Scripture Focus

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Scripture Focus

• Why dost thou stand afar off, O Lord? Why dost
  Thou hide Thyself in times of trouble? In pride
  the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted let them
  be caught in the plots which they have devised.
  For the wicked boasts of his hearts desire, and
  the greedy man curses and spurns the Lord. The
  wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance,
  does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, There
  is no God. Psalm 101-4

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• a major influence on Western education prior to
  the 20th century
• principles still permeate educational thought at
  some levels
• idea-ism more concerned with eternal concepts
  such as truth, beauty, and honor than with one
  who is a visionary or dreamer
• the mind is primary and basic and existed prior
  to matter matter is the product of the mind

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• linked with religion, because it focuses on the
  spiritual as the basis for reality and the origin
  of matter

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Plato (427-347)
Allegory of the Cave
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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• shadows on the cave wall are the particulars of
  the natural world, matter (houses, trees, rocks,
  food, etc.) which only serves to inhibit one from
  discerning truth
• most people reside in the cave, the realm of the
  senses,
• the cave is not the real world
• real world only known by the philosopher kings

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• gifted individuals should hold influential
  positions in society
• to maintain a fair and just economy.
• those living according to senses would not be
  able to make informed decisions based on truth

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Platos Republic
• Then those who see the many beautiful
  (particulars), and who yet neither see absolute
  beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the
  way thither who see the many just, and not
  absolute justice, and the like, - such persons
  may be said to have opinion but not knowledge?
• That is certain.

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Platos Republic
• But those who see the absolute and eternal and
  immutable may be said to know, and not to have
  opinion only?
• Neither can be denied.

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Platos Republic
• The one love and embrace the subjects of
  knowledge, the other opinion? The latter are the
  same, as I dare say you will remember, who
  listened to sweet sounds and gazed upon fair
  colors, but would not tolerate the existence of
  absolute beauty.
• Yes, I remember.

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Platos Republic
• Shall we then be guilty of any impropriety in
  calling them lovers of opinion rather lovers of
  wisdom, and will they be very angry with us for
  thus describing them?
• I shall tell them to not be angry no man
  should be angry at what is true.

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Platos Republic
• But those who love truth in each thing
  (absolute beauty, absolute justice, etc.) are to
  be called lovers of wisdom and not lovers of
  opinion.
• Assuredly.

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel (1770-1831)
• Absolute Spirit
• dialectic
• formal rhetorical argumentation or disputation
• logical development in thought
• the art of reasoning

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INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM

• Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel (1770-1831)
• dialectic
• thesis - the premise (the past)
• antithesis - opposition to the thesis (present)
• synthesis - the clash between the opposing forces
  (future)
• new thesis (past)

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SCHOOL OF ATHENS
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IDEALISM

• Metaphysics - reality is the world of pure ideas
  beyond the senses
• Epistemology - truth is rational
• Axiology -
• Aesthetics - beauty is fixed and external
  external to humankind inherent in reality
• Ethics - humanity is moral (good) when it lives
  in harmony with the universe (Absolute Spirit)

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• has its roots in Idealism and became the
  philosophical core of the Enlightenment of the
  seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
• the senses provide the raw data for knowledge
• data must be organized by the mind and processed
  to become meaningful and establish truth

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• the mind can yield truth about the universe
  without the aid of the senses
• For example, the associative property in addition
  where If A B, then B A
• it is possible to understand this principle
  without the use of our senses or having had a
  personal experience
• no need for non-rational spiritual superstition

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• faith in the power of the intellect joined with
  faith in the increasing advances of science
  combined to address a social/political agenda
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• contemporary of Benjamin Franklin and
  Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• freedom is the central theme

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• true moral worth
• There is no one, not even the consummate
  villain only provided that he is accustomed to
  the use of reason, who, when shown examples of
  honesty of purpose, of steadfastness in obeying
  good maxim, of sympathy and charity in the face
  of great sacrifices of advantages and comfort,
  would not wish that he might also posses these
  qualities.
• Metaphysical Foundations of Morals, 1785.

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• autonomythe belief that people who are able
  to reason autonomously are more motivated to
  behave properly than those who obey because of
  tradition, fear of punishment, or commandment

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• I am myself by inclination a seeker after truth.
  I feel a consuming thirst for knowledge and a
  restless passion to advance in it, as well as a
  satisfaction in every forward step. There was a
  time when I thought that this alone could
  constitute the honor of mankind, and I despised
  the common man who knows nothing. Rousseau set me
  right

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• This blind prejudice vanished I learned to
  respect human nature, and I should consider
  myself far more useless than the ordinary working
  man if I did not believe that this view could
  give worth to all others to establish the rights
  of man. Translated by Ernst Cassirer in
  Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, p. 624, 1945.

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• Therefore the basic question regarding the
  objective validity of knowledge in its relation
  to objects must be solved in the terms of the
  process of knowing i.e., through recognizing the
  particular conditions and limitations of the
  human mind.

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• Enlightenment is mans leaving his self-caused
  immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use
  ones intelligence without the guidance of
  another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is
  not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack
  of determination and courage to use ones
  intelligence without being guided by another.
• What Is Enlightenment, Kant, 1784.

