Key Concepts in Philosophy: From Parmenides to Sartre
Way of the Path of Truth or Reason
In Parmenides, this refers to rejecting false information from the senses and following thought to get a true understanding of being.
Way of the Views or Opinions
In Parmenides, this wrongly relies on data from multiple senses and does not reach knowledge.
Substantial Change or Entity
It is an exchange rate in which being is completely transformed. There are two types of substantial change: birth and death.
Catharsis
Purification.
Categories
Pure a priori concepts of understanding: synthetic judgments are possible a priori. These judgments call for empirical science and are the key to objectivity. The categories applied to content that comes from experience, intuition, or the sensitive, make knowledge, highlighting causality or substance. In themselves, they do not provide knowledge (this is why Kant says that “concepts without intuitions are empty, and intuitions without concepts blind”).
Efficient Cause
For Aristotle, this is one of four types of causes or explanatory factors of change. The efficient cause is the agent that causes or starts moving; it’s the engine.
Final Cause
For Aristotle, this is another factor of change. The final cause is the goal or purpose of the change, the goal pursued by the agent that triggers the change.
Formal Cause
For Aristotle, this is one of four types of causes or explanatory factors of change. The formal cause is the structure or the organization that the substrate adopts at the end of the change.
Material Cause
For Aristotle, this is one of four types of causes or explanatory factors of change. The material cause is the substrate or subject of change, the factor in which change occurs.
Cynicism
A Greek philosophical movement that aspired to individual happiness linked to an apology of the natural state, free of any human law or social convention, and a critique of civilization. Diogenes of Sinope (413-327 BC) is considered its most representative figure.
Knowledge
Mental activity through which one apprehends an object or idea.
Regular Conjunction
When two things usually go together, that is, when given a simple regular conjunction with each other, the mind imagines that there is a necessary connection, so when you see the first, you expect the second. Under no circumstances does one perceive a necessary connection, but just imagines it.
Necessary Connection
The first two conditions of causality (time priority and contiguity) are not essential in this regard. But the idea of necessary connection, according to Hume, is much more important. Hume says the idea of a necessary connection between two events, between what is considered the cause and what is considered the effect, does not come from any sensory impression, but from habit.
Consciousness
The psychic faculty consisting of realizing one’s own activities.
Contingency
The state that corresponds to facts whose existence is entirely coincidental. This term is opposed to “necessity”. A contingent event could have not been produced.
Cosmogony
A religious, mythological, or philosophical conception explaining the origin and formation of the world.
Cosmology
The study of the cosmos or universe. Rational, scientific, and philosophical cosmologies are based on the observation of the heavens in astronomy and physics to try to explain the structure and nature of the universe.
Cosmopolitanism
A theory that treats human beings as citizens of the world, without distinction of race or nationality, and the world-state (“Cosmopolis”) as their only homeland.
Cosmos
A term of Greek origin (“cosmos”) meaning universe, the total world, orderly and harmonious (as opposed to “chaos”).
Worldview or Conception of the World
The set of answers given about the world and reality in general and its meaning.
Cratos
Power. Along with “demos”, it forms the word “democracy”.
Creationism
A theory or concept, usually religious, whereby the world and all beings that comprise it were created from nothing by a higher being or deity with a specific purpose.
Christianity
A monotheistic, Jewish religion, with Jesus of Nazareth as its founder and prominent figure. His followers believe that Jesus, also called the Messiah or Christ, is the Son of God.
Fault
In Heidegger, this is the feeling of regret for not having done what we could have done.
Culture
The set of customs, habits, and values of a collective, along with the social mechanisms to convey them.
Deduction
Knowledge derived from other knowledge, where the former bases its truth on the latter. Intuition is also needed in deduction because the truth of the conclusion depends on the premises, which are known by intuition.
Demiurge
The divine craftsman or the creator of the universe, the builder of the world from pre-existing matter and following the model of perfect ideas. This is not a creator god from nothing but a divinity that is limited to shaping the field.
Demos
The set of citizens. Along with “cratos”, it forms the word “democracy”.
Displacement
The second law of dream development explains the emotional burden of change of an element on other elements of the dream: what seems important at the level of manifest dream may not be so at a deeper level.
Determinism
A scientific-philosophical doctrine that considers all phenomena necessarily due to causes expressible in universal laws.
Dionysian
In the philosophy of Nietzsche, this represents the unity of the world and the disappearance of all individual differences. This principle is manifested in non-figurative arts (music, dance, poetry, etc.).
