Philosophy
Philosophy
is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with
reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy
is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical,
generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. In more
casual speech, by extension, philosophy
can refer to the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual
or group.
The
word philosophy comes from the Ancient Greek, which literally means love of
wisdom. The introduction of the terms philosopher and philosophy has been
ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras.
Epistemology
Epistemology
is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, such as the relationships
between truths, belief, and theories of justification.
Skepticism
is the position which questions the possibility of completely justifying any
truth. The regress argument, a fundamental
problem in epistemology, occurs when, in order to completely prove any statement,
its justification itself needs to be supported by another justification. This
chain can do three possible options, all of which are unsatisfactory according
to the Munchhausen trilemma. One option is infinitism, where this chain of
justification can go on forever. Another option is foundationalism, where the
chain of justifications eventually relies on basic relies or axioms that are
left unproven. The last option, such as in coherentism, is making the chain
circular so that a statement is included in its own chain of justification.
Rationalism
is the emphasis on reasoning as a source of knowledge. Empiricism is the
emphasis on observational evidence via sensory experience over other evidence
as the source of knowledge. Rationalism claims that every possible object of
knowledge can be deduced from coherent premises without observation. Empiricism
claims that at least some knowledge is only a matter of observation. For this,
Empiricism often cites the concept of tabula rasa, where individuals are not born
with and that knowledge builds from experience or perception. Epistemological
solipsism is the idea that the existence of the world outside the mind is an
unresolvable question.
Parmesans argued that it is impossible to doubt
that thinking actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore
something beyond thinking
really exists. Parmesans deduced that what really exists must have certain
properties for example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist,
that it is a coherent whole, and that it remains the same eternally. This is
known as the third man argument. Plato combined rationalism with a form of
realism. The philosopher's work is to consider being, and the essence of
things. But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The
nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles, and all
trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind independent, that humans can
come to know by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense perception.
Modern rationalism begins with Descartes.
Reflection on the nature of perceptual experience, as well as scientific
discoveries in physiology and optics, led Descartes to the view that we are
directly aware of ideas, rather than objects.
Descartes tried to address the last problem by
reason. He began, echoing Parmesans, with a principle that he thought could
not coherently be denied, I think,
therefore I am, using, among
other means, a version of the His view that reason alone could yield
substantial truths about reality strongly influenced those philosophers usually
considered modern rationalists while provoking criticism from other
philosophers who have retrospectively come to be grouped together as
empiricists.
Logic
Logic
is the study of the principles of correct reasoning. Arguments use either
deductive reasoning or inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is when, given
certain statements, other statements are unavoidably implied. Rules of
inferences from premises include the most popular method, modus ponens, where
given A and if A then B, then B must be concluded. A common convention for a deductive argument
is the syllogism. An argument is termed if its conclusion does follow from its
premises, whether the premises are true. Propositional logic uses premises that
are proposition, which are declaration that are
either true or false, while
predicate logic uses more complex premises called formulae that contain
variables. These can be assigned values or can be quantified as to when they
apply with the universal quantifier. Inductive reasoning makes conclusions or
generalizations based on probabilistic reasoning.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics
is the study of the most general features of reality, such as existence, time, the
relationship between mind and body, objects and their properties, wholes and
their parts, events, processes, and causation. Traditional branches of
metaphysics include cosmology, the study of the world in its entirety, and
ontology, the study of being,
Within
metaphysics itself there are a wide range of differing philosophical theories.
Idealism, for example, is the belief that reality is mentally constructed or
otherwise immaterial while realism holds that reality, or at least some part of
it, exists independently of the mind. Subjective idealism describes objects as
no more than collections or bundles
of sense data in the perceiver.
In addition to the aforementioned views, however,
there is also an ontological dichotomy within metaphysics between the concepts
of particulars and universals as well. Particular are those objects that are
said to exist in space and time, as opposed to abstract object, such as
numbers. Universals are properties held by multiple particulars, such as
redness or a gender. The type of existence, if any, of universals and abstract
objects is an issue of serious debate within metaphysical philosophy. Realism
is the philosophical position that universals do in fact exist, while
nominalism is the negation, or denial of universals, abstract objects, or both.
Conceptualism holds that universals
exist, but only within the mind's perception.
The question of whether or not existence is a
predicate has been discussed since the Early Modern period. Essence is the set
of attributes that make an object what it fundamentally is and without which it
loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident a property that the
substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its
identity.
Ethics and political philosophy
Ethics, or moral philosophy, is concerned primarily
with the question of the best way to live, and secondarily, concerning the
question of whether this question can be answered. The main branches of ethics
are meta ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Meta ethics concerns the
nature of ethical thought, such as the origins of the words good and bad, and
origins of other comparative words of various ethical systems, whether there
are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths could be known. Normative
ethics are more concerned with the questions of how one ought to act, and what
the right course of action is. This is where most ethical theories are
generated. Lastly, applied ethics go beyond theory and step into real world
ethical practice, such as questions of whether or not abortion is correct.
Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality, and the two are often
interchangeable.
One debate that has commanded the attention of
ethicists in the modern era has been between consequentialism and deontology.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are famous for propagating utilitarianism,
which is the idea that the fundamental moral rule is to strive toward the greatest
happiness for the greatest number. However, in promoting this idea they also
necessarily promoted the broader doctrine of consequentialism. Adopting a
position opposed to consequentialism, Immanuel Kant argued that moral
principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the incorporation
of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep mistake, since it denies the
necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. According
to Kant, reason requires that we conform our actions to the Categorical
imperative, which is an absolute duty. An important 20th-century deontologist,
argued for weaker forms of duties called prima facie duties.
More
recent works have emphasized the role of character in ethics, a movement known
as the Aretaic turn. One strain of this movement followed the work of Bernard
Williams. Williams noted that rigid forms of consequentialism and deontology
demanded that people behave impartially. This, Williams argued, requires that
people abandon their personal projects, and hence their personal integrity, in
order to be considered moral. G. E. M Anscombe, in an influential paper, Modern Moral Philosophy, revived virtue
ethics as an alternative to what was seen as the entrenched positions of
Kantianism and consequentialism. Aretaic perspectives have been inspired in
part by research of ancient conceptions of virtue. For example, demands that
people follow the Aristotelian mean,
or balance between two vices, and Confucian ethics argues that virtue consists
largely in striving for harmony with other people. Virtue ethics in general has
since gained many adherents, and has been defended by such philosophers as
Philippa Foot. Alasdair Macintyre and Rosalind Hurst house.
Political
philosophy is the study of and the relationship of individuals to communities
including the. It includes questions about justice, law, property, and the
rights and obligations of the citizen. Politics and ethics are traditionally
inter linked subjects, as both discuss the question of what is good and how
people should live. From ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of
justification for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on
human nature. In The Republic, presented the argument that the ideal society
would be run by a council of, since those best at philosophy are best able to
realize the good. Even Plato, however, required philosophers to make their way
in the world for many years before beginning their rule at the age of fifty.
For
Aristotle, humans are political animals, and governments are set up to pursue
good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that, since the state was the
highest form of community, it has the purpose of pursuing the highest good.
Aristotle viewed political power as the result of natural inequalities in skill
and virtue. Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able
and virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she
lives in a community. His The
Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics
are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses virtues in the
person as a citizen, the second addresses the proper form of government to
ensure that citizens will be virtuous, and therefore complete. Both books deal
with the essential role of justice in civic life.
