INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAN
What is Philosophy?
 More than 2500 years ago a sage in
South Asia named Gautama Buddha
declared that “Life is suffering.” This is
the first of his Four Noble Truths. And
indeed if you look at your life you will see
that it is a series of challenges that you
have to overcome if you want to survive.
 Philosophy allows us the freedom to ask
even those questions that others believe
to already have a definite answer.
 Traditionally philosophy is defined as love
of wisdom because it came from two
Greek words Philos (love) and Sophia
(wisdom).
 some people like Socrates died for truth.
It is this centrality of love of philosophy
that we call people who engages in
philosophy as philosophers (love of
Wisdom)
PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION
 To reflect philosophically is to think
about an important question that does
not have a definite or ready answer. We
are puzzled mostly about things we
cannot fully know or understand because
we can ask. One of the things human
beings ask is “Why am I here?” which is a
variation of the questions “Why was I
ever born?” “What am I here for?” or
“What is the purpose of my existence?”
Many also ask “Why love when you only
get hurt” and “What if there is no after-
life?”
 Difficult questions that do not have
definite answers like the ones we have
been describing are significant. They are
questions that matter to us for they
reflect our desire to understand or at
least make sense of our experiences
 In social media we are made to believe or
defend the opposite that nothing lasts
forever. This is mostly referring to the
context of love relationships. When you
begin to agree, or disagree, it calls for
philosophical thinking whether in jest or
in a serious mode.
Origin of philosophy
• Greece the birthplace of philosophy in
the west. To be more precise it is the
ancient Greek city of Miletus in the
Western coast of what is now Turkey that
gave birth to philosophy. It is in this city
that the first philosopher in the west,
Thales lived.
• Thales is the father of philosophy I the
Western Civilization. He lived between
624 and 546 BCE a contemporary of the
Lydian king Croesus and the statesman
Solon (stumpf and Fieser 2008)
•
He believes that there is One in the Many.
• Thales was the first individual who tried
to reduce the multiplicity in to a unity
(Jones 1969)
• But his explanation of natural
phenomena is devoid of gods and
goddesses of the old religion of Greece. It
is completely rational. It represents a
departure from the mythological religion
of Greece. Thales approach highlights the
difference between religion and
philosophy. Religion rests on faith while
philosophy rests on reason
Thales greatest contribution to philosophy is the
problem he posed “What is the ultimate stuff of
the universe?” and his approach in solving that
problem. Studying Thales makes us realize that
philosophical activity is characterized by three
things.
• First in terms of scope philosophy
involves the widest
generalization
• Second philosophy is all about
fundamentals
• Third philosophy is drive by the
desire to integrate things in to a
one coherent whole.
Philosophy of thought
it deals with answering the problems related to
knowledge and reasoning
Epistemology- The word epistemology comes
from the Greek word episteme, which means
knowledge and logos which means study. It is a
philosophical theory that deals with the origin of
human knowledge; hence it is also known as the
Theory of Knowledge. Its main concern is the
nature of knowledge, its possibility, scope and
general basis
Logic- deals with the problem on reason. It is
basically the science and art of distinguishing
correct from incorrect. In distinguishing the
correct from incorrect thinking, it is necessary
that reason must be applied. Logic is used to be
considered as the Scientia Scientiarum, the
science of sciences.
PHILOSOPHY OF REALITY- it deals with the reality
of the world
Metaphysics- considered as the most abstract
and in some views the most highfalutin part of
philosophy. It deals with the origin of things.it is
basically the study of being in its general aspects.
Theodicy- this is also known as the Natural
Theology or the Philosophy of Religion. It deals
with the problem of God’s Existence. Basically it
answers the question: “Is there a God”. It
upholds the principle fides quaerens intellectum
Cosmology- the term cosmology comes from the
Greek word kosmos which means universe and
logos which means study. It is the study of
universe from a philosophical viewpoint. The
study of the corporeal beings. It deals with the
reality of the origin and the end of the universe.
Social philosophy- it deals with the philosophical
study of society and its institutions.
Political philosophy- it is equivalent to social
philosophy since both deals with the discussion
on society as a whole. It comes from the Greek
word polis which means community or city. It
focuses on one social institution, the state and
seeks to determine its justification and proper
organization
PHILOSOPHY OR MORALITY- deals with man’s
question regarding the problems of morals and
good deeds
ETHICS- comes from the Greek word ethos which
means “customs,” “usage” or “character”.
