Honors Test 2

MEDIEVAL TIMEZZZ

St. Augustine

• Background

  • raised Pagan (not Christian)

  • focuses on manichea(n)ism

  • “discovers” Catholicism

  • writes the book Confessions

    • talks about his personal choices

  • writes City of God

    • “how to be a good catholic”

  • focuses on cosmology, ethics, religion (theology), ecclesiology (study of christianity), and eschatology (study of “the Final Judgement”

• Main Points

  • Time is an illusion

    • God exists outside of time

    • Deterministic universe

      • you think you’re making choices but God knows all (no freewill)

  • Human Nature is bad

    • due to “Original Sin”

    • philosophical pessimist (human nature sucks)

    • goal is to understand Christianity

  • Sense perception (empirical)

    • inner sense (orders information)

    • reason (logic)

Ibn Rushd

• Background

  • focussed on theology, cosmology, metaphysics, psychology, politics, and natural sciences

  • moved from Spain to Morocco → studied under the Almohads

    • believed that law needs to coexist with religion and theology

  • influenced by Aristotle

  • banished from the Almohad Empire for being “too liberal”

• Main Points

  • Islam is the one true religion

    • scholastic point of view

    • all other sects are wrong about the existence of God

      • God is real because…

        • providence (luck)

          • everything serves humans

        • invention

          • everything is invented by someone

  • Philosophy should have a place with law and religion

    • law is for a larger audience while philosophy determines law

      • through philosophy we find law

    • two sets of shari’a law (“the way”)

      • one for the common people

      • one for philosophers

  • Different classes of being

    • substance, soul/mind, and outside the soul

      • substances are physical bodies → forms and matter

      • outside the soul is the cosmos

    • similar to Aristotle

St. Thomas Aquinas

• Background

  • Benedictine (extreme form of Christianity)

  • Dominican

  • “Encounters” Aristotle (thanks to Ibn Rushd)

    • writes a book Summa Theologica

  • focuses on theology, ethics, and epistemology

  • Thomism (you follow Aquinas)

    • Establishes Scholasticism

• Main Points

  • 5 Proofs of God

    • Prime Mover → there must have been a first cause → no void

    • Efficient cause → our existence is a list of cause and effect

    • Necessity → without God, what is there?

    • Degree → we can conceive an ultimate superlative (God)

    • Design → somebody built everything

  • Virtues (Cardinal)

    • Prudence → good judgement

    • Temperance → balance

    • Justice → a sense of fairness

    • Fortitude → courage

  • Virtues (Theological)

    • show faith at all times

    • hope that God will save you

    • charity

  • Double Faith Theory

  • Double Truth Theory

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

• Background

• Main Points

Thomas Hobbes

• Background

  • focused in politics, ethics, epistemology

• Main Points

  • politics

    • what would we be like with no rules? → the state of nature

      • uber pessimist

        • the worst will always happen

          • “a human is a creature whose whole life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

    • we would kill each other off with no government

      • he comes to the conclusion that a monarchy would be best

  • Social contract → unofficial agreement between the leaders and the people (give up something in exchange for something else)

  • separation of church and state is important

  • Epistemology

    • materialist, nominalist, anti-scholastic, skeptic

  • Ethics

    • Four facts of human life

      • equality of need

      • equality of power

      • limited altruism

      • scarcity of resources

Rene Descartes

• Background

  • wrote the Discourse on Method

  • condemned by the Dutch

  • mainly focussed on math and epistemology

  • marks a new era of Modern Philosophy

  • rationalist, idealist, wanted philosophy to be like math

  • not a skeptic

• Main Points

  • Methodological (systematic) Doubt

    • “Doubt anything you can’t prove”

      • anti-empiricism, anti-authority, anti-revelation

    • “I think therefore I am” → “cogito ergo sum”

      • “I can understand perfection, therefore God must exist”

    • Rebuild

      • recover all that you’ve doubted

    • Cartesian Dualism

      • two realms in the universe

        • mind (soul)

          • logical

          • immaterial

        • body

          • solid

    • objects perceived have 2 characteristics (perception theory)

      • primary characteristics

      • secondary characteristics

        • “Wax Ball Argument”

Roger Bacon

• Background

  • educated in Oxford

    • exposed to scholasticism

  • taught Aristotle’s works

    • praised ideal in logic and natural philosophy

  • focussed on ethics, natural sciences, philology/linguistics, and epistemology

• Main Points

  • how do we live a good life?

    • pursuit of knowledge, especially scientific and empirical

      • obstacles: ignorance and superstition

  • how do we gain knowledge?