Nicolas of
Cusa rekindled Platonic thought in
the early 15th century. He promoted democracy in Medieval Europe, both in his
writings and in his organization of the Council of Florence. Unlike Aristotle
and the Hobbesian tradition to follow, Cusa saw human beings as equal and
divine, so democracy would be the only just form of government. Cusa views are
credited by some as sparking the Italian Renaissance, which gave rise to the
notion of Nation States.
Later,
rejected the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as unrealistic. The
ideal sovereign is not the embodiment of the moral virtues, rather the
sovereign does whatever is successful and necessary, rather than what is
morally praiseworthy. Thomas hobbies
also contested many elements of Aristotle views. For Hobbes, human nature is
essentially anti social, people are essentially egoistic, and this egoism makes
life difficult in the natural state of things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though
people may have natural inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular
talents or virtues that people may have will make them safe from harm inflicted
by others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from a
common agreement to raise the community out of the. This can only be done by
the establishment of a, in which is vested complete control over the community,
and is able to inspire awe and terror in its subjects.
Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with
existing doctrines in political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or
neglect the possibility of a was among those who attempted to overturn these
doctrines, he responded to Hobbes by claiming that a human is by nature a kind
of, and that society and social contracts corrupt this nature. Another critic
was. In he agreed with Hobbes that the nation state was an efficient tool for
raising humanity out of a deplorable state, but he argued that the sovereign
might become an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign
unmodulated state of nature.
Following the doctrine of the, due in part to the
influence of and his student, appeals to human nature for political
justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers,
especially, still make use of some essential human nature as a basis for their
arguments.
Philosophy can be divided into five branches
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Ethics
Politics
Esthetics
Philosophy of education
The
Philosophy of education examines the aims, forms, methods, and results
of acquiring knowledge as both a process and a field of study. As a field of
applied philosophy, it is influenced both by developments within philosophy
proper, especially questions of ethics and epistemology, and by concern arising
from instructional practice.
Philosophical
treatments of education date at least as far back as Socrates, but the field of
inquiry only began to be recognized as a formal subdiscipline in the nineteenth
century. As an academic subject, it is often taught within a department or
college of education, rather than within a philosophy department. Though the
field often seems to lack the cohesion of other areas of philosophy, it is
generally, and perhaps therefore, more open to new approaches.
Educational philosophies
Educational
philosophies are informed by philosophical perspectives on subjects such a
ethics, epistemology, the human condition, and by psychological perspectives on
human learning and development. Major philosophies of education in the United
States that inform what to teach
include essentialism, perennialism, progressivism, and extentialism. Major
philosophies of education in the United States that inform who to teach and how to teach are behaviorism.
Cognitivism, humanism, and constructivism.
Classical education
The
advocates a form of education based in the traditions of Western culture, with
a particular focus on education as understood and taught in the middle Ages.
The term classical education has
been used in English for several centuries, with each era modifying the
definition and adding its own selection of topics. By the end of the 18th
century, in addition to the and of the Middle Ages, the definition of a
classical education embraced the study of literature, poetry, drama,
philosophy, history, art, and languages. In the 20th and 21st centuries it is
used to refer to a broad based study of the liberal arts and sciences, as
opposed to a practical or pre professional program.
Humanistic education
Humanistic
education emphasizes issues of moral autonomy, personal freedom, and tolerance.
Its long history can be traced through several phases, Classical humanism, with
roots going back to the Paideia of classical, Romantic humanism, as presented
in the works of Rousseau, Goethe, and Pestalozzi, Existentialist humanism,
emphasizing issues of freedom and identity and questioning modernism focus on
the primacy of rational thinking and Radical humanism, or critical pedagogy,
emphasizing social and political engagement, as represented by educators such
as Freire, Giroux, and Kozol
Contemplative education
Contemplative education ocuses on bringing spiritual awareness into the pedagogical process. Contemplative approaches may be used in the classroom, especially in tertiary or in secondary education. Contemplative methods may also be used by teachers in their preparation. In this case, inspiration for enriching the content, format, or teaching methods may be sought through various practices, such as consciously reviewing the previous day activities, actively holding the students in consciousness, and contemplating inspiring pedagogical texts. Waldorf education as one of the pioneers of this approach. Ziegler suggested that only through focusing on their own spiritual development could teachers positively impact the spiritual development of students. The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society's Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education was set up to foster the use of contemplative methods in education. Parker Palmer is a recent pioneer in contemplative methods.
Critical pedagogy
Critical Pedagogy is
an educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students
develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and
connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action. Based
in Marxist theory, critical pedagogy draws on radical democracy, anarchism,
feminism, and other movements for social justice.
Democratic education
Democratic education is a
theory of learning and school governance in which students and staff
participate freely and equally in a school democracy. In a democratic school,
there is typically shared decision making among students and staff on matters
concerning living, working, and learning together.
Social reconstructionism
Social Reconstructionism ocuses
on achieving social change by altering social systems. Social systems that
marginalize and oppress others need to be changed and, achieving this change
requires both creating a system that serves as a change agent while being open
to changing its own purposes and structures as the social contexts in which it
exists naturally evolve. Educational reconstruction purposefully and explicitly
requires that schools function as change agents, empowering students to question
systems in which they live and work, and to create a society that is more
equitable and just. As an educational
social movement guided by, social reconstructionism rests upon the idea
that schools need to actively assist students in changing the world that they
are a part of, it directly prompts the recognition that human beings tend to
adopt authoritarian systems which can become controlling, manipulative, and
which perpetuate the status quo and thus lie in opposition to ideas of free
will.
Unschooling
Unschooling
is a range of educational practices centered on allowing children to learn through
their natural life experiences, including child directed play, game play,
household responsibilities, work
experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more traditional
school curriculum. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities led by the
children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from
conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional
grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are
counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child.
Philosophers of education
Socrates
Socrates
important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry,
known as the Socratic method or method of elenchus,
first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. To solve a problem, it
would be broken down into a series of questions, the answers to which gradually
distill the answer a person would seek. The influence of this approach is most
strongly felt today in the use of the scientific method, in which hypothesis is
the first stage. The development and practice of this method is one of Socrates
most enduring contributions.
Plato
Plato educational
philosophy was grounded in his vision of the ideal republic, wherein the individual
was best served by being subordinated to a just society. He advocated removing
children from their mothers care and raising them as words of the state, with
great care being taken to differentiate children suitable to the various
castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they could act as
guardians of the city and care for the less able. Education would be holistic,
including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he
considered the highest form of endeavor.
Plato
believed that talent was distributed none genetically and thus must be found in
children born in any social class. He builds on this by insisting that those
suitably gifted are to be trained by the state so that they may be qualified to
assume the role of a ruling class. What this establishes is essentially a
system of selective public education premised on the assumption that an
educated minority of the population are, by virtue of their education,
sufficient for healthy governance.
Plato
writings contain some of the following ideas, Elementary education would be
confined to the guardian class till the age of 18, followed by two years
compulsory military training of and then by higher education for those who
qualified. While elementary education made the soul responsive to the
environment, higher education helped the soul to search for truth which
illuminated it. Both boys and girls receive the same kind of education. Elementary
education consisted of music and gymnastics, designed to train and blend gentle
and fierce qualities in the individual and create a harmonious person.
