KISII UNIVERSITY

PHIL104: PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIETY

SYNOPSIS
Date Content

Week One UNDERSTANDING PHILOSOPHY

 Philosophy as a Science
 Thinking in Philosophy
 Philosophy as Activity
Week Two ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
 Philosophy of the Elements
Week Three BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
FUNCTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
 Analytic, critical, practical, Rational functions
 Philosophy and Truth
Week Four METHODS OF PHILOSOPHY
 Analytic, Deductive, Inductive,
Phenomenology
Week Five THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY
 World, Man and God
 The Classical Time of Philosophy: Plato and
Aristotle
Week Six THE THREE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY
 Rationalism
 Empiricism
 Scepticism
Week Seven THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE
 Intellective Knowledge
 Sense Knowledge
Week Eight THE PHILOSOPHYOF THE CHRISTIANS
and Nine  Basic Characteristics
 Faith and Reason
Week Ten and MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Eleven Philosophical systems
a. Idealism: Kant and Hegel
b. Marxism: Karl Marx
c. Positivism: Wittgenstein
d. Existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard, Sartre
Week Twelve POSTMODERNISM
 Characteristics
Proponents: Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michael de Foucault
Week Thirteen Exams

Note: Not everything about African Spirituality can be discussed in class. Therefore, for a comprehensive
knowledge of the course, you are required to read widely.
Dr. Anthony Ichuloi.

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 UNDERSTANDING PHILOSOPHY

What is Philosophy? This is another ‗what question’. When we talk about philosophy, we are really
referring to the thoughts and ideas that began in Asia Minor around 600 B.C. Humans have always asked
questions about the ―stuff‖ around us. What is the nature of the world? Some of the questions were
practical, asking what we could use for food or clothing. Other questions were concerned with what we
use to build shelter. Money is always important, so gold and silver were of great interest. Philosophers
asked basic questions of life. Philosophers also asked difficult questions and try to answer them; they
think and discuss questions. They don‘t go into the lab to find answers. For many centuries there were no
labs to do research in. Thinking about questions was the only approach available. Today, we can go into a
laboratory and measure what is in a particular material. This ability was not available until the last couple
of centuries. One way of working out the answer to the above question is to look at the etymology of the
word ‗philosophy‘. Philosophy is a word that originates in the Greek language, philosophia which is the
union of two words: philia, love and a sophia, i.e., wisdom, that is, the love of wisdom. But what is love?
What is wisdom?

Love is something non-physical that cannot be imposed on anybody and cannot be taught.
 Love is the dimension of the Self.
It can be cultivated, developed and strengthened only by the Self.
 Love is a fundamental attitude or orientation of the self toward what exists.
 Love is the most fundamental element in the actualization of the project of the Self is.

Wisdom is also something that is non-material. Like love it has to do with the Self. In order to answer our
question more precisely let us observe someone acting in a way we would consider ‗wise‘. Think for
example of caring for one‘s parents; pursuing what is right, avoiding intoxicating substances, etc, what
makes these actions wise and not just manifestations of some other kind of intelligence? What not call
them simply ‗intelligent‘ or ‗prudent‘ rather than wise? Intelligence is calculative ends-means oriented;
while wisdom is an art of correct living as humans in a more sound and productive way, which essentially
entails discernment of the meaning of life, truth, the right from the wrong, proper from improper, etc. It
seems that wisdom has fundamentally two sides like a coin. On the one hand, it means a rational
behaviour in all areas of life; the capacity of determining what is truly good and what is truly bad for
man. In this sense, wisdom refers to the ability one has of making rally good choices for life; a kind of art
of living.