Philosophical study of moral judgments. It tries to
study the human acts and searches for the means
on how to obtain wisdom regarding how life
should be lived.
Aesthetics- comes from the aesthesis which
means harmony. It provides meaning on arts and
beauty and it is also known as the philosophy of
the art.. It deals with the questions about the
meaning of beauty and tries to determine
whether beauty is in the subject or in the object
TRUTH AND OPINION
Epistemology- is a science devoted to the
discovery of the proper method of acquiring and
validating knowledge” (Rand 1990).
Purpose of Epistemology
1. To show how we can acquire knowledge.
2. To give us a method of demonstrating whether
the knowledge we acquired is really knowledge
According to Ayn Rand knowledge is a “mental
grasp of reality reached either by perceptual
observation or by a process of reason based on
perceptual observation”
Knowledge- is a retained form of awareness
Philosophy of psychology- it comes from the two
Greek Words Psyche meaning soul and logos
meaning study. It is etymologically the study of
soul. Philosophers considers the soul as the
principle of life and the reason why people
behave as they do. It is for this reason that
psychology has been defined eventually as the
study of human behavior. It is also known as the
Rational Psychology, the study of that deals with
man not only as a sensing and thinking subject,
but also as a being composed of body and soul
Philosophy of Person- deals with the
philosophical inquiry into a human being as a
person and as an existing being in the world. It
deals with the study about dignity of man, truth,
freedom, justice, love, death, and his relationship
with other human beings and with God.
Branches of Philosophy
Philosophy of thought
 Epistemology
 Logic
Philosophy of Reality
 Metaphysics
 Theodicy
 Cosmology
 Philosophy of Psychology
 Social Philosophy
 Political Philosophy
Philosophy of Morality
 Ethics
 Aesthetics
 Philosophy of Man
So how do you acquire knowledge?
 First, we can acquire knowledge using
our senses, this method of acquiring
knowledge is called empiricism and it has
many adherents in the history of
philosophy such as John Locke, George
Berkeley, and David Hume.
 Second, we can acquire knowledge by
thinking with the use of our minds (what
philosophers call the rational faculty).
This is what rationalism advocates.
(Some well-known rationalists in history
are Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).
 ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE
1. Reality
To know is to know something. This
“something” is what philosophers call reality
Existence is really all there is to know
(Another name for it is the Universe [Peikoff
1990]). Is really all there is to know
2. Perception
Our first and only contact with reality is
through our senses. Knowledge begins with
perceptual knowledge. At first the senses
give us knowledge of things or entities (what
Aristotle calls primary substance)
Aristotelian categories cannot be separated
from the entities that have it
3. Concept
After we perceive other things. It is “an
abstract or generic idea generalized from
particular instances”.
Abstraction from abstractions-Process where we
can form higher level concepts through a process
Two types of abstraction from abstractions:
wider generalizations (or simply widenings) and
subdivisions (or narrowing’s) (Binswanger 2014)
Wider generalization is the process of forming
wider and wider concepts
 As we go up to these progressive
widenings our knowledge increases
Subdivisions consist of identifying finer and finer
distinctions
As we go down these progressive narrowings our
knowledge of things subsumed under a concept
increases
The result of this progressive widenings and
narrowing’s is a hierarchy (or levels) of concepts
whose based is sense perception
4. Proposition is a statement that expresses
either an assertion or a denial (Copi, 2002) that
an existent belongs to a class or possess certain
attribute. Usually expressed in a declarative
sentence
Affirmative proposition therefore has the
following structure: “S is P” (where S is the
subject, P is the predicate and “is” is the copula
stating the logical relationship of S and P) while
the negative proposition has the structure “S is
not P” (“is not” is the copula expressing denial).
5. Inference
How do we demonstrate that the statement is
true? By providing an argument
According to Hurley an argument “is a group of
statements
Conclusion is a statement that we want to prove
Premise provides justification, evidence, and
proof to the conclusion
Argument expresses a reasoning process which
logicians call inference (Hurley 2011).
Knowledge- episteme in Greek
Opinion- doxa in Greek
Plato is often considered the first to differentiate
knowledge from opinion
According to Plato, is certain whereas opinion is
not certain
Dialectic- is an instrumental in drawing out
assumptions inconsistencies, and citing counter
examples so the truth is known. It is learned by
Plato to his teacher Socrates
Aristotle developed syllogism
Syllogism-deductive argument of a certain form
where a conclusion is inferred from two premises
RENE DESCARTES- father of modern philosophy
- He introduced the notion of indubitality