At
the age of 20, a selection was made. The best students would take an advanced
course in mathematics, geometry, astronomy and harmonics. The first course in
the scheme of higher education would last for ten years. It would be for those
who had a flair for science. At the age of 30 there would be another selection;
those who qualified would study dialectics and metaphysics, logic and philosophy
for the next five years. After accepting junior positions in the army for 15
years, a man would have completed his theoretical and practical education by
the age of 50.
Aristotle
Only fragments of Aristotle treatise On Education are still in existence. We thus know of his philosophy of education primarily through brief passages in other works. Aristotle considered human nature, habit and reason to be equally important forces to be cultivated in education. Thus, for example, he considered repetition to be a key tool to develop good habits. The teacher was to lead the student systematically; this differs, for example, from Socrate emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas though the comparison is perhaps incongruous since was dealing with adults.Aristotle placed great emphasis on balancing the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught. Subjects he explicitly mentions as being important included reading, writing and mathematics, music, physical education; literature and history; and a wide range of sciences. He also mentioned the importance of play.
One of education primary missions for Aristotle,
perhaps its most important, was to produce good and virtuous citizens for the
polis. All who have meditated on the
art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of emprise depends
on the education of youth.
Avicenna
In the, medieval Islamic world, an elementary
school was known as a maktab, which
dates back to at least the 10th century. Like which referred to higher
education, a maktab was often attached to a. In the 11th century, wrote a
chapter dealing with the maktab
entitled The Role of the Teacher in the Training and Upbringing of Children, as
a guide to teachers working at maktab
schools. He wrote that children can learn better if taught in instead of individual
from private, and he gave a number of reasons for why this is the case, citing
the value of and among pupils as well as the usefulness of group discussion and
debates. Ibn Sina described the curriculum of a maktab school in some detail, describing the curricula for two
stages of education in a maktab
school.
Ibn Sina wrote that children should be sent to a maktab school from the age of 6 and
be taught until they reach the age of 14. During which time, he wrote that they
should be taught the islamic, metaphysics, language, literature, Islamic
ethics, and manual skills.
The empiricist theory of tabula rasa was also
developed by Ibn Sina. He argued that the human at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that
is actualized through education and comes to know and that knowledge is
attained through familiarity with objects in this world from which one
abstracts universal concepts which is developed through a method of,
observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to
further abstract concepts. He further argued that the intellect itself
possesses levels of development from the material intellect, that potentiality
that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect, the state of the human
intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge.
Ibn Tufail
In
the 12th century, the Andalusian Arabian philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail
demonstrated the empiricist theory of tabula rasa as a through experiment
through as Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn yaqzan, in which he depicted the development of the
mind of a feral child from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete
isolation from society on a desert island, through alone. The translation of
his, Philosophus Autodidacts,
published by the Younger in 1671, had an influence on formulation of tabula
rasa in an eassy concerning human understanding.
John Locke
Locke some thoughts concerning education is an outline on how to educate the mind: he
expresses the belief that education maketh the man, or, more fundamentally,
that the mind is an empty cabinet, with the statement, I
think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what
they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.
Locke also wrote that the little and almost
insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting
consequences. He argued that one makes when young are more important than those
made later because they are the foundation of the self, they are, put
differently, what first mark the tabula
rasa. In his Essay,
in which is introduced both of these concepts, Locke warns against, for
example, letting a foolish maid convince a child that goblins and sprites are
associated with the night for darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it
those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear
the one than the other.
Associationism,
as this theory would come to be called, exerted a powerful influence over
eighteenth century thought, particularly, as nearly every educational writer
warned parents not to allow their children to develop negative associations. It
also led to the development of and other new disciplines with attempt to
discover a biological mechanism for Associationism in his observation of man.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau though
he paid his respects to Plato philosophy, rejected it as impractical due to the
decayed state of society. Rousseau also had a different theory of human
development, where Plato held that people are born with skills appropriate to
different castes, Rousseau held that there was one developmental process common
to all humans. This was an intrinsic, natural process, of which the primary
behavioural manifestation was curiosity. This differed from Locke in that it
was an active process deriving from the child's nature, which drove the child
to learn and adapt to its surroundings.
Rousseau wrote in his book that all children are
perfectly designed organisms, ready to learn from their surroundings so as to
grow into virtuous adults, but due to the malign influence of corrupt society,
they often fail to do so. Rousseau advocated an educational method which
consisted of removing the child from society for example, to a country home and
alternately conditioning him through changes to his environment and setting
traps and puzzles for him to solve or overcome.
Rousseau was unusual in that he recognized and
addressed the potential of a problem of legitimating for teaching. He advocated
that adults always be truthful with children, and in particular that they never
hide the fact that the basis for their authority in teaching was purely one of
physical coercion, I am bigger than you. Once children reached the age of
reason, at about 12, they would be engaged as free individuals in the ongoing
process of their own.
He once said that a child should grow up without
adult interference and that the child must be guided to suffer from the
experience of the natural consequences of his own acts or behaviour. When he
experiences the consequences of his own acts, he advises himself.
Rousseau divides development into five stages.
Education in the first two stages seeks to the senses only when is about 12
does the tutor begin to work to develop his mind. Later, in Book 5, Rousseau
examines the education of Sophie. Here he sets out what he sees as the
essential differences that flow from sex. The man should be strong and active,
the woman should be weak and passive. From this difference comes a contrasting
education. They are not to be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework,
Nature means them to think, to will, to love to cultivate their minds as well
as their persons, she puts these weapons in their hands to make up for their
lack of strength and to enable them to direct the strength of men.
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac
Etienne
Bonnot de Condillac was a French philosopher and epistemologist who studied in
such areas as and the philosophy of the mind. Condillac collected works were
published in 1798 and two or three times subsequently, the last edition has an
introductory dissertation by A F Theory. The Encyclopedie methodique
has a very long article on Condillac by Naigeon. Biographical details and
criticism of the Traite des systemes in Memoires pour servir a histoire de to
philosophie au dixhuitieme siecle, tome a full
criticism in V Cousin Cours de histoire de la philosophie moderne,
Consult also F Rethore, Condillac ou empirisme et le rationalisme,
Dewaule, Condillac et la psychologie anglaise contemporaine
histories of philosophy.
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Considered
the founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline, established a system of
pedagogy built on the preparation and then presentation of engaging material
for example, using genuine works of literature rather than school readers,
analysis with the class, review of the material, and drawing conclusions
relevant to larger contexts. He strongly influenced the development of pedagogy
throughout Europe and beyond, an influence which is still felt to this day.
Philosophy of Education
All
human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; and
some wits have claimed that teaching is the second oldest profession. While not
all societies channel sufficient resources into support for educational
activities and institutions, all at the very least acknowledge their centrality
and for good reasons. For one thing, it is obvious that children are born
illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements
of the community or society into which they have been thrust; but with the help
of professional teachers and the dedicated amateurs in their families and
immediate environs, within a few years they can read, write, calculate, and act
in culturally-appropriate ways. Some learn these skills with more facility than
others, and so education also serves as a social-sorting mechanism and
undoubtedly has enormous impact on the economic fate of the individual. Put
more abstractly, at its best education equips individuals with the skills and
substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals,
and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as
full-fledged, autonomous citizens.