On the other hand, wisdom means the ability to find and abide with truth. Here it is not a matter of
making choices but rather of pursuing and achieving truth. In this sense wisdom is the study of the most
important questions in existence with the end of promoting illumination and understanding, and a vision
of the whole. Too often we suffer from ―tunnel vision‖. We perceive only bits of reality without context,
but when we speak, we tend to generalize and make a statement cover a great deal of territory. For
example, after having been robbed in the streets of Johannesburg, a tourist back home reports: ―All
Kenyans are thieves,‖ which obviously is not true. Philosophical practice should teach us that we are all
perceiving the world, as it were, through a key-hole or perspective and the need, then, to be very careful
in our generalizations. We are not able to see everything at once, and also what we see is often distorted.
On a clear day you can see the Indian Ocean from some sites in Mombasa. If you report correctly what
you see, you must admit that from Mombasa the Indian Ocean appears to be only few inches wide. Of
course, that is only a visual illusion that you have learnt to overcome and compensate for. But what about
mental psychological illusions? In Africa, for too long a time, white people suffered from the illusion that
black people were inferior beings. Even after the appearance of such a great men as Mr. Mandela,
Kenyatta, Kaunda, Nyerere, etc., there are still people suffering from this racist illusion. There are also
other illusions created by traditions, customs and cultures. Wisdom, understood as the ability of abiding
with truth involves the capacity of seeing through illusions of any kind, and attaining truth both in

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thoughts and in action. This implies an empathetic awareness of an error‘s attraction, i.e., I see the error
so clearly for what it is, that I experience freedom from it, an immunity to its appeal.

At this point we may appreciate the words the ancient Greeks used to speak about wisdom. They had two
terms: PHRONESIS and SOFIA: Phronesis means a rational behaviour in all areas of life; the capacity of
determining what is truly good and what is truly bad for man. Sofia means the highest form of knowledge
about the most excellent things: it is the highest degree of knowledge whose objects are the ultimate
things, that is, what is necessary, immutable, and eternal (remember the story of the cave). The Sophia of
philosophy is a type of perfect and even divine knowledge that enables one to judge all things in terms of
their ultimate causes. It is a knowledge based on meditation and contemplation, a passionate striving after
truth and light which is, in some degree, a fundamental trait of every human soul. It is the study of things
in their deepest and most general aspects, a speculation about the fundamental reality of things, where
things come from, why there is anything, and similar questions. This wisdom, however, is not
supernatural or simply instinctive; it is wisdom of man as man, which he acquires by the labour of his
intellect, and it is for that very reason a wisdom gained with great difficulty and held very insecurely;
thus, those who seek it should be called philosophers rather than wise men.

According to ancient tradition, Pythagoras (580-500 B.C.) was the first to describe himself as a
philosopher and to have used the term philosophy, that is, love of wisdom, observing that wisdom belongs
in the strict sense to God alone, and for that reason not wishing to be called a wise man, but simply a
friend or love of wisdom. He also alleged to have said that there are three classes of people who attend to
festal games: those who seek fame by taking part in them, those who seek gain by carrying on their
trades; and those (the best people) who are content to be spectators. Philosophers, according Pythagoras,
resemble the third class: spurning both fame and profit, they seek to arrive at the truth by contemplation.

Other Definitions of Philosophy

Many are the definitions of philosophy one can encounter in reading philosophers. Throughout its history
philosophy has been said to be one thing or another. Here I give you some definitions that are still current.
It has been written that:
 Philosophy is a habit of mind or a body of natural knowledge that results from disciplined inquiry
and that enables one to explain in a more or less profound way the sum of human experiences.
 Philosophy wants to arrive at a reasoned picture of what there really is, by examining whether a
given area of discourse-such as physics, religion history or astrology-meets certain minimum
standards of coherence, clarity and credibility.
 Philosophy is an attempt at working out some general systematic, coherent and consistent picture
of all that we know and think.
 Philosophy is all certain and evident knowledge, grasped either directly or through causal analysis
and demonstration, together with its dialectical extension, that man can attain through human
reason alone, and this both in the speculative order and in the practical order, but in the latter only
as it enables man to reach his ultimate end.
 Philosophy is the discipline which by the natural light of reason studies the first causes or highest
principles of all things-it is, in other words, the science of all things in their first causes, insofar as
these belong to the natural order.