Opinions are those that can be doubted and are
often confused in our thought
Knowledge, on the other hand are indubitable
and thus certain
Postmodernist have come to be known for their
denial of philosophical viewpoints
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
 In the late 1960’s, he developed
deconstruction which challenged
traditional views in philosophy
 According to him, like other postmodern
thinkers, we find the desire for a more
democratic society. Power and authority
is shifted from those who used to be at
the center of society
Theories of truth
in knowing the truth or falsity of a statement, we
generally use the following theories of truth
The Correspondence theory of Truth
What we believe or say is true if it corresponds to
the way things actually are based on the facts
Austin Cline argues, it is important to note here
that “truth” is not a property of “facts
Fact is some set of circumstances in the world,
cannot be either true or false
Belief is an opinion about what those facts are,
capable of being true or false
Coherence Theory
For Cline, only when statements are tested as
part of a larger system of complex ideas, then
one might conclude that the statement is “true”.
- Coherence Theory is similar to the
Correspondence Theory since both evaluates
statements based on their agreement with
reality. The difference lies in the method where
the former involves a larger system while the
latter relies on a single evidence of fact
The Pragmatist Theory of Truth
Belief/statement is true if it has a useful
(pragmatic) application in the world. If it does not,
then it is not true
-Cline argues that when a belief works, it is more
appropriate to call it useful rather than “true”
HOW TO REFLECT PHILOSOPHICALLY
Essence of philosophy- changed our
competencies and emphasized the most essential
ones. Separate the essences of things versus
accidentals and necessary versus contingent
Reflection- is the process that would aide in
understanding the holistic point of view
- An activity that requires a person to examine
his or her thoughts, feelings and actions and learn
from experience. (Abella, 2016).
Philosophical reflection- see the bigger picture
about everything
According to Gabriel Marcel, philosophical
reflection is the act of giving time to think about
the meaning and purpose of life.
Two types of reflection:
Primary reflection- which is the ability to think
logically. The ability of the mind to construct and
evaluate arguments. Examines its object by
abstraction, by analytically breaking it down into
its constituent parts.
Secondary reflection- According to Marcel this
type of reflection enables us to look deeper into
our experiences and see the bigger picture of
reality
Moral theology- In research it is called
methodological approach. Employs the STOP sign
as guidepost of moral decision making.
S-earch…
T-hink
O-thers
P-ray
Praying- is a unique tool of theology which is in
the realm of faith
St. Anselm said “its faith seeking understanding.”
St. Thomas Aquinas- one of the great theologian
of the church quoted in Latin the relationship
between philosophy and theology; ‘philosophia
ancilla theologiae’ or philosophy is the
handmaid of theology
Framework- is a conceptual map consisting of our
views and beliefs which affects the way we view
the world (Abella 2016)
AQAL- formulated by an American
philosopher/psychologist Ken Wilber
METHODS OF PHILOSOPHIZING
Infographic- is a visual representation of
information
Methods of Philosophizing
1. The Dialectic method
2. The Pragmatic Method
3. The Phenomonological Method
4. The Primary and Secondary Reflections
5. The Analytic Method
Different kind of Philosophizing:
1. Argumentum ad Hominem - Attacking the
Person. Hominem came from Latin word “homo”
which means man. This fallacy literally means
hitting the person below the belt
Argumentum ad Baculum-Appeal to Force.
Baculum is a Latin word which means scepter or
stick. A scepter is a symbol of authority.
Argumentum ad Misercordiam- Appeal to Pity.
Misercordiam came from Latin word Misericordia
which means pity or compassion. A person uses
emotion such as pity to convince someone
Argumentum ad Populum- Appeal to people/
Bandwagon fallacy. Populum is the Latin word for
people. Most of TV commercials are guilty of this
argument
Argumentum ad Traditio- Appeal to Tradition.
Traditio means tradition. Advancing an idea since
it has been practice for a long time
Argumentum and Ignorantiam- Appeal to
Ignorance. Ignorantiam a Latin word for
ignorance
Petitio Principii- Begging the Question. According
to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, it is a fallacy in
which a conclusion is taken for granted in the
premises. Also called-“circular argument.”
8. Hasty Generalization- This fallacy is committed
when one reaches a generalization based on
insufficient evidence
9. Cause and Effect- Assuming that the effect is
related to a cause because both events occur one
after the other.

10. Fallacy of Composition- Infers that something

is true of a part, is true of a whole

11. Fallacy of Division- Infers that something is

true of the whole, must also be true on its parts

12. Fallacy of Equivocation- Using the same term

in a different situation with different meaning.