ChristianPhilosophy

What is Christian Philosophy? Because it requires faith in biblical revelation, you might assume that the Christian worldview cannot possibly have a philosophy of its own. According to the secular worldviews, naturalism and materialism are grounded firmly in modern scientific methodology and enlightened human experience. How can we as Christians, who are required to postulate existence or reality outside the material realm, ever hope to prove that our beliefs are true, reasonable, rational, and worth living and dying for? A Christian Philosophy of Education.

By Dr. Paul W. Cates, Ph.D. From a Christian philosophy of education, thoughts and actions can be derived, implemented, and defended. The elements to be considered in developing a Christian philosophy of education range from theological and doctrinal to social and educational. The first step is the development of a Biblical base. The Bible becomes the skeleton on which the practical application of our philosophy can be arranged. Under consideration in this paper on a Christian school's educational philosophy shall be the Biblical base, implications for the teaching-learning process of the school, the role of the educator, and the role of the learner.

The Biblical Base

The importance of having a sound Biblical philosophy of education cannot be overemphasized. In referring to the importance of developing a distinctively Christian philosophy, more Christian educators are beginning to realize that to be truly Christian, the curriculum must be Bible integrated in theory and practice. By this the Bible is to provide more than theoretical guidance and generalization. It is to be a vital part of the content of the curriculum and integrated with all subject matter. The Bible should be the integrating factor around which all other subject matter is correlated and arranged, and provides the criterion by which all other subject matter is judged.

Since God is central in the universe and is the source of all truth, it follows that all subject matter is related to God. Thus, the revelation of God must become the heart of the subject matter curriculum. The Bible itself becomes the central subject in the school' curriculum. It, as God's primary revelation to man, must become the integrating and correlating factor in all that is thought and taught at the school. It is the basis by which all other channels of knowledge are evaluated and used. Through the bible the inter-relatedness of all other subjects and truths is made possible. We may conclude therefore that the function of the bible in the subject matter curriculum is twofold. First, it provides content of its own. Second, it provides a service function to the other subjects. The principles of Biblical truth should be applied to and in all other subjects. Claim to truth from other areas should be tested and evaluated by the philosophical and theological truths of the Word of God. God's Christian Schools are built on the premise that all truth is God's truth and that the Word of God is to be the key factor in the communication of knowledge. It is important to note that any and all education that is received should have the word of God as its foundation. This is not to imply that the Bible is a textbook on anything and everything; but rather, that the Bible is to be the point of reference from which we can evaluate all other areas and sources of knowledge. What one learns from God's natural revelation must be in harmony with what He has revealed in His Word. Since God is the author of both revelations it is reasonable that they would not contradict each other. In summary some of the advantages of having a Biblical philosophy of education are as follows: 1. It co-ordinates the various spheres of life as a whole. 2. It relates knowledge systematically. 3. It examines the presuppositions, methods, and basic concepts of each discipline and group of disciplines. 4. It strives for coherence, the formulation of a worldview. 5. Its method is to consult data from the total experience.

Rationalism
Rationalism is the philosophical stance according to which reason is the ultimate source of human knowledge. It rivals empiricism according to which the senses suffice in justifying knowledge. In a form or another, rationalism features in most philosophical tradition; in the Western one, it boasts a long and distinguished list of followers, including Plato, Descartes, and Kant.

Advanced Information

Philosophical rationalism encompasses several strands of thought, all of which usually share the conviction that reality is actually rational in nature and that making the proper deductions is essential to achieving knowledge. Such deductive logic and the use of mathematical processes provide the chief methodological tools. Thus, rationalism has often been held in contrast to empiricism. Earlier forms of rationalism are found in Greek philosophy, most notably in Plato, who held that the proper use of reasoning and mathematics was preferable to the methodology of natural science. The latter is not only in error on many occasions, but empiricism can only observe facts in this changing world. By deductive reason, Plato believed that one could extract the innate knowledge which is present at birth, derived from the realm of forms. However, rationalism is more often associated with Enlightenment philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. It is this form of continental rationalism that is the chief concern of this article. Innate Ideas Descartes enumerated different types of ideas, such as those which are derived from experience, those which are drawn from reason itself, and those which are innate and thus created in the mind by God. This latter group was a mainstay of rationalistic thought. Innate ideas are those that are the very attributes of the human mind, inborn by God. As such these "pure" ideas are known a priori by all humans, and are thus believed by all. So crucial were they for rationalists that it was usually held that these ideas were the prerequisite for learning additional facts. Descartes believed that, without innate ideas, no other data could be known. The empiricists attacked the rationalists at this point, arguing that the content of the socalled innate ideas was actually learned through one's experience, though perhaps largely unreflected upon by the person. Thus we learn vast amounts of knowledge through our family, education, and society which comes very early in life and cannot be counted as innate.

