Introduction to Philosophy

Philosophy and Philosophizing

• Philosophy gives meaning to human existence beyond just knowing facts
• Philosophy is the unending human search for truth
• Philosophy is a way of thinking about the world, the universe, and society
• It also entails understanding truths about ourselves, the world we live in, and relationships

Beginning of Philosophizing

• Philosophizing begins with questioning and a desire to know
• Philosophy started in Greece around 600 B.C.E. as an intellectual activity
• Philosophy is thinking accompanied by genuine and free inquiry

Etymology of Philosophy

• Derived from the Greek words philia (love) and sophia (wisdom)
• Love involves passion and pursuit
• Going beyond wisdom entails knowledge, understanding, and reliable, accurate self/world understanding

Philosophy Today

• Moving away from ignorance and apathy is the nature and function
• Aims to go beyond value as an idle academic pursuit
• Involves preference for science, mechanical, and technological advances

Philosophizing

• Philosophy involves a search for deeper knowledge (of the world within and around us)
• Giving meaning to experiences
• Asking deeper questions

Philosophy Today

• Can be a way of life, providing someone with a world-outlook and value system
• Philosophy can be an approach or attitude, sometimes even a calling to ask, question, answer, or comment on certain kinds of questions
• It is a sustained inquiry into the principles and presuppositions of any field of inquiry
• Focuses primarily on assumptions upon which an inquiry field is based

Obstacles to Philosophizing

• An idle, academic pursuit - no practical value
• Preference for advances, in science, mechanical & technological age

Philosophy and Students

• Can help students to understand deeply difficult intellectual problems
• Necessary to interpret texts, analyze and criticize arguments, and express themselves clearly
• The basic aim of education in philosophy is not to impart information

Why People Philosophize

• Due to tension in human existence
• Tension results in inquiry, questioning, and/or a search for meaning

Emmanuel Dy's View

• The act of questioning and wanting to know is how philosophy begins
• Philosophy comes from shared interaction of the "I" and the other
• Characterized by tension and incoherence

Inquiry

• Human beings make an effort to integrate and harmonize this tension

Inquiry Types

• Common sense involves sound judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts
• Scientific inquiry is careful investigation into a natural world aspect where quantifiable relationships may be propounded
• Philosophical inquiry goes beyond the scientific by searching out coherence quality, sense of human life itself as a comprehensive reality

Wonder in Philosophy

• Plato stated that wonder means to realize that there is something strange behind the things that we ordinarily perceive
• Wonder is to notice something extraordinary in the ordinary things
• Wonder is the feeling of a Philosopher, and Philosophy begins here (in wonder).

René Descartes Methodic Doubt

• Everything should be doubted until something can't be doubted (that he is doubting)
• Descartes was influenced by the progress and success of science during that time
• Doubt paved the way for a new period

The ideas and philosphy from Karl Jaspers

• It may not be possible to control everything, but people can respond with sense and deeper meaning
• Realities that people can only acknowledge but not change include death, birth, aging, fright, guilt, finality, and suffering
• Karl Jaspers refers to this as "limit situations" - which are certain situations where human experiences differ from normal situations

Gabriel Marcel viewpoint

• Contrasted with curiosity
• Marcel believed curiosity starts from external objects outside of someone with a vague idea
• Philosophy begins from the inner restlessness

Topic 2: Account of how philosopy started

• Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary periods.
• Philosophical themes occur in the different periods where claims are made about the different problems of world issues
• People are driven by design to explain the world
• Compare the history of Philosophy to to establishment of tradition and epics

Aspects of people

• There were revered ancestors who, through great suffering, established traditions for the betterment of their descendants
• There are black sheep that stir up trouble and embarrass family
• Bitter family feuds that last generations, with no clear victor ever emerging with feelings of progress
• Old-fashioned ways were replaced with new faddish ones
• Adventure of ideas, is an adventure of philosophy

Early Greek Philosophers and aim

• Early Greek philosophers had specific puzzles, what are things really like: how can we explain the process of change
• the solutions to this puzzle shortly dubbed philosophy

Reason why people fail in examining basic questions

• The need to survive for the sake of physical existence
• Not conducive for philosophy's prosperity

Predecessors in Philosophy

• Many claim philosophy initially started in the east
• Some claim that western thoughts were influenced by Oriental thought
• Western thought and Oriental thought began treating the world in a particular fashion

The Myths of the Early Greeks

• Myth played a role in explaining reality.
• Mythological explanations are all-encompassing, ultimate, and universal explanations for the world and its beginnings
• In Greek history the metaphysics but not philosophical

Ionian ways of thought

• Ionian springsboard for the development of philosophy
• Contained elements of myth/fable but were essentially, a rational attempt to unravel the mysteries of reality
• Aspects of nature, identified as souls

Thales

• First philosophers who wanted to understand reality as a whole and explain the first cause of unifying principle
• Springboard in philosophy even in science

Characterizing Ancient Philosophy

• Intellectual activity gave rise to culture as a Rhetorical Movement
• Activity concerned with speech and writing
• Plato described wisdom "that dear delight" and love of modestly illusive truth, with the lust for ways of flesh
• Described as knowledge that aligns with the infinite of endless knowledge and infinite

Ancient Philosphers with Ancient Philosphy

• Knowledge of totality and expanse of inquiry without excluding any part
• Seeking no other goal but to know with the desire to love for it's own sake

Thales: Water as the ultimate substance

• Taught that the source of all things and earth flows on water
• Was the source and motivation to create his theory
• All things came from a combined ultimate principle

Phythagoras

• Did not follow the naturalistic explanation
• Taught that the world is made of numbers not literal
• Reality can be explained numerically
• Thus is the case, the world is mechanical and predictable

Coining the term Philosophy

• Heracles Ponticus attributed discovery of philosophy to Pythagorean, only a philospher not knowing any art

Socrates (470 BC - 399 BC)

• One must be wise to seek a better life
• Described ethical action as a way to be wisdom

More on Epistemology

• The point of Absolute Certainty on whether or not things are known
• Whether or not many things are unknowable

Metaphysics.

• What is real, principle and principle
• Study of value, ethics as moral philosphy and Aesthetics (inquiry to the beauty, arts and sensory)

Logic in Philosphy

• Study of the principle used to distinguish correct from incorrect.

Different Branches of Philosophy

• Gives to certain aspects describing the meaning and the necessity through meaning through the useage of the philosophical approach
• Engaged in the meanings of the linguistic of language

Language in Disputes

• Disagreements with verifying facts
• Disagreements usually resolve through the compromise of preference
• Disagreements clarified properly through clarified expressions

What constutes is that disagreements can be clarified with clarifying the meanings of the critical terms

Philosophy

• Aims to practice the best
• Help us to flourish in the truest and effective approaches