    • a combination of reason and experiment

    • slowly moved away from revelation

      • believed it played a “secondary role”

  • mastering language (Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic) was fundamental to learn truth

    • those were the original languages the Bible was written in

  • system of signs

    • a sign is something that signifies or represents something else

      • natural signs

      • artificial signs

William of Occam

• Background

  • Franciscan → anti-hedonism

  • Ascetic: a person who denies him/herself physical pleasure

  • interested in ethics, epistemology, theology, and philology

• Main Points

  • Occam’s Razor

    • “don’t multiply ideas beyond necessity”

    • the simplest theory that explains all of the empirical data will always be correct

  • Nominalism

    • words precede ideas (materialist way of thinking)

  • believed that Church and State should be separate

John Locke

• Background

  • “Father of British Empiricism”

  • wrote 1st and 2nd Treatise of Civil Government

  • wrote Essay Concerning Human Understanding

  • studied politics and epistemology

  • optimist and empiricist

• Main Points

  • “State of Nature”

    • if there were no government we would just be blank slates

      • nurture over nature

  • Government

    • social contract

      • basically the government shouldn’t be tyrannical

Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

• Background

  • born and raised in a Jewish community in Amsterdam

    • was later kicked out for not following the tradition teachings

  • influenced by philosophical rationalism, Stoicism, Hobbes, and Descartes

  • focussed on ethics and theology

• Main Points

  • from his book “Ethics” aka an attempt at rewriting religion

    • believed praying to God has no effect

      • humans are supposed to understand the universe and accept it

      • once you understand the universe, you live your life in that way to give yourself the results you want

    • best way to understand God is through the universe, not holy text (pantheism)

      • “sub-species durationis” → humans are under the aspect of eternity

      • “sub-specie aeternitatis” → humans are under the aspect of eternity

        • allows us to see the universe for what it truly is

    • how to live a good life

      • good things = anything that increases our own power in something

      • bad things = what we see as bad

        • we need to see past these local concerns and be connected to the universe → strive to be better (conatus)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

• Background

  • focussed on math, metaphysics, ontology, ethics, theodicy, and epistemology

  • compatibilist: determinist but does not deny free will

• Main Points

  • Defines individual substances

    • monads

      • pre-established harmony

        • these substances appear to work together but they are actually individual

  • Principle of Sufficient Reason

    • everything existing or occured has a sufficient explanation/cause for its existence/occurrence

      • contingency/cosmological argument

        • contingency: because everyone/everything has potential to exist/not exist there must be a reason why it exists

          • it is contingent that there are contingent things

          • there are contingent things

          • if both are true then there must be something not contingent that created them

  • Problem of Evil

    • theodicy: God and evil’s existence are probable

    • we live in the best of all possible worlds

      • Leibniz Optimism → God has created the best of all worlds for us to live in because he is the best

    • evil, pain, and suffering exist as “necessary evils” which maximize overall goodness

Anne Conway

• Background

  • cartesianism: philosophical and scientific traditions derived from Descartes

  • material pantheism → God is the matter of all things

  • focussed on metaphysics, ontology, theology, ethics, and atomism

• Main Points

  • species

    • substances distinguished by properties → essence and ontological boundaries

      • Tri-partaid system

        • God → middle nature (Christ) → creatures

  • creatures

    • subject to time and multiplicity → infinite spirit particles in everything created by God

      • the more God-like something becomes the more spiritual it is

        • Captain spirit: determines moral constitution and its continuous identity (your soul can not change)

          • physical features can change over multiple lifetimes

  • perfectibility

    • potential to increase perfection → Platonic ideas of goodness and godlikeness

    • change can be bad but a creature can not lose goodness it can be corrupt

      • punishment for sin is pain

        • forces you to turn back to godlikeness which fulfills Conway’s cycle of perfection

      • apocatastasis: no one goes to hell, everyone has the possibility to go to heaven

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Background

  • influenced by enlightenment thinkers

  • mainly focuses on morals, ethics, and government

  • optimist

• Main Points

  • Civilization is not good for human nature

    • state of nature - freedom, selflessness, all the vibes

      • society has turned us evil → jealousy and greed

    • society has cause artificial self-love called “amour-propre” → changing yourself for other people

    • “noble savage”: a human corrupted by society

  • humans should trust their feelings more than reason

    • human nature is good, so why not trust it?