But
this is to cast matters in very individualistic terms, and it is fruitful also
to take a societal perspective, where the picture changes somewhat. It emerges
that in pluralistic societies such as the Western democracies there are some
groups that do not wholeheartedly support the development of autonomous
individuals, for such folk can weaken a group from within by thinking for
themselves and challenging communal norms and beliefs, from the point of view
of groups whose survival is thus threatened, formal, state provided education
is not necessarily a good thing. But in other ways even these groups depend for
their continuing survival on educational processes, as do the larger societies
and nation states of which they are part, for as John Dewey put it in the
opening chapter of his classic work Democracy and Education, in its
broadest sense education is the means of the social continuity of life. Dewey
pointed out that the primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each
one of the constituent members in a social group make education a necessity,
for despite this biological inevitability the life of the group goes on. The
great social importance of education is underscored, too, by the fact that when
a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational
breakdown; education, and educators, become scapegoats.
It
is not surprising that such an important social domain has attracted the
attention of philosophers for thousands of years, especially as there are
complex issues aplenty that have great philosophical interest. Even a cursory
reading of these opening paragraphs reveals that they touch on, in nascent
form, some but by no means all of the issues that have spawned vigorous debate
down the ages; restated more explicitly in terms familiar to philosophers of
education, the issues the discussion above flitted over were, education as
transmission of knowledge versus education as the fostering of inquiry and
reasoning skills that are conducive to the development of autonomy the question of what this knowledge, and what
these skills, ought to be part of the domain of philosophy of the curriculum, the
questions of how learning is possible, and what is it to have learned something
two sets of issues that relate to the question of the capacities and
potentialities that are present at birth, and also to the process of human
development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be
influenced or manipulated, the tension between liberal education and vocational
education, and the overlapping issue of which should be given priority education
for personal development or education for citizenship the differences between
education and enculturation, the distinctions among educating versus teaching
versus training versus indoctrination, the relation between education and
maintenance of the class structure of society, and the issue of whether different
classes or cultural groups can justly be given educational programs that differ
in content or in aims, the issue of whether the rights of children, parents,
and socio cultural or ethnic groups, conflict and if they do, the question of
whose rights should be privileged, the question as to whether or not all
children have a right to state provided education, and if so, should this
education respect the beliefs and customs of all groups and how on earth would
this be accomplished; and a set of complex issues about the relation between
education and social reform, centering upon whether education is essentially
conservative, or whether it can and or should be an agent of social change and or
personal liberation. Perhaps the most fundamental issue is that concerning
aims, It is worth noting that in the Western philosophical tradition at least,
most of the major figures, with varying articulations and qualifications,
regarded the fostering of reason or rationality as a fundamental educational
aim.
It
is impressive that most of the philosophically interesting issues touched upon
above, plus additional ones not alluded to here, were addressed in one of the
early masterpieces of the Western intellectual tradition Plato Republic. A.N. Whitehead somewhere
remarked that the history of Western philosophy is nothing but a series of
footnotes to Plato, and if the Meno
and the Laws are added to the Republic, the same is true of the
history of educational thought and of philosophy of education in particular. At
various points throughout this essay the discussion shall return to Plato, and
at the end there shall be a brief discussion of two other great figures in the
field Rousseau and Dewey. But the account of the field needs to start with some
features of it that are apt to cause puzzlement, or that make describing its
topography difficult. These include, but are not limited to, the interactions
between philosophy of education and its parent discipline.
The open nature of philosophy and philosophy of education
In describing the field of philosophy, and in
particular the sub field of philosophy of education, one quickly runs into a
difficulty not found to anything like the same degree in other disciplines. For
example, although there are some internal differences in opinion, nevertheless
there seems to be quite a high degree of consensus within the domain of quantum
physics about which researchers are competent members of the field and which
ones are not, and what work is a strong contribution. The very nature of
philosophy, on the other hand, is essentially contested, what counts as a sound
philosophical work within one school of thought, or socio cultural or academic
setting, may not be so regarded in a different one. Coupled with this is the
fact that the borders of the field are not policed, so that the philosophically
untrained can cross into it freely indeed, over the past century or more a
great many individuals from across the spectrum of real and pseudo disciplines
have for whatever reason exercised their right to self-identify as members of
this broad and loosely defined category of philosophers.
In essence, then, there are two senses of the
term philosopher and its cognates, a
loose but common sense in which any individual who cogitates in any manner
about such issues as the meaning of life, the nature of social justice, the
essence of sportsmanship, the aims of education, the foundations of the school
curriculum, or relationship with the Divine, is thereby a philosopher, and a
more technical sense referring to those who have been formally trained or have
acquired competence in one or more areas such as epistemology, metaphysics,
moral philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, and the like. If this
bifurcation presents a problem for adequately delineating the field of philosophy,
the difficulties grow tenfold or more with respect to philosophy of education.
This essay offers a description and assessment of
the field as seen by scholars rooted firmly in the formal branch of philosophy of education, and moreover
this branch as it has developed in the English speaking world but first it is
necessary to say a little more about the difficulties that confront the
individual who sets out, without presuppositions, to understand the topography
of philosophy of education.
The diversity of, and clashes between, philosophical approaches
As sketched earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favoured conceptual frameworks concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, criteria for selecting evidence that has relevance for the problems that they consider central, and the like. No wonder educational discourse has occasionally been likened to Babel, for the differences in backgrounds and assumptions means that there is much mutual incomprehension. In the midst of the melee sit the philosophers of education.
It
is no surprise, then, to find that the significant intellectual and social
trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in
philosophy, all have had an impact on the content and methods of argument in
philosophy of education Marxism, psycho analysis, existentialism, phenomenology,
positivism, post modernism, pragmatism, neo liberalism, the several waves of
feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal
guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg. It is revealing to note some of the
names that were heavily cited in a pair of recent authoritative collections in
the field, Adorno, Aristotle, Derrida, Descartes, Dewey, Habermas, Hegel,
Horkheimer, Kant, Locke, Lyotard, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Plato, Rawls, Richard
Rorty, Rousseau, and Wittgenstein. Although this list conveys something of the
diversity of the field, it fails to do it complete justice, for the influence
of feminist philosophers is not adequately represented.
No
one individual can have mastered work done by such a range of figures,
representing as they do a number of quite different frameworks or approaches,
and relatedly no one person stands as emblematic of the entire field of
philosophy of education, and no one type of philosophical writing serves as the
norm, either. At professional meetings, peace often reigns because the
adherents of the different schools go their separate ways, but occasionally
there are violent clashes, rivalling the tumult that greeted Derrida nomination
for an honorary degree at Cambridge in 1992. It is sobering to reflect that
only a few decades have passed since practitioners of analytic philosophy of
education had to meet in individual hotel rooms, late at night, at annual
meetings of the Philosophy of
Education Society in the USA, because phenomenologists and others barred
their access to the conference programs; their path to liberation was marked by
discord until, eventually, the compromise of live and let live was worked out. Of course the situation has
hardly been better in the home discipline; an essay in Time magazine in 1966 on the state of the discipline of
philosophy reported that adherents of the major philosophical schools don't
even understand one another, and added that as a result philosophy today is
bitterly segregated. Most of the major philosophy departments and scholarly
journals are the exclusive property of one sect or another. Traditionally there
has been a time lag for developments in philosophy to migrate over into
philosophy of education, but in this respect at least the two fields have been
on a par.
