Philosophy Fridays
RENEE
DESCARTES

Considered the father of
modern Philosophy

Rationalism-"any view
appealing to reason as a
source of knowledge or
justification.”

the criterion of the truth is
not sensory but intellectual
and deductive
Descartes continued…

"Cogito ergo sum” I think therefore I am

Believed in God and defended free will

Stressed the importance of empirical
science
PLATO’S CAVE
Allegory for how we view life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhAS
OdM&feature=related
Plato’s view of the “enlightened”

They would know their previous existence was
farce, a shadow of truth, and they would come to
understand that their lives had been one of
deception. A few would embrace the sun, and the
true life and have a far better understanding of
“truth.” They would also want to return to the
cave to free the others in bondage, and would be
puzzled by people still in the cave who would not
believe the now “enlightened” truth bearer. Many
would refuse to acknowledge any truth beyond
their current existence in the cave.

Examples of “truth bearers”-philosophers,
religious prophets, scientists

We all may acquire and comprehend the
world around us as our experience of
physical objects, but it would be a mistake
to limit ourselves to the conventional
thoughts indentured by our stubbornness
towards change.

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of
land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve
enough to believe him, that man was the true
founder of civil society. From how many crimes,
wars, and murders, from how many horrors and
misfortunes might not any one have saved
mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the
ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening
to this impostor; you are undone if you once
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all,
and the earth itself to nobody.” — Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754
JEAN-JACQUES
ROUSSEAU
Primitivism-belief that those who lived far from cities in what was
called the “state of nature” were better off

State of Nature supposedly…
◦ Had less crime
◦ Were happier people
◦ Were more willing to share the fruits of their labor

Rousseau restated the myth of the Garden,
blaming government for society’s problems
(corruption, greed)
Rousseau continued…
Created the archetype of the “noble
savage”
 “noble savage” is uneducated, but brilliant
in the ways of nature, resourceful and able
to provide for his family

Most famous for expanding upon the idea
of the social contract, “Consent of the
governed”
 Noble savage is a balance between chaos
and oppression
 morality was not a societal construct, but
rather "natural" in the sense of "innate"

Transcendentalism
One way to look at the Transcendentalists is to see
them as a generation of well educated people who
lived in the decades before the American Civil War
and the national division that it both reflected and
helped to create.
 These people, mostly New Englanders, mostly around
Boston, were attempting to create a uniquely
American body of literature. It was already decades
since the Americans had won independence from
England. Now, these people believed, it was time for
literary independence. And so they deliberately went
about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy,
poetry, and other writing that were clearly different
from anything from England, France, Germany, or any
other European nation.

Basic Beliefs
Inherent goodness of both man and
nature.
 society and its institutions—particularly
organized religion and political parties—
ultimately corrupted the purity of the
individual.
 Faith that man is at his best when truly
"self-reliant" and independent. It is only
from such real individuals that true
community could be formed.

Immanuel Kant


Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the German
philosopher Immanuel Kant the credit for
making "Transcendentalism" a familiar term.
Contrary to Locke's theory, that before any
concept could be intellectualized it must first
be experienced by the senses, Kant said
there were experiences that could be
acquired through "intuitions of the mind;" he
referred to the "native spontaneity of the
human mind."

In his essay, "Nature," Emerson explained
how every idea has its source in natural
phenomena, and that the attentive person
can "see" those ideas in nature. Intuition
allowed the transcendentalist to disregard
external authority and to rely, instead, on
direct experience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Individuality
 Freedom
 The ability for humankind to realize almost
anything
 The relationship between the soul and the
surrounding world
 Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical
than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered,
the universe is composed of Nature and the
Soul."

Existentialism
the philosophical and cultural movement
which holds that the starting point of
philosophical thinking must be the
experiences of the individual.
 Moral and scientific thinking together do
not suffice to understand human
existence

Existentialism became popular in the
years following WWII and influenced a
range of disciplines besides philosophy,
including theology, drama, art, literature
and psychology.
 Existentialists generally regard traditional
systematic or academic philosophies, in
both style and content, as too abstract
and remote from concrete human
experience.

Basic Beliefs of Existentialism
◦ Existence Precedes Essence.

Human life is understandable only in terms of an individual
man’s existence, his particular experience of life. A man lives
rather than is, and every man’s experience is unique, radically
different from everyone else’s and can be understood truly
only in terms of his involvement in life or commitment to it.

There is no Platonic ideal of man—there is no universal of
human nature of which each man is only one example. Don’t
ask “What is mankind?” Ask: “Who am I?”


The existentialist insists that each person is unique. He is an
entire universe—the center of infinity.
Absurdity: life is absurd and reason is incapable of
dealing with the depths of human life
 Human reason is relatively weak and imperfect and there are
dark places in human life which are “non-reason” and to
which reason scarcely penetrates.


Existentialism insists that man must be taken in his
wholeness and not in some divided state, that whole man
contains not only intellect but also anxiety, guilt, and the will
to power—which modify and sometimes overwhelm the
reason.

A man seen in this light is fundamentally ambiguous, full of
contradictions and tensions which cannot be dissolved
simply by taking thought.

