Overview of philosophy

Branches of Philosophy
• Philosophy is often divided into four main
branches: metaphysics, the investigation of
ultimate reality; epistemology, the study of the
origins, validity, and limits of knowledge;
ethics, the study of the nature of morality and
judgment; and aesthetics, the study of the nature
of beauty in the fine arts.
• Usually, when we say philosophy, we talk about
Western philosophy from the Greek tradition to
the European and American thought

Other Philosophies
• Chinese Philosophy; Confucius and later
thinkers (Confucius thought that the way to
reform society was to cultivate ethical
behavior in individuals, especially in rulers and
their ministers because leaders serve as
important role models for their people)
• Islam;
• Buddhism;
• Daoism (Taoism);

• Islam – guided by Koran or the Muslim bible
• In the Arabic language, the word Islam means “surrender”
or “submission”—submission to the will of God. A follower
of Islam is called a Muslim, which in Arabic means “one
who surrenders to God.” The Arabic name for
God, Allah, refers to the God worshiped by Jews and
Christians. Islam’s central teaching is that there is only one
all-powerful, all-knowing God, and this God created the
universe. This rigorous monotheism, as well as the Islamic
teaching that all Muslims are equal before God, provides
the basis for a collective sense of loyalty to God that
transcends class, race, nationality, and even differences in
religious practice. Thus, all Muslims belong to one
community, the umma, irrespective of their ethnic or
national background.

• Five Pillars of Islam, called arkan in Arabic, five
ritual duties that mainstream Muslims view as
central to their faith. These are :(1)
pronouncing the confession of faith (shahada
or kalima); (2) performing the five daily
prayers (salat); (3) fasting during the month of
Ramadan (saum); (4) paying the alms tax
(zakat); (5) and performing, at least once in
life, the major pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj).

• Buddhism - a major world religion, founded in
northeastern India and based on the teachings of
Siddhartha Gautama, who is known as the
Buddha, or Enlightened One
• Buddhism today is divided into two major
branches known to their respective followers as
Theravada, the Way of the Elders, and Mahayana,
the Great Vehicle. Followers of Mahayana refer to
Theravada using the derogatory term Hinayana,
the Lesser Vehicle.

• At the core of the Buddha’s enlightenment was the realization of
the Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is suffering. This is more than a mere
recognition of the presence of suffering in existence. It is a
statement that, in its very nature, human existence is essentially
painful from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Even
death brings no relief, for the Buddha accepted the Hindu idea of
life as cyclical, with death leading to further rebirth. (2) All suffering
is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and the craving,
attachment, and grasping that result from such ignorance. (3)
Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment.
(4) The path to the suppression of suffering is the Noble Eightfold
Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech,
right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and
right contemplation. These eight are usually divided into three
categories that form the cornerstone of Buddhist faith: morality,
wisdom, and samadhi, or concentration.

• Daoism (Taoism) - The second great philosophy of the
classical age was Daoism (Taoism). The traditional view
is that Daoism was founded by Laozi (Lao-tzu), who
was presumably a contemporary of Confucius and
wrote the Daodejing (“Classic of the Way and Its
Virtue”). However, many scholars today believe that
there was no single person who wrote the Daodejing,
but rather that it is an anthology of sayings by different
authors and was composed as late as the 3rd century
BC. The Daodejing often talks about the dao (“way”), an
entity that both creates the world and determines how
things should live.

Schools in Philosophy
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Ionian School
The Pythagoran School
The Heraclitean School
The Eleatic School
The Pluralists
The Atomists
The Sophists
Socratic Philosophy
Platonic Philosophy
Aristotelian Philophy

Ionian School
• The first philosopher of historical record was
Thales, who lived in the 6th century BC in
Miletus, a city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor.
Thales, who was revered by later generations as
one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, was
interested in astronomical, physical, and
meteorological phenomena. His scientific
investigations led him to speculate that all natural
phenomena are different forms of one
fundamental substance, which he believed to be
water because he thought evaporation and
condensation to be universal processes.

Ionian School
• Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, maintained
that the first principle from which all things
evolve is an intangible, invisible, infinite
substance that he called apeiron, “the
boundless.”
• The third great Ionian philosopher of the 6th
century BC, Anaximenes, returned to Thales’s
assumption that the primary substance is
something familiar and material, but he claimed
it to be air rather than water.

Ionian School
• In general, the Ionian school made the initial
radical step from mythological to scientific
explanation of natural phenomena. It
discovered the important scientific principles
of the permanence of substance, the natural
evolution of the world, and the reduction of
quality to quantity.

Pythagorean School
• About 530 BC at Croton (now Crotona), in southern Italy,
the philosopher Pythagoras founded a school of philosophy
that was more religious and mystical than the Ionian
school. It fused the ancient mythological view of the world
with the developing interest in scientific explanation. The
system of philosophy that became known as
Pythagoreanism combined ethical, supernatural, and
mathematical beliefs with many ascetic rules, such as
obedience and silence and simplicity of dress and
possessions. The Pythagoreans taught and practiced a way
of life based on the belief that the soul is a prisoner of the
body, is released from the body at death, and migrates into
a succession of different kinds of animals before
reincarnation into a human being.