One rationalistic response to this empirical contention was to point out that they were many concepts widely used in science and mathematics that could not be discovered by experience alone. The rationalists, therefore, concluded that empiricism could not stand alone, but required large amounts of truth to be accepted by the proper use of reason. Epistemology Rationalists had much to say about knowledge and how one might gain certainty. Although this query was answered somewhat differently, most rationalists eventually got back to the assertion that God was the ultimate guarantee of knowledge. Perhaps the best example of this conclusion is found in the philosophy of Descartes. Beginning with the reality of doubt he determined to accept nothing of which he could not be certain. However, at least one reality could be deduced from this doubt: he was doubting and must therefore exist. In the words of his famous dictum, "I think, therefore I am." From the realization that he doubted, Descartes concluded that he was a dependent, finite being. He then proceeded to the existence of God via forms of the ontological and cosmological arguments. In Meditations III-IV of his Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes argued that his idea of God as infinite and independent is a clear and distinct argument for God's existence. In fact, Descartes concluded that the human mind was not capable of knowing anything more certainly than God's existence. A finite being was not capable of explaining the presence of the idea of an infinite God apart from his necessary existence.

This rationalistic methodology, and the stress on mathematics in particular, was an important influence on the rise of modern science during this period. Galileo held some essentially related ideas, especially in his concept of nature as being mathematically organized and perceived as such through reason. Biblical Criticism

A number of trends in English deism reflect the influence of, and similarities to, continental rationalism as well as British empiricism. Besides the acceptance of innate knowledge available to all men and the deducing of propositions from such general knowledge, deists such as Matthew Tindal, Anthony Collins, and Thomas Woolston attempted to dismiss miracles and fulfilled prophecy as evidences for special revelation. In fact deism as a whole was largely characterized as an attempt to find a natural religion apart from special revelation. Many of these trends had marked effects on contemporary higher criticism.

Empiricism
Empiricism is the philosophical stance according to which the senses are the ultimate source of human knowledge. It rivals rationalism according to which reason is the ultimate source of knowledge. In a form or another, empiricism features in most philosophical tradition. In Western philosophy, empiricism boasts a long and distinguished list of followers in all ages; probably, the most fertile period for this trend happened during the early modern period, with the so-called British empiricists, whose rank includes authors of the caliber of John Locke and David Hume. The Centrality of Experience

Empiricist claim that all ideas that a mind can entertain have been formed through some experiences or to use a slightly more technical term through some impressions; here is how David Hume expressed this creed: "it must be someone impression that gives rise to every real idea" (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Section IV, Ch. vi). Indeed Hume proceeds in Book II "all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones". Under this characterization, empiricism is the claim that all human ideas are less detailed copies of some experience or other

Empiricists seem to have several cases on their side, cases where a persons lack of experience precludes her from possessing an adequate idea. Consider pineapples, a favorite example among early modern writers. How can you explain the flavor of a pineapple to someone who never has never seen one such fruit? Here is what John Locke says about this case in his Essay:

"If you doubt this, see whether you can by words give anyone who has never tasted pineapple an idea of the taste of that fruit. He may approach a grasp of it by being told of its resemblance to other tastes of which he already has the ideas in his memory, imprinted there by things he has taken into his mouth; but this isnt giving him that idea by a definition, but merely raising up in him other simple ideas that will still be very different from the true taste of pineapple." (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter IV)

There are of course countless cases analogous to the one cited by Locke. They are typically exemplified by claims such as: "You cant understand what it feels like " Thus, if you never gave birth, you dont know what it feels like; if you never dined at the famous Spanish restaurant El Bulli, you dont know what it was like; and so on.

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected. Pragmatism originated in the United States during the latter quarter of the nineteenth century. Although it has significantly influenced non-philosophersnotably in the fields of law, education, politics, sociology, psychology, and literary criticismthis article deals with it only as a movement within philosophy. The term pragmatism was first used in print to designate a philosophical outlook about a century ago when William James (1842-1910) pressed the word into service during an 1898 address entitled Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results, delivered at the University of California (Berkeley). James scrupulously swore, however, that the term had been coined almost three decades earlier by his compatriot and friend C. S. Peirce (1839-1914). (Peirce, eager to distinguish his doctrines from the views promulgated by James, later relabeled his own position pragmaticisma name, he said, ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers.) The third major figure in the classical pragmatist pantheon is John Dewey(1859-1952), whose wideranging writings had considerable impact on American intellectual life for a half-century. After Dewey, however, pragmatism lost much of its momentum. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in pragmatism, with several high-profile philosophers exploring and selectively appropriating themes and ideas embedded in the rich tradition of Peirce, James, and Dewey. While the best-known and most controversial of these so-called neo-pragmatists is Richard Rorty, the following contemporary philosophers are often considered to be pragmatists: Hilary Putnam,Nicholas Rescher, Jrgen Habermas, Susan Haack, Robert Brandom, and Cornel West. The articles first section contains an outline of the history of pragmatism; the second, a selective survey of themes and theses of the pragmatists.

