Major Philosophers: Context, Concepts, and Modern Relevance

Plato: Core Philosophical Concepts

Context

Historical and Cultural Context

• Born 427 BCE.
• Peloponnesian War, Thirty Tyrants.
• Socrates condemned to death.
• Conflict between three powerful states.
• Influences: Aristophanes, Xenophon.
• Focus on beautiful style and education.
• Involvement with Dionysius II of Syracuse.

Philosophical Context

• Sophists: Rhetoric, Phenomenalism, Subjectivism, and Relativism.
• Socrates: Concept, inductive reasoning, moral intellectualism.
• Pre-Socratics: Pythagorean school (shared features with the Theory of Ideas), Parmenides (Being), Heraclitus (vision of the sensible world's becoming).
• Atomist mechanism.
• Theology close to Anaxagoras.

Topics

Five major topics addressed.

Relevance Today

• Education and values.
• Foundation of Human Rights.
• Prison system reform.
• Politics and ethics.
• The media (The News Caverns: The Mall).

Key Philosophical Unfoldment

1. Theory of Ideas: (Intellectual, Ethical, Political, Scientific implications).
2. Cosmology: (The Demiurge, Eternal Model, Material Mass, Empty Space).
3. The Soul: (Rational, Irascible, Appetitive parts).
4. Knowledge: (Reminiscence, Dialectics).
5. Virtue: (As Wisdom, Purification, Harmony).
6. The State (Ideal Republic):
   • Rational (Leaders) – Prudence.
   • Irascible (Guards) – Strength/Courage.
   • Appetitive (Craftsmen) – Temperance.
   • Harmony = Justice.

René Descartes: The Foundation of Modern Philosophy

Context

• 1637, Holland.
• Thirty Years' War.
• Baroque era, Lutheran Reformation, loss of Catholic authority.
• Nominalism of Ockham.
• Decline of Scholastic Humanism and Renaissance anthropocentrism.
• Scientific Revolution (Copernicus and Galileo) leading to Heliocentrism.
• Skepticism.
• Influence of Francis Bacon (Induction) and Galileo (Resolutive-Compositive Method).

Subjects

Ontology (Ont), Gnoseology (Gnos), Anthropology (Antrum).

Relevance Today

• Mathematization and scientific/informatic development.
• Autonomy of reason and the secularization of human sciences.
• Autonomy of reason and individualism.
• The problem of truth and the Evil Genius hypothesis.

Key Philosophical Unfoldment

1. The Need for a Method: (Intuition and Deduction).
2. The Methodical Doubt (What the Method Discards): (Universal, Methodical, Theoretical).
   • Doubt concerning the senses.
   • Doubt concerning the exterior world.
   • Doubt concerning reasoning itself.
   • Doubt concerning himself.
3. Rules of the Method: (Evidence, Analysis, Synthesis, Enumeration).
4. Result of Doubt: "The Cogito" (Cogito ergo sum).
5. The Actual Descartes: (His established system).
6. The Source of Substance: (Res Cogitans, Res Extensa, Res Infinita).
7. Explain each substance extensively.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Critique and the Will to Power

Context

Nihilism

• Comte's Positivism, Marxism.
• Artistic influences: Impressionists, Wagner, Symbolism (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Degas, Toulouse Lautrec).

Eternal Recurrence Against History

• Dostoyevsky.
• Anarchists, Socialists, Enlightened Christians.

The Übermensch (Super-Man)

• Darwin's theory, Social Darwinism, Imperialism.

Recovery of Innocence

• Gauguin, emphasis on freshness.

Will to Power

• Freud, Psychoanalysis.

Topics

Ontology (Ont), Gnoseology (Gnos), Ethics (Moral vs. Vitalism).

Relevance Today

• Atheism or Anti-theism.
• Vitalism.
• Shift from concept to image.
• Value of education in critical thinking and life affirmation.

Key Philosophical Unfoldment

1. Critique of the Western Tradition.
2. Critique of Traditional Morality: (Morality of Masters vs. Morality of Slaves).
3. Critique of the Philosophical Tradition: (Socrates, Plato).
4. Nihilism: (Positive face, Negative face) (Doubt, Reflection, Reassessment).
5. The Real "Will to Power."
6. The Idea of the Übermensch: (Camel, Lion, Child stages) (Lust for life, Overcoming, Superiority, Security, Earth/Land).

José Ortega y Gasset: Ratiovitalism and Perspectivism

Context

• Ortega's central theme: "The Issue of Our Time."
• Historical events: Bourbon Restoration, Disaster of '98, Great War, Annual Disaster, Totalitarianism.
• The Silver Age, Regenerationism (Joaquín Costa), Generation of '98.
• Philosophical influences: Neo-Kantianism, Idealism, Vitalisms, and Existentialisms.
• Nietzsche and Husserl (Consciousness).
• Heidegger and Sartre (Categories of Life).
• Dilthey (Vital Reason).

Topics

Ontology (Ont), Gnoseology (Gnos), Anthropology (Antrum).

Relevance Today

• The role of culture and education.
• The foundation of political life.
• International relations and diverse cultures.
• The value of history.

Key Philosophical Unfoldment

Being: I and My Circumstance (Yo y mi circunstancia)

1. The Philosophical Tradition in Ortega.
2. Critique of Realism and Idealism: (Modern and Ancient philosophy).
3. Life as Reality.

Knowledge: Truth and Perspective

4. The Dramatism of the Problem: (Skepticism, Dogmatism).
5. Opposition to Previous Views.
6. Truth as Perspective.
7. Ontological Foundation of Perspectivism.
8. Vital Reason or Ratiovitalism.
9. The Historical Man.