BACKGROUND ON PHILOSOPHY

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• BACKGROUND ON PHILOSOPHY

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What is Philosophy?

• Roughly speaking, it is the search for reasoned
  answers (i.e., based on argument) to important
  and fundamental non-empirical questions (e.g.,
  normative questions, or conceptual questions)
  about the nature of the universe and our place in
  it.

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Five Main Branches Of Philosophy

• (1) Ethics and Political Theory The study of
  the general conditions under which actions,
  practices, laws, or social institutions are right
  or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust.
• (2) Metaphysics (the study of the nature of
  reality) Does God exist? Do we have free will?
  In what way are physical things different from
  mental things? What is a person? Is there a
  physical world that exists independently of our
  mind?
• (3) Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge) What is
  knowledge? Do I know that I am not now dreaming?
  Do I know that you have a mind? Do I know what
  the past was like? Do I know what the future will
  be like?
• (4) Logic and Philosophy of Language Study of
  language and logic that is used to discuss the
  first three areas.
• (5) History of Philosophy The study of what
  philosophers of the past wrote about the first
  four areas.

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Main Historical Figures In Western Philosophy

• - Greek Socrates (Greek, 469-399 BCE), Plato
  (Greek, 427-347 BCE), Aristotle (Greek 384-322
  BCE)
• - Medieval (Saint) Thomas Aquinas (Italian,
  1225-1274)
• - Modern Rationalist René Descartes (French,
  1596-1650), Baruch Spinoza (Dutch, 1632-1632-77),
  Gottfried Leibniz (German, 1646-1716)
• - Modern Empiricists John Locke (English,
  1632-1704), (Bishop) George Berkeley
  (Anglo-Irish, 1685-1753), David Hume (Scottish,
  1711-1776)
• - Kant and Post-Kantians Immanuel Kant (German,
  1724-1804), Georg W.F. Hegel (German, 1770-1831),
  Karl Marx (German, 1818-83), Friedrich Nietzsche
  (German, 1844-1900).
• For more information on the nature of philosophy
  in general, see http//www.apa.udel.edu/apa/publi
  cations/texts/briefgd.html

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I. Key Information

• 1. Be able to state and illustrate the following
  concepts/theses permissibility vs optionality vs
  obligatoriness the moral point of view (vs.
  other normative viewpoints) moral realism vs.
  moral constructivism the point of moral argument
  even if moral constructivism is true ethical vs.
  political theory.
• 2. Be able to state and briefly assess the
  following ethical theories the Divine Command
  theory, act utilitarianism, libertarianism, and
  opportunity egalitarianism
• 3. Be able to state the (e.g., five) main points
  of each of the readings.
• 4. See the sample test questions.