Inevitably,
however, traces of discord remain, and some groups still feel disenfranchised,
but they are not quite the same groups as a few decades ago for new
intellectual paradigms have come into existence, and their adherents struggle
to have their voices heard, and clearly it is the case that reflecting the
situation in 1966 many analytically trained philosophers of education find
postmodern writings incomprehensible while scholars in the latter tradition are
frequently dismissive if not contemptuous of work done by the former group. In
effect, then, the passage of time has made the field more, not less, diffuse.
All this is evident in a volume published in 1995 in which the editor attempted
to break down borders by initiating dialogue between scholars with different
approaches to philosophy of education; her introductory remarks are revealing.
Philosophers of education reflecting on the
parameters of our field are faced not only with such perplexing and disruptive
questions as, but also and Embedded in these queries we find no less
provocative ones, and Although such questions are disruptive, they offer the
opportunity to take a fresh look at the nature and purposes of our work and, as
we do, to expand the number and kinds of voices participating in the
conversation.
There
is an inward looking tone to the questions posed here, Philosophy of education
should focus upon itself, upon its own contents, methods, and practitioners.
And of course there is nothing new about this; for one thing, over forty years
ago a collection of readings with several score of entries was published under
the title. It is worth noting, too, that the same attitude is not unknown in
philosophy, Simmel is reputed to have said a century or so ago that philosophy
is its own first problem.
Having
described the general topography of the field of philosophy of education, the
focus can change to pockets of activity where from the perspective of the
present authors interesting philosophical work is being, or has been, done and
sometimes this work has been influential in the worlds of educational policy or
practice. It is appropriate to start with a discussion of the rise and partial
decline but lasting influence of analytic philosophy of education. This approach
dominated the field in the English speaking world for several decades after the
Second World War, and its eventual fate throws light on the current
intellectual climate.
Contemporary social, political and moral philosophy
By
the 1980s, the rather simple if not simplistic ordinary language analysis
practiced most often in philosophy of education was reeling under the attack
from the combination of forces sketched above, but the analytic spirit lived on
in the form of rigorous work done in other specialist areas of philosophy work
that trickled out and took philosophy of education in rich new directions.
Technically oriented epistemology, philosophy of science, and metaphysics
flourished, as did the interrelated fields of social, political and moral
philosophy. John Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1971, a decade later Alasdair Macintyre After Virtue appeared, and in
another decade or so there was a flood of work on individualism,
communitarianism, democratic citizenship, inclusion, exclusion, the rights of
children versus the rights of parents, and the rights of groups versus the
rights of the larger polity. From the early 1990s philosophers of education
have contributed significantly to the debates on these and related topics;
indeed, this corpus of work illustrates that good philosophy of education flows
seamlessly into work being done in mainstream areas of philosophy. Illustrative
examples are Eamonn Callan Creating
Citizens, Political Education and Liberal Democracy, Meira
Levinson the Demands of Liberal
Education, Harry Brighouse Social
Justice and School Choice, and Rob Reich Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education.
These
works stand shoulder to shoulder with semi classics on the same range of topics
by Amy Gutmann, Will Kymlicka, Stephen Macedo, and others. An excerpt from the
book by Callan nicely illustrates that the analytic spirit lives on in this
body of work, the broader topic being pursued is the status of the aims of
education in a pluralistic society where there can be deep fundamental disagreements,
the distinction must be underlined between the ends that properly inform
political education and the extent to which we should tolerate deviations from
those ends in a world where reasonable and unreasonable pluralism are entangled
and the moral costs of coercion against the unreasonable variety are often
prohibitive. Our theoretical as well as our commonsense discourse do not always
respect the distinction if some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church
conflict with our best theory of the ends of civic education, it does not
follow that we have any reason to revise our theory, but neither does it mean
we have any reason to impose these ends on Catholic schools and the families
that they serve.
Callan
and White have offered an explanation of why the topics described above have
become such a focus of attention. What has been happening in philosophy of
education in recent years, they argue, mirrors a wider self examination in
liberal societies themselves. World events, from the fall of communism to the
spread of ethnic conflicts have all heightened consciousness of the contingency
of liberal politics. A body of work in philosophy, from the early Rawls on, has
systematically examined the foundations of liberalism, and philosophy of
education has been drawn into the debates. Callan and White mention communitarianism
as offering perhaps the most influential challenge to liberalism, and they
write,
The debate between liberals and communitarians
is far more than a theoretical diversion for philosophers and political
scientists. At stake are rival understandings of what makes human lives and the
societies in which they unfold both good and just, and derivatively, competing
conceptions of the education needed for individual and social betterment.
It
should be appended here that it is not only external world events that have
stimulated this body of work; events internal to a number of democratic
societies also have been significant. To cite one example that is prominent in
the literature in North America at least, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling
in which members of the Amish sect were allowed to withdraw their children from
public schools after the eighth grade for, it had been argued, and any deeper
education would endanger the existence of the group and its culture. In
assessing this decision as of course philosophers have frequently done a
balance has to be achieved between the interest of civic society in having an
informed, well educated, participatory citizenry, the interest of the Amish as
a group in preserving their own culture, and the interests of the Amish children,
who according to some at least have a right to develop into autonomous
individuals who can make reflective decisions for themselves about the nature
of the life they wish to lead. These are issues that fall squarely in the
domain covered by the works mentioned above.
The
quantity, variety and quality of work being produced on the complex and
interrelated issues just outlined amounts to a veritable cottage industry of
post Rawlsian philosophy of education. There are, of course, other areas of
activity where interesting contributions are being made, and the discussion
will next turn to a sampling of these.
Analytic philosophy of education, and its influence
Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of
arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions
which make up at least part of the philosophical analysis package have been
respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field.
Traditionally they have stood alongside other philosophical activities, in the Republic, for example, Plato was sometimes analytic, at
other times normative, and on occasion speculative metaphysical. Just as
analytic techniques gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during
and after the rise of analytic philosophy early in the 20th century,
they came to dominate philosophy of education in the third quarter of that
century.
Philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research
The
educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by
politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers,
philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves but the criticisms
have been contradictory. Charges of being too ivory tower and theory oriented
are found alongside too focused on practice and too atheoretical, but
particularly since publication of the book by Stokes mentioned earlier, and
also in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of
theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem solving, it is becoming more
fashionable to hold that the theory v. practice dichotomy is a false one.
A
similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two
rival groups of research methods on one hand quantitative/statistical
approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative ethnographic
family. For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated
by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms,
and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as the paradigm wars. In essence the issue at stake was
epistemological, members of the quantitative experimental camp believed that
only their methods could lead to well warranted knowledge claims, especially
about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole
they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor, on the other hand the
adherents of qualitative ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was
too positivistic and was operating
with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs one that ignored the role
of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness
of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the paradigm wars suggested that there was
anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program provided
that if both were used, they only were used sequentially or in parallel, for
they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be
blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement,
towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible
and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense of the term, the melding
of the two approaches is often called mixed
methods research, and is growing in popularity.