Alienation or Estrangement
◦ Because of the dissociation of reason from the rest of the
psyche, we have SCIENCE, a hallmark of Western civilization.
Since the Renaissance we have progressively separated man from
concrete earthy existence, and forced him to live at a high level
of abstraction.
◦ Man lives in alienation from God, from nature, from other men,
from his own true self.
◦ Existentialists worry about the walls of industry and technology
which shut us off from nature and from one another.
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Crowding of people into cities
Subdivision of labor
Burgeoning of centralized government
Growth of advertising, propaganda and the mass media of entertainment and
communication
◦ These things drive us apart by destroying individuality and
making us live on the surface of life, content to deal with things
rather than people.
Fear,Trembling, and Anxiety
 “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long
sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer
problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be
blown up?” –William Faulkner at his Nobel Prize
 Causes of Fear,Trembling, and Anxiety
 Lost optimism from the Age of Enlightenment that problems can be solved through reason,
science. Nature can be “conquered.”
 WW I
 Great Depression
 WW II and Holocaust
 Nuclear threat
 Environmental crises
 Terrorism

Too many moral choices! We cannot resolve ethical questions by
subjecting our moral consciousness to an impersonal deliberative
perspective. Ethical questions are essentially first-person.

The Encounter with Nothingness
◦ If man is alienated from nature, God, neighbors, and
self, what is left?
◦ People who seemingly have “everything” feel empty,
uneasy, discontented.

Nothingness appears in existentialism, as the
placeholder of the possibility. The awareness of
anything in the world that is not my own
existence is an awareness of nothingness, that is,
what I, this existence am not and in some cases I
could become.
Freedom
 Existentialists write about the loss of freedom or
the threat to it, or the enlargement of the range
of human freedoms.
 Freedom means human autonomy. Sartre said
that we are condemned to freedom. Because
there is no God, we must accept individual
responsibility for our own becoming. Nothing
explicitly implies that in becoming a free individual
one becomes a virtuous person.
 Freedom is the acceptance of responsibility for
choice and a commitment to one’s choice.

Fatalism

Fatalism generally refers to several of the following
ideas:
◦ Though the word “fatalism” is commonly used to refer to
an attitude of resignation in the face of some future event
or events which are thought to be inevitable, philosophers
usually use the word to refer to the view that we are
powerless to do anything other than what we actually do.
Included in this is that man has no power to influence the
future, or indeed, his own actions. This belief is very similar
to predeterminism.
◦ That actions are free, but nevertheless work toward an
inevitable end.
◦ That acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance
against inevitability. This belief is very similar to defeatism.
While the terms are often used interchangeably,
fatalism, determinism, and predeterminism are discrete in
emphasizing different aspects of the futility of human will or
the foreordination of destiny. However, all these doctrines
share common ground.
 Determinists generally agree that human actions affect the
future but that human action is itself determined by a causal
chain of prior events. Their view does not accentuate a
"submission" to fate or destiny, whereas fatalists stress an
acceptance of future events as inevitable. Determinists
believe the future is fixed specifically due to causality; fatalists
and predeterminists believe that some or all aspects of the
future are inescapable, but not necessarily due to causality.
 Fatalism is a looser term than determinism.


Both fatalism and predeterminism, by
referring to the personal "fate" or to
"predetermined events" strongly imply the
existence of a someone or something that has
done the "predetermining." This is usually
interpreted to mean a
conscious, omniscient being or force who
has personally planned—and therefore
knows at all times—the exact succession of
every event in the past, present, and future,
none of which can be altered.
Idle Argument

One famous ancient argument regarding fatalism was
the so-called Idle Argument. It argues that if something
is fated, then it would be pointless or futile to make
any effort to bring it about. The Idle Argument was
described by Origen and Cicero and it went like this:
If it is fated for you to recover from this illness, then
you will recover whether you call a doctor or not.
 Likewise, if you are fated not to recover, you will not
do so whether you call a doctor or not.
 But either it is fated that you will recover from this
illness, or it is fated that you will not recover.
 Therefore it is futile to consult a doctor.

Epistemology
Philosophy (Philo- love of )(sophia-learning)

Episteme/doxa
 (reliable knowledge)/(opinion)


Epistemology –study of “valid”
(trustworthy) knowing

Big questions of philosophy◦ What is most significant or real, and can I
know this with certainty?
◦ What should I do about what I determine to
be real and significant?
John Dewey
was an American philosopher, psychologist and
education reformer whose ideas have been
influential in education and social reform. Dewey
was an important early developer of the
philosophy of pragmatism and one of the
founders of functional psychology. He was a
major representative of progressive education
and liberalism.
 Although Dewey is known best for his
publications concerning education, he also wrote
about many other topics, including experience,
nature, art, logic democracy, ethics and inquiry.


In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered
two fundamental elements—schools and civil
society—as being major topics needing attention
and reconstruction to encourage experimental
intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that
complete democracy was to be obtained not just
by extending voting rights but also by ensuring
that there exists a fully formed public opinion,
accomplished by effective communication among
citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter
being accountable for the policies they adopt.
Dewey’s Circuit of Inquiry

Judgment is more likely to be true if it is
based on reflective inquiry
Dewey Quotes

Education is not preparation for life;
education is life itself.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point
of another.