Philosophy Notes

•  Philosophy is a conceptual/logical analysis of reality
• What is the nature of reality? → one source 

• Thales- water → natural philosopher
• Anaximenes-air
• Heraclitus- fire/ eternally in a process of change → absolute truth

• Problems given by the natural philosophers—The Sophists 

• Became suspicious of philosophy
• Specialized in rhetoric—learning to speak well
• Discouraged the presuit of philosophy

• Supernatural philosophies

• Platos- the eternal: non temporal, immutable-unchanging, simple, the one, impassable—without passions, necessary vs. contingent,

• Metaphysics- (after physics) attempt to explain reality and how it fits together. → the theory of everything
• Necessary vs. contingent
• Eternal vs. temporal
• Simple vs. complex
• Plato was concerned with the establishment of truth
• Heraclitus- Fire/Change → flux
• Apriori- (inate) before experience, knowledge that is with us before we experience anything
• Aposteriori- after experience, knowledge after experiencing something
• Immortal soul—no beginning and no end.
• The Sophists—“philosophers” Reality is derived from the eternal, believe we don’t know who was in the beginning.

• Rhetoric

• Spoke well—parents would hire to teach children to speak

• No Truth
• Help in an expedient way—whatever works/ works well

• Socrates

• Philosophy is instruction in virtue
• See’s himself as a midwife→ 1) indirect communication, and an “occasion” for truth. 2) conceptual analysis
• Never answered a question with an answer, rather with another question

• External Relations: “who you are is not important”

• “are the lights on”—Go check

• Internal Relations: “who you are is important”

• “is life a gift from God?”—Go check

• Midwife philosophy—Socrates

• Indirect communication

• Answering the question with another question
• Parables

• Neighbor—conceptual analysis
• Internal relation between the concept and the person—the idea of a conviction, who you are is important between the concept and the person

• Holiness for Socrates—remaining faithful to the concepts of virtue justice VS. Expediency—whatever works is right or true
• Plato

• Metaphysical realism

• The Theory of Forms

• Good—God
• Forms—forms emanating from God—universals/ concepts
• Copies—

• Ontology—study of being
• Epistemological knowledge

• Allegory of the Cave
•     Aristotle                                  vs.                         Plato
• Inductive –bottom → up             Deductive—top → down
• Reptiles/mammals                     Ontology/ being
• Telcology/purpose→ End(goal)    
• Human beings= social/valuing
• Laws: necessary(no choice) vs. contingent
• Freedom/ rational
• Aristotle

• Virtues—practice

• Learned such as grammar and music.

• Virtue Ethics—Eudaimonia: possessing a genius spirit, understanding what is worth while

• Ancient Tradition-

• Ethics: expression of ones nature

• “Who should I be?”

• Modern Tradition-

• Ethics: expression of ones choice

• “What should I do?”

• The focus of virtue training:

• 1. The passions/ feelings (not primary focus)
• 2. Faculty—ability to experience feelings (not primary focus)
• 3. Character  ( primary focus)

• Epicurus—Hedonism: avoidance of pain  

• One philosopher that moderns quote with approval
• Very materialistic understanding of ethics
• Believes our fear of death makes us anxious
• Defining “good and evil” in terms of “pleasure and pain”
• “its irrational to fear something you’re not going to experience”
• “death is an empty pain of anticipation”
• we seek immortality “the desire of the flesh” “the desire of blind flesh”
• Social compact

• Epictetus-

• Stoicism—belief that an alternative to seeking satisfaction in happiness they line their lives with “logos” (the word logic) of universe.
• Focus on the good—what is constant and unchanging
• Your only concern/focus is what is in your power, if it is on what is not in your power you cannot find peace.
• Enchridion—hand book on life
• “You can’t control the events that happen to you, but you can control how you respond to them.”

• DEPARTMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY
• 1. First department—don’t lie, be honest—the most necessary 
• 2. Second department—why should we be honest? Demanding a demonstration- presenting a picture, values are their own reason

1. Third department—establishing and analyzing the departments, abstract, why is this a good explanation?

• Augustine- Enchiridion on faith, hope, and love.

