Wittgenstein’s Philosophy: Language, Logic, and Reality
Wittgenstein
CONTEXT
Historical
Wittgenstein witnessed social and political tensions of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, culminating after the First World War, with Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia becoming independent republics. The Russian Revolution marked the beginning of a new political reality, completed with the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, the prelude to World War II.
Sociocultural
These events coincided with urban growth, where the middle classes imposed their tastes,
Read MoreFoundations of Modern Science: Mechanism, Atomism, and Method
17th Century Scientific Objectivity
The nature of modern science (17th century) is to establish a new scientific objectivity, characterized by three essential features:
Mechanism
The scientific worldview is mechanistic, rejecting final causes in favor of efficient, mechanical causes. The universe functions like a cause-and-effect machine. We understand how it works, not its purpose or design. This new understanding benefits humankind by enabling technological control and productive efficiency, shifting
Foundations and Criteria of Ethics: Human Dignity and Moral Truth
Philosophical Methods in Ethics
- From Aristotle’s ethics, linked with human nature. Aristotle considered reason the specificity of human nature; thus, ethics is identified with living according to reason.
- Aristotle used an inductive process, studying his own morals and those of other countries.
- Scholastic philosophers derived ethics from a moral nature, referring to God as supreme legislator.
- Kant used a transcendental method, acknowledging a moral law in our hearts and studying that knowledge.
- Max Scheler
Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Knowledge, Morality, and the Superman
Nietzsche’s Epistemology: The Problem of Knowledge
According to Nietzsche, traditional metaphysics considers reality as static, fixed, and immutable. Compared to the true reality of becoming and multiplicity, philosophy has posited essences, substances – something immutable, static, and permanent – as the true reality of things. This distinction, originating with Plato, between true and false, apparent reality, is, according to Nietzsche, a product of resentment and fear of life. Philosophers,
Read MorePlato’s Theory of Forms and Political Philosophy
Plato
1. Theory of Ideas
Birth of the Theory of Ideas
- At the time of Plato, during a period of decline, Relativism was the prevailing culture. This included Moral Relativism (nothing is inherently good or bad, it depends on perception) and Political Relativism (“Justice depends on force”). In this view, nothing is objectively true or false; everything depends on rhetoric.
- Relativism was based on demagoguery and the Sophists, for whom everything depended on rhetoric or the ability to convince others.
Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Pure and Practical Reason
Critique of Pure Reason: Transcendental Aesthetic
Transcendental aesthetic judgments are synthetic a priori in mathematics. Aesthetics means sensitivity, to perceive, to know. What do I know and how does it work? I direct my attention to capture experience. My mind has two a priori elements: space and time, which help me know objects. As God did not apply space and time, I do not know. What forms my mind, space, and time, is called the Form of Sensitivity or pure intuitions.
Transcendental Analytic
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