BACHELOR'S SCHOOL

Squad 26

SUBJECT:

PHILOSOPHY

NAME OF THE JOB

CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE BOOK “PHILOSOPHY

FOR BEGINNERS”

TEACHER:

- PROF. MIGUEL ANGEL TORRES PADILLA

STUDENT DATA
- ALEXIS GARCIA AZUARA
- 6th “F”
- MORNING SHIFT

DELIVERY DATE: FEBRUARY 5, 2013

PHILOSOPHY FOR BEGINNERS

Alexis Garcia Azuara
ALEXIS GARCIA AZUARA
6th “F”
NUM 13
DEL RIO GARCIA Eduardo.
“Philosophy for beginners”
Posada publishing house , Mexico 1985.
137 pages.

In this book “ Philosophy for beginners” the author Rius tells us about what
philosophy is and also about the two great philosophical currents in the world,
which are the eastern and the western; The latter is what the book focuses on
since there are two great schools of Western philosophy: the idealist and the
materialist. It is then implied that the idealist is the one who explains everything
with religious arguments and the materialist is the opposite; since this is explained
with scientific arguments.

According to the author, philosophy is, in short, man's attempt to know everything
and this occurs from the moment man begins to reason, an argument with which I
completely agree because reason is the path to the truth.

Later we find the thoughts of different philosophers, such as Thales of Miletus,

Pythagoras, Socrates, etc., towards what Philosophy is according to their
reasoning, content that is worth mentioning that seems quite interesting to me
because we can make various comparisons between them. thoughts of these
characters and in this way reach our own conclusion and try to reach the truth.
First they present us with the ideology of Miletus about philosophy, at first he held
a materialist idea, that is, that everything had arisen from the material, later he
came up with the idealist theory, "Behind the material reality is the divine" , That is,
everything was created by gods. Parmenides says the complete opposite: “There
is no existence of god, but the essence of god, god does not exist, god is not”
Parmenides closes the discussion to materialism. Pythagoras shares his
materialist idea but towards a mathematical approach, saying that everything was
created through mathematics. Likewise, Empedocles reasons materially in the
same way, launching his thesis of the 4 elements as components of everything.

The author Rius noted the difference between these thinkers and Socrates. He
mentions that unlike the other philosophers, Socrates questioned himself not about
the origin of the universe, but about those who lived in it. He also mentions that
Socrates' primary interest was morality, finding the definition, the clear concept of
what love, kindness, justice, temperance, compassion, etc. were. Another of the
philosophical thinkers who agreed with the materialist idea was Democritus, he
stated that our origin was due to atoms, which I do not agree with because
assuming that was our origin, then who created those atoms?

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Without a doubt, one of the philosophers that caught my attention the most was
Plato, because of his way of thinking, he said that we had already lived before and
that when we died we went up to heaven to acquire knowledge and see the truth
and later come down and not be there. in this hellish world. I have to mention that I
completely disagree with his theory because although he says that we had already
lived, then what or who created us in that supposed life?

Along with the ideological reasoning of Thales of Miletus, there is Aristotle, who
affirms that our creation was thanks to God, the difference from Thales of Miletus is
that Aristotle said that God is only thought, divine thought.

In the final part of the book he refers to Jesus (Christ) and denies some situations
related to philosophy-religion.

In brief words, the author Rius opened up a much broader panorama of philosophy
for us and made it known that the opinion that existed in Greece about the two
currents were those who believed that the origin of everything was the spirit of a
god and those who believed that everything was the origin of matter.

REFERENCES

Later we will analyze the thoughts of each of the main philosophers that the author
presented to us to verify each statement made and in this way reach the truth.

- “Everything has moisture, and what is hot is born and subsists through what
is humid: that from which something is born is its origin” (Tales of Miletus,
philosophy for beginners, page 18)

- “By observing and studying water in its 3 states: liquid, solid and gaseous,
the distracted person came to the conclusion that everything comes from
water” (Eduardo del Rio, Philosophy for Beginners, page 18)

- “Thales says that the element and first principle of all things, that
element is water…taking this assumption from the observation that the
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 food of all things is moist” (Ethel Amador Hdz., COBACH Philosophy
Book, page 48)

- “The base substance of the universe is air. Life is in the air: if we don't
breathe it we die!!” (Anaximenes, philosophy for beginners, page 21)

- “For Anaximenes, the original substance is air, which he associates

with respiration or breath essential for life, and explains this with a
process of rarefaction and condensation, which gives rise to
everything that exists” (Ethel Amador Hdz., COBACH philosophy book,
page 51)

- “Empedocles launches the thesis of the 4 elements as components of

everything” (Rius, philosophy for beginners, page 32)

- “Empedocles said, for example, that bones were composed of two

parts of earth, two of water and four of fire. What we perceive as
changing phenomena are nothing more than combinations in different
proportions of the four elements of which everything is composed or
roots: earth, air, fire and water” (Ethel Amador Hdz., COBACH
philosophy book, page 59)

- “The method used by Socrates to arrive at the truth is known as maieutics,

or the question. The Socratic method is called Dialectic , as an art of
debating through questions and answers and thus arriving at the truth”
(Rius, Philosophy for Beginners, pages 37 and 38)

- “Socrates helped to create true ideas, based on reason, he called this

method Mayeutics , it consists of knowing how to interrogate to
oppose each answer with a new question, until finding a true answer

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 that has overcome and integrated the partial truth of all the previous
ones. ” (Ethel Amador Hdz., COBACH philosophy book, page 35)

- “The cosmic substance is composed of atoms, that is, of indivisible,

indestructible and infinite particles, the origin of the world is in matter”
(Democritus, Philosophy for Beginners, page 42)

- “Democritus proposed a materialist and mechanistic conception of

Nature. Existence of atoms: small particles, which cannot be captured
by the senses. They are indivisible. They collide and repel each other
in an incessant movement.” (Ethel Amador Hdz., COBACH philosophy
book, page 60)

- “For Aristotle, the purpose of the human being on Earth was to become that:
a perfect human being, not trying to become an angel in heaven again”
(Eduardo del Rio, Philosophy for Beginners, page 56)

- “For Aristotle, the purpose of the human being on Earth was to

become a human being. Perfect. Not in trying to be an angel in heaven
again. The goal of the human being in this world is to know everything
that surrounds him and himself” (Ethel Amador Hdz., COBACH
Philosophy Book, page 92)

In conclusion, my position on this book is that it is a quite interesting writing in

which the author, Eduardo del Río, used a fairly simple language to transmit
knowledge about philosophy to all types of people, and therefore I conclude that
this book fulfilled totally with its purpose: To transmit philosophical knowledge to all
people through simple language. As for its content, it is worth mentioning that it is
quite interesting and very easy to understand and also by making comparisons
with other books, I come to the conclusion that its content is completely true.
Personally, I really liked this book for its language, content and presentation of
information.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SHEET

- DEL RIO GARCIA Eduardo, Philosophy for Beginners, Ed.

Posada, Mexico 1985.

- HERNANDEZ Ethel Amador, Philosophy in competencies, Ed.

High School, Mexico.

- www. Wikipedia.com/Eduardo-del-rio

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