Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Philosophy and ethics for Baccalaureate

19th Century Philosophical Landscape

The nineteenth century in philosophy witnessed the emergence of large systems and a number of philosophical movements of very different designs, many of which rejected systematic and speculative philosophy.

The Rise of Positivism

This century also saw the triumph of Positivism. Auguste Comte was its most prominent representative.

Reaction Against Positivism

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, a strong reaction against Positivism emerged. The causes were numerous: the crisis of the positive sciences and the growing awareness that individual and social problems were not solvable solely through scientific research.

Currents involved in this reaction included older philosophies (e.g., Kantianism and...

Kant: Theory of Knowledge and Metaphysical Music

Kantian epistemology combines the empiricist thesis (knowledge comes from experience) and the rationalist thesis (understanding uses concepts to comprehend experience). According to Kant, the study of knowledge is manifested through:

Trials of Science

• Subject-Predicate Reason

  • Analytical

    The subject is within the predicate.

  • Synthetic

    The subject is not contained within the predicate; expands knowledge.

• Experience

  • A Priori

    Before the experiment; universal and necessary.

  • A Posteriori

    After the experience; private.

Kant posits that a priori synthetic judgments are crucial for genuine knowledge, extending prior knowledge and being universal and necessary.

Knowledge requires conditions for analyzing trials in science:...

Absolute

Absolute, as traditionally understood in philosophy, is that which exists by itself and does not need or depend on anything else. When referring to truth, it means complete and total truth.

Abstract and Abstraction

Abstract, etymologically, means to extract or to get something from something else. More rigorously, abstraction means the process by which the understanding obtains (extracts) the universal concept from the sensory image, which is particular and specific. The concept of 'home' is universal because it applies to all objects called "home," which share common characteristics. The image of a "home" is unique because it refers only to a specific house.

For Ortega, the "I" is a concrete reality, mobile and plural. All knowledge that...

Marx's Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical materialism is the view that reality is pure change and process, subject to the struggle of opposites. It accounts for the development and evolution of reality as understood by Marx and Engels, contrasting with Hegel's original view that reality is the Spirit, not matter.

This process is governed by particular laws. While Marx did not explicitly detail these laws, their enunciation is primarily attributed to Engels:

1. The Law of Opposites: Nature itself is a unity of two opposing elements.
2. The Law of Negation (Negation of the Negation): The struggle and contradiction between elements is denied and surpassed in a new stage (synthesis).
3. The Law of Transformation: Small quantitative changes potentially produce

Nietzsche's Revaluation of the Body and Senses

This text examines Nietzsche's profound critique of how the body and senses, which he argues have been despised and suppressed by the philosophical, moral, and religious traditions of Western culture.

The Philosophical Devaluation of the Body

Nietzsche attributes this decline to philosophers' denial of instincts and the body's senses. He argues that these thinkers reject what is inherently tied to change and plurality. This rejection stems from a static conception of being that, originating with Parmenides, Socrates, and Plato, subsequently dominated the Western philosophical tradition up to modern times.

The Static Conception of Being and Overestimated Reason

This static conception of being arises...

Sophists vs. Socrates: A Philosophical Comparison

Sophists

Main Features

• Itinerant teachers, often metics (non-Athenian Greeks).
• Offered encyclopedic knowledge.
• Charged fees for their teaching.

Thought and Philosophy

• Lack of interest in cosmology; strong interest in man and politics.
• Emphasized the importance of language, rhetoric, oratory, and eristic (argumentation).
• Arete (virtue) understood as social success.
• Often atheists or agnostics.
• Nomos: Law understood as a convention.
• Relativism (doctrine that human knowledge only seeks relationships, without ever reaching the absolute).
• Skepticism (mistrust or doubt regarding truth or effectiveness).
• Conventionalism (views or procedures based on misconceptions, taken as true for comfort or convenience).

Methodology

• Claimed

Fundamental Political Concepts

Source of Political Power:

Investigating how, when, and why the first human communities developed a clear division between rulers and ruled.

Legitimacy:

The question of whether a phenomenon is positive or negative, and if it is worthwhile to maintain and improve, regardless of its historical origin. Not all political power is legitimate, just as not every form of football play is correct. In both cases, criteria are needed to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate forms.

Institution:

An established organization or system, often with the ability to enact laws, regulate for the public, and levy mandatory taxes or fees.

State:

The result of the transition from the state of nature into a society organized by a social contract.

The Concept of Vital Reason

Life is not merely a thought about life, but stems from the fact that all reason is living. Life is not something static; it is a process, not to be understood by the logico-mathematical reasoning that builds the abstract theories that science uses. This is called a task that is life, and the perspective of reality has to make use of a historic and vital reason. Here is where Ortega introduces the concept of vital reason that replaces Cartesian pure reason. This integrates all the demands of life and makes it compatible with rationality.

Perspectivism and Historical Reason

Summarizing, the perspective maintains the multiplicity of possible views of reality, which must be unified from a single principle. This principle...

Romanticism: Feeling, Imagination, and Nature

Romanticism began in Germany. The new watchwords were feeling, imagination, experience, and longing. Romanticism shares many features with the Renaissance, particularly the importance of art and its significance for human knowledge.

Romantics were attracted to the night, dawn, old castles, ruins, and the supernatural. They were interested in the enigmatic, the gloomy, and the mysterious look. Another key feature of Romanticism was the longing for nature.

Schelling's Philosophy of Nature and Consciousness

The most important Romantic philosopher was Schelling. He believed that nature and human consciousness were two expressions of the same universal spirit that was present in both nature and human consciousness....

Personal Rating of Mill's Utilitarianism

To develop the current philosophy of Utilitarianism, Mill can be used as a reference. The sentence, "It is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," shows that Mill prefers to choose intellectual pleasures over sensual ones. This choice is because Mill establishes a hierarchy of pleasures. First, we have sensible pleasures, which are based on satisfaction, in contrast to intellectual pleasures, which are based on happiness.

In making this assertion, Mill believes the state also plays an important role. We start from the basis that the state must strengthen the happiness of the individual through external sanctions. External sanctions can be physical and psychological. Internal sanctions...