Inequality in Democracy and Hypatia of Alexandria

Inequality in democracy

• Citizenship, persuasion, and rhetoric are key aspects of democracy
• Hypatia and the Neoplatonic school faced challenges and intolerance
• Philosophy and Polis: Greek democracy's origins, tenets, and current relevance are examined
• Isonomy, political community as equality of beings
• Democracy as equality: the connection between original democracy and its modern form is discussed
• Politics as a characteristic of humans as political animals

Hypatia of Alexandria

• Hypatia was born in Alexandria, Egypt, around 355-370 AD, exact birth date unknown
• Daughter of Theon, a renowned astronomer and mathematician
• She was knowledgeable in mathematics and philosophy, teaching from home which turned into a school
• No works survive though writings about her detail her influence in politics and her experiments
• The dominant philosophical system was Neoplatonism, combined Platonic ideas with new compatible knowledge
• Two adversarial groups sought power in Alexandria
• Pagans were represented by Hypatia and her Neoplatonic school
• Christians were represented by Cyril
• Hypatia maintained friendships with influential figures, including the Roman emperor which garnered enmity from the Christian hierarchy
• Tensions escalated, resulting in a mob of fanatical Christians attacking Hypatia in 415 AD
• Hypatia was dragged, undressed, mutilated, and burned

Rationality in philosophy

• Rationality is acting based on reasons, with human knowledge from reason related to thoughts, beliefs, and judgments
• Human thought evolved with René Descartes (1596-1650) inaugurating modern philosophy
• Descartes established an approach that broke with older world views
• Descartes posited that a thinking subject exists apart from the external world, creating a separation between concepts and reality

European philosophical thought in the 15th-17th centuries

• Encounters between Europe and America
• Scholastic philosophical thought was founded by Catholic Church
• The scientific method appeared and philosophy used doubt to investigate the reality of objects
• Humanist philosophical thought focused on human beings
• Philosophical thought in the Age of Enlightenment, focused on reason, and the rise of modern states

Philosophical thought in America

• Colonizers introduced Roman Catholic philosophical thought to America
• It superseded indigenous beliefs, leading to territorial, cultural, and religious conquest
• Humanist thought emerged later creating syncretism with diverse local cultures
• The republican era was largely influenced by Simón Bolívar, who sought universality

Formation of thought, construction of concepts, and theories

• Thought is humanity's most important activity and involves creating ideas, abstraction, and perception of reality
• Thought provides the raw material that language communicates
• Thought begins with stimuli from the reality, called the perceptual phase
• Prior knowledge is activated, called the reflective phase
• A creative phase begins where imagination expands knowledge
• The expansion becomes new learning or memorized repetitions, called the retentive phase
• The expression of the idea through language leads to the practical phase, which defines future human actions
• New ways of understanding and relating to the world are forged

Conceptualization process

• A concept is a mental representation of an object, event, quality, or situation
• Humans try to understand it better through analysis and synthesis
• Concepts are basic units of human knowledge organized to form logical categories that define reality
• One important methodology for arranging concepts is systematization by mentefacts
• Mind maps structure knowledge
• The concept is the qualities of the concept
• The supraordinate contains the concept
• The infraordinate are all the ramifications of the concept
• The exclude is what is not the concept

What is theory?

• A theory is used to explain the laws that govern the world, moving beyond mythical, magical, or religious views
• Theories rely on hypotheses, which are assertions about definitions

Truth and Validity

• Truth and validity are not synonymous
• Arguments can be valid without being true
• Validity comes from the structure of thought and logic
• Truth comes from the content
• Logic allows us to differentiate between valid and invalid arguments
• Arguments are structured with premises and a conclusion
• Validity depends on the structure, independently of the content and truth
• Political discourse uses valid arguments that may not be true
• Political discourse uses the social climate, media, and different perspectives to be persuasive.
• It intends to legitimize a political standing and delegitimize opponents, becoming a power tool
• It can spread ideology
• It is crucial to analyze the validity and truth in that discourse.