WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." In a broad sense, philosophy
is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about
themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each
other. As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same. Those who study
philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their answers to
life’s most basic questions. To make such a pursuit more systematic academic
philosophy is traditionally divided into major areas of study.

Metaphysics
At its core the study of metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the
world, what it is like, and how it is ordered. In metaphysics philosophers wrestle with such
questions as:

• Is there a God?

• What is truth?

• What is a person? What makes a person the same through time?

• Is the world strictly composed of matter?

• Do people have minds? If so, how is the mind related to the body?

• Do people have free wills? • What is it for one event to cause another?

Epistemology
is the study of knowledge. It is primarily concerned with what we can know about the world
and how we can know it. Typical questions of concern in epistemology are:

 What is knowledge?
 Do we know anything at all?
 How do we know what we know?
 Can we be justified in claiming to know certain things?

Ethics
The study of ethics often concerns what we ought to do and what it would be best to do. In
struggling with this issue, larger questions about what is good and right arise. So, the
ethicist attempts to answer such questions as:

 What is good?
 What makes actions or people good?
 What is right?
 What makes actions right?
 Is morality objective or subjective?
 How should I treat others?

Logic
Another important aspect of the study of philosophy is the arguments or reasons given for
people’s answers to these questions. To this end philosophers employ logic to study
the nature and structure of arguments. Logicians ask such questions as:

 What constitutes "good" or "bad" reasoning?

 How do we determine whether a given piece of reasoning is good or bad?

History of Philosophy
The study of philosophy involves not only forming one’s own answers to such
questions, but also seeking to understand the way in which people have answered such
questions in the past. So, a significant part of philosophy is its history, a history of answers
and arguments about these very questions. In studying the history of philosophy one
explores the ideas of such historical figures as:

 Plato
 Locke
 Marx
 Aristotle
 Hume
 Mill
 Aquinas
 Kant
 Wittgenstein
 Descartes
 Nietzsche
 Sartre
What often motivates the study of philosophy is not merely the answers or arguments
themselves but whether or not the arguments are good and the answers are true.
Moreover, many of the questions and issues in the various areas of philosophy overlap and
in some cases even converge. Thus, philosophical questions arise in almost every
discipline. This is why philosophy also encompasses such areas as:

 Philosophy of Law Philosophy of Feminism

 Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Science
 Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Literature Political
 Philosophy Philosophy of the Arts
 Philosophy of History Philosophy of Language

This philosophy course has two goals. The first goal is to introduce you to the things that
philosophers think about. The second goal is to get you thinking philosophically yourself.
This will help you develop your critical reasoning and argumentative skills more generally.
Along the way we will draw from late, great classical authors and influential contemporary
figures. To help enhance your learning experience, this course offers instructor grading. If
you choose to pursue a verified certificate, a professional philosopher will carefully read,
grade and comment upon your work. Though all residential philosophy courses at MIT, and
other major universities, offer instructor grading, this is an innovation in the world of
MOOCs. Students will test their ideas against, and receive individual advice from,
professional philosophers. We believe that this is the best way to learn philosophy.

What you'll learn

 How to construct and analyze philosophical arguments
 How to write clearly and communicate complicated ideas effectively
 Arguments for and against the existence of God
 The distinction between epistemic and practical rationality
 Theories of Knowledge
 Physicalist and Non-Physicalist theories of consciousness
 Free Will and Determinism
 Personal Identity

PHILOSOPHERS
Epicurus (c. 341-270 BCE)
“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of
philosophy called Epicureanism. For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the
happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia-peace and freedom from fear-and aponia-the
absence of pain. Epicurus believed in atoms and taught that the humans had no control
over fate. He also refused to believe in the gods and taught that the universe was infinite
and had no purpose. He often said that fear of death was one of the main causes of
human anxiety and it often led people to despair. Epicurus preached that death was an
inescapable reality and that it was an end to the body with the soul as well. Even though
Epicurus is believed to have written 300 works, almost none of his writings are known to
have survived.

Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 BCE)

“The seed of everything is in everything else.”

Anaxagoras was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Athens. His philosophical
views much revolved around the nature itself. He believed that in the physical world,
everything contains a portion of everything else. Nothing was pure on its own and ‘nous’
(which means ‘mind’) asserts a certain motion and meaning to the entities in this chaos.
As it was the case with most of the philosophers in ancient Greece, his ideas contrasted
and collided with the contemporary ideologies and beliefs that led him to face life-
threatening consequences and exile.