Reconstructionism
Pragmatic Roots Reconstuctionism in not a fully developed philosophy of life or of education. writers view it as only an extension of progressivism, the educational philosophy. Many Like

progressivism, it is based on the pure philosophy of pragmatism. Therefore, its answers to basic questions are the same. In answer to the ontological question of what is real, The

reconstructionists agree that everyday, personal experience constitutes reality.

epistemological question asks: What is truth and how do we know truth? The reconstructionist claims that truth is what works, and we arrive at truth through a process of trial and error. The axiological question asks: What is good and beautiful? The reconstructionists answer to this is whatever the public consensus says it is!

Educational Theory

As far as his educational views are concerned, the reconstructionist sees things the same way as the progressiveup to a point. For example, reconstructionists believe that

students learn more, remember it longer, and apply it to new situations better if they learn through experience, rather than through being told something. As they see it, the teachers main role is that of a resource person or a research project director who guides the students learning rather than being a dispenser of knowledge. In this role, the teacher carries on a dialogue with students, helping them identify problems, frame hypotheses, find data, draw appropriate conclusions, and select efficacious courses of action (praxis). Reconstructionists dont believe in a predetermined curriculum. They would use the subject matter from any or all disciplines when needed to solve a problem. They would

probably deal more, however, with the subject matter of social experience (the social sciences) in solving problems.

The teaching methods favored by reconstructionists are (1) the pupil-teacher dialogue and (2) praxis. Praxis is effective action. In other words, reconstructionists favor applying the problem-solving method (scientific method) of the progressives to real-life problems. After one has reached an intellectual solution to a problem, reconstructionists favor carefully thought-out social action to remedy or ameliorate the problem.

Reconstructionists, like progressives, do not favor any type of ability grouping. They feel students should be grouped only upon the basis of common interests.

Reconstructionists also like flexible student seating arrangements, but since there is so much involvement outside the classroom, seating is not even an issue. Reconstructionists share the progressives view of student discipline. Moreover, they feel that if students are actively involved in bringing about change in areas that concern them, they will not become frustrated, and therefore, will not be likely to become discipline problems.

Reconstructionists prefer to evaluate students subjectively on the basis of their ability as a social activist rather than give written examinations. Like progressives, they feel that student self-evaluation has a proper place. Reconstructionists Platform

Reconstructionists differ significantly from progressives in the matter of social policy. Progressives acknowledge the rapidly changing conditions around us. But they are content to just teach students how to cope with change. It has been said that progressives seek to teach students how to reach intellectual solution to problems. This often culminates in writing a paper, doing a report or a project of some kind. This kind of education would tend to mirror the contemporary society. On the other hand, reconstructionists believe that students must learn through practical experience how to direct change and control it. They believe strongly that our culture is in crisis. They believe that things will get uncontrollably bad unless we intervene to direct change and thereby reconstruct the social order. Reconstructionsists believe that a Utopian Future is a genuine possibility for mankind if we learn how to intervene and to direct change. They believe that the school should train students to be social activists in the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson.

Hindu Philosophy

The compound Hindu philosophy is ambiguous. Minimally it stands for a tradition of Indian philosophical thinking. However, it could be interpreted as designating one comprehensive philosophical doctrine, shared by all Hindu thinkers. The term Hindu philosophy is often used loosely in this philosophical or doctrinal sense, but this usage is misleading. There is no single, comprehensive philosophical doctrine shared by all Hindus that distinguishes their view from contrary philosophical views associated with other Indian religious movements such asBuddhism or Jainism on issues of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, ethics or cosmology. Hence, historians of Indian philosophy typically understand the term Hindu philosophy as standing for the collection of philosophical views that share a textual connection to certain core Hindu religious texts (the Vedas), and they do not identify Hindu philosophy with a particular comprehensive philosophical doctrine.

Hindu philosophy, thus understood, not only includes the philosophical doctrines present in Hindu texts of primary and secondary religious importance, but also the systematic philosophies of the Hindu schools: Nyya, Vaieika, Skhya, Yoga, Prvamms and Vednta. In total, Hindu philosophy has made a sizable contribution to the history of Indian philosophy and its role has been far from static: Hindu philosophy was influenced by Buddhist and Jain philosophies, and in turn Hindu philosophy influenced Buddhist philosophy in India in its later stages. In recent times, Hindu philosophy evolved into what some scholars call NeoHinduism, which can be understood as an Indian response to the perceived sectarianism and scientism of the West. Hindu philosophy thus has a long history, stretching back from the second millennia B.C.E. to the present.

Buddhist philosophy

Buddhist philosophy is the elaboration and explanation of the delivered teachings of the Buddha as found in the Tripitaka and Agama. Its main concern is with explicating the dharmas constituting reality. A recurrent theme is the reification of concepts, and the subsequent return to the Buddhist middle way.

Early Buddhism avoided speculative thought on metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics, and epistemology,[3] but was based instead on empiricalevidence gained by the sense organs (ayatana).

Nevertheless, Buddhist scholars have addressed ontological and metaphysical issues subsequently. Particular points of Buddhist philosophy have often been the subject of disputes between different schools of Buddhism. These elaborations and disputes gave rise to various schools in early Buddhism of Abhidhamma, and to the Mahayana traditions and schools of the prajnaparamita, Madhyamaka, buddha-nature and Yogacara.

