Introduction to Philosophy
Code:
Term:
ECTS credits:
Lessons per week:
Language:
Instructor:
Form of study:
F-116
Autumn / Spring
6
90 + 90 min
Slovak + English
Mgr. Mgr. Peter Šajda, PhD
lecture + seminar
Course Objectives
The students are introduced to basic problems of philosophy and they are made familiar with
principal philosophical disciplines and different types of philosophical inquiry. With the help of
primary sources the students acquire the skill of critical reading of philosophical texts.
Contents
1. Different approaches to philosophy. Philosophy in comparison to other branches of science, art
and religion. The origin and motives of philosophical inquiry. Philosophy and everyday experience.
The place of philosophy in culture.
2. Principal philosophical disciplines, their terminology and issues: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics,
political philosophy, philosophy of history. Currently debated issues within the disciplines.
3. Classical philosophical problems and the modes of their solution: determinism vs. free will, etc.
4. Critical reading of primary philosophical texts from different epochs of the history of philosophy.
Analysis of philosophical methods and arguments.
Topics and readings
1. Introduction.
2. The notion of philosophy, impeti and motives of philosophical inquiry. Different definitions of
philosophy. The place and significance of philosophy in everyday life and culture.
3. Delineation of philosophy in relation to empirical and formal sciences, religion and art.
4. Metaphysics and its problems: the subject matter and fundamental issues of metaphysics, classical
and modern metaphysics, the issues of the universal and the particular, substance and accident,
modality, time and space, the mental and the physical, free will.
5. Epistemology: the origin and types of knowledge, appearance and reality, knowledge from
immediate experience and knowledge from description, a priori knowledge, truth and error, theories
of justification of belief (foundationalism and coherentism), philosophical traditions of rationalism
and empricism, the objections of skepticism.
6. Ethics: the problems of metaethics (objectivism and relativism, egoism and altruism, reason and
emotion), normative ethics (virtue theories, deontological theories, consequentialist theories),
applied ethics (principles, areas, current debates).
7. Political philosophy: ethical foundation, metaphysical and epistemological issues, main traditions
in political philosophy – their principles and transformations (liberalism, conservativism, socialism,
etc.)
8. Philosophy of history: what is history, descriptive and explanatory approach to history, the
problem of causality and the issue of historical laws, historical facts and their interpretation, the
issue of historical method (ideological bias, empathy, anachronism), historical truth, critical and
speculative philosophies of history.
9. The value of philosophy, the limits of philosophical inquiry.
10. Conclusion.
Required Readings
Platón, „Kriton,“ in Dialógy, Bratislava: Tatran 1990, vol. 1, pp. 369-382.
Platón, „Menon,“ in Dialógy, Bratislava: Tatran 1990, vol. 1, pp. 488-509.
René Descartes, Rozprava o metóde, Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo SAV, 1954, pp. 23-69.
Immanuel Kant, K věčnému míru, Praha: OIKYMENH, 1999, pp. 9-35.
Jean-Paul Sartre, „Existencialismus je humanismus,“ in Jindřich Zelený (ed.), Úvod do filosofie, Praha:
Svoboda 1969, pp. 280-300.
Bertrand Russell, Problémy filozofie, Bratislava: P and K, 1992.
Additional Readings and Sources
Blackburn, S., Think. A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Bunnin, N. a Tsui-James, E. P. (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
Craig, E. (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Oxford: Routledge, 1998.
Honderich, T. (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Nagel, T., What Does It All Mean? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Toulmin, S. E., Knowing and Acting. An Invitation to Philosophy, London: Macmillan, 1976.
Evaluation Criteria
30% Active attendance at seminars, participation in debates, preparedness for class.
20% Written class preparation (questions and comments on respective text or a short reflection on
the contents of previous lesson).
50% Essays.
Course Evaluation (%)
A –
B –
C –
D –
E –
Fx –
excellent:
very good:
good:
satisfactory:
sufficient:
fail:
100-93%,
92-84%,
83-74%,
73-63%,
62-51%,
50-0%.
Passing a course assumes that student was not absent at more than 4 lessons.