Philosophy as a Science
What is science? Have you ever wondered what science really is and what it is that scientists
really do? I am sure you have seen a scientist in the white lab coat working furiously with
coloured test tubes looking for new discoveries. But is that all there is to science? Ask yourself
―what is science?‖ The term ―science‖ is hard to define because science involves many different
aspects of learning. The word ―scientist‖ was introduced in 1834 by a British scholar named

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William Whewell (1794-1866). Before this time people who studied science were called ―natural
philosophers.‖ It is fundamental to note that the word ―science‖ is a relatively modern word. One
way to define science is: The word ―science‖ comes to us from the Latin word scire which means
―to know.‖ Science is a systematic body of knowledge or way to study the world in which we
live.

Scientists use systematic or particular methods, such as observation and experimentation, to

gain a better understanding of the world around us. Scientists collect information or data, then,
they use this data to make conclusions and predictions about how the world works. Science
involves making observations about nature and designing experiments. It also involves making
conclusions and trying to better understand the world we live in. Systematically it involves steps
for the process of scientific inquiry. These involve:

Today‘s modern science is really a combination of three different ways ancient people
investigated the world around them. In today‘s modern world scientists also use instrumentation
to help them make observations that they can‘t observe with their senses alone. Ancient people
investigated the world around them first through ideas, then as observation, then as application.
Hence, modern science is really a combination of science as ideas, science as discovery, and
science as invention.
 Science as ideas we now call philosophy.
 Science as discovery we call a particular scientific discipline, such as chemistry, or
biology.
 Science as invention, we call technology.

How science affects philosophy

Philosophy too is a science, but not exact science in the sense of its mathematical calculation. It is
a science because it deals with ideas or knowledge of whatever exists in a systematic way. The
earliest philosophers clustered around the Mediterranean Sea most notably ancient Greece.
However, activities that we would today associate with modern science were happening all over
the world. Ancient peoples such as the Egyptians and traditional societies were observing the sky
and making mathematical calculations. The Chinese were doing primitive forms of chemistry
with mercury and sulphur, and the American Indians were testing plants for healing disease and
sickness. Today, all of these activities or technologies we would associate with ―science.‖

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 Philosophers ask the ―big‖ questions. Why is there something and not nothing at all? Since we
are something where did we come from? What is the meaning of life? What is life? How is
life defined? What is the nature of Knowledge? How can we know? How do we know that
we know? And so on. Science as we have defined gives us a systematic way of studying the
physical world around us. Scientists collect scientific information and from that information they
draw conclusions about the world we live in. As scientific information has been collected and
understood, some of the questions philosophers debated in the past, have changed. We no longer
debate about the existence of matter and how matter is composed of atoms. Science has been able
to observe and understand some aspects of the nature of matter like atoms. But other questions,
like how did matter get here in the first place, are still being debated. So science can affect how
we think about the world around us. Philosophy has to do with the training of our thinking; hence
it aims at developing fully the potentialities of our selves.

There are other two fundamental issues regarding philosophy that we ought to know right from the very
beginning of this course:
 Philosophy is not a thing, not even a particular subject matter that one can master by studying the
right books. Many beginners in philosophy expect a study similar to history, or geography or
literature. They envision reading books, learning a doctrine and at the end of the philosophical
curriculum, if successful, they hope to graduate as philosophers. Such a view is very misguided
and I invite you to dispose of it right now.
 Philosophy is not a collection of rare and sophisticated doctrines that some patience and good
will you are going you are going to master then know. Think of philosophy as swimming. How
do you learn to swim? By reading books and attending lectures in a classroom? Certainly not. If
you want to learn how to swim you must jump into the water and there you must negotiate
whether to drown or float. If you do not drown, in time, you will become a swimmer. The
analogy can be applied to philosophy as well. You learn philosophy by philosophising. At the
beginning you have to negotiate whether you are going to make a fool of yourself or you are
going to make some sense.

Now, if we agree that philosophy is not a thing, neither is it a doctrine, what is it then? How does one
learn philosophy? In order to do and know philosophy, one should first and foremost think.