Buddhist philosophy, Indian

Buddhism was an important ingredient in the philosophical melange of the Indian subcontinent for over a millennium. From an inconspicuous beginning a few centuries before Christ, Buddhist scholasticism gained in strength until it reached a peak of influence and originality in the latter half of the first millennium. Beginning in the eleventh century, Buddhism gradually declined and eventually disappeared from northern India. Although different individual thinkers placed emphasis on different issues, the tendency was for most writers to offer an integrated philosophical system that incorporated ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. Most of the issues addressed by Buddhist philosophers in India stem directly from the teachings attributed to Siddhrtha Gautama, known better through his honorific title, the Buddha.

The central concern of the Buddha was the elimination of unnecessary discontent. His principal insight into this problem was that all dissatisfaction arises because people (and other forms of life as well) foster desires and aversions, which are in turn the consequence of certain misunderstandings about their identity. Discontent can be understood as frustration, or a failure to achieve what one wishes; if ones wishes are generally unrealistic and therefore unattainable, then one will naturally be generally dissatisfied. Since the Buddha saw human frustration as an effect of misunderstandings concerning human nature, it was natural for Buddhist philosophers to attend to questions concerning the true nature of a human being. Since the Buddha himself was held as the paradigm of moral excellence, it was also left to later philosophers to determine what kind of being the Buddha had been. A typical question was whether his example was one that ordinary people could hope to follow, or whether his role was in some way more than that of a teacher who showed other people how to improve them. The Buddha offered criticisms of many views on human nature and virtue and duty held by the teachers of his age. Several of the views that he opposed were based, at least indirectly, on notions incorporated in the Veda, a body of liturgical literature used by the Brahmans in the performance of rituals. Later generations of Buddhists spent much energy in criticizing Brahmanical claims of the supremacy of the Veda; at the same time, Buddhists tended to place their confidence in a combination of experience and reason. The interest in arriving at correct understanding through correct methods of reasoning led to a preoccupation with questions of logic and epistemology, which tended to overshadow all other philosophical concerns during the last five centuries during which Buddhism was an important factor in Indian philosophy.

Since the Buddha saw human frustration as an effect that could be eliminated if its cause were eliminated, it was natural for Buddhist philosophers to focus their attention on a variety of questions concerning causality. How many kinds of cause are there? Can a multiplicity of effects have a single cause? Can a single thing have a multiplicity of causes? How is a potentiality triggered into an actuality? Questions concerning simplicity and complexity, or unity and plurality, figured prominently in Buddhist discussions of what kinds of things in the world are ultimately real. In a tradition that emphasized the principle that all unnecessary human pain and conflict can ultimately be traced to a failure to understand what things in the world are real, it was natural to seek criteria by which one discerns real things from fictions. 1 Human nature 2 Ethics 3 Buddha-nature 4 Epistemology 5 Metaphysics

Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius ( Kng Fz, or K'ung-fu-tzu, lit. "Master Kong", 551479 BC). Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han Dynasty.
[1]

Following the

abandonment of Legalism in China after the Qin Dynasty, Confucianism became the official state ideology of China, until it was replaced by the "Three Principles of the People" ideology with the establishment of the Republic of China, and then Maoist Communism after the ROC was replaced by the People's Republic of China in Mainland China. The core of Confucianism is humanism, the belief that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and selfcreation. Confucianism focuses on the cultivation of virtue and maintenance of ethics, the most basic of which are ren, yi, and li.
[3] [2]

Ren is an obligation of altruism and humaneness for other individuals within a

community, yi is the upholding of righteousness and the moral disposition to do good, and li is a system of norms and propriety that
[3]

determines

how

person

should
[4]

properly

act

within

community.

Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or Although Confucius the man
[2]

actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren and yi.

may have been a believer in Chinese folk religion, Confucianism as an ideology is humanistic theistic, and does not involve a belief in the supernatural or in a personal god. Cultures and countries strongly influenced by Confucianism

and non-

include

mainland China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, as well as various territories settled predominantly by Chinese people, such as Singapore. Although Confucian ideas prevail in these areas, few people outside of academia identify themselves as Confucian, complementary including democracy,
[8] [6][7]

and instead see Confucian ethics as a ideologies and beliefs,

guideline
[9]

for
[10]

other

Marxism, capitalism,

Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.

Paulo Freire's Philosophy

Description A critical exploration of the genealogy of Freires thinking and the ways in which Freires seminal work has influenced philosophical and political movements, offering an analysis of how this work might be developed for the future. Irwin explores Freires philosophy of education, which balanced traditional ethical and spiritual concerns with contemporary ideas and drew upon Christian and Hegelian-Marxist political thought and insights from existentialism and psychoanalysis. The impact of Freires work and legacies are considered, drawing from his emphasis on the need for praxis to bring about real and progressive change, with special reference to his work in Brazil and his Third Worldist discourses. This essential guide to Freires work and legacy will prove invaluable for postgraduate students looking at educational theory and the philosophy of education. It will also be of interest to postgraduate students looking at cultural and political theory.

