L2 | WESTERN PHILO

• WESTERN PHILOSOPHY SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

  1. stoicism
  2. scholasticism
  3. humanism
  4. existentialism
  5. cynicism
  6. pessimism
  7. nihilism
  8. empiricism
  9. rationalism
  10. constructivism
  11. pragmatism
  12. positivism
  13. phenomenology
  14. absurdism
• STOICISM

  • Teaches the development of self control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotion
  • becoming a clear and unbiased thinker
  • emphasizes on what you can control
  • used the cardinal values of socrates
• ZENO OF CITIUM

  • founder of stoic philosophy

  
• MARCUS AURELIUS

  • freedom from "passion" by following "reason"
  • did not seek to extinguish emotions, rather, they sought to transform them to enable a person to develop clear judgment and inner calm
• CARDINAL VALUES OF SOCRATES: (STOICISM)

  • courage
  • temperance
  • justice
  • wisdom
• MARCUS AURELIUS

  
• SCHOLASTICISM

  • philosophical systems and speculative tendencies of various medieval Christian thinkers
  • aimed to silence all doubts and questionings through argument
  • rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions
• SCHOLASTICISM

  • bring reason to the support of faith;
  • strengthen the religious life and the church by the development of intellectual power
• SCHOLASTICISM

  • bring reason to the support of faith;
  • strengthen the religious life and the church by the development of intellectual power
• SCHOLASTICISM

  • method of learning more than a philosophy or a theology
  • strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions
• St. Ambrose and St. Augustine

  • tried to use philosophy to help explain the doctrine and mysteries of the church
• ST. AUGUSTINE

  • “The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself”
• THOMAS AQUINAS

  • “He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”
• ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

  • “For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe-that unless I believe I shall not understand.”
• HUMANISM

  • progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.
• HUMANISM

  • emphasizes reason and science over scripture and tradition. 
  • human beings are flawed but capable of improvement.
  • seeing the "whole" person and appreciating the uniqueness
• EXISTENTIALISM

  • We are responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives.
  • actual life of individuals is what constitutes their "true essence"
  • through own consciousness, human beings create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.
• ESSENCE

  intrinsic nature of someone or something.
• EXISTING

  state of living/existing.
• JEAN PAUL-SARTRE

  • “Man’s existence precedes his essence”
• “Man’s existence precedes his essence”

  • Man exists (is born) before he can become anything;
  • individual is responsible for making himself into an essence
  • most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals— independently acting and responsible, conscious beings ("existence") — rather than what labels, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individuals fit ("essence")
• CYNICISM

  • distrust by prudence; while due to a sense of defeatism
  • Negative about something because you have already faced defeat
• PESSIMISM

  • distrust of potential success.
  • Haven’t tried but already unhopeful
• NIHILISM

  • general distrust cast upon the belief that anything in life (including life itself) has any valuable meaning
• EMPIRICISM

  • greek word for experience: empeiria
  • theory of empiricism explain how human beings acquire knowledge and improve their conceptual understanding of the world. 
• EMPIRICISM

  • All learning comes only from experience and observations.
  • best way to gain knowledge is to see, hear, touch, or otherwise sense things directly
  • philosophy of science emphasizes evidence (experiments.)
• JOHN LOCKE'S APPROACH

  • no innate ideas that are with us when we are born
  • At birth we are a blank slate, or tabula rasa in Latin.
  • Experience includes both sensation and reflection.
• RATIONALISM

  • knowledge is based on logic and intuition, or innate ideas that we can understand through contemplation, not observation.
• CONSTRUCTIVISM

  • one way to get the best of both worlds
  • knowledge is based first on observing the world around us and fitting it into some broader rational structure
• IMMANUEL KANT

  • “Although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.”
• PRAGMATISM

  • ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily
  • meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it
• PRAGMATISM

  • thinking of or dealing with problems in a practical way, rather than by using theory or abstract principles.
  • Will answer the question of how we determine the truth
• PRAGMATISM ACCORDING TO CHARLES SANDER PEIRCE:

  • For any statement to be meaningful, it must have practical bearings.
• POSITIVISM

  • truth comes entirely from science or math.
  • only valid truths in the world would come from a scientific verification.
• PHENOMENOLOGY

  • philosophy of experience
  • the ultimate source of all meaning and value is the lived experience of human beings.
• PHENOMENOLOGY

  • study of “phenomena”
  • appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.
• PHENOMENOLOGY

  • “experience” itself
  • focused on “the experience which make things possible”
• EMPIRICISM

  • what is “in experience.
  • “the things in our experience.” 
• ABSURDISM

  • "the absurd"
• THE ABSURD

  • conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any.
  • arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously.