PHILOSOPHY REVIEWER B.

Socratic Period
Philosophy
 The love of wisdom (pythagoras)
 A science or discipline which uses human
reason to investigate the ultimate causes,
reasons, and principles which govern all
things
 ‘Philo’ means love; ‘sophy’ means wisom
Why do we need Philosophy?
 Philosophy helps us attain the capability to
make careful distinction in thoughts, words,
and arguments
 Philosophy helps us to be critical, logical,
and reflective
Ancient Period
A. Pre-Socratic Period
 “Where did everything come from?”
 Concerned with the nature and origin of the
work; Cosmocentric
Proponents of the Pre-Socratic Period
1. Thales of Miletus
 Everything must have come from water
2. Anaximander of Miletus
 Everythingmust have come from an aperion
or the indeterminate boundless
 Focused on the concept of knowledge
Proponents of the Socratic Period
1. Socrates
 Socratic method (argumentative dialouge) or
Method of Elenchus
2. Plato
 The world of ideas, forms, or souls (innate)
 Believes that concepts or ideas are the true
realities
 Education is important!
 Plato is the student of Socrates
3. Aristotle
 The world of perception and of things
 Cannot separate ideas and perception
 Proven through logic
 Aristotle is the student of Plato
Medival Period
 Religious in nature
 Faith or reason?
 God’s Existence: Theocentric
1. St. Thomas of Aquinas
 God is the Prime Mover
 Patterned after the key concepts of Aristotle
 Focused on order and contradiction

3. Anaximeres of Miletus 2. St. Anselm

 Everything must have come from air  Focused on the Ontological Argument;
 The earth floats on air; the sun does not set existence of God
below the edge, but is obscured by higher  Proof by contradiction
parts of earth  Wrote the ‘Proslogion’; Title: “Latin
Proslogium: Discourse on the Existence of
4. Pythagoras of Samos God”
 Everything must have come from numbers
3. St. Augustine
5. Heraclitus of Ephesian  The argument by analogy
 Everything must have come from a constant  Questions Solipsism; “solus” means alone,
flux (constant motion or change) while “ipse” means self
 Believes in explaining using reason
6. Parmenides of Elea
 Change is an illusion, as everything is Modern Period
permanent  Ideocentric: human knowledge; problems of
 The world consists of one indivisible thing knowledge
 “One: motionless and perfect sphere”
 Rationalism (Apriori): All knowledge arises
from intellectual and deductive reason rather
than from the senses
 Empiricism (Aprosteriori): All knowledge is
sense/experience

Proponents for the Modern Period

1. Rene Descartes
 From Metaphysical Inquiry to
Epistemological Inquiry
 “Cognito Erosum”: I think therefore I am
(existence)
 Father of Modern Philosophy

2. John Locke
 “Rabula Rasa”; based on experience

3. Immanuel Kant
 Synthetic apriori (knowledge)
 Form beforehand

Contemporary Period
 Anthropocentric (man)

Proponents of the Contemporary Period

1. Jean-Paul
 Existence preceds essense

2. Martin Heidegger
 Man is thrown into the world

 Science: learn more and more about less and

less; knows everything about nothing
 Philosophy: learn less and less about more
and more; knows nothing about everything