Socrates Philosophy

Perhaps the greatest philosophical personality in history was Socrates. Unlike the Sophists, Socrates refused to accept payment for his teachings, maintaining that he had no positive knowledge to offer, except the awareness of the need for more knowledge. Despite his humble self-opinion, it was through Socrates that Greek philosophy attained its highest level. His avowed purpose was "to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men".

-470 BC to 399 BC

Greek thinker and founder of Western philosophy. Socrates committed none of his thinkings to writing. It was only through his pupilPlato that we know his ideas. And it is difficult in the later Plato to distinguish between his own thoughts and those of Socrates. Socrates lived in Athens, where he questioned fellow citizens on how they should live their lives. 'Know thyself' was his principal axiom, and he believe in the unity of beauty, truth and virtue. It was impossible, Socrates held, to know what was good and not pursue it. Socrates, the first great Athenian philosopher, taught that the key to a good life lay in moral worth and the practice of virtue, and saw it as his duty to make other citizens aware of the ignorance of the true good.

Socrates wrote nothing down; all we know of his teaching comes from the philosophy of his pupil Plato, who was not quite 30 when Socrates was put to death. All Plato's major works are in dialogue form, and the main speaker is usually Socrates. It is assumed that in the earlier dialogues this character is the real historical Socrates, while in the later ones he represents Plato's mature development of the teachings of Socrates. The continuity of thought makes it impossible to tell where Socrates leaves off and Plato begins. Throughout his career Plato remained convinced by the teachings of Socrates, and continued to identify virtue with knowledge. However, the corresponding belief - that evil is inevitably done by the ignorant was probably the basis of Plato's distrust of democracy, for a democracy had convicted Socrates.

Plato
(427-347 BCE)

The son of wealthy and influential Athenian parents, Plato began his philosophical career as a student of Socrates. When the master died, Plato travelled to Egypt and Italy, studied with students of Pythagoras, and spent several years advising the ruling family of Syracuse. Eventually, he returned to Athens and established his own school of philosophy at the Academy. For students enrolled there, Plato tried both to pass on the heritage of a Socratic style of thinking and to guide their progress through mathematical learning to the achievement of abstract philosophical truth. The written dialogues on which his enduring reputation rests also serve both of these aims.

In his earliest literary efforts, Plato tried to convey the spirit of Socrates's teaching by presenting accurate reports of the master's conversational interactions, for which these dialogues are our primary source of information. Early dialogues are typically devoted to investigation of a single issue, about which a conclusive result is rarely achieved. Thus, the (Euthyphro ) raises a significant doubt about whether morally right action can be defined in terms of divine approval by pointing out a significant dilemma about any appeal to authority in defence of moral judgments. The (Apology ) offers a description of the philosophical life as Socrates presented it in his own defense before the Athenian jury. The (Crito ) uses the circumstances of Socrates's imprisonment to ask whether an individual citizen is ever justified in refusing to obey the state.

Although they continue to use the talkative Socrates as a fictional character, the middle dialogues of Plato develop, express, and defend his own, more firmly established, conclusions about central philosophical issues. Beginning with the (Meno ), for example, Plato not only reports the Socratic notion that no one knowingly does wrong, but also introduces the doctrine of recollection in an attempt to discover whether or not virtue can be taught. The (Phaedo ) continues development of Platonic notions by presenting the doctrine of the Forms in support of a series of arguments that claim to demonstrate the immortality of the human soul.

The masterpiece among the middle dialogues is Plato's (Republic ). It begins with a Socratic conversation about the nature of justice but proceeds directly to an extended discussion of the virtues (Gk. [aret]) of justice (Gk. [andreia]), [dikaisun]), wisdom (Gk. [sopha]),courage (Gk.

and moderation (Gk. [sophrosn]) as they appear both in individual human beings and in society as a whole.This plan for the ideal society or person requires detailed accounts of human knowledge and of the kind of educational program by which it may be achieved by men and women alike, captured in a powerful image of the possibilities for human life in the allegory of the cave. The dialogue concludes with a review of variousforms of government, an explicit description of the ideal state, in which only philosophers are fit to rule, and an attempt to show that justice is better than injustice. Among the other dialoguesof this period are Plato's treatments of human emotion in general and of love in particular in the (Phaedrus ) and (Symposium ).

Plato's later writings often modify or completely abandon the formal structure of dialogue. They include a critical examination of the theory of forms in (Parmenides ), an extended discussion of the problem of knowledge in (Theaetetus ), cosmological speculations in (Timaeus ), and an interminable treatment of government in the unfinished (Laws ).

Rousseau philosophy
Jean-JacquesRousseau (1712-1778)

As a brilliant, undisciplined, and unconventional thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent most of his life being driven by controversy back and forth between Paris and his native Geneva. Orphaned at an early age, he left home at sixteen, working as a tutor and musician before undertaking a literary career while in his forties. Rousseau sired but refused to support several illegitimate children and frequently initiated bitter quarrels with even the most supportive of his colleagues. His autobiographical Les Confessions (Confessions ) (1783) offer a thorough (if somewhat self-serving) account of his turbulent life.

