>There are two dimensions of understanding: seeking understanding, implementing understanding. >Philosophy is about the former. ![[IMG_0477.gif]] # Metaphysics ### Ancient Philosophy **Pre-Scocrates Philosophers** > “Where does everything come from?” Milesian philosophers are believed in the principle that the world comes from single source origin (arche). For instance, Thales claimed that ’water’ is the origin of everything; Anaximander picked ‘limitless’; Anaximenes chose ‘air’. > In common, they all explained The world in a materialist way by claiming a physical substance as origin and use reason to explain how other things grow out of it.. > From today’s science-centric perspective, Pre-Socrates Philosophers seem to be dumb. But man should appreciate how they set the tone for philosophy: reason and curiosity. - ==Early Greek Philosophy (EGP), ed. Jonathan Barnes== **Socrates** > “An unexamined life is not worth of living.” Socrates is the first significant figure in the history of western philosophy. In his central belief, he proposed that real freedom is self-mastery, which means man should let reason rule over one’s appetite and desire, and seek understanding of the truth. > In Georgia, Socrates revealed the highly mistaken view of justice and freedom through conversation with the sophist Georgia. Philosopher, different from oratory/sophists, is a practice of pursuing the real good (virtue) with knowledge. Oratory on the other hand, tricks people through speech (logos) as if they know about justice.. > Being voted for execution, Socrates drank the poison and accepted his death. “Philosophy as preparation for death” later became a well-known spirit. There’s something higher than life worth pursuit, which is the truth. - ==Plato, Complete Works, ed. Cooper== **Plato** > “Allegory of Cave”: Imagine a group of people chained in a cave facing the wall. They treat the shadow casted by the movement of people and objects in front of a fire as reality. Then one day, a prisoner happens to ascend to the ground. They are then amazed by the real object, the tree, the cloud, the sun. This is the allegory of Cave, that Plato used to depict how people are deceived by appearance of things rather knowing the ultimate truth of knowledge. > The death of the mentor changed how Plato perceive philosophy completely. In Plato’s work the Phaedo, he brought the question ‘is death something good or bad?’ & ‘whether the soul dies after death?’. He argued that soul is immortal because soul brings the essence of ‘life’ with it and can never accept the form of death. > Theory of forms: for each thing there is a Form that it participates in. And the form, which isn’t learned through senses, defines the essence of things. For instance, a triangle participates in the form Triangularity so that we recognize it. Later another theory, the ‘doctrine of Recollection’ explains how we know about the form. Plato believes that our souls learned the a priori knowledge, the forms, long before we enter the life, so that the particular object (a in perfect triangle on the blackboard) can trigger the association of us and the form triangularity. - ==Plato, Complete Works, ed. Cooper== **Aristotle** > To Be Continued.. ![[IMG_0476.gif]] **Continental Philosophy** - ==Introduction to German Philosophy - Andrew Bowie== - Kant > For a long time the rationalist and empiricist disagreed with each other on the topic “how man gets to know the world”: Rationalists argued that all empirical knowledge gained from observation and senses are unreliable; Empiricists like John Lock argued mind is like a white paper without any innate knowledge and will only be active when it receive information from the external world and then make reflections upon them. Then Hume, who is also an empiricist, questions reason and logic by arguing that man misunderstand correlation between observations as causality. > “Thing in itself” > In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant explained the difference between the appearance of things and “things in themselves”. We are only able to know about the appearance of things through our intuition, while “things in themselves” are unknowable. Here, intuition is a priori knowledge that is gained independent of senses and experiences. A posterior, on the other hand, is knowledge gained from subjective experience such as our observation on particular things. - Hegel - Kierkegaard - Nietzsche - ==the Gay Science (god is dead)- Walter Kaufmann== - the Birth of Tragedy Phenomenology - Husserl - **Heidegger** - Being and Time - John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson - ==Letter on Humanism== - ==Basic Writing (What is Metaphysics, What calls for thinking) - David Farrell Krell== - ==What are poets for / “Poetically man dwells”== - Levinas - Derrida - Marion --- ## Philosophy in Our Time >As science takes up the dominant role of explaining the world, philosophy (metaphysics) is marginalized from the public focus. Philosophy takes turn. Attention shifted from those ultimate truths towards the questions in real world. >“What is a good way of living? How do we understand the society? And what’s the relationship between power, sexuality?“ In the 20th to 21st century, Philosophy keeps growing at the chaotic era. Sartre - ==Existentialism is a Humanism= **Beauvoir** - The Reckoning: An Autobiography of Beauvoir Foucault - The history of sexuality - Discipline & Punish Hannah Arendt