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• traditional values (represented primarily by
  Christianity) had lost their power in the lives
  of individuals
• He proclaimed that God is dead
• traditional values represented a slave morality
• new values could be created to replace the
  traditional ones and create superman

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Nihilismcomplete disregard for all things that
  cannot be scientifically proven or demonstrated
• many people use religion, especially
  Judeo-Christian teachings, as a crutch for
  avoiding decisive actions
• "...in Christianity neither morality nor religion
  come into contact with reality at any point." Der
  Antichrist,1888

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INTRODUCTION TO RATIONALISM

• Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987)
• six stages of moral development are linked to
  cognitive development
• moral dilemmas
• justice

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STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
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SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION

• In groups of four, complete the following
  statements
• metaphysics of rationalism is...
• epistemology of rationalism is...
• axiology of rationalism is...
• aesthetics
• ethics...

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)
• pupil of Plato
• the basic components of the particulars are both
  form (ideas) and matter
• form can exist without matter (as with the idea
  of God), but there can be no matter without form
• the thesis for realism is that physical objects
  (matter) exists independent of them being
  acknowledged by a mind

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)
• School of Athens

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
• Christian
• the scientific method (inductive methodology)

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)
• theist
• professed the universe to be a giant mechanism of
  matter which people comprehended with the
  mind
• reality is two separate concepts of being

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
• theist
• tabula rasathe human mind is a blank sheet that
  is impressed by the environment

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• JULIEN DE LA METTRIE (1709-1751)
• Man a Machine
• If there is a revelation, it can not then
  contradict nature. By nature only can we
  understand the meaning of the words of the
  Gospel, of which experience is the only truly
  interpreter.
• Of the two alternatives, only one is possible
  either everything is illusion, nature as well as
  revelation, or experience alone can explain
  faith.

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)
• Romanticism
• whatever is natural
• Let us lay it down as an incontrovertible rule
  that the first impulses of nature are always
  right. There is no original perversity in the
  human heart. Emile Book 2.

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
• Consistency is plainly impossible when we seek
  to educate a man for others, instead of for
  himself. If we have to combat either nature or
  society, we must choose between making a man or
  making a citizen. We cannot make both.

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• JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
• The only passion natural to man is self-love,
  or self-esteem in a broad sense. This self-esteem
  has no necessary reference to other people. In
  so far as it relates to ourselves it is good and
  useful. It only becomes good or bad in the social
  application we make of it. Until reason, which is
  the guide of self-esteem, makes its appearance,
  the child should not do anything because he is
  seen or heard by other people, but only do what
  nature demands of him. Then he will do nothing
  but what is right.

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• JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
• Our first duties are to ourselves. Self is the
  center of the primitive sentiments. The natural
  impulses all relate in the first instance to our
  preservation and well-being. Hence, the first
  sentiment of justice does not come to us from
  what we owe others, but from what others owe us.
  Emile Book 1

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• KARL MARX (1818-1883)
• employed Hegels idealism to denounce the
  bourgeoisie as outdated and heralded the
  proletariat as the new society of communism
• human history by design must evolve toward
  absolute communism
• Dialectical Materialism

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• KARL MARX (1818-1883)
• physical world is matter and nothing more
• living beings were merely highly specialized
  machines
• Marx and Friedrich Engels issued the Communist
  Manifesto in 1848
• social revolution

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INTRODUCTION TO REALISM

• CARL SAGAN (1934-1996)
• Atheist/astrophysicist
• The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever
  will be.

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• 1. Matter exists externally and is all there is.
  God does not exist.
• We find insufficient evidence for belief in the
  existence of a supernatural. Humanist Manifesto
  II (1973)
• We reject the miraculous. Rhodes W.
  Fairbridge, Professor of Geology, Columbia
  University. The Columbia History of the World
  (1972)

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• The cosmos exists as a uniformity of cause and
  effect in a closed system. Not open to
  reordering from the outside.
• We must find some way of facing the fact that
  Jesus Christ is the product of the same
  evolutionary process as the rest of us. David
  Jobling, How Does Our Twentieth-Century Concept
  of the Universe Affect Our Understanding of the
  Bible? 1972.

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• Human beings are complex machines personality is
  an interrelation of chemical and physical
  properties.
• Let us conclude boldly then that man is a
  machine, and that in the whole universe there is
  but a single substance with various
  modifications. La Mettrie, Man a Machine, 1747

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• Human beings are complex machines personality is
  an interrelation of chemical and physical
  properties.
• the brain secretes thought as the liver
  secretes bile. Pierre Jean Georges Canbanis,
  Relations of the Physical and the Moral in Man
  1802

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• 4. Death is extinction of personality.
• No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and
  feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond
  the grave. Bertrand Russell, A Free Mans
  Worship, 1957.
• Human destiny is an episode between two
  oblivions. Ernest Nagel, Naturalism
  Reconsidered, 1954.

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• 5. History is a linear stream of cause and effect
  events without an overarching purpose.
• The origin of what man is - man, earth, universe
  - is shrouded in a mystery we are no closer to
  solving than was the chronicler of Genesis.
  Lodewijk Woltjer, Astronomer, Columbia
  University, 1972.

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6 PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

• 6. Ethics is related only to human beings.
• We affirm that moral values derive their source
  from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and
  situational, needing no theological or
  ideological sanction. Humanist Manifestos I and
  II, 1973.

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CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

• Complete the following statements
• metaphysics of realism is...
• epistemology of realism is...
• axiology of realism is...
• aesthetics
• ethics...

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF REALISM

• Metaphysics -
• reality is the objective natural world
• Epistemology -
• truth is observable fact the objects speak for
  themselves
• Axiology -
• Aesthetics - beauty is that which is natural
• Ethics - nature has a law