Heraclitean School
• Heraclitus of Ephesus, who was active around
500 BC, continued the search of the Ionians for
a primary substance, which he claimed to be
fire. He noticed that heat produces changes in
matter, and thus anticipated the modern
theory of energy. Heraclitus maintained that
all things are in a state of continuous flux, that
stability is an illusion, and that only change
and the law of change, or Logos, are real.

Eleatic School
• In the 5th century BC, Parmenides founded a
school of philosophy at Elea, a Greek colony on
the Italian peninsula. Parmenides took a position
opposite from that of Heraclitus on the relation
between stability and change. Parmenides
maintained that the universe, or the state of
being, is an indivisible, unchanging, spherical
entity and that all reference to change or
diversity is self-contradictory. According to
Parmenides, all that exists has no beginning and
has no end and is not subject to change over
time.

Pluralists
• The speculation about the physical world begun
by the Ionians was continued in the 5th century
BC by Empedocles and Anaxagoras, who
developed a philosophy replacing the Ionian
assumption of a single primary substance with an
assumption of a plurality of such substances.
Empedocles maintained that all things are
composed of four irreducible elements: air, water,
earth, and fire, which are alternately combined
and separated by two opposite forces, love and
strife.

Atomists
• It was a natural step from pluralism to
atomism, the theory that all matter is
composed of tiny, indivisible particles differing
only in simple physical properties such as
size, shape, and weight. This step was taken in
the 4th century BC by Leucippus and his more
famous associate Democritus, who is generally
credited with the first systematic formulation
of an atomic theory of matter.

Atomists
• The fundamental assumption of Democritus’s
atomic theory is that matter is not infinitely
divisible but is composed of numerous indivisible
particles that are too small for human senses to
detect. His conception of nature was thoroughly
materialistic (focused on physical aspects of
matter), explaining all natural phenomena in
terms of the number, shape, and size of atoms.
He thus reduced the sensory qualities of
things, such as warmth, cold, taste, and odor, to
quantitative differences among atoms—that is, to
differences measurable in amount or size.

Sophists
• Toward the end of the 5th century BC, a group of
traveling teachers called Sophists became famous
throughout Greece.
• Lacking the education of the aristocrats, they
sought to prepare themselves for politics and
commerce by paying the Sophists for instruction
in public speaking, legal argument, and general
culture. Although the best of the Sophists made
valuable contributions to Greek thought, the
group as a whole acquired a reputation for
deceit, insincerity, and demagoguery.

Sophists
• The famous maxim of Protagoras, one of the
leading Sophists, that “man is the measure of
all things,” is typical of the philosophical
attitude of the Sophist school. Protagoras
claimed that individuals have the right to
judge all matters for themselves.

Socratic Philosophy
• Socrates left no written work and is known
through the writings of his students, especially
those of his most famous pupil, Plato. Socrates
maintained a philosophical dialogue with his
students until he was condemned to death
and took his own life.
• He often taught in agora or the marketplace

Socratic Philosophy
• He concluded that, in matters of morality, it is
best to seek out genuine knowledge by exposing
false pretensions. Ignorance is the only source of
evil, he argued, so it is improper to act out of
ignorance or to accept moral instruction from
those who have not proven their own wisdom.
Instead of relying blindly on authority, we should
unceasingly question our own beliefs and the
beliefs of others in order to seek out genuine
wisdom.

Socratic Philosophy
• The philosopher’s task, Socrates believed, was to
provoke people into thinking for themselves,
rather than to teach them anything they did not
already know. His contribution to the history of
thought was not a systematic doctrine but a
method of thinking and a way of life. He stressed
the need for analytical examination of the
grounds of one’s beliefs, for clear definitions of
basic concepts, and for a rational and critical
approach to ethical problems.

Platonic Philosophy
• Like Socrates, Plato regarded ethics as the highest
branch of knowledge; he stressed the intellectual
basis of virtue, identifying virtue with wisdom.
• Plato also explored the fundamental problems of
natural science, political theory, metaphysics,
theology, and theory of knowledge, and
developed ideas that became permanent
elements in Western thought.
• He founded the Academy

Platonic Philosophy
• The basis of Plato’s philosophy is his theory of
Ideas, also known as the doctrine of Forms. The
theory of Ideas, which is expressed in many of his
dialogues, particularly the Republic and the
Parmenides, divides existence into two realms, an
“intelligible realm” of perfect, eternal, and
invisible Ideas, or Forms, and a “sensible realm”
of concrete, familiar objects.
Trees, stones, human bodies, and other objects
that can be known through the senses are for
Plato unreal, shadowy, and imperfect copies of
the Ideas of tree, stone, and the human body.

Platonic Philosophy
• Plato’s theory of Ideas and his rationalistic view
of knowledge formed the foundation for his
ethical and social idealism. The realm of eternal
Ideas provides the standards or ideals according
to which all objects and actions should be judged.
The philosophical person, who refrains from
sensual pleasures and searches instead for
knowledge of abstract principles, finds in these
ideals the basis for personal behavior and social
institutions.

