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Introduction to philosophy and ethics (FFIL100)
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Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics2nd year Biology
Lecture 1: Introduction to philosophy
Philosophy: thinking about life/reflecting on life/ wonder/ what is the meaning of life.
Philosophers strive for wisdom
Greek invention
Socrates:
- Philosophy is not wisdom but a desire or longing (eros) for wisdom
- Socratic (=self-aware) ignorance: they think they know, but they do not know
- Quest for true knowledge: instead of illusory knowledge (pseudos) and opinions
(doxa)
- Philosophy started off as a struggle with the sophists: ‘bluffers’, those not interested
in truth but in something else (money, power, fame, influence, etc.)
Philosophical ideal:
- Socrates: ‘the unexamined life (or the life that does not look critically at itself) is not
worth living’
- ‘Know thyself!’
- ‘Take care of thyself!’
- Goal: a good, a true and a beautiful life
Philosophical questions:
Questions the ‘what’ of things/phenomena:
- What is truth?
- What is time?
- What is space?
- What is matter?
- What is life?
- What is humanity?
Questions the implicit presuppositions of our thinking and reasoning, such as:
- Our senses are a reliable source of knowledge
- The world (cosmos) is intelligible (can be known)
- The human is a free creature (possesses free will)
The human:
- Human: rational animal, animal rationale, zoon logon echon
- Every human is a philosopher by nature?
- The human is a being that can put him or herself and the world at large in question
- ‘The human is a creature that wants more than it can do, and that can do more than
it may’ (W. Wickler)
4 fundamental questions (Immanuel Kant):
- What can I know? (science)
- What must I do? (ethics)
- What may I hope? (religion)
- What is man? (anthropology)
, Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics
2nd year Biology
Science Philosophy
Always examines one specific domain of Examines being in its totality as such
objects
Object is already understood in a certain Object is questioned in its way of being
way
Thus: based necessarily on theoretical Critical examination of these theoretical
presuppositions presuppositions
Thus: hypothetical Thus: problematizing→ always asking
questions
Empirical-theoretical Reflexive-theoretical: reflects on concepts
Philosophical disciplines:
- Logic: laws of thinking
- Ontology and epistemology
o Ontology: science of beings. what is true or real, and the nature of reality.
‘what is existence?’ and ‘What is the nature of existence?’
o Epistemology: science of the knowledge of beings. About knowledge. ‘what
do we know?’ how do we know it?’
Ethics: Just or unjust. What is good and what is wrong→ morality.
Aesthetics: What is beauty? Principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of
beauty, especially in art. Mostly subjective.
History:
Mythos: ancient origin stories
Logos: explanations about the world
Because of the invention of writing (memory technology) from mythos to logos.
- Alphabet/phonetic writing: visual representation of speech sounds by means of
symbols.
- Greece used this alphabetic technology to think. Philosophy is a technology of
thinking based on phonetic writing
First philosophers (presocratics): talked more about nature
- Asked for the unchanging (eternal) foundations and regularities behind the
permanent change and changeability of the phenomena
- Looked for first principles (archai) behind reality
- The fundamental question was invariably: what is the original element or principle?
What constituted the world at its origin? And how have all the various things come
to be out of this origin?
- Thales of Milete: everything follows from water. Water is the origin.
- Anaximander of Milete: something that is infinite: and everything comes from it in a
way.
- Pythagoras: the world is made of numbers
- Parmenides: ‘What is, is’
o Only being is, not-being is not and cannot be thought either
o Change is impossible because something cannot originate from nothing
, Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics
2nd year Biology
o The (apparently) changing world of phenomena (of our senses) is therefore
an illusion
- Heraclitus: ‘everything flows’ → everything changes constantly
o ‘You cannot step into the same river twice’
o ‘War is the father of all things’: everything changes because of conflicts
o ‘Nature loves to hide’
o There exists a logos (=principle of understanding) that pervades and lies at
the foundation of physis (=nature)
- Empedocles: there are 4 elements: fire, earth, water, air. Everything is a mixture of
the four elements
- Democritus/Leucippus (atomists): something that cannot be split. You will end up
with the atom.
- Plato: looking to the heavens. Invented the philosophical academy
o Two worlds doctrine (=doctrine of ideas): difference in the things we see and
the way we understand them. Difference between real things(finite) and
ideal (eternal). You see a dog with 3 legs and you still think it is a dog.
o Three souls doctrine (biological thing): appetitive soul (metabolism/
onderbuik gevoel), spirited soul (political soul), rational soul (mind). The
rational soul (logos) should control the appetitive soul and the spirited soul.
- Aristotle: looking to the earth. Super scientist.
o Four causes doctrine: everything comes in the world because of causes: for a
table
▪ Material cause: wood
▪ Formal cause: design
▪ Final cause (function): dining
▪ Efficient cause: carpentry
o Four elements doctrine: fire, water, earth and air
o Three souls doctrine:
▪ Soul (psyche): principle of life = organizing and vitalizing principle in
each living organism.
• Vegetative soul = metabolism (plants)
• Sensitive and animate soul (animals): feeling and ability to
move
• Intellectual/ rational soul (humans): mind
Some fundamental concepts:
- Cosmos: the universe
- logos: word, reason, or plan
- Physis: nature (that which has its principle of movement and rest within itself)
- Techne: technics (that which has its principle of movement in something else: the
human)
- En-ergeia: being at work; reality; today: energy
- Dynamis: possibility, potentiality
- Ananke: necessity
- Last 3→modalities of being (others: contigenty, essentiality, accidentality).
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