Ancient Catholic Philosophy Final Exam Review part 1

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering God, the Nature of Reality, and the Search for Truth as outlined in the Ancient Catholic Philosophy review sheet.

Theist

A person who believes in the existence of a God or gods.

Atheist

A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

Agnostic

A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.

Religious syncretism

The blending or attempted blending of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.

St. John's conception of God

The belief that God is Love.

St. Thomas Aquinas's conception of God (Ch. 3)

God as a continuously active Creator.

Deism

The view held by Voltaire and T. Jefferson of God as an impersonal first principle of physics or a distant, transcendent mystery.

Transcendent

The quality of being beyond the ordinary world of human experience.

Immanent

The quality of God not being outside of us or distinct from the Universe.

Pantheism

The philosophy, associated with Spinoza, that God is totally immanent and identical to the universe.

God as Universal Spirit

The conception of God according to Hegel.

God as the unknown object of faith

The conception of God according to Kierkegaard.

Moral Evil

Evil done or perpetrated by man.

Non-moral Evil

Evil that occurs through natural causes, such as diseases and natural disasters.

Aesthetic Totality Solution

A response to the problem of evil stating that evil is part of the aesthetic whole over the long term.

The Cosmological Argument

Thomas Aquinas's argument for God as the first cause of everything.

Argument from Design

An argument for God's existence associated with William Paley and C. Darwin.

The Ontological Argument

St. Anselm's $11^{th}$ Century argument stating that the very idea we have of God makes it necessary that He exists.

Rational Faith

Immanuel Kant's view that belief in God is rationally necessary for one to be a morally good person.

Irrational Faith

Kierkegaard's view that faith is an intensely personal commitment or "leap of Faith" not subject to proof.

Pascal's Wager

An argument that it is in one's own best interest to behave as if God exists, since the rewards are infinite while the costs are minimal.

Mysticism

A special experience or vision of the direct experience of God that cannot be completely described or communicated.

Ritual

The variety of practices that give life to religion and bring its practice to life in concrete and visible ways.

Tradition

The cultural and historical contexts of religious foundations, such as Jesus in $1^{st}$ Century Palestine or Muhammed in $7^{th}$ Century Arabia.

Ontology

The study of what is real and the effort to establish a hierarchy of levels of reality.

Metaphysics

The attempt to say what reality is; an interpretation of the world.

Cosmology

A branch of metaphysics concerned with how we think most real things came into being.

Thales

A materialist ($624-546\,BC$) who believed reality is ultimately water.

Anaximenes

A materialist ($585-528\,BC$) who believed reality is essentially air.

Heraclitus

A philosopher ($536-470\,BC$) who viewed reality as change but governed by an underlying Logos.

Democritus

A materialist ($460-371\,BC$) who argued reality consists of tiny atoms.

Pythagoras

An immaterialist ($571-497\,BC$) who believed reality is ultimately number.

Parmenides

An immaterialist ($539-492\,BC$) who believed reality is unchanging and unknown to us.

Zeno of Elea

A $5^{th}$ Century BC philosopher who believed reality is unchanging and motion is unreal.

Plato's Ideals/Forms

A synthesis of materialism and immaterialism stating the unseen eternal world is more real than the seen material one.

Logos (Platonic definition)

The mind of God.

Aristotle's Metaphysics

A common sense approach where reality is trees, roads, etc., and essence and substance coexist in the material world.

Idealism

The philosophy that what is real is Mind, meaning all objects and ideas exist only insofar as they are experienced by the mind.

Pluralist (Descartes)

A thinker who believes in more than one substance; Descartes accepted body, mind, and God.

Monist (Spinoza)

A thinker who believes there is only one universal substance; Spinoza treated mind and body as separate attributes of this one substance.

Monads

Leibniz's concept of immaterial substances created by God that do not interact with each other.

Subjective Idealism

George Berkeley's theory that "To be is to be perceived" ($Esse\,est\,percipi$).

Kant's Metaphysical Dualism

The vision of two rational worlds: one of nature and knowledge, and one of actions, morals, and faith.

The Will (Schopenhauer)

An irrational and violent force inside of us that drives desires and passions but ultimately to no purpose.

Teleology

The view of the world as having a goal or purpose toward which it is continually developing.

Animists

Believers who attribute life-like activity to all things, viewing the universe as alive and in constant process.

Epistemology

The theory of knowledge.

Empirical Truth

Truth that is true because of facts or experience.

Contingent Truth

A truth that depends upon a circumstance or one's observations.

Necessary Truth

A truth that is true a priori and cannot possibly be false, such as $2+2=4$.

Rationalism

The school of thought confident that human reason can provide final answers to basic questions, resulting in necessary truths.

Empiricism

The school of thought that rejects innate ideas and accepts that all knowledge comes from experience.

Tabula Rasa

John Locke's concept of the mind as a blank slate.

Skepticism

The assumption of two worlds: an outer physical world and an inner world of senses and experiences.