The
most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in
motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved
in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research the
kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development
of practically effective policies. The definition of rigorously scientific, however, was decided by politicians and not
by the research community and it was given in terms of the use of a specific
research method the net effect being that the only research projects to receive
Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments
or field trials. It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT
as the gold standard methodology.
The
National Research Council an arm of the U.S. National Academies of Science issued
a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science that argued that
this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently
that point out how the gold standard
account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex
nature of the relation between evidence and policy making has been distorted and
made to appear overly simple, and qualitative researchers have insisted upon
the scientific nature of their work.
Nevertheless,
and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in
some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four
journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of
philosophical fronts, Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed
that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the
ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they
misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, they were guilty of
advocating your father paradigm. This last critic asserted that educational
research should move toward a Nietzschean sort of unnatural science that leads
to greater health by fostering ways of knowing that escape normativity a
suggestion that evokes the reaction discussed in Section 1.3 above, namely, one
of incomprehension on the part of most researchers and those philosophers of education
who work within a different tradition where a way of knowing, in order to be a
way of knowing, must inevitably
be normative.
The
final complexity in the debates over the nature of educational research is that
there are some respected members of the philosophy of education community who
claim, along with Carr, that the forms of human association characteristic of
educational engagement are not really apt for scientific or empirical study at
all. His reasoning is that educational processes cannot be studied empirically
because they are processes of normative initiation a position that as it stands
begs the question by not making clear why
such processes cannot be studied empirically.
Social Epistemology
Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions
of education and schooling just rehearsed are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by
social epistemologists. There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative
epistemic aims, whether truth, critical thinking or rationality and rational
belief, or understanding. Next is controversy concerning the places of testimony and trust
in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their
teachers pronouncements, Related are questions concerning indoctrination, Additionally
there are traditional epistemological worries concerning absolutism and relativism
with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is
taught, with more recent worries concerning the character and status of group epistemologies
and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods universalistically in
the face of some feminist, multiculturalists and postmodernist challenges
adding newer dimensions to the more familiar mix.
Education Philosophy Definition
An educational philosophy is a personal
statement of a teacher guiding principles about big picture education related
issues, such as how student learning and potential are most effectively
maximized, as well as the role of educators in the classroom, school,
community, and society
Each
teacher comes to the classroom with a unique set of principles and ideals that
affects student performance. A statement of educational philosophy sums up
these tenets for self reflection, professional growth, and sometimes sharing
with the larger school community.
Philosophy
Education Society
The
Philosophy of Education Society is an international forum that promotes the
philosophic treatment of educational practice, policy and research, advances
the quality of teaching the philosophy of education, and cultivates fruitful
relationships between and among philosophers, philosophers of education and
educators.
Philosopher
A
philosopher is someone who studies philosophy. This person usually has
extensive knowledge concerning one or more of the fields of aesthetics, ethics,
epistemology, logic, metaphysics, as well as social philosophy and political
philosophy. Occasionally they use this knowledge to solve philosophical
problems.
A
generally accepted interpretation in academia is that a philosopher is one who
has attained a in philosophy, teaches philosophy, and has published literature
in a field of philosophy or is widely accepted by other philosophers as a
philosopher.
Education
Philosophers
usually cover a breadth of topics within philosophy in their undergraduate
education, and then proceed to specialize in topics of their own choice at the
graduate level. In some universities, a qualifying exam serves to test both the
breadth and depth of a student understanding of philosophy, the students who
pass are permitted to work on a doctoral dissertation.
Motivation
Though it is true that philosophy finds diverse
applications in many areas of research, a philosopher does not determine the
value of an idea by the diversity of its applications alone. A substantial
minority of philosophers focus their research exclusively upon the history of
philosophical inquiry. Nonetheless, philosophers realize or invent an analysis
in order to show how ideas and/or concepts can work productively within a set
of contingent cause and effect relationships.
Just as the natural sciences are built on a
persistent curiosity and healthy scepticism in regards to how we interpret what
we see never accepting any explanation as truth if that explanation cannot be
supported by empirical evidence philosophical inquiry reflects a persistent
curiosity and healthy scepticism in regards to what we define as truth,
empirical, evidence, and thought. The usefulness of an idea, and studying the
interpretation of an idea, is situated within the historical events that gave
possibility to the idea, and in the potential to study how these ideas can work
to shape our lives. How we think about what counts as real, affects and
conditions the way that we interact and think. Philosophers often seek to
identify and analyze the consequences of ideas and concepts.
Differences with scientists
Philosophy
differs from natural science in that scientists subject truth claims to tests
by empirical experiments, while philosophical propositions may be tested by
thought experience and are conclusions of philosophical arguments.
Women in Philosophy
While
the majority of philosophers are male, there have been some demographic changes
since the 20th century. Some prominent female philosophers are Judith Butler,
Marilyn Mc Cord Adams, Patricia Churchland, Ayn Rand, and Susan Haack.
History of philosophy
The history
of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through
time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include. All
cultures be they prehistoric, medieval, or modern, eastern, western, religious
or secular have had their own unique schools of philosophy, arrived at through
both inheritance and through independent discovery. Such theories have grown
from different premises and approaches, examples of which include rationalism,
empiricism, and even through leaps of faith, hope and inheritance. History of
philosophy seeks to catalogue and classify such development. The goal is to
understand the development of philosophical ideas through time.
Western philosophy
Western philosophy has a
long history, conventionally divided into four large eras the Ancient,
Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary. The Ancient era runs through the fall of
Rome and includes the Greek philosophers such as and. The Medieval period runs
until roughly the late 15th century and the. The Modern is a word with more varied use, which includes everything
from Post Medieval through the specific period up to the 20th century. Contemporary
philosophy encompasses the philosophical developments of the 20th century up to
the present day.
Ancient philosophy
Western
Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor
with Thales of Miletus, who was active around 585 B.C. and left us the opaque
dictum, all is water. His most noted students were Anaximeans of Miletus and
Anaximander.
Other
thinkers and schools appeared throughout Greece over the next few centuries.
Among the most important were reality is so ordered that it must be in all
respects governed by mind, the and the world is composite of innumerable
interacting parts, the and all is One and change is impossible, as illustrated
by became known, perhaps unjustly, for
claiming that truth was no more than opinion and for teaching people to argue
fallaciously to prove whatever conclusions they wished. This whole movement
gradually became more concentrated in, which had become the dominant city state
in Greece.
There
is considerable discussion about why Athenian culture encouraged philosophy,
but a popular theory says that it occurred because Athens had a direct. It is
known from Plato writings that many sophists maintained schools of debate, were
respected members of society, and were well paid by their students. Orators
influenced Athenian history, possibly even causing its failure. Another theory
explains the birth of philosophical debate in Athens with the presence of a
slave labor workforce which performed the necessary functions that would
otherwise have consumed the time of the free male citizenry. Freed from working
in the fields or other manual economic activities, they were able to
participate in the assemblies of Athens and spend long periods in discussions
on popular philosophical questions. Students of Sophists needed to acquire the
skills of oration in order to influence the Athenian Assembly and thereby
increase respect and wealth. In response, the subjects and methods of debate
became highly developed by the Sophists.
The
key figure in transforming Greek philosophy into a unified and continuous
project one still being pursued today is, who studied under several Sophists.