Aristotelian Philosophy
• Aristotle, who began study at Plato’s Academy
at age 17 in 367 BC, was the most illustrious
pupil of Plato, and ranks with his teacher
among the most profound and influential
thinkers of the Western world. After studying
for many years at Plato’s Academy, Aristotle
became the tutor of Alexander the Great.
• He founded the Lyceum or the Peripatetic
School

• Aristotle defined the basic concepts and
principles of many of the sciences, such as
logic, biology, physics, and psychology. In
founding the science of logic, he developed the
theory of deductive inference—a process for
drawing conclusions from accepted premises by
means of logical reasoning. His theory is
exemplified by the syllogism (a deductive
argument having two premises and a
conclusion), and a set of rules for scientific
method.

• In his metaphysical theory, Aristotle criticized
Plato’s theory of Forms. Aristotle argued that
forms could not exist by themselves but existed
only in particular things, which are composed of
both form and matter. He understood substances
as matter organized by a particular form.
• The soul, for Aristotle, is the form of the body,
and humans, whose rational soul is a higher form
than the souls of other terrestrial species, are the
highest species of perishable things.

• The standards of personal and social behavior,
according to Aristotle, must be found in the
scientific study of the natural tendencies of
individuals and societies rather than in a
heavenly or abstract realm of pure forms.
• In his theory of knowledge, Aristotle rejected
the Platonic doctrine that knowledge is innate
and insisted that it can be acquired only by
generalization from experience.

Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy
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Epicureanism
Stoicism
Skepticism
Neoplatonism

Epicureanism
• In 306 BC Epicurus founded a philosophical school
in Athens. Because his followers met in the
garden of his home they became known as
philosophers of the garden. Epicurus adopted the
atomistic physics of Democritus, but he allowed
for an element of chance in the physical world by
assuming that the atoms sometimes swerve in
unpredictable ways, thus providing a physical
basis for a belief in free will. The overall aim of
Epicurus’s philosophy was to promote happiness
by removing the fear of death.

Stoicism
• The Stoic school, founded in Athens about 310 BC
by Zeno of Citium, developed out of the earlier
movement of the Cynics, who rejected social
institutions and material (worldly) values.
• The Stoics taught that one can achieve freedom
and tranquility only by becoming insensitive to
material comforts and external fortune and by
dedicating oneself to a life of virtue and wisdom.

Skepticism
• The school of Skepticism, which continued the
Sophist criticisms of objective
knowledge, dominated Plato’s Academy in the
3rd century BC. The Skeptics discovered, as had
Zeno of Elea, that logic is a powerful critical
device, capable of destroying any positive
philosophical view, and they used it skillfully.
Their fundamental assumption was that
humanity cannot attain knowledge or wisdom
concerning reality, and they therefore challenged
the claims of scientists and philosophers to
investigate the nature of reality.

Skepticism
• The Skeptics concluded that the way to
happiness lies in a complete suspension of
judgment. They believed that suspending
judgment about the things of which one has
no true knowledge creates tranquility and
fulfillment.

Neoplatonism
• During the 1st century AD the Jewish-Hellenistic
philosopher Philo of Alexandria combined Greek
philosophy, particularly Platonic and Pythagorean
ideas, with Judaism in a comprehensive system that
anticipated Neoplatonism and Jewish, Christian, and
Muslim mysticism. Philo insisted that the nature of God
so far transcended (surpassed) human understanding
and experience as to be indescribable; he described
the natural world as a series of stages of descent from
God, terminating in matter as the source of evil. He
advocated a religious state, or theocracy, and was one
of the first to interpret the Old Testament for the
Gentiles.

Neoplatonism
• Neoplatonism, one of the most influential
philosophical and religious schools and an
important rival of Christianity, was founded in the
3rd century ad by Ammonius Saccus and his more
famous disciple Plotinus. Plotinus based his ideas
on the mystical and poetic writings of Plato, the
Pythagoreans, and Philo. The main function of
philosophy, for him, is to prepare individuals for
the experience of ecstasy, in which they become
one with God. God, or the One, is beyond rational
understanding and is the source of all reality.

Link to Encarta Encyclopedia
• Medieval Philosophy
– Augustinian Philosophy
– Scholasticism
– Medieval Philosophy after Aquinas

Modern Philosophy
• Mechanics and Materialism
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Decartes
Hobbes
Spinoza
Locke

• Idealism and Skepticism
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Leibniz
Berkeley
Hume
Kant

19th-Century Philosophy
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Hegel
Schopenhauer
Nietzche
Kierkegaard
Bentham and Mill
Karl Marx and Marxism
Pragmaticism

20th-Century Philosophy
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Phenomenology
Existentialism
Analytic Philosophy
Postmodern Philosophy
Feminist Philosophy
Environmental Philosophy
Contemporary Political Philosophy
Applied Ethics

Overview of philosophy

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Overview of philosophy