PHILOSOPHY
What is Philosophy?
From the Greek words philos (meaning love)
and sophia (meaning wisdom). Philosophy seeks to
answer the fundamental questions about existence,
knowledge, truth, morality, nature of man, and other
aspects of life through the use of rational or logical
thinking (Alata et al., 2018).
Ancient Philosophy
Ancient philosophy is philosophy in antiquity, or
before the end of the Roman Empire. It usually refers
to ancient Greek philosophy. It can also encompass
various other intellectual traditions, such as Chinese
philosophy, Indian philosophy and Iranian philosophy.
Ancient philosophies are generally deeply rooted in
religious traditions.
Socrates and Plato:
The Ancient Greek Philosophers
It sad that Philosophy originated in the ancient
civilization of Greece. While the earliest
philosophers were mostly concerned about the
composition of the cosmos, Socrates and his
student Plato were more concerned about the
nature of man.
SOCRATES
Socrates believed that the self exists in two
parts: one that is tangible, mortal and constantly
changing and one that is believed to be immortal.
He also dons the idea that man is innately good
and that evilness stems from not knowing the Self.
If you know that you are “good”, it will follow that
you will do your best to avoid “evil deed” because
this is not part of your nature.
PLATO
Known as Socrates’ greatest student, Plato
also believes in the dual nature of man, that is, the
self is composed of body and soul (mind). In
reaction to this, Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts
that everything that we see in the world of senses
(physical world) existed because of their existence
in the world of ideas, where every single matter in
the physical world has a perfect form.
TRIPARTITE SOUL
RATIONAL/LOGICAL
Seeks truth and is swayed by facts and
arguments
SPIRITED/ EMOTIONAL
How feelings fuel your actions
APPETITIVE/PHYSICAL DESIRES
Drives you to eat, have sex, and
protect yourself
St. Augustine:
The Medieval Philosopher
The Medieval Ages is widely known as the Dark
Ages. This is a period in history when there were little
advances in the field of science. When the Greek
civilization flourished and made history in the
advancement of the scientific realm, the medieval
period took history to an opposite direction.
ST. AUGUSTINE
St. Augustine was a Catholic bishop who was
exposed to the teachings of the ancient Greek
philosophers while he was studying to become a
priest. In his explanation, he likened the world of
senses to the material or physical world where
everything is bound to perish. Just like the physical
world, our eventually return to dust as it is not
eternal – unlike the soul. The soul, which is perfect
and immutable has existed even before the physical
body existed – in the hands of God, the only one
who is infinite, perfect and the only source of truth
and knowledge.
Modern Philosophy
The Age of Enlightenment, sometimes called the
Age of Reason, refers to the time of the guiding
intellectual movement, called The Enlightenment. It
advocated reason as a means to establishing an
authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government,
and even religion, which would allow human beings to
obtain objective truth about the whole of reality.
Rene Descartes:
The Rationalist
Try to ponder on these questions: Do you exist? What proof
do you have that you can say that you are truly awake and not
just a part of someone else’s dream?
These kind of questions have bothered Rene Descartes a
very long time ago. Like most thinkers of his time, Descartes
believe that truth can only be derived through independent
rational thinking and should not be based on decrees handed
down by authority.
DESCARTES
Rene Descartes came up with this valid
conclusion through his method of doubting.
Contrary to the medieval period, where the things
that people in authority are regarded as truth, Rene
Descartes believed that the only way that he can
possibly arrive at truths is by doubting every single
idea that he has.
John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant:
The British Empiricists
In the same time that the Rationalists in Europe were
emerging, a separate school of thought was also blooming in
England – empiricism. Just like the rationalists, they also
condemned ideas that are baseless and simply handed by
authority. However, the empiricists were more skeptical on the
validity of claiming truth by merely thinking and logic.
JOHN LOCKE
John Locke believed that the mind is a
tabula rasa or blank slate when we are born. He
does not subscribe to Plato’s or Descartes’ belief of
innate ideas. For him, the thoughts and ideas we
acquire are products of our experience in the
environment. The self, therefore is something that
is shaped by our conscious experience of the
world.
DAVID HUME
David Hume, an empiricist and nihilist took
empiricism and the idea of the self into the extreme.
“There is no self” according to Hume. For him, the “self”
is nothing more than a bundle of different perceptions in
inconceivable rapid successions in perpetual flux and
movement. If reality or truth lies in sensations
experienced by our sense organs – ear, eyes, mouth,
skin and nose – then there would be an uncountable
number of “self” from the moment of birth until a
person’s last breathe.
IMMANUEL KANT
Unlike the two previous empiricists, Kant
believes that we have an innate mechanism that
helps organize our experiences that makes it
intelligible. This mechanism is called the a priori
concepts, the fundamental organizing rules or
principles built into the architecture of the mind,
which categorize, organize and synthesize sense
data into the familiar fabric of our lives, bounded by
space and time (Vanzo, 2013).
Gilbert Ryle and Paul Churchland:
The Physicalists
While the rationalists have been busy examining
the duality of human nature, the physicalists have
moved on with the unobservable, the unmeasurable,
and the subjective experience.
GILBERT RYLE
Gilbert Ryle asserts to deny all forms of
dichotomy concerning the nature of man. He
rejected altogether the notions about the
unconscious, consciousness, souls, and inner
selves because these things cannot be measured,
cannot be directly observed. If we have to explain
a phenomenon, we need to acquire information
from measurable sources, for example, behavior.
PAUL CHURCHLAND
Paul Churchland (1981) stands in the
materialistic belief that nothing but matter
exists, for example, the thing you are
holding right now, the thing right beside you
or in front of you. Meaning, anything that
can be seen, felt, heard, tasted or smelled
exists, nothing beyond what our senses can
experience it.
Contemporary Philosophy
Contemporary Philosophy goes beyond the
mind-body problem and even finds it unnecessary.
They argue that life is more than identifying how the
mind and body work but rather, it is living through
life and finding meaning as we live it.
MAURICE MERLEAU:
THE PHENOMENOLOGIST
Merleau-Ponty is a French philosopher who believed
that the mind and body should not be subjected to a
competition because both the thoughts and ideas in our
mind as well as our physical body comprise the whole
person. The mind and the body are so intertwined that you
cannot separate them from one another.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
He is a firm believer of phenomenology,
the field of study that emphasizes lived-
experiences, Merleau-Ponty considers the self
as the sum of all your experiences in the past
or in the present, your emotions, your
thoughts, and your behavior. It is having the
ability to experience the world that we live in
that makes a human being a person.
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