It is said that following a visit to the he spent much of his life questioning
anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to disprove the oracular
prophecy that there would be no man wiser than Socrates. Through these live
dialogues, he examined common but critical concepts that lacked clear or
concrete definitions, such as beauty and truth, and the virtues of piety,
wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Socrates awareness of his own
ignorance allowed him to discover his errors as well as the errors of those who
claimed knowledge based upon falsifiable or unclear precepts and beliefs. He
wrote nothing, but inspired many disciples, including many sons of prominent
Athenian citizens, which led to his in 399 B.C. on the charge that his
philosophy and sophistry were undermining the youth, and moral fiber of the city. He was offered a
chance to flee from his fate but chose to remain in Athens, abide by his
principles, and drink the poison.
Socrates
most important student was Plato, who founded the of Athens and wrote a number
of dialogues, which applied the of inquiry to examine philosophical problems.
Some central ideas of Plato dialogues are the, mind is imbued with an innate
capacity to understand and contemplate concepts from a higher order preeminent
world, concepts more real, permanent, and universal than or representative of
the things of this world, which
are only changing and temporal, the idea of the immortal soul being superior to
the body, the idea of evil as simple ignorance of truth, that true knowledge
leads to true virtue, that art is subordinate to moral purpose, and that the
society of the should be governed by a merit
class of property less philosopher kings, with no permanent wives or paternity
rights over their children, and be protected by an athletically gifted,
honorable, duty bound military class. In the later dialogues Socrates figures
less prominently, but Plato had previously woven his own thoughts into some of
Socrates words. Interestingly, in his most famous work, Plato critiques
democracy, condemns tyranny, and proposes a three tiered merit based structure
of society, with workers, guardians and philosophers, in an equal relationship,
where no innocents would ever be put to death again, citing the philosophers'
relentless love of truth and knowledge of the forms or ideals, concern for
general welfare and lack of propertied interest as causes for their being
suited to govern.
Medieval philosophy
The history of western medieval philosophy is
generally divided into two periods, early medieval philosophy, which started
with in the mid 4th century and lasted until the recovery in the 13th century
West of a great bulk of works and their subsequent translation into Latin from
the Arabic and Greek, and high medieval philosophy, which came about as a
result of the recovery of Aristotle. This period, which lasted a mere century
and a half compared to the nine centuries of the early period, came to a close
around the time of in the middle of the
14th century. Western medieval philosophy was primarily concerned with
implementing the Christian faith with philosophical reason that is, baptizing
reason.
Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the
likes of, but, above all, the philosophy of himself. The prominent figure of
this period was St. Augustine who adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it
in the 4th century and whose influence dominated medieval philosophy perhaps up
to end of the era but was checked with the arrival of Aristotle texts.
Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers including
the great up until the 13th century.
During the later years of the early medieval
period and throughout the years of the high medieval period, there was a great
emphasis on the nature of God and the application of and thought to every area
of life. Attempts were made to reconcile these three things by means of. One
continuing interest in this time was to prove the existence of God, through
logic alone, if possible. The point of this exercise was not so much to justify
belief in God, since in the view of medieval Christianity this was self
evident, but to make classical philosophy, with its extra biblical pagan
origins, respectable in a Christian context.
One monumental effort to overcome mere logical
argument at the beginning of the high medieval period was to follow
Aristotelian demonstration by starting from effects and reasoning up to their
causes. This took the form of the, conventionally attributed to. The argument
roughly is that everything that exists has a cause. But since there could not
be an infinite chain of causes back into the past, there must have been an
uncaused first cause. This is God. Aquinas also adapted this argument to prove
the goodness of God. Everything has some goodness, and the cause of each thing
is better than the thing caused. Therefore, the first cause is the best
possible thing. Similar arguments were used to prove God's power and
uniqueness.
Another important argument for proof of the
existence of God was the, advanced by St Anselm. Basically, it says that God is
that than which nothing greater can be thought. There is nothing that simply
exists in the mind that can be said to be greater than something that enjoys
existence in reality. Hence the greatest thing that the mind can conceive of
must exist in reality. Therefore, God exists. This argument has been used in
different forms by philosophers from Descartes forward.
Renaissance philosophy
Contemporary philosophical historiography
emphasizes a great gap between Middle Ages and Modern thought. And often this
gap is used as a mean to characterize the meaning of the word modern used in
modern philosophy.
However, a historical perspective emphasizes the
existence of a long period of transition between the teleological driven
centuries and the rationalists empiricists debates. As well as for the
figurative arts, music, vernacular languages and literatures, and the Christian
religion, philosophy was greatly renewed in. The Renaissance, spread into
Europe from Italy and in particular from Northern Italy and Tuscany, also by
the means of architecture, arts and literature, inaugurated new philosophical
problems, and permitted a new era of thought, independent from the Roman
Church.
If most medieval philosophers were priests and
monks, early and late Renaissance philosophers were a more heterogeneous
population, including rhetors, magicians and astrologers, early empirical
scientist, poets, philologists. The new era put together all these souls in the
search for the human specificity. The study of humanae litterae overcame that of divinae litterae, and opened the way for modern skepticism and
science.
Many philosophers from the Renaissance are today
read and remembered, even if often not categorized into a single category, but
spread into modern philosophy or instead put back into the Middle Ages,
especially if heavily influenced by esoteric traditions, and even and. Only a
few, relatively innocuous philosophers are often fully recognized as
Renaissance philosophers among them.
Modern philosophy
As
with many periodizations, there are multiple current usages for the term Modern Philosophy that exist in
practice. One usage is to date modern philosophy from the, where systematic
philosophy became common, excluding and as modern philosophers. Another is to
date it, the way the entire larger modern period is dated, from the. In some
usages, Modern Philosophy ended in 1800, with the rise of Hegelianism and
Idealism. There is also the problem, namely that some works split philosophy
into more periods than others: one author might feel a strong need to
differentiate between The Age of Reason or Early Modern Philosophers and The
Enlightenment, another author might write from the perspective that 1600-1800
is essentially one continuous evolution, and therefore a single period.
Wikipedia's philosophy section therefore hews more closely to centuries as a
means of avoiding long discussions over periods, but it is important to note
the variety of practice that occurs.
Contemporary philosophy
The deals with the upheavals produced by a series
of conflicts within philosophical discourse over the basis of knowledge, with
classical certainties overthrown, and new social, economic, scientific and
logical problems. 20th century philosophy was set for a series of attempts to
reform and preserve, and to alter or abolish, older knowledge systems. Seminal
figures include, the theory of knowledge, and its basis was a central concern,
as seen from the work of Heidegger, Russell. Phenomenologically oriented
metaphysics undergirded and finally has argued that these and other schools of
20th century philosophy, including his own, share an opposition to classical
that is both an ant metaphysical. The work of, and others has also been
influential in contemporary. Conversely, some philosophers have attempted to
define and rehabilitate older traditions of philosophy. Most notably, and have
both, albeit in different ways, revived the tradition of philosophy.
The philosophy of the present century is
difficult to clarify due to its immaturity. A number of surviving 20th century
philosophers have established themselves as early voices of influence in the
21st. These include the perceived conflict between and schools of philosophy
remains prominent, despite increasing skepticism regarding the distinction
usefulness. A variety of new topics have risen to the stage in analytic
philosophy, orienting much of contemporary discourse in the field of, New inquiries consider, for example, the
ethical implications of new media and information exchange. Such developments
have rekindled interest in the an, There has been increased enthusiasm for
highly specialized areas in philosophy of science, such as in the school of.
