Class Lecture Notes By Chanda M.M. Erasto Email: chandae2020@yahoo.co.uk Cell: 0977886214/ 0968465520/0954236801 CUZ- 2015 LECTURE 1. FUNDAMENTALS OF PHILOSOPHY 1.0 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY: Philosophy is the root of all knowledge. It is considered as mother of all sciences. Philosophy has interpreted man and his various activities in a comprehensive manner. It helps to coordinate the various activities of the individuals and the society. It helps us to understand the significance of all human experience. “It explores the basic source and aims of life. It asks and tries to answer the deepest questions to life. It clarifies life and the basic values of life. This clarity is very essential because it provides us with the wisdom to face the challenges of life. Wisdom is the supreme instrument in the hands of man in the struggle for his successful existence. 1.1 NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY : a) Meaning of philosophy: The word ‘Philosophy’ involves two Greek words – Philo meaning love and Sophia meaning knowledge. Thus literally speaking, philosophy means love of wisdom. Man is a rational animal. Desire for knowledge arises from this rational nature of man. Philosophy is an attempt to satisfy this very reasonable desire. Philosophy signifies a natural and necessary urge in human-beings to know themselves and world in which they live, move and have their being. It is impossible for man to live without a philosophy. The choice is not ‘between metaphysic and no metaphysic ; it is between a good metaphysic and a bad metaphysic’. b) The origin of philosophy: According to Aristotle, philosophy arises from wonder. Man experiences rains and drought, storms, clouds, lightning. At times, he is greatly terrified. Then the events of life and death mystify him. He begins to reflect over the events. The sun, moon and the stars appear to him wonderful and beautiful. As a result of his reflection, he thinks that the events can be explained by powers akin to man. He proposes to control them by means of magical spells. This magic gives way to science, philosophy and religion in due course. Magic becomes science when natural events begin to be explained and controlled with the help of natural causes. Magic, again, becomes religion when the powers are taken to be super natural beings. The same magic flowers into philosophy when man makes an attempt to explain the world as a whole. c) The subject matter of philosophy : Philosophy is the rational attempt to have a world-view. It endeavors to reach a conception of the entire universe with all its elements and aspects and their interrelations to one another. It is not contented with a partial view of the world. It seeks to have a synoptic view of the whole reality: it tries to have a vision of the whole. The different sciences deal with different departments of the world Mathematical sciences deal with numbers and figures. Physics deals with heat, light, motion, sound, electricity and magnetism. Chemistry 1|Page deals with chemical phenomena. Psychology deals with the phenomena of mental life. Sociology deals with the structure and growth of the society and its institutions. Economics deals with welfare and wealth of man. Politics deals with the structure and functions of the State and its various organs . Thus sciences give us a sectional view of the world. But philosophy harmonizes the highest conclusions of the different sciences, coordinates them with one another, and gives a rational conception of the whole world. It investigates the nature of the fundamental concepts of matter, time pace, life, mind, and the like and interrelates them to one-another. It enquires into the nature of the universe, its stuff or material, its Creator or God, its purpose, and its relation to man and his soul. It is the art of thinking all things logically, systematically, and persistently. It is the art of thinking rationally and systematically of the reality as a whole. d) Philosophical problems: The basic problems of philosophy have been same in the East as in West. A general characteristic of these problems was that they were concerned with general and universal questions and not with the questions and not with the questions of particular nature. In this sense the philosophical problems are different from scientific problems which have their origin in particular questions. Some examples of philosophical problems are: What is knowledge? What is world? Who has created this world? Is there a God? Who am I? What is the aim of my life? Why should I live? What is the purpose of the world? etc. e) History of Philosophy i).Ancient philosophy This is the study of the philosophers of the Greek and Roman world. The usual concentration is on Greek philosophy from c.624BC, marking the birth of the Presocratic Thales, to 322BC as the death of Aristotle. The most important figures are undoubtedly Plato and Aristotle. Often this period is extended to include the Roman world. The significance of thought in the ancient world cannot be overestimated. Here we find almost everything, developed to varying degrees, that characterises the Western outlook. Indeed it represents a watershed in human history, where for the first time reason alone is applied across the board to the solving of the deepest problems rather than appeal to mere authority or an idea’s longevity. ii). Medieval philosophy This covers, we should note, the study of philosophers over a vast time of around one thousand years, extending from St Augustine of Hippo (AD354–430) and William of Ockham (c.1285– 1349), and continuing beyond until at least the Renaissance. The connecting thread is the rise and dominance of Christianity which permeates the philosophy done during this period. The other most significant link throughout the period is the interpretation and adaptation of Aristotle’s metaphysics. iii). Modern philosophy: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries It may seem strange to call