Essential Philosophical Concepts and Thinkers

Branches of Philosophy

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of existence, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. It distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

Ethics

The field of Ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior.

Early Greek Philosophers and Their Ideas

Thales

Known as the father of Western philosophy, Thales is famous for the story of having once fallen into a cistern because he was looking up at the heavens.

Anaximander

Anaximander believed that nature or the world came to be out of the struggle of fundamental oppositions (like hot and cold, and light and dark), with cyclic movements of these into and out of the apeiron (the infinite or boundless).

Anaximenes

Anaximenes stated that everything was ultimately air.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras developed a theory of reincarnation and believed that the body was the source of evil, with the purpose of life being to purify the soul. He also believed that the cosmos generated a kind of glorious symphony that we could not hear unless our souls were purified. Pythagoras is associated with music, mathematics, and mysticism.

Heraclitus

Heraclitus thought that the constantly changing nature of reality was never made uniform, and insofar as it was governed by a force that he called the Logos. He wrote in riddles and various paradoxical sayings, famously stating, "You cannot step into the same river twice." Heraclitus's symbol for reality was fire.

Parmenides

Parmenides argued that being neither was nor will be, but simply is. He contended that change and motion were illusions and that we should not listen to what our senses tell us about the world. He believed that reality was one and that nothing changes.

Empedocles

Empedocles stated that reality consisted of the four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water.

Democritus

Democritus used his theory of the nature of atoms to explain the character of our sensations (such as the sense of color and the way certain foods taste). He thought reality was composed of atoms and empty space (or the void).

Sophist Thought and Relativism

Key Concepts

• Relativism: The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context.
• Skepticism: The attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas.

Prominent Sophists

• Protagoras: Famous for the saying, "Man is the measure of all things." Sophists, in general, said we could not know the nature of the gods because our minds are too limited.
• Gorgias: A sophist who taught that truth was relative to belief.

The attitudes embraced by sophists included skepticism and relativism.

Emergence of Philosophy

Philosophy emerged when thinkers moved from more mythological to more rational ways of explaining the world.

Socrates and the Meno Dialogue on Virtue

Meno's Attempts to Define Virtue

1. First Attempt: Meno lists instances of virtuous conduct for men, women, children, and so on. For example, the virtue of a man is to manage his public affairs; a woman's virtue is to order her house and obey her husband. Virtue, in this view, is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
2. Second Attempt: Meno defines virtue as the power of governing mankind.
3. Third Attempt: Meno suggests virtue is the desire for honorable things and the power of attaining them.

Socrates' Criticisms of Meno's Definitions

1. First Criticism: Socrates argues that of the virtues, however many and different they may be, they all have a common nature which makes them virtues.
2. Second Criticism: Socrates questions, "Is virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno? Can the child govern his father or the slave his master, and would he who governed be any longer a slave?" He implies that if this definition is right, it would exclude many people, suggesting only powerful individuals would possess virtue.
3. Third Criticism: Socrates asks, "Were you not saying just now that virtue is the desire and power of attaining good? Then the desire of good is common to all, and one man is no better than another in that respect?" He concludes that the acquisition of such goods is no more virtue than the non-acquisition and want of them, but whatever is accompanied by justice or honesty is virtue, and whatever is devoid of justice is vice.

Socrates on Evil and Ignorance

Socrates' argument that it is impossible to know that something is evil and still desire it: He claimed that all wrong or evil is only done out of ignorance and not from the intention to do evil.

The source of evil implied by Socrates' argument is that no one ever knowingly and intentionally does evil rather than good.

Meno's Paradox of Inquiry

Meno's paradox states: If you know what you are looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you do not know what you are looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

Socrates' Response: Learning as Recollection

Socrates responds to Meno's paradox with his vision of the soul's immortality and the idea that "learning is merely recollection." He posits that the soul, being immortal and having been born again many times, has seen all things that exist, whether in this world or the world below, and thus has knowledge of them all. For as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in learning, out of a single recollection, all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint, for all inquiry and all learning is but recollection.

Conclusion on the Teachability of Virtue

The basic argument about the teachability of virtue suggests that virtue is neither natural nor acquired, but an instinct given by God to the virtuous.

The ultimate conclusion of the dialogue is that virtue comes to the virtuous by divine dispensation; God just blesses certain people with virtue.

Plato's Allegories of Knowledge and Reality

The Sun Analogy

Plato uses the sun analogy to explain the Form of the Good. The sun is the cause of sight itself and is seen by it. This is what Plato called the offspring of the Good, which the Good begot as its analogue. What the Good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things. Whenever one turns their eyes on things illuminated by the sun, they see clearly. The soul should be understood the same way. The sun is to the world of appearances as the Good is to the intelligible world.

The Divided Line

The divided line is a concept where reality is divided into two unequal sections: the visible and the intelligible. One subsection of the visible consists of images, like shadows. In the other subsection of the visible, Plato places the originals of these images, the physical objects. Now, the section of the intelligible is also to be divided. In one subsection, the soul, using as images the things that were imitated before, proceeds to a conclusion. In the other subsection, proceeding from a hypothesis but without the images used in the previous subsection, the soul uses Forms themselves and investigates through them.

The Parable of the Cave

Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.

Comparison of the Form of the Good to the Sun

What the Good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things.

Nature and Structure of Reality Symbolized

The story of the cave symbolizes how people sometimes get misjudged by their appearance without knowing who the person truly is inside.

Moral of the Story of the Parable of the Cave

We may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical objects. But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp were on the same level as the things we perceive. Everything we see is an illusion.

Philosophical Theodicies: Explaining Evil

Augustinian Theodicy

Augustinian theodicy posits that evil always consists of the malfunctioning of something that is in itself good, like blindness. It includes judgment, where many will go to heaven, others to hell. Evil is understood as sin and the punishment of sin, essentially being the privation of goodness.

Criticisms

• A flawless creation would never go wrong.
• We cannot now think of the human species as having been once perfect and then falling.
• It attacks the idea of eternal hell, arguing that eternal punishment has no constructive purpose.

Irenaean Theodicy

The Irenaean theodicy, also known as the "soul-making theodicy," proposes the gradual creation of a perfected humanity through life in an imperfect world. God places us in a world of evil so we can develop spiritual qualities that will make us worthy of God's kingdom.

• First Stage: Humans are brought into existence as intelligent animals with the capacity for moral and spiritual development.
• Transformation: We are being transformed through our free responses into children of God.
• Afterlife: We become children of God and heirs of eternal life.

Criticisms

• Protested against the rejection of the fall of humanity.
• Disagreement regarding the necessity of such a painful creative process, even if it leads to an infinite good.

Process Theodicy

Process theodicy involves the idea of a God who is not all-powerful and cannot prevent evil in humans or nature. It suggests a universe that God did not create but is able to influence. God is an energy that tries to influence the universe to move into harmony and away from discord. Every actual occasion, as creativity, exerts some power. God shares human joys and sub-human pains. Evil is justified by the good. God has no power to prevent evil, so he does not need to be justified.

Primary Goods and Evils

• Primary Goods: Harmony and intensity.
• Primary Evils: Discord and triviality.

Criticisms

• Involves a morally and religiously unacceptable elitism.
• Their God is just the God of the elite and successful, not the God of sinners, the intellectually disabled, or starving poor people, yet still responsible for human existence risking their suffering.

Derived from

Derived from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, based on a vision that God is not the creator of the universe.