Philosophy Literally Means Love of Wisdom
Philosophy of Life
- Philosophy literally means "love of wisdom."
- In philosophy, people are looking important life questions such as what do we want from life, how should we treat other people, and what is life all about?
- The goal of philosophy is not to identify final answers that everyone should accept, but to explore different answers. There are no philosophical facts. Everyone has a right to disagree and develop his or her own ideas.
- Philosophers agree that although philosophical thinking can be difficult, controversial and undesirable to many, it ultimately is good for you and can help figure out what life is about. It also helps people understand more about what it means to live a good life and discover more about who they really are.
Objectivism vs Subjectivism
Objectivism - The belief that certain opinions and points of view are matters of fact and can be proven or shown with evidence.
Subjectivism - The belief that opinions and points of view are a matter of opinion, and that there are no rights and wrongs on these matters.
Beauty and Love
What is Love?
-Philosophers have been attempting to answer this question since the beginning.
-Although philosophers agree that love is good, they disagree over why it’s good.
3 different philosophers on love: A) Plato; B) Montaigne; C) CS Lewis
A) Plato: According to the Greek philosopher Plato, love is good because it is rational, meaning that there are reasons for it. He believed true love is always directed toward true beauty. Beauty is not something that you feel or sense, but rather something that you come to know exists through philosophical thought.
- Plato argued that when you see something that is beautiful, you are really just seeing a partial reflection of true beauty, must like a painting or a photo only captures an image of the real thing.
- True beauty has no particular shape, size or color, rather it is an abstract idea kind of like the number 5. Abstract ideas are objects of thought that have no physical form.
- Plato says that when you love someone, you actually love the From of Beauty you see reflected in that person. Because the Form of Beauty is the highest good, we have every reason to love it.
B) Montaigne: French philosopher Michel de Montaigne says that love is irrational, there is no reason for it. Love is at its best when it is free and not limited by reason.
- There is no way to explain or justify your feelings if you love someone, you can’t explain why.
- Montaigne said that if you are asked why you love someone, a sufficient answer would simply be “because I do.”
C) CS Lewis: A British author, philosopher and theologian, his perspective on love is representative of how many Christians think.
- The highest form of love is expressed in the Greek term agape, which means "self gift." It is the pure gift of the self without wanting anything in return and brings us closest to God.
- Lewis categorized 4 types of love:
1) Romantic love 2) Friendship 3) Familial Love 4) Religious Love
Epistemology - The study of knowledge.
3 theories about knowledge: Empiricism, Pragmatism, Rationalism
Empiricism
- The belief that knowledge comes to us through sensory experience. To know something means to have experienced it or observed it.
- We have no innate knowledge when we are born. All truths are acquired through sensory experiences.
- The basis of knowledge comes from the ideas that form in your mind when you are observing an object, not from the actual object itself. Intellectual thought and abstract ideas don't help
us to truly "know" truths.
- Exact science isn't possible because none of us can ever fully experience every possibility.
Pragmatism
- The value of knowledge is in it's practical implications. Knowledge is only important to the extent that it makes a difference and that it works for something productive.
Something is meaningless if it has no practical implications. Basically don't waste your time thinking about things that aren't important.
- John Dewey: Truth evolves since the world is constantly changing. What's true today may not be true tomorrow. No two situations are exactly the same, so you can only use past
knowledge as a guide when dealing your present problem. Don't get attached to searching for absolute theories.
- Making mistakes can help you to learn how to improve your decisions. However, the process of trial and error only works if you know what error means. If there is no such thing as being
wrong, there is no such thing as being right, and if there are no mistakes then we don't have anything to learn from.
Rationalism
Rationalism - A philosophical theory that claims knowledge is primarily acquired through the use of concepts and abstract ideas separate sensory experiences. It does not reject all of the
claims of empiricism, but states that intellectual knowledge is just as accurate as experiential knowledge if not more.
- Intuition plays an important role in gaining knowledge. Intuition is the ability to learn truths without proof (scientific study) or logical reasoning. Sometimes people can even explain how they have come to learn knowledge through intuition.
- Rationalism also uses deductive reasoning (top down) logic to figure out truths. For example let's look at a classical example taken from Greek philosopher Socrates:
- Rationalists also believe in innate knowledge, truths that we know already because we are human beings and they are part of our human nature.
- Predictability and inductive reasoning (using observations, evidence and reasoning to draw conclusions.) can help lead us to make assumptions. However, knowledge gained from
inductive reasoning is only probable and never certain because there always exists the possibility of change.
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is concerned with questions on how people should act, what is right conduct, and what does it mean to live a good life where one is happy.
-Ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” meaning habit or custom.
-Meta-Ethics is the subfield within ethics that studies what “right” even means.
Alternative Ethical Theories:
A) Humanism - More of a general stance than a specific position, humanists believe that human beings are naturally prone to care of their kind.
- It looks to science, reason, rationality and self-determination as means to explain why humans try to live moral lives and preserve their race.
- Humanism is often seen as being separate from religion, although some elements of humanism such as having human rights are found in many religions.
B) Skepticism - This theory believes that human beings are virtually incapable of deciding between good and bad and will rather make decisions to promote their self-interest.
