Introduction to Philosophy: Key Concepts and Applications
ITEM 1. What is Philosophy?
Specialty Philosophical Learning
Philosophy is the science of all being that uses natural light to understand the ultimate causes of all things based on experience.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom (or truth).
Truth is the adaptation of a trial (or proposition) to reality (or correspondence).
“All men desire by nature to know”
Item Material
Those who study truly immaterial realities.
Formal Object
Point of view or perspective from which all reality is studied.
Science is Knowledge by Causes
- Empirical Sciences
- Theoretical or Speculative Science
ITEM 2. Justification of Philosophy: Meaning and Necessity
Admiration is a contemplative stance oriented toward the mystery of greatness, etc.
Top of Philosophy
- Admiration
- Experience
- Frustration / Disappointment / Situations Limit
Concept of utility: not only pragmatic, but also metaphysical.
ITEM 8: People, Society, and Culture
8.1 Value and Dignity of the Person
In ordinary language, we usually use the term “person” as a synonym for man. However, although the terms person and man are equal, the word person adds a touch of dignity. This nuance is also present if we examine the etymological considerations:
- Prosopon (Greek): Originally meant face, countenance, visage… From there, it began to mean theatrical masks, even the characters in the theater.
- Contact (Latin): Meant resound, sound a lot. In fact, that meaning is parallel to the word prosopon.
- Phersu (Etruscan): Means the same as prosopon.
For example, in the ancient world, not everyone was considered a person.
Contributions of Christian Philosophy
- Concept of creation: It provides a linear view of time.
- Concept of:
- In Platonic anthropology, man is dignified, but that dignity comes from the soul, which has a divine and immortal nature. In addition, for Plato, the soul is not an idea.
- In Aristotelian anthropology, man is dignified, but that dignity comes from rationality. Recall that Aristotle defines man as a rational animal.
- Really talking about man and not individuals.
The positive contemporary personalism (Mourier / Maritain) recovers the concept of the person.
- The concept of personalism distinguishes between individual and person.
Courage and Dignity
Every man is a person (and cannot stop being a person, or be greater or lesser extent). There is strength in the personal computer.
Each individual person is unique and unrepeatable. No two people are alike. So people are irreplaceable. Incommunicable and ineffability of the individual.
The person is an end, not a means. So when it comes to people as things, as means, they are not treated according to their dignity. The person has a substantive value, not an adjective.
The person is the most perfect of nature. It means that the person is perfect because it needs people, things to satisfy their material needs… in the context of nature, which can be represented as a pyramid: at the base of inert matter, then vegetative matter, then sensitive matter, in the end the material intellect.
8.2 Human Sociability
“Man is by nature a social being.”
The partnership is the result of a covenant (or contract).
We are going to undergo a reflexive phenomenological analysis:
The reflexive phenomenological analysis has two steps. The phenomenological phase consists of data recovery experience.
Besides co-existing with others, we need to live with others. In the phenomenological analysis, we need others to meet material and spiritual needs.
As to the second position, it speaks of a previous state of nature, where man is a social being in that state before. Talking about the state of nature is speculative, a theoretical act. Even the authors admit that it could not verify that such a state existed. From this, it gets to that man is a being-social.
The only author who claims that this state of nature is peaceful was Rousseau.
Interpersonal Relations
The ultimate foundation of the different interpersonal relationships is the love of form or ceremony of a trend to appetitive faculty.
- Amor natural or inborn.
- Amor elicit (thus knowledge)
- Amor sensitive (passionate love) [Love in the proper sense and unambiguous]
- Amor on sentence (meaning love)
- Amor domain (or thing) is that we have things properly. The beloved is not an end but no way. The classic saying, love is good for someone wanting a
- Amor of friendship (or person) which properly deserve love people.
“Love is a natural element or be destroyed? Can you go from love to hate? Is it the same love of friendship as friendship?
Love of friendship <> friendship
Friendship = Friendship + Love Reciprocity.
Friendship = Benevolence * Reciprocity affective union.
8.3 The Concept of Culture
We will relate the concept of culture with nature.
The word nature has different meanings:
- Nature is the whole order, the layout of the existing reality. This nature is made up of all natural beings, and therefore artificial.
- Nature does the mode of being that specifically identifies an entity, i.e., a set of characteristics that identify a certain reality.
We are a part of NATURE. On the cultural concept, man is the only one who has culture. In this sense, culture identifies and defines man. Culture is a result of our intelligence; no other animal has a history or can adapt nature to their needs. The culture reflects the identity of a given society. Originally, the term culture reflected the identity of spirit, in the sense of care. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was expanded and became everything that man adds to his nature, whether it is in ourselves or in other objects. In this sense, culture is the growing sense of human knowledge. We can say that culture encompasses everything that is an abomination, is acquired, and transmitted from generation to generation. It offers ideas, beliefs, behavioral norms, and so on.