      • children should recieve an education based off of their natural tendencies and not those taught by society

        • reward them with love and compassion and allow them to experience the world

  • from The Social Contract

    • general will: surrendering of an individual’s desire to work towards the common good

      • legislators are people who understand the general will

    • popular sovereignty: permission for the government to govern lies within the people

Wilhelm Amo

• Background

  • a slave “enlightenment experiment”

    • he gets a PHD from Uni of Wittenberg in philosophy

  • focuses in epistemology, ontology and metaphysics

• Main Points

  • interested in Cartesian Duality

    • huge split between mind and body

      • mind is non-corporeal → body is corporeal

        • no communication between the two

        • empiricism is on the body side → the mind doesn’t receive it

          • mind can not be affected by the world

Scholasticism

premise 1 → the Bible is true (Revelation), premise 2 → you can use logic, authority, and empiricism after

Tabula rasa

“blank slate” in Latin → John Locke’s idea that without government we would all just be blank slates

Double Truth theory

God’s miracles can exist and if science contradicts them then it’s ok

Teleology

everything should be done with a purpose

Double Faith theory

there is one faith for the philosophers and another designed for the masses

Manichea(n)ism

2 equal gods: god of good and god of evil

Occam’s razor

don’t multiply ideas beyond necessity → the simplest theory that explains all empirical data is correct

Materialism (vs. Platonic Idealism)

focus on empirical data vs ideas (Aristotle vs Plato)

“State of Nature”

what would people do if there was no government

Empiricism vs. Rationalism/Idealism

favoring the use of the 5 senses vs favoring the use of logic

Social Contract Theory

an agreement between the governed and the governor

Nominalism vs. Platonism

words precede ideas vs ideas preceding all

Pessimism vs Optimism

human nature is inherently evil vs human nature was born good

Cartesian Dualism

there is a split between our mind (soul) and our body

“Wax Ball” argument

argument by Descartes → if I hold a wax ball it will start out hard and shiny but as it melts it will become mushy and liquid BUT it will always be wax

Deductive (vs Inductive) logic

major premise to minor premise vs minor premise to major premise

Methodological doubt

Created by Descartes → doubt anything you can’t prove

Donatism

the Christian clergy must be faultless in order for their prayers and sacraments to be valid

Arianism

believed that God the Father was superior to God the Son

Locke’s vision for government

• social contract

• life, liberty, and property

• gold standard: not allowed to print money without equal amount of gold

• balanced, tolerant international trade

• liked weaker/decentralized government

Aquinas’s 5 Proofs of God

• prime mover

• efficient cause

• necessity

• degree

• design

Shari’a Law

laws we should be using should come from our holy book

Cogito ergo sum

Descartes → “I think therefore I am”

Free will vs Mechanism vs Determinism

we are in control of our own actions vs God has created certain principles but allows human beings to create while keeping them in mind (gravity) vs God has predetermined our paths before we know

Principle of sufficient reason

created by Leibniz → proves the existence of God through contingency: it is contingent that there are contingent things, there are contingent things, therefore there must be something not-contingent that creates these things (God)

Great Chain of Being

a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God; starts with God and the angels, ends with plants and minerals

Monads

thought of by Leibniz to be individual substances that make up everything

Amour de sois vs Amour de propre (Rousseau)

a healthy type of self-love vs an unhealthy type of self-love where individuals concern themselves with what society views them as

Social Constructionism (Relativism) vs. Essentialism

there are no absolute truths as someone’s “truths” vary based on background vs people have an innate set of “truths”

Pantheism

God exists equally in everything

Truths of Reason

statements that cannot be denied without a contradiction (math)

Truths of Fact

statements that can be denied (a person’s likeableness)

Problem of Evil

why does evil exist if the world was created by an all-loving God?

General Will (Rousseau)

the will of people as a whole

Conatus

the act of becoming a better person

Why did medieval education latched on to ancient/classical philosophy?

Christianity was rising at the same time the Roman empire was falling and there was a mixture of Greek and Roman ideas, which weren’t designed to mix, there is a need to make two different mindsets fit together (Scholasticism)

Hobbes’s Facts of life

equality of need, equality of power, limited altruism, and scarcity of resources

Spirit particles

concept of Lady Conway that every being is made of particles that determine our overall goodness (we are all born with them)

Mysticism

a sect of a religion that focuses more on spiritual access (Kabbalah)

Kabbalah/sefirot

a Jewish book used by Pico that illustrated that God has no space/time boundaries and within that he illustrated that there are 10 ways we can become closer to God

Rousseau’s idea of education

children should be free to explore the world and form their own conclusions (montesory)

tautology/tautological

circular reasoning (premise is the same as the conclusion)

Natural vs Artificial Signs (Bacon)

a sign made by God/Earth vs a sign that is man-made

sub specie durationis/aeternitatis (Spinoza)

human beings are under the aspect of time/eternity

3 Species (Conway)

God → middle nature (Christ) → creatures

Contingent Proof of God (Leibniz)

for all things to exist there must be something non-contingent that created them