our ability to reason and make decisions.
• The soul is creates by God at the moment of conception and it is considered immortal.
• The soul continues to exist after the body dies and is the source of free will.
• This allows people makes choices and act according to their own decisions.
• Reason is a key aspect of human nature by enabling people to think logically and make deductions based on principles that we know to be true.
• According to Aquinas, reason is a gift from God that enables people to understand the nature of the world and the truths of faith.
• Aquinas believed that reason is necessary for understanding God's existence and nature.
• He believed that reason can lead to a knowledge of God through the study of the natural world and the use of rational faculties.

Aquinas' Five Proofs for the Existence of God

• The unmoved Mover: Everything moved is moved by something, and since an endless regress is not possible, a Prime Mover is required.
• The first Cause: Every result has a cause and since an endless regress is impossible, there must be a First Cause.
• The ultimate Necessity: There must be a source for all consequences which follow as a repeat of Reason.
• Perfect Source: All perfection in the world requires, as its source, an Ultimate Perfection.
• Purpose: Even lifeless things have a purpose which must be defined by something outside themselves, since only living things can have an internal purpose.
• Aquinas also believed that reason is necessary for living a virtuous life.
• Virtue is a habit or disposition and enables people to act in accordance with reason and the natural law.
• The four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude.
• These virtues are the foundation of all other virtues and enable living a good life.
• Aquinas believed that human beings possess freedom through the ability to make choices and act according to their own decisions.
• Freedom is an essential aspect of human nature and necessary for living a virtuous life.
• Freedom is the ability to act in accordance with reason and the natural law.
• Freedom is not the ability to do whatever one wants, but rather is limited by the demands of morality and the common good.
• "Modern" is being used to describe a period of time.
• The Modern era serves to contrast it with other periods of time.
• It includes the philosophy of the 1600s and onwards, as opposed to ancient and medieval philosophy.
• Modern philosophy is marked by an increasing emphasis on reason, science, and empirical observation.
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is the father of modern philosophy.
• Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, a small town in central France.
• He was extensively educated, first at a Jesuit college at age 8, then earning a law degree at 22.
• Descartes' quote is "I think; therefore I am.” - “Cogito ergo sum."
• It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
• If one would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary to doubt, as far as possible, all things.
• Cartesianism's torch bearer is continental rationalism and the light of reason with philosophical enlightenment.
• A philosophical movement and school of thought, Continental Rationalism was prominent in 17th and 18th-century continental Europe.
• Continental Rationalism emphasizes reason and innate ideas as the primary sources of knowledge.
• The Philosophical Epoch includes enlightenment, the rise of modern science, and the big movement after the Renaissance.

Rene Descartes

• Skepticism is the attitude of doubting or questioning the truth of something.
• Skeptics want to see evidence or good reasons to believe something is true, rather than accepting things as true.
• The growing sense of skepticism argues that it is impossible to gain certainty without any proofs.
• A method of doubt includes Cartesian doubt which is the way of searching for certainty by systematically and tentatively doubting everything.
• Descartes' belief system enables a quest for certainty.
• A substance is defined as something that exists independently and has an essence that doesn't rely on anything else for its existence.
• The material body, Res Extensa, is the extended substance that shows body as "Extension" through size, shape and motion.
• All things in the material world can be understood and explain in terms of size, shape and motion.
• The Essence of the body is considered clear and distinct.
• One can not help taking notice of its clearness.
• It can not be confused with anything else distinctly.
• Even if the mind and body exist independently, they also interact with each other.
• The non-material Mind, Res Cogitans, is the thinking substance where the Soul is superior to the body.
• Mental states occur in the mind, which is fundamental to life as a person by enabling thinking, imagining, and analyzing.
• The mind is superior and makes humans human.
• Man is a thinking thing, called res in Latin (substance).
• Humans are essentially made up of a thinking substance, with thinking being the defining quality.
• A thinking thing is a being that doubts, understands, asserts, denies, wills, imagines and the like.
• The body of knowledge assumes there are senses that are Fallible.
• The senses can often deceive.
• Water makes a stick appear bent when submerged which illustrates our senses can be tricked.
• The sense of sight can be deceived by optical illusions or when we see distant objects that appear smaller than they are.
• The quest for certainty for Cartesian Doubt declares "Cogito Ergo Sum", I think therefore, I am.
• Skepticism seeks to find something certain that can serve as the foundation for knowledge.
• The act of doubting or thinking demonstrates the presence of a thinking subject.
• Even if a powerful demon were to deceive someone into thinking that they do not exist, they need to exist in order for the demon to deceive them.

Ontological Argument of God’s Existence

• An idea of God is the idea of a supremely perfect being.
• Existence is a perfection.
• Perfection causes existence.
• "If something exists, then it must be caused by something else.
• The only possible ultimate cause is an infinite, perfect being.
• Since God is the only infinite and perfect being, God exists.“
• Descartes are imperfect beings.
• Imperfect beings have an idea of perfection in mind.
• Less perfect beings are less real than a perfect being.
• How could an imperfect being have an innate idea of perfection if it did not actually exist?
• This innate idea must come from a perfect being.
• Humans have perfection as a shared attribution from the Ultimate Good being God.
• Humans exist.
• Existence is perfection which is to think is to exist as certainty.
• God is the Ultimate Good possessing perfect benevolence who is the source of all truth and goodness.
• Perfection includes attributes like omnipotence, omniscience, and existence.
• The human body, as part of God's creation, must be designed with a certain perfection in terms of its functionality.
• The body may be imperfect because it is subject to physical decay and limited by the material world.
• In terms of how it works mechanically, it was seen as perfectly suited to its role in the physical world.
• God is the infinite and necessary substance that exists outside of the two substances of mind and body.
• The perfect, benevolent God created the world and everything in it by creating the human body in a way that reflects divine perfection.
• This is true, even though the body is subject to material limitations.
• The body's overall design, its structure, function, and its ability to sustain life, reflects God's wise and perfect design.