Pythagoras (c. 570-495 BCE)

“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the
spheres.”

Another pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Pythagoras is a famous mathematician who is

credited with inventing the Pythagorean Theorem, one of the key computations in
geometry. Although better known for his legendary contribution to mathematics, his
philosophical works and ideas have had a great influence on modern philosophy and on
Plato as well. He regarded the world as perfect harmony and aimed his teaching on how to
lead a harmonious life. Some legends also indicate that he was the first to teach that the
Earth was round.

Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BCE)

“There is nothing permanent except change.”

Heraclitus is yet another pre-Socratic philosopher, mostly known for his contribution to the
thought that things are always changing. He thought that change is the fundamental
essence of the universe, as stated in the famous saying, “No man ever steps in the same
river twice”. He also said that opposites attract and that fire was the base for all things in
the world. He was also called “The Obscure” and the “Weeping Philosopher”, because of
the lonely life he led and the nature of his philosophy.

Democritus (c. 460-370 BCE)

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.”

Democritus, the so called “laughing philosopher”, was an influential ancient Greek

philosopher and one of the first advocates of democracy, equality and liberty. He was also
the first person, along with his mentor Leucippus, to advance the hypothesis that all matter
is composed of small invisible particles called atoms. Many consider Democritus to be the
“father of modern science”. Apart from that, Democritus was one of the first known critics
and a proponent of the just theory—the idea that people should take up arms to defend
themselves from tyrants.

Empedocles (c. 490-330 BCE)

“There are forces in nature called Love and Hate. The force of Love causes elements to
be attracted to each other and to be built up into some particular form or person, and the
force of Hate causes the decomposition of things.”

Empedocles was one of the most important pre-Socratic era philosophers. His
philosophical landmark was originating the cosmogenic theory of the four classical
elements. It states that all matter is basically composed of four primary elements – earth,
air, fire and water. He also put forth the idea of opposite motive forces involved in building
of the world – namely, love as the cause of union and strife as the cause of separation. He
also went on to become the first person to give an evolutionary account on the
development of species.

Thales (c. 624-546 BCE)

“The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.”

Thales of Miletus is regarded as one of the fathers of Greek philosophy, being a pivotal
point for following generations of famous thinkers, philosophers and scientists. He was the
first to try to explain natural phenomena without the inclusion of myths, by theories and
hypothesis, ergo science. Aristotle points Thales as the first person to have investigated
basic principles such as origination of matter. Thales is also said to be the founder of
school of natural philosophy.

Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE)

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

A student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristotle is considered one of
the world’s greatest ancient philosophers. Aristotle studied a wide variety of subjects,
including science, ethics, government, physics and politics, and wrote extensively on
them. He believed that people’s concepts and all of their knowledge were ultimately based
on perception. All aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy continue to be the object of active
academic study today.

Plato (c. 428-348 BCE)

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men
are afraid of the light.”

Plato, a student of Socrates, is regarded as the father of political science and the founder
of one of the world’s first known institutions of higher learning, the Academy in Athens.
The primary groundwork of Plato’s philosophy is a threefold approach – dialects, ethics
and physics, the central point of unison being the theory of forms. For him, the highest of
forms was that of the ‘good’, which he took as the cause of being and knowledge. Plato
wrote one of the first and most influential works on politics, The Republic, which described
an ideal or Utopian society. Like his mentor Socrates, Plato was a critic of democracy.

Socrates (c. 469-399 BCE)

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

The most well-known ancient Greek Philosopher of all time, Socrates, was a master
stonemason and social critic. He never wrote anything and most of his philosophical
contributions come through his students, mainly Plato. Socrates embarked a whole new
perspective of achieving practical results through application of philosophy in our daily
lives. Socrates became famous for encouraging people to critically question everything.
Socrates’ greatest contribution to philosophy was the Socratic Method in which discussion,
argument, and dialogue are used to discern the truth. Eventually, his beliefs and realistic
approach in philosophy led to his end, as he was tried and convicted for criticizing religion
and corrupting the youth. Socrates then chose death by suicide over exile from his
homeland of Athens. His legendary trial and death at the altar of the ancient Greek
democratic system has changed the academic view of philosophy as a study of life itself.