In contemporary continental thought, a number of
developments are taking place. The field of, championed in the late 20th
century by theorists such as and has established itself as a major academic
presence. The Slovenian philosopher remains tremendously popular in both
academic and popular demographics, synthesizing, and thought in discussions of
popular culture and politics. Zizek is also involved with the contemporary
thrust to step beyond and the of the 20th century. Key contributors to this
movement are the French polymath, and those classified under the blanket
designation of, including and on the other hand, the American philosopher has strong support among many demographics in
her close readings of, and non violent. As a result she has received strong
criticism from, and radical.
Eastern philosophy
In
the west, the term Eastern philosophy refers very broadly to the various philosophies
of the East, namely Asia, including China, India, Japan, Persia and the general
area. One must take into account that this term ignores that these countries do
not belong to a single culture. Ancient eastern philosophy developed mainly in India
and China.
Indian philosophy
Indian
philosophy primarily begins with the later part of Rig Veda, which was compiled
before 1100 BCE. Most of philosophy of the Rig Veda is contained in the
sections Purusha Sukta and Nasadiya Sukta. Vedas are followed by Upanishads,
the oldest, such as the Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads, have been dated
to around the 8th century BCE. The philosophical edifice of Indian religions
viz, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism is built on the foundation laid by the
Upanishads. Upanishadic thoughts were followed by the Buddhist and Jain
philosophies.
Philosophy
and Cultural Differences
Different individuals have different perspectives. Existing within a
definite time space location, they share in the basic wealth of a given
culture. They participate in the process of civilization. They have
been in part determined in what they will think and do by what is at their
disposal to work with and what has gone before to make them what they
are. Individuals add to their inheritance their own uniqueness which is
centered in their valuational acts.
Philosophers are no different from others in regard to their cultural perspectives.
Philosophers differ in their conclusions. They build upon what has come
before. They react to it and criticize it. They draw from the total
wealth of their given civilization and all others they have knowledge of.
Philosophers differ in what they end up with, however, they share in a common
pursuit and they do so by their attempt to pursue inquiry in a definite manner,
i.e. a critical and comprehensive approach.
Philosophy
and other forms of Thought
While the Philosophical mode of thought exists
along side of those of Religion, Science and Art it is distinct from them and
influences each of them and in part responds to developments within each of
these fields or dimensions of human experience. While Religion offers a
comprehensive view of all aspects of human life, it is a view which is
uncritically formulated and does not itself encourage or tolerate criticism of
the fundamental tenets of faith or the principle applications of those basic
beliefs to the affairs of everyday life. Science, on the other hand, is
quite critical in the evaluation of hypotheses and theories but it lacks the
comprehensive nature of philosophic thought. The various branches of
scientific inquiry have not as yet demonstrated that they are capable of being
welded into a single comprehensive view of all reality built upon a single
coherent set of basic principles or laws. Art remains as a discipline
capable of demonstrating, representing and encouraging values but it is not a
discipline of thought at all least of all one that is characterized by the
critical and comprehensive features of philosophical thought.
I hope that you
have been able to detect these features of philosophic thought although there
are obstacles that most of you have encountered such as the brevity of the
treatment given each philosopher examined during this semester, the rather
small number of passages and works read and the inexperience of class members
with reading and analyzing philosophical treatises. Even so each
student should have come to appreciate that Philosophy as an activity and a
tradition of thought involves a good deal more than the common usage of the
term in popular discourse would intimate.
Today the term Philosophy is often misused. So
often in fact that the term itself has been corrupted. Most think of
Philosophy as a way of life, view of
the world, theory about life, the public has little conscious appreciation for
the philosophic tradition.
The future for
Philosophy as an intellectual activity has come to be in doubt due to present
social conditions: the anti intellectual and anti rational tendencies that
characterize the current cultural scene and most of the influential and
determining social and political movements within it.
There are over
20,000 philosophers in the world. There are more than 6,000 philosophers
in the United States. They are philosophers according to their academic
training and degree and their professional affiliations, membership in the
American Philosophical Association. There are Philosophers who participate
in different traditions. Analytical Philosophy which was quite popular at
the middle of the twentieth century offered an approach to problems through
linguistic analysis, in which all problems are seen as problems of
language, questions of semantics. This approach alone, while promising
much and necessary for inquiry, has not answered many of our most important
problems. Social Philosophy in the tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Dewey
still has many participants. There are many definite characteristics of
this tradition in the works of Marxists, Existentialists, and Pragmatists. Applied
Philosophy in the forms of Applied Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs and
Political Philosophy has a growing number of participants as societies around
the globe call upon those skilled in analytical and critical thinking to sort
through the confusion wrought by the breathtaking speed of technological
developments and the failure of contemporary thought to keep pace with them
applying the values held by each society. Finally, there is still if even
in only the smallest of numbers speculative Philosophy such as evidenced in
this country by Peirce, Whitehead, Hartshorne, and Weiss. Philosophy in
the grand style of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and Hegel.
Philosophy evolving an entire worldview and all encompassing conceptual
framework: Philosophy in its most comprehensive form of thought.
What is philosophy
Philosophy is not a Way of Life.
Every person does not have his or her own Philosophy.
Philosophy is not simply a theory about something. Nor is Philosophy a belief
or a wish. Philosophy is an activity: a quest after wisdom.
Philosophy is an activity of thought. Philosophy is a particular unique
type of thought or style of thinking. Philosophy is not to be confused
with its product. What a philosopher provides is a body of philosophic
thought NOT a Philosophy. A philosopher enacts a Philosophy, a quest after
wisdom.
Philosophy is not
a picking and choosing what body of thought one would like to call one's own or
would like to believe in; a choice based upon personal preferences or
feelings. Philosophy is a pursuit. One can choose to be
philosophical. One can choose to be a philosopher. One can NOT choose a
Philosophy. Philosophy, insofar as it may be correlated at all to a way
of Life, is a form of thinking meant to guide action or to prescribe a
way of life. The philosophic way of life , if there is one, is displayed
in a life in which action is held to be best directed when philosophical
reflection has provided that direction, SOCRATES the paradigm of a philosopher.
Philosophy is an
activity of thought, a type of thinking. Philosophy is critical and
comprehensive thought, the most critical and comprehensive manner of thinking
which the human species has yet devised. This intellectual process
includes both an analytic and synthetic mode of operation. Philosophy as
a critical and comprehensive process of thought involves resolving confusion,
unmasking assumptions, revealing presuppositions, distinguishing importance,
testing positions, correcting distortions, looking for reasons, examining
world-views and questioning conceptual frameworks. It also includes
dispelling ignorance, enriching understanding, broadening experience, expanding
horizons, developing imagination , controlling emotion, exploring values,
fixing beliefs by rational inquiry, establishing habits of acting, widening
considerations, synthesizing knowledge and questing for wisdom.
Philosophy as a
process functions as an activity which responds to society's demand for wisdom,
which is bringing together all that we know in order to obtain what we
value. Viewed in this way Philosophy is part of the activity of human
growth and thus an integral, essential part of the process of education.
Philosophy and education have as a common goal the development of the total
intellect of a person, the realization of the human potential.
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