Rousseau first attracted wide-spread attention with his prize-winning essay Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts) (1750), in which he decried the harmful effects of modern civilization. Pursuit of the arts and sciences, Rousseau argued, merely promotes idleness, and the resulting political inequality encourages alienation. He continued to explore these themes throughout his career, proposing in mile, ou l'education (1762) a method of education that would minimize the damage by noticing, encouraging, and following the natural proclivities of the student instead of striving to eliminate them. Rousseau began to apply these principles to political issues specifically in his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'ingalit parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality ) (1755), which maintains that every variety of injustice found in human society is an artificial result of the control exercised by defective political and intellectual influences over the healthy natural impulses of otherwise noble savages. The alternative he proposed in Du contrat social (On the Social Contract ) (1762) is a civil society voluntarily formed by its citizens andwholly governed by reference to the general will [Fr. volont gnrale] expressed in their unanimous consent to authority.

Rousseau also wrote Discourse on Political Economy (1755), Constitutional Program for Corsica (1765), and Considerations on the Government of Poland (1772). Although the authorities made every effort to suppress Rousseau's writings, the ideas they expressed, along with those of Locke, were of great influence during the French Revolution. The religious views expressed in the "Faith of a Savoyard Vicar" section ofmile made a more modest impact.

Stoic philosophy
Epistemology philosophy

As most Greeks, the Stoics believed that a human being had a soul. For the Stoics, the soul was corporeal, and was diffused throughout the body. (The individual soul was actually a part of the world-soul.) Diogenes says, "And the soul is a nature capable of perception. And they regard it as a breath of life, congenital with us; from which they infer that it is a body and secondly that it survives death" (Lives, 156). The soul is that which comes into contact with objects outside the perceiver by means of the five senses, which are called parts [or, better, "functions"] of the soul. The perception of an object by the soul through one of the five senses the Stoics called "presentation" (phantasia). Diogenes explains, "A presentation is an imprint on the soul; the name having been appropriately borrowed from the imprint made by the seal upon the wax" (Lives, 7.45). The soul is like a wax tablet and the object perceived is like a seal that impresses a copy of itself into the wax. (Chrysippus warns, however, that one should not think that literally an object impresses itself upon the soul [Lives, 7.50].) Diogenes quotes Diocles the Magnesian concerning the importance of "presentation" in Stoic philosophy:

The Stoics agree to put in the forefront the doctrine of presentation and sensation, inasmuch as the standard by which the truth of things is tested is generically a presentation, and again the theory of assent and that of apprehension and thought, which precedes all the rest, cannot be stated apart from presentation. For presentation comes first; then thought, which is capable of expressing itself, puts into the form of a propositions that which the subject receives from a presentation (Lives, 7. 49)

The Stoics, however, made a distinction between two types of presentation; the one is a sensation (aisthtik) that corresponds to an external object, while the other is that conveyed by the mind itself (Lives,7.51). Diogenes explains,

According to them some presentations are data of sense (aisthtikai) and others are not: the former are the impressions conveyed through one or more sense-organs; while the latter, which are not data of sense, are those received through the mind itself, as is the case with incorporeal things and all other presentations which are received by reason" (Lives, 7.51).

The distinction is between presentations that originate from external objects and those that are the result of the operations of the soul or mind, usually connected to the perception of an external object. When, for example, a person desires or fears an object, being aware of the desire or fear is a presentation, which, although not originating from the external object, is yet inseparable from it. Thus the Stoics distinguish between awareness of external, corporeal objects and awareness of interior states or rational processes, which are incorporeal, but connected usually with corporeal things.

Do you agree that "presentations" that originate from external objects are such that they can be compared to an object leaving its imprint in wax? If not, what is the nature of perception and how do perceptions relate to the hypothethical external objects from which they originate?

The Philosophy of Epicureanism

Epicureanism was the philosophy founded by Epicurus at Athens near the end of the 4th century B. c. Epicureanism propounded a simple, rational, dogmatic view of the nature of man and the universe, through which men might attain real and enduring pleasure, in the sense of peace of mind. The philosophy was never very popular and was attacked with extraordinary violence and unfairness by philosophers of other schools and, later, by Christians. From these attacks Epicureanism got its popular reputation as a mere self-indulgent cult of pleasure. But the small groups that upheld Epicureanism were intensely devoted to their master. They regarded his teaching as a true gospel, as good news about the nature of things that delivered those who upheld it, presumably on strictly rational grounds, from the worst of human evils.

In the 1st century B.C. the school attracted some of the finest minds of the time, including the Roman poet Lucretius, and for a time, Vergil. In the course of the 3d and 4th centuries A. D. Epicureanism quietly died out. It seems to have been extinct as a school by the end of the 4th centuryA.D.

