BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY

1. Metaphysics (study of existence)

 First principle of things; to know what is real.

Everything is water (Thales)- water means reality (mind & matter)

Reality (in fact is just the opposite). It is unchanging, eternal, immaterial, and can
detected only by the intellect (Plato).

2. Ethics (Study of Action)

 Study of the nature of moral judgments.
 Philosophical ethics attempts to provide an account of our fundamental ethical ideas.
Socrates said:
“To be happy, a person has to live a virtuous life.”
“True knowledge means wisdom, which means virtue.”

Etymology
 Virtue (Greek word: arête (derived from Ares/Mars, the God of war).

Connotations: machismo/manliness- courage

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois- raised the “Problem of the Negro.” Which he
consider himself as part of this problem, therefore he wanted equal rights for the
blacks
(must assert themselves in the African-American community.

He puts his ideas into…

• Political action and helped organized various initiatives for the advancement of the
colored people.
• Published researches
• Taught in Atlanta University.

3. Epistemology (study of knowledge)

• Deals with nature, sources, limitations, and validity of knowledge (Soccio, 2007)

Epistemology explains:
1. How we know what we claim to know?
2. How we can find out what we wish to know?
3. How we can differentiate truth from falsehood.

Epistemology addresses varied problems:

1. The reliability, extent, and kinds of knowledge.
2. Truth
3. Language
4. Science and Scientific Knowledge

How do we acquire reliable knowledge?

1. On the one hand, he sees, hears, and touches; on the other hand, he organizes in
his mind what he learns through the senses.
2. Other philosophers think it is more important to find a general law according to which
particular facts can be understood or judged (deduction).
Rationalists (Rene Descartes)- advocates of deduction.
Mary Wollstonecraft
• Envisioned an education for women.
• In her work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she dictated that women
were to be more than just wives and caretakers; they were to educate children, and
to act not as slaves to their husbands, but as companions (Rifkin, 2009).

4. Logic (Study of arguments)

• Reasoning (concern of a logician); it could be science or medicine, ethics, law,
politics, commerce, sports and games, and in the mundane affairs of everyday living.
Etymology:
Logike (Zeno the Stoic)- reasoning- treatiese on matters pertaining on human
thought.
Aristotle- the 1st philosopher who devise a logical method
• Understood truth to mean the agreement of knowledge with reality.
• Truth exists when the mind’s mental representations, otherwise known as ideas,
correspond with things in the objective world.
• Zeno of Citium (Aristotle’s Successor; Founder of Stoicism)
Stoic/Stoicism- poikile (painted porch)

Other Influential Authors of Logic

Later Roman Empire Arab World

 Cicero  Al Farabi
 Boethius  Avicenna
 Porphyry  Averroes

5. Aesthetics (Study of Art)

 Criteria of Beauty
 It is the science of the beautiful in its various manifestations.

Importance of Aesthetics

1. It vitalizes our knowledge

2. It helps to live more deeply and richly
3. It brings us in touch with our culture

Hans-Georg Gadamer (German Philosopher)

 Argued that our tastes and judgments regardng beauty, work in connection with
one’s own personal experience and culture.
 He believes that our culture consists of the values and beliefs of our time and our
society.
Dialog or conversation is important in interpreting works of art (White, 1991).