Philosophy Midterm Exam Reviewer

“An unexamined life is not worth living”

Quote by Socrates

Reflection

Perceiving, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, and willing

Philosophical reflection

• It is the process of examining your experiences, beliefs, values, or assumptions by stepping back and asking fundamental, foundational questions.

• Refers to the contemplation and analysis of educational concepts and practices from a philosophical perspective, often involving critical thinking and cultural reflection.

• Meticulous analysis of a situation

• Critical examination of views

Philosophical Questions

• Difficult questions that do not have definite answers

• Questions that matter, reflect our desire to understand

our experiences

• Contain a bigger problem

Philosophy

• Rational activity that teaches us to search for truth and hold on to beliefs we can defend

• Does not dictate a final and conclusive answer

• It is the translation of words into action or application of theory into practice.

Philosopher

Lover of wisdom

Questioning the Unexamined

It challenges assumptions, norms, and "given" truths that people usually take for granted.

Abstracting from the specific

It takes a concrete, everyday situation and looks at the broader human condition or principle behind it

Systematic and Logical

It isn't just venting or emotional processing; it uses critical thinking, conceptual clarity, and logical reasoning to analyze an idea

Particular

Part of the whole

Universal

Pertains to the whole

Martin Heidegger

The philosopher who claimed that a philosophical question “leads into a totality of beings” and “inquiries into the whole”

Essence of man

The essence of the world

The essence of God

Essence of human freedom

Essence

The most important or fundamental part of something, its core nature or character

Freedom as the Ground of Human Existence

• Heidegger does not treat freedom in the traditional moral or political sense.

• He sees freedom as the ground for the possibility of truth

• Freedom is about the “letting-be” of beings — allowing them to appear in their beingness.

Freedom and Truth

• Truth is not merely a matter of correctness (matching statements to facts), but unconcealment — the revealing of beings.

• For truth to happen, freedom is required:

• Freedom is deeply tied to Dasein

Dasein

Hiedegger’s term for human existence

Freedom is letting things be

• Heidegger sees it as stepping back and letting the world exist on its own terms.

• It’s like looking at a forest and appreciating it as a living ecosystem, rather than immediately seeing it as a pile of lumber to be harvested.

Freedom is what makes truth possible

• You need an open mind to notice the thing in

the first place.

• Heidegger calls freedom that open mental space, a light in a dark room.

• Freedom is the mental space that turns raw physical matter into a meaningful concept allowing a rock to be recognized as a tool, a obstacle, or a piece of art.

Freedom comes before physics

• Before humans could create physics, measure gravity, or map out cause and effect, we had to possess the open, creative freedom to interpret the world that way in the first place.

• Therefore, human freedom is the foundation. You cannot use science to disprove or explain human freedom, because science itself is a tool built using that very freedom. Freedom came first; science is just one of its creations.

Plato

The philosopher who warned us of deceptions of this world

Dialectics

• An act of refutation

• Ancient Greek’s technique of arriving at truth through the systematic exchange of opinions

Dialogues

Illustrates how dialectics is an effective means of examining and evaluating truth claims.

Elenchus

• Means testing

• Since those tested by Socratic questioning are often shown inadequate in their responses, it comes to mean refutation

Thesis

• The currently perceived truth

• Starting point/status quo

• The initial claim

Antithesis

• Is an opposing pov

• Mechanism for change

• The counter-arguement

Synthesis

• When thought tries to reconcile Thesis with Antithesis, what survives is this

• The progress and resolution

Socratic Dialectic

A form of cooperative argumentative dialogue using probing question-and-answer methods to eliminate false beliefs and uncover fundamental truths.

Heglian Dialectic

An idealist approach viewing history and human thought as an evolving process where the Absolute Mind or Idea progresses through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Marxist/ Materialistic Dialectic

Developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this framework applies dialectical principles to physical reality, material conditions, economics, and class struggle rather than abstract ideas.