The objective and the contents of Epicurean philosophy are known from the fragmentary remains of Epicurus' own writings, supplemented by later sources. Much of the existing knowledge of Epicurean doctrine comes from Lucretius' poem On The Nature of Things, and there are other accounts in the writings of Cicero. The study of the doctrine is made easier by the fact that it did not develop much after the time of Epicurus, and no schisms or subdivisions grew up in the school. Epicureans were generally content to repeat the teachings of their master with very little modification. The Epicurean Objective

The great objective of Epicureanism, as of the contemporary Stoic and Skeptic schools, was to free men from anxiety and bring them through knowledge of the truth to that untroubled peace of mind they called ataraxia. But the route the Epicureans followed to this objective was very different from that of their contemporaries. Epicurus thought that men reduced themselves to utter misery by their worrying, particularly about worldly ambitions and the satisfaction of their material needs. but most especially about death and the gods.

Widespread fear of the gods was promoted, according to Epicurus, not only by popular superstition but even more by philosophical religion. A belief in an all-embracing and inexorable Divine Providence governing every detail of life was something to be really frightened ofif it truly existed. Epicurus proposed to deliver men from these fears by persuading them to follow a way of life conformable to his rational view of the universe.

Philosophical Tenets Epicurus divided philosophy into three parts: canonic, concerned with the rules for finding the truth; physics, concerned with the nature of the world and the gods; and ethics, concerned with morality.

The canonic basis of the doctrine was a simple one. There was only one means of knowledge: some kind of direct physical perception based on the senses, which were considered absolutely reliable. The general notions by which men recognize different kinds of things are a sort of memory-deposit resulting from a large number of particular sense-perceptions.

Epicurean physics, the process of discovering the truth about the universe and the gods, was a variation of the old atomism of Democritus. Nothing exists but atoms and the empty space in which they endlessly move. Universes, including our own, and all in them, including men, are just chance concatenations or chains of atoms, which are always coming into existence and being dissolved in infinite space. In these atomistic universes, human thought and action are completely undetermined and not subject to any fate or necessity. The gods live in the gaps between the universes. They are peculiar atomic structures, immortal in that the flow of atoms into them exactly balances the outflow. This is not the case with men, and hence men die.

The gods have no power over the universes, but live a quiet happy life in the betweenworlds. They must exist because all men believe in them, but there is no need to fear them. Philosophers can derive peace and joy from contemplating the ideal existence of the gods, and it is possible that the gods approve of the philosophers, who are their equal in all except immortality.

Philosophical analysis
Philosophical analysis (from Greek: ) is a general term for techniques typically used by philosophers in the analytic tradition that involve "breaking down" (i.e. analyzing) philosophical issues. Arguably the most prominent of these techniques is the analysis of concepts (known as conceptual analysis). This article will examine the major philosophical techniques associated with the notion of analysis, as well as examine the controversies surrounding it. Method of analysis While analysis is characteristic of the analytic tradition in philosophy, what is to be analyzed (the analysandum) often varies. Some philosophers focus on analyzing linguistic phenomena, such as sentences, while others focus on psychological phenomena, such as sense-data. However, arguably the most prominent analyses are of concepts or propositions, which is known asconceptual analysis (Foley 1996). Conceptual analysis consists primarily in breaking down or analyzing concepts into their constituent parts in order to gain knowledge or a better understanding of a particular philosophical issue in which the concept is involved (Beaney 2003). For example, the problem of free will in philosophy involves various key concepts, including the concepts of freedom, moral responsibility, determinism, ability, etc. The method of conceptual analysis tends to approach such a problem by breaking down the key concepts pertaining to the problem and seeing how they interact. Thus, in the long-standing debate on whether free will is compatible with the doctrine of determinism, several philosophers have proposed analyses of the relevant concepts to argue for eithercompatibilism or incompatibles. A famous example of conceptual analysis at its best is Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions. Russell attempted to analyze propositions that involved definite descriptions (such as "The tallest spy"), which pick out a unique individual, and indefinite descriptions (such as "a spy"), which pick out a set of individuals. Take Russell's analysis of definite descriptions as an example.[1]Superficially, definite descriptions have the standard subject-predicate form of a proposition. For example, "The present king of France is bald" appears to be predicating "baldness" of the subject "the present king of France". However, Russell noted that this is problematic, because there is no present king of France (France is no longer a monarchy). Normally, to decide whether a proposition of the standard subject-predicate form is true or false, one checks whether the subject is in the extension of the predicate. The proposition is then true if and only if the subject is in the extension of the predicate. The problem is that there is no present king of France, so the present king of France cannot be found on the list of bald things or non-bald things. So, it would appear that the proposition expressed by "The present king of France is bald" is neither true nor false. However, analyzing the relevant concepts and propositions, Russell proposed that what definite descriptions really express are not propositions of the subject-predicate form, but rather they express existentially quantified propositions. Thus, "The present king of France" is analyzed, according to Russell's theory of descriptions, as "There exists an individual who is currently the king of France, there is only one such individual, and that individual is bald." Now one can determine the truth-value of the proposition. Indeed, it is false, because it is not the case that there exists a unique individual who is currently the king of France and is baldsince there is no present king of France (Bertolet 1999).

