Key Philosophical Concepts: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Thought
Philosophy
Systematic answer to the great questions of human life, using the laws of logic, without special appeal to math, experimental method, or (religious) authority.
Logotherapy
Psycho-therapy that addresses the human drive for meaning.
Paradox
A statement that is contrary to what it appears, but is (arguably) true.
Love
To see the essential traits and features in another, to see what is potential and to enable one to actualize these potentialities.
Relativism
Everything is a matter of opinion and there is no objective or absolute truth.
Nihilism
There is no meaning of life; life is absurd.
Emotivism
Values result solely from our emotional reaction, not from facts or reasons.
Radical Empiricism
Knowledge is ultimately nothing but perception.
Skepticism
No one knows anything.
A Priori
Knowledge not constituted by any possible sense perception.
Substance
That which exists through itself, not by being in another.
Prime Matter
Pure potency to be some substance.
Soul
1st substantial actuality of the natural body capable of life through parts-differentiation.
2nd principle of the different kinds of activity belonging to different living things.
Object
Target or terminus of an act, power or habit of the soul.
Principle
Of Non-Contradiction: nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.
Statement or explanatory source.
Frankl
Work: Man’s Search for Meaning
Socrates
Work: no written works.
Plato
Work: Republic, 5 Dialogues.
Aristotle
Work: De Anima
Dualism
Soul and body are two different substances.
Dialogue
Question and answer between two interlocutors.
Genus
Accident: quality.
Bundle Theory of Self
Human identity is the result of several perceptions linked through memory.
Academy
Plato’s school in Athens.
Hylomorphism
Form actualizes matter.
Form
That by which a thing is what it is.
Matter
That out of which something is made.
Substance
That which exists through itself.
Sophists
Presocratic philosophers that went from city to city teaching rhetoric.
This World
Changeable and non-eternal – knowledge in the weak sense – dependent on forms for existence.
Really Real World
Eternal and unchangeable – knowledge in the strong sense – the cause of the existence of our world.
Four Causes
Material, efficient, formal, final.
Material Cause
That out of which something is made.
Efficient Cause
That by which something is made.
Formal Cause
That into which something is made.
Final Cause
That for the sake of which something is made.
Three Ways of Finding Meaning
- In nature
- In suffering
- In love (other people)
Knowledge
In the Weak Sense: empirical knowledge.
In the Strong Sense: knowledge learned in a past life.
Prime Matter
Has no form; pure potency of some substance.
Secondary Matter
Matter + form.
Attribute (or Accident)
That which exists through substance (ex: personality).
Two Kinds of Form
Substance; attribute.
Two Kinds of Matter
Prime; Secondary.
Early Dialogues
Focus on ethics.
Middle Dialogues
Speaker is Plato (world of the forms is introduced).
Late Dialogues
Answers to questions, Socrates is not talked about.
Proper Sensible
Certain qualities in physical objects that each sense is adapted to apprehend.
Common Sensible
Common to the several different senses.
Per Accidens
Things that are sensed accidentally.
The Sense
Acts within a corporeal organ.
Human Intellect
Power of the soul in the form of a body.
Three Principles of Cognition
- Cognition is a kind of becoming.
- The object of cognition causes the cognition.
- We cognize things through its form.
8 Categories
Quantity, quality, place, time, action, passion, relation.
Quality
Perceptible qualities (color, shape, smell, flavor).
Unexamined Life
Not worth living.
Body
Is a prison; soul is trapped and death frees it.
Soul
As harmony cannot be true because no soul is more than another, and soul is not dependent on body.
Philosophy
As preparation for death; philosophy tells us what to expect in death and allows us to look forward to it.
Care for the Soul
Being just and good.
Virtue
Is knowledge.
Images
What do we always think in?
Frankl
Meaning of life gives us will to live – 20th century.
Socrates
Soul is just and our source of life – 400-300 BC.
Plato
Soul and body are separate (dualism) – 400-300 BC.
Hume
Soul doesn’t exist because we can’t see it – 18th century.
Aristotle
Soul is our sense and our intellect – 400-300 BC.
Augustine
Soul senses through body – 400-300 BC.
Aquinas
13th century.
Philo of Alexandria
40 CE – 1st greatest Jewish philosopher – Ideas are in the mind of God.
Avicenna
Has five internal senses (central, proper, fantasy, estimative, memory).
Four Arguments of Immortality of Soul
- Cyclical: opposite of life = death.
- Recollection: Soul got strong knowledge from previous life.
- Affinity: Souls is a form = indestructible.
- Final: Soul is like the “immortals” who never die, so neither can the soul.
1st Potentiality
Matter or body.
1st Actuality
Soul.
2nd Potentiality
Ability to sit down and play the piano at will.
2nd Actuality
Actually playing the piano.
Universal
In the mind; proper object of intellectual cognition.