Socrates

He engaged Athenians in the marketplace with his series of questions

Karl Marx

He is known for introducing the concept of historical materialism

Mind

The best tool humans have in their pursuit of truth and meaning

Essence of the world

The problem of freedom includes this concept aside from man and God

Metaphysics

• It seeks to what is real

• Branch of philosophy that goes beyond the realms of science

• Questions the existence of spiritual beings, nature of universe, life after death

Metaphysician

Their task is to explain that part of our experience which we call unreal in terms of what we call real

Thales

• The first known metaphysician

• Claims that everything we experience is water (reality)

Ontology
Natural Theology
Universal Science

Main branches of metaphysics

Ontology

The study of being or existence

Natural Theology

The study of God and Creation

Universal Science

The study of first principle

Ethics

• Explores the nature of moral virtue and evaluates human actions

• Study of the nature of moral judgements

• It insists that obedience to moral law be given a rational foundation

• Seeks to address questions about how we should live our lives, how we define proper conduct

Philosophical ethics

Attempts to provide account of our fundamental ethical ideas

Practical Knowledge

The one does not only knows the rules of right living, but one lives them

Virtue

An awakening of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in the mind and heart of a person

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

• An African-American who wanted equal rights for the blacks

• His philosophy uses the same process as Hegel’s dialectic

Epistemology

Deals with nature, sources, limitations, and validity of knowledge

Belief

An acceptance that something is true/exist

Truth

The idea that one beliefs are in accordance with reality or objective facts

Justification

Why one has good reason for holding that beliefs?

Induction

• Gives importance to particular things, seen, heard, and touched

• Forms general ideas throughh the examination of particular facts

Empiricism

The view that knowledge can be attained only through sense experience

Empiricist

Advocates of induction method

Deduction

• Gives importance to general law from which particular facts are understood or judged

• Theory first then observation

Rationalist

Advocates of deduction method

Reasoning

The concern of the logician

Logike

• Comes from the Greek words

• Coined by Zeno, the Stoic

• A treatise (formal) on matters pertaining to the human thought

Logic

• Branch of philosophy that deals with reasoning

• It does not provide us knowledge of the world directly and does not contribute directly to the content of our thoughts.

Artistotle

The first philosopher to devise a logical method

Aesthetics

The science of the beautiful in its various manifestations – including the sublime, comic, tragic, pathetic, and ugly.

Wonder

Direct us to discover new things

The beginning that stimulates us to venture to a new philosophy

Beyond curiosity, our wonder can direct us to analogy and relationship of thigs

Theoretical

knowledge of necessary truth and logical consequences.

Practical

Knowledge in the realm of action. To have practical wisdom is to know truths that have to do with our dealings with fellow human beings.

Intuition

in philosophy is a way people devote their time to examine beliefs and opinions, to arrive at a certain truth.

Rational

Faculty of reason, this separates us from plants and animals

Rational faculty is the best element and divine quality that we share with gods.

Cosmocentric era

the human person is studied or understood in relation to the Cosmos.

Cosmos is at the center.

Cosmos is given great importance.

All creatures have to follow the natural law or the law of nature including a human person.

Astraeus

The Titan god (greek) of the stars. He was father of the planets and the four seasonal winds by Eos the dawn

Natural Law

Suggest that human laws are derived from eternal unchangeable principles found in nature.

Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute.

Theory of Natural Law

Humans possess an intrinsic sense of right and wrong that governs our reasoning and behavior.

Cosmocentric view

Ancient Philosophers wondered about the world, and the origin of the universe- arche (Greek for starting point)

Where did things come from?

What is the structure of the universe?

What is the nature of the world?

Thales

one of the earliest advocates for a naturalistic explanation for the observable phenomena in the cosmos.

water was the fundamental building block of all things.

Anaximander

Proposed a primal substance or principle from which all things originated and to which all things would return.

Boundless (apeiron)

eternal and infinite entity that transcended the physical world.

Anaximenes

the philosopher who theorized that air was the principal element of the universe, may have inadvertently discovered the soul.

Pythagoras

Greek philosopher, scientist,astronomer, and of a mathematician.

Historians claimed that he had a condition called synesthesia.

Pythagoreans/Mathematikoi (learners)

The cult Pythagoreas formed that worshipped numbers

Atomist Philosopher

thinker who believed that the universe is composed of tiny, indivisible units called atoms,

Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

most influential philosophers and scientists of the Islamic

Golden Age.

He is best known for his work in philosophy, medicine, logic, and metaphysics.

Christian era/Theocentric period

where the human person is being studied or understood in reference to God.

Here, the human person is considered to be the image of God.

created being in the image and likeness of God.

St. Augustine

A human person needs to obey or follow God’s law to reach his final destiny which is salvation.

derived the study of a human person from Plato and Plotinus.

St. Thomas Aquinas

a human person is composed of body and soul.

is a follower of Aristotle.

Wrote, Summa Theologica

Anthropocentric era

According to Descartes a human person’s existence is revealed in his thinking activity.

• This aspect of a human person presents his whole existence.

• We can know a human person through this activity.