philosophy done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘modern philosophy’. It indicates a period of astonishing fecundity in philosophical thought and a new way of doing philosophy that was a significant break from what had gone before. Moreover many of the ways that philosophy is presently done still derive from thought in this period. The central figures are Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume. 2|Page f) Main Branches of philosophy : 1) Epistemology :- Philosophy is the search for knowledge. This search is critical. Hence, the first problem which arises before a philosopher is about the nature of knowledge and its limitation. Therefore, epistemology is the most fundamental branch of philosophy. It discusses philosophically truth and falsehood, validity of knowledge, limits of knowledge and nature of knowledge, knower and known, etc. 2) Metaphysics :- Metaphysics is the main branch of philosophy. It is the science of reality. Its main problems are; What is Reality? Is the world one or many? What is space? What is the purpose of creation? Is there a God? In brief metaphysics discusses the three aspects of Reality, viz, the world, the self, and the God. Its scope includes ontology, philosophy of self, cosmogony, cosmology and theology 3) Axiology:- This branch of philosophy philosophically studies value. It has been divided into the following three branches; i) Ethics: It discusses the criteria of right and good. This is concerned with values (normative as opposed to factual matters) with respect to human actions. What is it for something we do to be counted good or bad? What is it to say we ought to do or not do something? It is not enough to talk of what we do, we need to address what we should do and what saying this means. ii) Aesthetics :It discusses the nature and criteria of duty. iii) Logic : It studies truth. The subject matter of logic includes This is concerned with the nature and identification of good inferences: those circumstances in which one statement is said to follow from another. It seeks to understand and classify the cases where statements, if true,justify to whatever degree the truth of other statements, the methods of judgment , types of propositions, hypothesis, definition etc 4).Philosophy of mind What kind of entity are we referring to when we talk about the ‘mind’? How does talk of the mind relate to talk of what we normally call our bodies? Are the mind and the body one or is the mind non-physical? How can conscious awareness and understanding whereby we refer to things arise from inert matter? What do we mean by, and can it justify, saying that someone is the same person throughout his life? 5). Philosophy of language What is it for an expression, spoken or written, to have meaning and the capacity to refer to things? What constitutes a person’s understanding the meaning of a word, at which point they know how it ought to be used correctly? 6). Philosophy of science What defines a law of nature? How does it differ from other claims about the world? How if at all are scientific theories justified by evidence? How can we know that our laws of nature describe features of the world that will persist next time we examine it? 3|Page 7). Political philosophy How ought society to be organised? What justifies the existence of the state that can rightly usurp power from people? How should the state be controlled? What justifies private property, if anything? How do people acquire rights that cannot be transgressed apart from exceptional circumstances, if at all? 8). Philosophy of arts Can what a work of art is be defined? What do we mean when we say some work has a certain aesthetic quality, such as beauty? What determines the meaning of a work of art? What, if anything, justifies our valuing works of art differently? 9). Philosophy of religion How good are the arguments justifying the existence of God? Are arguments for the existence of God required, or is faith enough? What is the nature of God and how does that relate to the sort of creatures we are? 10). Continental philosophy It is controversial to claim that the group of philosophers often brought together under this title can be done so coherently, and the chapter here deals mainly with this matter. Negatively the title may indicate a divergence of methods and philosophical concerns between philosophers in Continental Europe and English-speaking philosophers in Britain, North America, New Zealand and Australia. Positively there is perhaps a thread that runs from the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) to the present with such thinkers as Jacques Derrida, and this can be seen as various ways of responding to the philosophical outlook of transcendental idealism. The recent philosophers here are often marked by the most fundamental questioning of the nature, and indeed existence, of philosophy itself. 11). THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY Philosophy will go on just as long as some people hold the view that thinking things through for themselves is important. It is hard to say what philosophical concerns will be the centre of people’s attention in the future. But it looks as if there will always be someone trying to struggle with the deepest questions and unwilling to take on trust the answers that happen to be around. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS. 1 Explain the meaning of philosophy. 2. Describe the nature of philosophy. 3. What are the various branches of philosophy. SUGGESTED READING : 1. Fundamentals of Philosophy - John Shand 2. Bennington, Geoffrey (2001) ‘For the sake of argument (up to a point)’, in S. Glendinning (ed.) Arguing with Derrida, Oxford: Blackwell. 3. Critchley, Simon (1998) ‘What is Continental philosophy?’, in S. Critchley and W. Schroeder (eds) A Companion to Continental Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell. 4. Samuel E. Stumpf(1993)'Elements of Philosophy',(3rd Ed), New York, McGraw-Hill, Inc 4|Page