Double Truth
A doctrine, in force during the Middle Ages, according to which arguments (from reflection) and revelations (from faith or religious beliefs) are true even though both may seem contradictory.
Dogma
A doctrine defended from religious or political spheres that does not support any kind of reply. Dogma asserts that beliefs are unmodifiable and must be complied with by members of the group on which it exerts influence. A truth affirmed or believed as indisputable.
Dogmatism
An epistemological conception that defends the possibility of knowledge and the ability of reason to get the truth.
Law
The set of rules that regulate human behavior in a given society.
Natural Law
An expression that refers to the existence of rules or laws prior to the will of men (either because they derive from the Greek “physis”, medieval religious beliefs, or human reason in the modern age). It is different from positive law, which is the agreed set of laws that the parliaments of various countries establish.
Methodical Doubt
Descartes believes that such a step is necessary to systematically doubt what is questionable and therefore, “reject as absolutely false everything in which it is possible to imagine the slightest doubt”.
Emotivism
A conception according to which emotions and feelings are the source of morality.
Empirical
Refers to anything that can be tested or proven through observation and experience.
Empiricism
A school of thought in modern times that places knowledge behind the experience of the senses.
Epistemological Empiricism
The principle of the copy can reject, according to Hume, words that have no meaning because they allude to an idea that represents no particular impression. If an idea is not derived from experience, it is a useless idea on which there is no need to continue discussing.
Psychological Empiricism
A principle that says that any idea is a copy or derived from a previous impression. This principle eliminates innate ideas because they do not derive from any previous experience.
Incarnation
A Christian theological term that refers to the act under which the mysterious Divine Word became human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
In-itself
For Sartre, this is the world of things.
In-itself-for-itself
In the thinking of Sartre, this is the way of defining the classical philosophy of being needed, or God.
Epicureanism
A school of thought that focuses on happiness, the ultimate human purpose, in natural pleasure and friendship.
Epistemology
The branch of philosophy that deals with research on issues related to knowledge, especially its foundation and its value. It is also often called gnoseology or theory of knowledge.
Skepticism
An epistemological conception that denies the possibility of strong and secure knowledge and the existence of truth or the ability of reason to access it. As a school of ethics, it advocates the suspension of all judgment (“epoche”) about things and all desire as an instrument for achieving imperturbability of mood linked to happiness.
Skepticism in Hume
Hume’s philosophy culminates in skepticism. A moderate skepticism is good and fruitful in certain research limited to human subjects. The areas attainable by human understanding, according to Hume, are knowledge of abstract mathematical relations composed of ideas, and questions of fact, i.e., empirical knowledge, obtained through rating sensitive experience.
Scriptures
A term used to refer to the Bible, i.e., the set of canonical books of Judaism and Christianity.
Essence
What a thing is.
Being
To be.
State of Nature
A philosophical concept used to refer to the original situation in which men were before the institution of the state, institutions, laws, and regulations derived therefrom. Many thinkers from the Greeks to the present have referred to this concept. Especially, we must mention Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
Welfare State
A concept that is the counterpoint to the state of nature. It refers to the stage where there is already a human social organization and a number of institutions have been created that serve to regulate social and political relations.
Status
The social position an individual occupies within society.
Aesthetics
The branch of philosophy that investigates and reflects on issues of beauty and art in general.
Stoicism
A school of thought that focuses on happiness, the ultimate human purpose, in accepting the inevitable fate: to live according to nature, impassive and indifferent to suffering or pleasure.
Eternal Return
A mythical conception of history according to which this will happen again completely and forever. According to most Stoics, for example, the world is eternally constant and in a repetitive cycle of destruction and regeneration under the universal divine providence (“pronoia”). Nietzsche believes that this is the great challenge that the Superman has to face, that is, accepting the idea of the eternal return of all things, the acceptance that all things that happen, all events present, have passed countless times and will pass again countless times.
Ethics
Philosophical reflection on morality and its foundations.
Formal Ethics
Focuses on the conditions of moral behavior.
Material Ethics
Sets out what the duties of the individual are and the specific rules to follow.
Ethnocentrism
An attitude that consists in taking one’s own culture as a suitable reference point for judging and evaluating others.
Eudaimonia
A Greek term to refer to happiness as the supreme good. Literally, it means “a good devil”, that is, enjoying a genius, character, or way of being by virtue of which we can be happy and prosperous.
Evidence
The first rule of the Cartesian method presents evidence as a criterion of truth. A proposition is obviously a true proposition. And a proposition is an obvious proposition if it is clear and distinct.