Phenomenology (philosophy)
Phenomenology (from Greek: phainmenon "that which appears"; and lgos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of subjective experience and consciousness. As aphilosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Gttingen andMunich in Germany. It then spread to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work.

Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness. This phenomenological ontology can be clearly differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and reacting upon one another.

Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticized and developed not only by himself but also by students such as Edith Stein, by existentialists, such as Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and by other philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, and sociologists Alfred Schtz and Eric Voegelin. Phenomenology is a movement in philosophy that has been adapted by certain sociologists to promote an understanding of the relationship between states of individual consciousness and social life. As an approach within sociology, phenomenology seeks to reveal how human awareness is implicated in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds (Natanson 1970).

Phenomenology was initially developed by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), a German mathematician who felt that the objectivism of science precluded an adequate apprehension of the world (Husserl 1931, 1970). He presented various philosophical conceptualizations and techniques designed to locate the sources or essences of reality in the human consciousness. It was not until Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) came upon some problems in Max Weber's theory of action that phenomenology entered the domain of sociology (Schutz 1967). Schutz distilled from Husserl's rather dense writings a sociologically relevant approach. Schutz set about describing how subjective meanings give rise to an apparently objective social world (Schutz, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1970. 1996; Schutz and Luckmann 1973; Wagner 1983).

Schutz's migration to the United States prior to World War II, along with that of other phenomenologically inclined scholars, resulted in the transmission of this approach to American academic circles and to its ultimate transformation into interpretive sociology. Two expressions of this approach have been called reality constructionism and ethnomethodology. Reality constructionism synthesizes Schutz's distillation of phenomenology and the corpus of classical sociological thought to account for the possibility of social reality (Berger 1963, 1967; Berger and Berger 1972; Berger and Kellner 1981; Berger and Luckmann 1966; Potter 1996). Ethnomethodology integrates the Parsonian concern for social order into phenomenology and examines the means by which actors make ordinary life possible (Garfinkel 1967; Garfinkel and Sacks 1970). Reality constructionism and ethnomethodology are recognized to be among the most fertile orientations in the field of sociology (Ritzer 1996).

Phenomenology is used in two basic ways in sociology: (1) to theorize about substantive sociological problems and (2) to enhance the adequacy of sociological research methods. Since phenomenology insists that society is a human construction, sociology itself and its theories and methods are also constructions (Cicourel 1964; 1973). Thus, phenomenology seeks to offer a corrective to the field's emphasis on positivist conceptualizations and research methods that may take for granted the very issues that phenomenologists find of interest. Phenomenology presents theoretical techniques and qualitative methods that illuminate the human meanings of social life.

Phenomenology has until recently been viewed as at most a challenger of the more conventional styles of sociological work and at the least an irritant. Increasingly, phenomenology is coming to be viewed as an adjunctive or even integral part of the discipline, contributing useful analytic tools to balance objectivist approaches (Aho 1998; Levesque-Lopman 1988; Luckmann 1978; Psathas 1973; Rogers 1983).

Logical positivism
Logical positivism, also called logical empiricism, a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless.

Logical positivism differs from earlier forms of empiricism and positivism (e.g., that of David Humeand Ernst Mach) in holding that the ultimate basis of knowledge rests upon public experimental verification rather than upon personal experience. It differs ... (100 of 527 words)

Logical positivism (also known as logical empiricism, scientific philosophy, and neopositivism) is a philosophy that combines empiricismthe idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledgewith a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology. It may be considered as a type of analytic philosophy. Logical positivism, in the formal sense, began from discussions of a group known as the First Vienna Circle which gathered during the earliest years of the 20th century in Vienna at the Caf Central. After World War I, Hans Hahn, a member of that early group, helped bring Moritz Schlick to Vienna. Schlick's Vienna Circle, along with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle, propagated the new doctrines more widely during the 1920s and early 1930s. It was Otto Neurath's advocacy that made the movement self-conscious and more widely known. A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath, Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. The doctrines included the opposition to all metaphysics,

especially ontology and synthetic a prioripropositions; the rejection of metaphysics not as wrong but as having no meaning; a criterion of meaning based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work; the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable by a single standard language of science; and above all the project of rational reconstruction, in which ordinary-language concepts were gradually to be replaced by more precise equivalents in that standard language. During the early 1930s, the Vienna Circle dispersed, mainly because of political upheaval and the deaths of Hahn and Schlick. The most prominent proponents of logical positivism emigrated to the United Kingdom and the United States, where they influenced American philosophy considerably. Until the 1950s, logical positivism was the leading school in the philosophy of science. Ultimately, it failed to solve many of the problems with which it was centrally concerned,[2][3][4] and after the Second World War, its doctrines increasingly came under attack by thinkers such asNelson Goodman, Willard Van Orman Quine, J. L. Austin, Peter Strawson, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.