Philosophy-I

By Pooja
Philo +Sophy

(Greek Word)

Love +Wisdom
• Does God exist?
• What’s the meaning of life?
• Why do innocent people suffer?
• Is everything a matter of opinion?
• Are all people really equal, and if so, in what sense?
• What is the best form of government?
• How minds are connected to bodies?
• Is beauty in the eye of beholder?
What is Philosophy?

• To answer, ‘What is Philosophy’ one needs to know what it is not.

• The social sciences are based on scientific foundations.

• Does philosophy tantamount to any of the ‘Natural Science.’ The answer is

no. Why?

• Does it use hypotheses?

• Does it try to test any hypotheses?

Questions of Philosophy

• What is knowledge?
• What is right or wrong?
• Mother of methods.
• Philosophy is the search for comprehensive view of nature, an
attempt at universal explanation of things.
• The idea of philosophy has evolved with the social necessity of
the times.
• Philosophy is neither science nor religion, though historically it
has been entwined with both.
• Initially, the distinction between science, religion, and
philosophy was not clear as it did become later.
• The function of philosophy is critical evaluation of our beliefs and
clarification of concepts.
• Philosophy is the search for conceptual clarity in all areas of life.
• Philosophy maintains the distinguishing features of abstraction and
concern for truth.
• Philosophers analyze and clarify concepts.
• Philosophy tries to explore critically the foundations of human practices,
such as science, politics, religion, or morality.
Brief History; Nature and
Scope of Philosophy
 Historical Background

• WESTERN PHILOSOPHY BEGAN in ancient Greece about eight hundred

years before the time of Christ.
• At that time, the chief component of Greek culture was a powerful religious
mythology.
• These early myths offered primitive explanations of natural phenomena, human
history, and the gods. They provided standards of conduct, morality, social
obligations, education, art, religious practices, and so on.
• The most important mythical view of life was expressed in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, two epic poems attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer (c. eighth
century b.c.e.).
• For the Greeks of Homer’s era, everything happened through some kind of divine
agency.
• They believed, for example, that the sun was carried around the heavens by
Apollo’s golden chariot, that thunder and lightning were hurled down from the
top of Mount Olympus by Zeus, and that the motion of Poseidon’s trident created
waves.
• Other natural phenomena were thought to have similar divine origins. The nature
of the community, victory or defeat in war, the course of love, and other human
affairs were also directly tied to the gods.
• The ancient Greek gods were exaggerated human beings: bigger,
stronger, and faster. Like human beings, they were also jealous,
sneaky, biased, lazy, promiscuous, and violent.
• They were not, however, morally or spiritually superior to humans.
In fact, the gods were often indifferent to human affairs, including
human suffering, because they were involved in complicated soap
operas of their own.
• Occasionally, the gods took an interest in an individual human being
or involved themselves in wars or politics, often treating people as
pieces in an elaborate chess like game.
• Although the ancient Greeks’ mythological accounting of events ultimately
failed, it implied two crucial principles that are still disputed by
philosophers:
1. There is a difference between the way things appear and the way they
really are.
2. There are unseen causes of events.
• Pre-Socratic Western philosophers challenged the mythological worldview by asking for
rational explanations of questions that mythology could not adequately answer:
• What causes earthquakes?
• Where do islands come from?
• Why doesn’t the earth fall out of the sky like an apple from a tree?
• What holds it up? And what holds that up?
• Why don’t the stars fall out of the sky?
• Or, more subtly yet, “How come if I eat fish and grain, I don’t look like a fish or stalk of
wheat?
• How does ‘fish stuff ’ become fingernail ‘stuff ’?”
• Where does the stone go that is worn away by the waterfall?
Nature of Philosophy

• In their unified rational explanations, these philosophers first

concentrated on the ‘world order” (kosmos in Greek).
• Nature- phusis or physis in Greek.
• Around the fifth century, an element of specialization or division
emerged throughout the entire world.
• At this time philosophers began distinguishing between nature (physis)
and convention (nomos) rather than specializing along narrower lines.
• In the west the humanistic philosophers known as Sophists turned away
from the study of nature to understand the human being.
From Sophos to Philosophers

• In his earliest incarnations, the Western sophos was predominantly a sage, or “wise
man,” in the general or generic sense.
• He was not a professional thinker. That is, he did not charge people fees (tuition) to
study with him or to accompany him.
• His relationships with his students were personal, complex, and long-lasting. In
many cases his pupils were more like disciples than like paying students.
• Ancient philosophers were not specialized. However, the demarcation is bleak.
• Rationale discussion began with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–545 b.c.e.)
Brief History (Hellenistic Period)

• The Pre-Socratic Sophos

• Reasons for development of Philosophy

• The Milesian or Early Greek Philosophers- Thales

• Meaning of arche

• Thales and his arche-All things are full of ‘gods’ and by some nature or principle all things come
into being, e.g., magnet.

• Anaximader/Anaximander (610-540 BCE)-apeiron or infinity

• Anaximenes (500 BCE)-air

• Anaximenes advanced the search for a common principle with the introduction of the argument
that qualitative differences can result from quantitative changes.
• Rather than pairs of opposite stuffs, Anaximenes proposed two opposing processes of exchange:
condensation and rarefaction.
• In Anaximenes’ cosmology, air (pneuma) is invisible in its pure, original state. Pure air becomes
progressively denser through the process of condensation, in the following stages: air → fire →
wind → cloud → water → earth → stone.
• Matter becomes progressively lighter during the process of rarefaction: stone → earth → water
→ cloud → wind → fire → air.
• Thus, the ongoing cosmic and natural cycle of generation and destruction provides a single
underlying world order that itself stays the same throughout all change: air ↔ fire ↔ wind ↔ cloud
↔ water ↔ earth ↔ stone.
• Pythagoras (6th Century BCE)-Metempsychosis or rebirth of the soul

• Heraclitus (500 BCE)-Arche as fire and cyclic nature of stuff

• Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE)- Nothing can come into being or get perished.

• Empedocles (5th Century BCE)- Existence of the immortal divine that does
not influence the being.
 Socratic Period- Ancient
Roman Philosophers-Ancient
The Scholastic Period-Medieval
Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke-Modern Period
Post-modern, Contemporary and Twentieth Century
Philosophy.
• Is philosophy relevant?
• Are philosophers always men?
• Susan Langer
• Susan Stebbing
• Simon de Beauvoir
• Simone Weil
• Ayn Rand
• Christina Hoff Sommers
• Alison Jaggar and many more