Thinking
How should we approach the study of Philosophy in general? The first thing that is required is thinking.
A man is growing in the measure he is progressing in his thinking. The difference between a child and an
adult is not only the size of their bodies, but primarily the way they think. But what is thinking? Let us
first notice that this is a ―what question” (What is thinking?). The ‗what’ questions are philosophical
questions and, therefore, are very difficult in nature. Only the ignorant person fails to see the difficulty of
the following inquiries: What is a pencil? What is yellow? What is goodness? These are philosophical
questions. The ‗what question’ is after the nature of something, and to determine the nature of what is
inquired about is not always easy.

When we want to answer a what question we should first differentiate things from activities and qualities.
Whatever exists is either a thing or an action, or a quality. So when we ask: what is thinking? we must
first agree that thinking is an activity. Activities, however, can be of two types, physical activities which
involve bodies and non physical (spiritual) activities which cannot be explained in a strictly physical way.
Then, what kind of activity is thinking? Is it physical or non-physical? Philosophers have been at variance
in their answers to this question. From the point of view of Christian philosophy I say that thinking is a
non-physical activity, that is, an activity that does not belong to the body but to Mind.

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But what is Mind? Mind is a thing. Yet things can material and non-material (spiritual). The mind is a
non-material thing; we may call the mind, SELF, or CONSCIOUSNESS, or SOUL. This idea of Mind or
Soul comes from the Aristotelian divisions of Soul. For Aristotle, the soul is the animating principle; it is
the principle of life for any living organism. Aristotle argues that there are three types or divisions of
Soul. We have the 1) vegetative Soul, which gives life to any living organism taking charge of the
metabolic activities like in plants. 2) We have the animal soul, higher than the vegetative soul, which
gives life to animals; this soul is in charge of all the metabolic and instinctive activities within the
organism. Finally, 3) we have the rational Soul, which is found only in humans. For Aristotle, it is clear
that each level of soul retains the lower level, it does not drop it out completely; it only transcends it. For
example, we humans have all the three levels of soul: we have the vegetative soul, because we are livings
organisms, then we also have the animal soul that is in charge of the metabolic activities and instincts in
my body, then, finally we have the rational soul, which takes charge of all the thinking activities.

So, when we talk of Soul or Mind (or consciousness) in philosophical thinking, are referring to that
dynamic source of several non-physical activities, such as perceiving, experiencing, understanding,
judging, dreaming, imagining, remembering, recollecting, reflecting, comparing, evaluating, reasoning,
etc. Thinking therefore is an activity of the mind [our consciousness] whereby we talk to ourselves! Is
thinking only the use of mind? How about talking? But what is talking? Talking is using words to express
things. But what is a word? A word is a very special thing, is a sign that signifies a concept. What is a
concept? A concept is a thing of the mind, called also idea. The concept is non-material. Thinking is an
activity of consciousness whereby we use concepts, or ideas in order to understand, to judge and to
decide. Our thinking process is stimulated by society and culture, but it can also become limited by the
same phenomena. Yet, thinking as such is not limited: we remain fundamentally free to think as we want
to. Philosophy as a science encourages proper thinking. Therefore, to understand philosophy, we have
think if it as a science. But what is science?

Philosophy as an Activity of Man

All the above definitions or descriptions of philosophy have their good points but also their limits, insofar
as they reflect the philosophical presupposition of a given school. Personally, I like better the following
description according to which philosophy is an intellectual activity of man by means of which he wants
to understand and explain things as he experiences them as they are in themselves. In short, through
philosophy man wants to pursue truth.

