introduction to philosophy

what is philosophy?

• philosophy: “the love of wisdom”

  • philein – to love
  • sophia – wisdom
  • generally refers to the study of knowledge, reality, existence, and human reason
  • many different forms of philosophy – we will be focusing on metaphysics, logic, and the philosophy of the human person

• Aristotle’s four causes

  • Material Cause - What that thing is made of
  • Formal Cause - Shape/arrangement of a thing
  • Efficient Cause - What made it into that arrangement
  • Final Cause - What it was made to do/Why it is ultimately that way and not another

• metaphysics

  • study of the fundamental structure of all reality
  1. Putting things into categories (Hot Dogs as Sandwiches?)
  • defining the nature of things (What it is) allows us to act accordingly
  1. Division of Substance (What something is/Nature) and Accidents (Properties that thing has)
  • prime example: Eucharist
  1. substance: goes from bread to Jesus Christ
  2. accidental properties: tastes, looks and smells like bread (stay the same)

• philosophy of the human person

  • As body and soul, unified (“body and soul, but truly one”)
  • Thomistic Hylomorphism
  • named after St. Thomas Aquinas, who adopted the ideal from Aristotle
  • the human person is defined by the four faculties of the soul:
  • intellect - power of cognition, knowing reality in a nonmaterial way;  the faculty of thinking in a way essentially higher than with the senses and the imagination
  • will – the faculty of choice; ability to choose one thing over another
  • passions/emotions – emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act
  • senses – medium of knowledge
  • the faculties in disorder
  • intellect – becomes darkened; blinded to the truth
  • will – becomes weakened; ceases to choose good
    • I & W are most wounded by Fall – these define who we really are
  • passions/emotions – become inflamed; attempt to rule intellect and will; do not serve truth and goodness
  • we are most ourselves when all four faculties (intellect, will, passion, senses) are engaged correctly
  • faculties must be in order to discover truth and happiness
  • passions/emotions and senses must serve truth and goodness via the intellect and will (not the other way around)
  • the Fall resulted in disorder,  but we can reorder
  • hence the importance of the study of right and wrong to reorder them

faith and reason

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves”

• reason (philosophy) without Faith = can’t fully answer big (WHY) questions in life
• faith without reason = becomes blind faith (fideism), goes against human nature
• philosophy bridges the gap between faith and reason

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