Key Philosophical Disciplines and Core Characteristics
Philosophy encompasses various fields of study, including the philosophy of mathematics, physics, religion, sociology, culture, and art, among others. Philosophers grapple with a wide range of issues, which have evolved into distinct philosophical disciplines taught at universities.
Main Branches of Philosophy
1. Epistemology
Examines the possibility, origin, and limits of knowledge. It pertains to all acquired knowledge, including scientific knowledge. Epistemology seeks to explain how humans understand
Read MoreHuman Rights Fundamentals: Definitions, History, and Challenges
Understanding Rights and Duties
The concept of human rights involves both give and take. A right concerns the power to make demands or to require others to behave in a certain way. Rights are guarantees, freedoms, or privileges that people possess. They may or may not be guaranteed by law, but they aim to provide protection and security to all citizens.
Conversely, duties are the rules, laws, or regulations governing coexistence in society, which we are obliged to comply with.
Fundamental or human
Read MoreDavid Hume’s Philosophy: Empiricism, Knowledge, and Causality
Hume’s Empiricism: Impressions, Ideas, and Knowledge Limits
Are there impressions derived from ideas? Yes. The impressions of reflection may follow their respective ideas, but only after the feeling and the ideas derived from them. Ideas of sensation, however, are derived from their corresponding impressions of sensation. Therefore, all the contents of the mind are rooted in sensory experience. (Treatise, Part One, Section Two).
Hume’s Knife: Meaning and Metaphysics
What is meant by Hume’s Knife? It
Read MoreFreedom, Morality, Culture, and Humanization Concepts
Defenders of Freedom
Determinism is not easily acceptable. Thinkers have sought ways to defend the possibility of liberty. There is no doubt that if even a donkey’s will can overcome circumstances, much more so can a being endowed with reason overcome its circumstances, thus not being determined by them. Historically, this theory has been developed as follows:
- Kant claimed a distinction between what can be known through experience and what can be thought. This does not mean our mind cannot consider
Plato: Soul’s Immortality and Theory of Knowledge
Plato’s View on the Body and Soul
In his pejorative conception of the body, influenced by Pythagoras, Plato considers the body the prison of the soul, where it has been locked up as punishment for a past fault. While the soul inhabits a body, it is like being in a tomb, and only death will deliver the liberation of the soul. The body is seen as the root of all evil, the origin of irrational love, passion, hatred, discord, ignorance, and madness – all considered the death of the soul. While the
Read MoreKey Pre-Socratic Philosophers and Their Ideas
Unit 1: Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Pre-Socratic philosophy refers to the Greek philosophers who were active before Socrates, or contemporary thinkers who were not influenced by him. They are generally considered the first philosophers in the Western tradition. This period predates Socrates, who significantly shifted the focus of philosophy towards ethics and human knowledge.
These early thinkers primarily focused on cosmology, the nature of the universe (physis), and the fundamental substance or principle
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