Philosophy of Hermeneutics

Minor First Order Branches

• Hermeneutics: the art of interpreting, originating from the Greek god Hermes who interprets the minds of the gods for people.
• Hermeneutics is a method of understanding cultural and historical contexts of ideas, and involves understanding the component words or sentences of a text.
• Key hermeneuticists include Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida.
• Hermeneutics is a circular process, where understanding the text requires understanding the component words or sentences, and vice versa.

Critical Theory

• Critical Theory has a narrow and broad meaning in philosophy and social sciences.
• In the narrow sense, it designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists.
• Critical Theory has influenced modern political debates, aiming to challenge conservative worldviews.

Darwinism

• Darwinism is a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth.
• Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859.
• Key themes in Darwinism include probability and chance, the nature and power of selection, adaptation and teleology, and nominalism.

Rationalism and Empiricism

• Rationalism: an epistemological school of thought that says knowledge is possible only through human reasoning.
• Proponents of rationalism include Réné Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Baruch Spinoza, Plato, and Immanuel Kant.
• Empiricism: an epistemological school of thought that counters rationalism, insisting that human knowledge is only possible through experience.
• Proponents of empiricism include British philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Critical Thinking and Philosophy

• Critical thinking involves reference to a wide range of skills, dispositions, and attitudes that characterize a virtue.
• Philosophy helps develop critical thinking skills, moral sensitivity, and intellectual culture.
• The possession of critical skills is insufficient to make one a critical thinker; one must also have an inward readiness to give weight to the other side and recognize that knowledge is subject to correction.

Ecstatic Experiences

• Ecstatic experiences are experiences that put us into a state that is difficult to describe in words, often characterized by feelings of connection to something beyond oneself.
• These experiences can be therapeutic, providing a sense of meaning and connection to the universe.
• Ecstatic experiences have been important in bonding people and inspiring creativity throughout history.
• In Western culture, there has been a shift towards marginalizing ecstatic experiences, viewing them as dangerous or shameful.
• The 1960s saw a resurgence of ecstatic practices, and today, there is an attempt to integrate these experiences into mainstream culture, recognizing their value in human flourishing.