- Skepticism tends to be subjectivist, stating that one cannot arrive at
objective or universal truth. People tend to be selfish.
C) Hedonism - Ethics are based on humans' drive to maximize
pleasure and minimize pain. This ranges widely from focusing on what brings an individual person pleasure and pain, to looking at how decisions impact can bring happiness or misery to the larger community.
- Utilitarianism comes from hedonism, stating a decision is right if it leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people. It becomes a way to quantify the rightness of a decision.
D) Stoicism - This position views contentment, serenity and peace of mind as the goal of the ethical in life.
- Desire and occasionally emotion are seen to bring on suffering.
If people can order their desires and stay detached from material possessions they can reach an inner peace (often associated with spirituality). Many Eastern philosophies and in particular Buddhism incorporates many Stoic views.
E) Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative - Kant theorized that ethics should be found on the principle that a person's motive determines the rightness of a choice not the consequences.
- The Categorical Imperative states you should only act in such a way that you would your actions to become a universal law so that everyone would have to follow it regardless of the situation or context. (If everyone made the same decision as you it would make the world a better place).
- People should always be treated as an end in themselves. It's never right to manipulate, lie or harm individuals even for the "greater good."
Christianity in Ethics
Teleology (Consequentialism) - This theory argues that the morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome or result. Thus, a morally right action is one that produces a good
outcome or consequence. Teleological (Consequentialist) theories must consider questions like "What sort of consequences count as good consequences?", "Who is the primary beneficiary of moral action?", "How are the consequences judged and who judges them?"
Deontology - An approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions. It argues that decisions should be made considering the factors of one's duties and other's rights. As long as you are fulfilling your obligations and responsibilities, you can't concern yourself with the consequences, especially bad consequences that are out of your control.
Virtue Ethics - This Christian model for evaluating moral decisions looks to see how a choice promotes virtue. This evaluates how a person's relationships are affected by his or decision incorporating the intent of the choice, the effects it had on others, and how the decision increases or decreases virtue within the person making the choice.
Christian Tradition on evil
- Evil is both transcendent and also in humanity. It can be both a condition that exists in society as well as human choices.
- John Milton’s Paradise Lost depiction of Satan - Almost a heroic figure who defied God. Pride is his ultimate downfall, he essentially wants to become God. Classic image of Satan shaking his fist at God better to burn in hell than to serve in heaven. His biggest problem with God is that he is unfair for loving all equally. Pride is the main vice for Milton. The drive to be the best, even better to God, is the root of evil.
- Dante’s Divine Comedy Satan: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here." The way to evil is through a loss of hope where a person is no longer able to see goodness in the world.
- In the Divine Comedy, Satan is depicted as a much more pathetic figure who is frozen in the depths of hell from his own tears in a deep sadness. Evil ultimately makes us unhappy.
Fraud and betrayal are the main vices for Dante which lead to evil. Evil is a result when people betray others and themselves to be something they are not.
- Traditionally it was assumed that people chose evil because of:
1) Ignorance: Truly not knowing any better or being unaware of what is good (Aristotle)
2) Compulsion: Being heavily influenced by circumstance or other people to do evil
- St. Augustine proposed a new idea on evil, that it is a choice that people make and that there is something tempting about evil that draws us to it.
- In the famous German play Faust, (the story of a man who makes a deal with the devil to gain ultimate satisfaction in life), when asked who he is, the devil responds by saying, "I am the
spirit that says no to everything that will come to an end, that it would be better that nothing existed." As a summary of Christianity on evil, the root of evil is the desire to not be. It is
the complete rejection of the goodness or value of God's creation and the world.
Augustine's Ideas About Evil
Augustine believes that there are three main causes that lead to
sin:
1) Superbia - pride or arrogance, wanting to superior to others
2) Curiositas - the inability to settle or commit to anything. Spreading yourself to thin over many areas instead of concentrating on a few.
3) Concupiscence - absolutizing a relative good. Making "a" good into "the" good. An example of this would be idolatry, when you treat something as if it is your god.
3 stages of evil
1) When you think that you are basically God, the center of the universe, and everything should be about pleasing you.
2) When you try to fill the hole in the center of your being with all different kinds of things. You keep trying to satisfy yourself with things that ultimately do not work.
3) The Great Choice: Because you see that nothing can really satisfy you, answer your questions, or fully make you happy, you come to the conclusion that all of creation/life is meaningless and one big joke. This can often lead to extreme acts of violence and
even suicide.
The Ontological Question – Does God Exist?
Why Bad things happen to good people shows the Religious Skepticism Theory: Either
1) If God is angry and vengeful rather than all loving, then it would make sense that he would allow suffering.
OR
2) If God is loving but not all powerful then while he would want to prevent suffering he would not be able to.
- Either way God is not who Christians claims he is
For the existence of God:
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theory of absolute dependence.
- If we are dependent then we have to be dependent on something. It could be the universe; it could be nature; it could be God. If you get rid of this dependence then we no longer are human beings.
1) Do you believe that you are a creation, that you were brought into existence by something else other than your own self?
2) Do you believe that you have some sort of deeper purpose in life and that this purpose is not something that you have chosen but rather something that you come to discover?