1. The unchangeable God, made all things good
2. To be (exist) is to be good—if it exist it is good.
3. Evil logically is therefore nothing
4. Evil exists as a corrupted good—good that has gone bad

• Manicheans—astrology; fate

• Dualism- good and evil

• Two things that have being, the force of good (spirit) and the force of evil (flesh/body)

• Aquinas

• Aristotle-teleology
• Perfection/ completion- “happiness”-goal
• Virtues are not the goal of human living—they are the means to achieve a further end
• Human- rational capabilities—God/truth

•  Modernity
• 1. Individual thinker
• 2. Fact/ Value or “is”/ “ought”
• 3. No ontology, no teleology, no bible
• 4. Rational basis- Epicurus

• 16th- 19th century
• Rene Desartes—wrote meditations on first philosophy- book on epistemology
• Radical doubt
• “I think therefore I am”
• cause/effect

• Ancient: World/ us
• Modern: I/ world—thinking thing
• Validation of an argument

• Is it formally true
• Is it sound

• Butler—jews
• Revelation/ nature
• Church/state
• Social cohesion
• David Hume—first shall be last, the last shall be first.

• Empiricism
• Habit
• Impressions/perceptions/reason
• 2 kinds of reason: establish true/false (fact-inert)

• empirical—

• matters or real existence

• There is an elm tree- parent tree- sapling- death of parent tree

• real relation of ideas

• abstract—

• matters of abstract existence

• triangle

• abstract relation of ideas

• object with 3 sides

• Apriori—before experience
• Aposteriori—after experience
• Feel correctly
• REASON: Establish facts—true/ false
• Facts are by nature inert (none moving)
• Ethics- feelings and passion

• Emanuel Kant

• Teacher in Prussia—mathematics& metaphysics
• Hume: human beings are interesting animals, nothing more—hopelessly shaped by their environment
• Human beings are hybrids of a phenomenon—physical world, but also members of noumena—intellectual world (existence of noumena is only suggested)
• Anthropology of freedom
• Reason/ freedom
• Hybrid—dual citizens of 2 realms
• 2 “oughts”- imperative

• 1- hypothetical imperative—if/then quality
• 2- categorical—based on who you are, hybrid (moral)

• Utilitarianism—utility: workability

• Good- pleasurable

• No goodness for goodness sake—private standard for morality (fideism)

• Bentham

• Utility

• 1- greatest amount of pleasure for greatest number
• 2-impartiality—no one is special

• problems with utilitarianism

• disrupts personal relationships
• distorts traditional ethical concepts

• 19th century—end of modernity

• optimism/progress
• Kierkegaard—Christian
• Nietzsche—Athiest
• Feuerbach

• The essence of religion

• Academic Discipline

• History

• Epistemological relativism

• Kant: humans are thinking things, dual beings of noumena and phenomena
• Christianity- ethics

• Social gospel
• Protestant Liberalism

• GFW Hegel

• Considered most important philosopher of 19th century
• Refers to himself as the last philosopher
• Dialectical thinking-truth happens when opposition occurs (truth is a result of the encounter of opposites
• Absolute truth is attainable—possible to know
• Epistemological relativism of history—peoples views change over time
• History is “geist”(mind/spirit) coming to know itself
• The phenomenology of spirit—book
• Reason in history—book
• Terrible writer
• Ancient conception of God

• God has all knowledge
• God creates the world
• Truth preexists the world

• Hegel conception of God

• God creates world in order to know what truth is
• God/ideas
• God has an idea for justice, but justice isn’t true in the abstract
• God needed the world in order for truth to be made real

• Thesis—antithesis—synthesis

• Kierkegaard

• Monstrous illusion
• Existing individual
• Romanticism

• Mood

• Nietzsche—God is dead and we (western culture) have killed him

• “on the Genealogy of morals”
• Hermeneutics (lens with which you are reading a specific text) of suspicion
• Power
• Superman—will to power

