ETHICS

• Etymology of Philosophy

  philia and sophia, love and wisdom, love of wisdom
• Philosopy is a way of thinking about the world, the universe, and the society.
• Philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other.
• People philosophize because there is tension in human existence that calls for inquiry, questioning, and/or search for meaning.
• Common sense: sound judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.
• Scientific inquiry: careful investigation into some aspect of the natural world whereby quantifiable relationships may be propounded.
• Philosophical inquiry: goes beyond the scientific. It inquires the coherence quality, sense of human life itself as a comprehensive reality.
• The act of questioning, of wanting to know as the initiation to philosophy.
• Sources of Philosophizing

  Socrates - When man is confronted with mystery, or something whose causes are still unknown, he wonders why.
• Sources of Philosophizing

  Plato - Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
• Sources of Philosophizing

  Rene Descartes - Known for his Methodic Doubt, he started anew way of philosophizing.
• Sources of Philosophizing

  Karl Jaspers - Grenzsituation (Limit Situations) is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have differing experiences from those arising from ordinary situations.
• Sources of Philosophizing

  Gabriel Marcel - Metaphysical uneasiness is to be curious is to start from external objects (outside of me) which I have a vague idea of. Metaphysical uneasiness is beyond the physical (external) but more of internal.
• Philosophy can be characterized as:

  a.) an attitude, an approach, or perhaps, even sometimes;

  b.) a calling, to ask, to question, answer, or comment upon certain kinds of questions.
• Pythagoras distinguished three kinds of lives in Olympian Games.


  Lowest class those who go there to make profit.
• Pythagoras distinguished three kinds of lives in Olympian Games.

  Those who go there to compete, to gain honors.
• Pythagoras distinguished three kinds of lives in Olympian Games.

  Those who are spectators, who analyze and reflect upon what is happening.
• Mythological explanations are all-encompassing, ultimate and universal explanation for the world and its beginnings. Hence, their way of explaining is metaphysical.
• Stories are based on myths, thus, mythical or mythological and not based on reason or rational argumentation.
• Philosophy is triumph over a primitive form of viewing the world.
• The way of explaining the world was through terms of activities, including the moods and whims of gods and goddesses until ancient philosophy came into the picture.
• Mythos means story. It refers to folk narratives.
• Logos means word but identified in Philosophy as “reason or truth”
• Ancient Philosophy started with Thales.
• Ancient Philosophy Birth: 6th century BCE. End: 529 C.E.- Emperor Justinian forbade the teaching of pagan authors.
• CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

  Intellectual activity

  • Gave rise to culture as a rhetorical and literary phenomenon

  • Associated with culture

  • Activity concerned with speech and writing
• CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

  Search for wisdom - the love of modestly elusive truth seems more glorious, incomparably, than the lust for ways of flesh.
• CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY


  Knowledge of totality - Inquiry about the whole expanse of reality, without excluding any part.
• CHARACTERISTICS OF PHILOSOPHY

  Speculative, theoretical, contemplative, reflective - Free science does not pursue any utilitarian end. Seeks no other goal but that of knowledge, for its own sake, and derives its stimulus from no other source but natural desire to know.
• THALES - Water as basic stuff. Source of all things and earth flows on water. First principle and principal motor (soul) of all things. Contained by everything. Ultimate principle because all things lead back to it.
• Pythagoras of Samos - Did not follow the naturalistic explanation. The world is made of numbers (not literal). Whole of reality can be explained by way of numerical relations.
• Pythagoras of Samos - Coined the term Philosophy (Philia and Sophia)
• Heracles Ponticus attributed the discovery of philosophy to Pythagoras which was manifested in his reply to the question about art.
• Socrates - Identifies knowledge with virtue. If knowledge can be learned, so can virtue.
• Socrates stated that virtue can be taught.
• Socrates - “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
• Plato - Happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues are the dispositions/skills needed to attain it.
• Aristotle - Happiness is the final and self-sufficient end of a person. Attaining happiness is arrived when a person performs his/her function, which is to act in accordance to reason. It is in doing his/her function well that virtue, excellence, or arete is realized.
• Epistemology - theory of knowledge studies the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge and belief.
• Epistemology as a discipline includes the subjects of the nature of knowledge and the extent of knowledge, given its possibility.