Core Philosophical Concepts: Branches, Logos, and Mythos

Key Branches of Philosophy

Metaphysics

Studies the fundamental nature of reality and the properties of all that exists.

Logic

Focuses on reasoning as expressed linguistically, studying its structure, form, and correctness to arrive at valid conclusions.

Epistemology

Reflects on the origins, validity, and limits of knowledge.

Anthropology

Analyzes human beings from various perspectives, such as biological, social, or cultural.

Ethics

Examines moral codes and analyzes their rules, rationale, validity, and universality.

Aesthetics

Examines the nature of beauty and artistic creations.

Politics

Deals with aspects of the human community, such as social origins, power, and governance. Other fields include the philosophy of language, history, and social development.

The Concept of Logos

1. Logos can mean reasoning, argumentation, speech, intelligence, thought, and science.
2. It is knowledge acquired through reason, not from beliefs or myths.
3. In contrast to the arbitrariness of myth, logos introduces necessity, explaining why things happen when, where, and how they do.
4. It opposes chaos by presenting an ordered cosmos that follows its own laws.
5. In myth, appearance contrasts with the essence or ultimate, unchanging nature of reality found in logos.
6. It confronts the anguish caused by the future and ignorance of circumstances with confidence in the explanatory power of reason.
7. It challenges tradition based on blind obedience with critical capacity, analysis, and synthesis.

Characteristics of Myths

1. The term comes from the Greek word mythos, which means narrative.
2. Myths perform both an explanatory and an exemplary function, involving imagination and beliefs.
3. Through myth, humanity seeks to personify and explain fundamental concepts like life and death, or love and hate.
4. World events are depicted as dependent on the capricious will of the gods.
5. Objects can acquire properties different from those that correspond to them by nature.
6. Greek mythology refers to a collection of stories recorded in works like Hesiod's Theogony and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
7. In myths, the world can seem chaotic. In contrast, a rational vision transforms it into an orderly and stable cosmos governed by discoverable laws.