• Marx

•  Motivation for human life is money
• Freud—sex

• The first people to use the word “Good”

• Nietzsche says—the noble class (a noble is not noble by choice but by nature)

• Self referential
• Bad—unfortunate people

• Servant class (morality)—birthed in resentment/ revenge

• God—Good & Evil
• God calls servant class good
• God calls noble class evil

•  Repentance—theological idea

• free will
• bad conscience
• love your neighbors/ equality

• Zizek

• Political philosopher
• Ideology—Big other

• Making sure you don’t over step your bounds when speaking to others
• Violence

• Adolf Von Harnack

• Protestant Liberal Theology
• “what is Christianity?”—famous book he wrote
• Rejects gospel of John
• Jesus was a teacher of ethics

• Love your neighbor as yourself

• Karl Barth (one of Harnack’s students)

• Ethics of Jesus
• Masters of divinity—became pastor in Switzerland
• “nein”—no. A book he wrote

• Suggested that if we apply historical criticism  we will find the real Jesus
• The motives of the historian and the motives of a believer are not the same
• Historian—research/interview people. Assign percentage based on their research
• Believer—percentage on your findings doesn’t translate to your faith

• Martin Heidegger

• Everyday-ness

• Culture/media
• We live under the dictates of culture around us
• Unreflectively assuming the way things are in the world we live is covering over a fundamental approach we should have to reality
• Human Being—“Dasein” being there

• Sartre

• For born
• Existence preceeds essence
• Burden of freedom

• Camus

• Lucidity—seeing clearly
• The absurd
• Metaphysical revolt
• Self discovery

• Continental Philosophy—prescriptive
•  
• British Philosophy—like criticism of Hume

• Analytic Philosophy
• Descriptive

• G.E. Moore— understand the concept of “good” and how it is to be defined

• Suggests that the way we use to word good in ordinary language will offer a clue as to what the word good means
• **Most fundamental question in ethics
• complex idea
• the idea of good is simple
• Naturalistic Fallacy

• utility is good
• god is utility

• AJ Ayer

• Addresses the question “can an ethical claim be true?”
• Uses scientific or empirical language—true or false
• NO. an ethical claim is nonsense
• Passions/feelings
• Ethical Emotivist  
• Statements of preference

• John Rawls

• You can think disembodiedly
• Book: “a theory of justice”

• Collectively think together of the best possible foundation for the best possibly society

• Justice understood in terms of fairness
• The veil of ignorance
• The original position of equality
• (Someone else will choose your starting place)

• Wolf

• “Moral Saints” book she wrote
• Loving Saints
• Rational Saints
• Being as good as possible is her dominant passion/hobby
• A person may be perfectly wonderful without being perfectly moral
• Meta-moral assumption:

1. Values
2. Family
3. Friends
4. Jobs

• Applied Ethics (taking ethics out of the classroom and becoming public policy)

• The social contract theory—(framework in which public ethics does its work)
• Judith Thompson—written 1971 (abortion was illegal)

• Argument—in favor of abortion, links abortion issue with self defense (abortion and self-defense is key to her argument)
• Angered pro-choice advocates
•  Essay is famous for her examples, used (quoted) in many abortion cases
• Supererogatory actions—refer to actions of a saint
• Abortional self defense

• Don Marquis (argues against Judith Thompson)

• Argument: the claim that abortion except in rare instance is extremely wrong

• “Abortion is wrong for the same reason as killing the person reading this essay is wrong”
• “Killing a fetus is wrong for the same reason that killing an adult is wrong”
• antiabortion conception of the fetus is too broad—killing human tissue, if its human you cant kill it
• proabortion conception of the fetus is too narrow—to be a member of the moral community (to have rights) you have to have rational  consensus

• FLO theory—what the fetus shares with an adult human being is a future

• FLO= Future Like Ours

• Argues that the FLO theory understanding is that abortion is seriously wrong because we are robbing them of a future

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