What does it mean to say that philosophy is an activity of man? Philosophising is an activity of man in the
sense that it begins with man and is something that man can do by his own very nature as a thinking
subject. Man is a centre of activity and it is in action the he realizes and reveals himself. Man manifests
himself through his conscious acts. An exhausted man is not expressing his own true self. Human activity
actualizes itself in acts which describe and differentiate a human being. Man in virtue of his nature is an
open-ended-project, which means he has theoretically an infinite number of possible self-actualizations
and self-realizations. As an activity, philosophy therefore, describes the nature of man in the world, his
subjectivity. This aspect of conscious activity and choices differentiates the human from other entities; we
are not just any other entity, we are acting and world forming beings through our activity in order to
develop the idea that we dwell in the world. Dwelling is a proper term and it explains the idea of being at
home in the world as the world gets revealed to us. While other entities are just within the world; they are
not conscious of their being within the world. As world forming, we engage ourselves through our
activity with the world. As an activity, the idea of being-with is fundamental. We relate with other people
– we are relational whereby our activity affects the other and the other is a reflection of my own activity
and myself. We also relate with objects within the world and these objects obtain their meaning as we try
to understand them. Through that we transcend them. This is our mission as humans and philosophy is to
help us realize this mission.

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The capacity for self-realization is a differentiating element among men. Thus, one can say that human
activity differentiates men according to its own type as good, bad, intellectuals, morons, courageous, etc.
As an activity we determine ourselves as bad or good people. This means that philosophy as activity has
moral implications. The free human activity issued by an original act of self-determination is a
humanizing activity in the sense that it is oriented to the self-realization of the project a subject wants to
be. The more lucid the self-determination, the more personal the self-realization will be. As Pythagoras
seems to have noticed people in life follow different purposes and pursue different goals such as fame,
wealth or enjoyment. Pythagoras world claim that man is the measure of everything: of what is and what
is not. That is why we have moral philosophy to take charge of this part. Using a different language, we
can say that people in their self-realization are responding to a kind of call or vocation of what they want
to become. Of course, not all people do make the right existential choices about their self-realization
strategy, and not everybody succeeds in living a meaningful life. This implies that man has the real
chance also of destroying himself through his own activity.

In philosophising, man freely enters into philosophizing with awareness that by so doing he is responding
to some deep call of his nature. By choosing philosophizing as his activity, he makes an existential choice
of spending his life in the pursuit of wisdom. Through philosophizing man wants to understanding and
explain things as he experiences them and as they are in themselves. By means of philosophy man wants
to pursue “meaning” and not simply “facts”. Also an animal can be able to perceive facts and react to
them, but to uncover their underlying meaning belongs to man. It seems that the force behind all human
questioning is this unlimited desire of opening up the meaning of any human experience. When we get the
meaning of something we say that we have understood it. Only when understanding is complete the full
explanation of phenomena is attained and becomes communicable.

Philosophizing is an intellectual activity, that is, is proper to the intellect. There are several intellectual
activities such as experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding, thinking, and reasoning. Philosophizing
cannot be identified with any one single intellectual activity; rather, it involves all of them and we could
say that the art of philosophizing is the scientific utilization and coordination of all the above-mentioned
intellectual activities. Philosophizing is a deliberated activity. Hence, man does not necessarily have to
engage himself in such an activity, by has his possibility in himself. As all human activities, also
philosophizing involves several degrees of perfection which means that it can be refined, improved and
perfected.

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Introduction
Above we have said that man, as a being capable of thinking, is naturally inclined to philosophy.
Consequently, man has always been a ―philosopher‖. However, from an historical point of view,
philosophy proper is thought of as appearing when philosophical thought is set in written form, and
when philosophical thought is organized in a more or less systematic form. These two criteria are not
denying the existence of philosophy before literature civilization appears, but simply indicate that only
when written sources are available a history of philosophy can be produced. As far as the Western world
is concerned, philosophy proper appeared for the first time about 27 centuries ago, in the land of Greece.
Before that time it seems that man lived in a world regulated primarily by religious beliefs. Religion
was providing answers to deep human problems such as the origin and destiny of man and was also
providing rules for good living and controlling politics. Thus, it seems that before the birth of philosophy
proper, man did his own thinking according to the principles of his traditions, and accepted to be
instructed, even on matters concerning human affairs, by the ―gods.‖

While it is not difficult to reconstruct the philosophical situation of those civilizations who had known
writing, it becomes a very hard task for those peoples who don‘t have written documents. Particularly, if

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we want to consider Africa from a philosophical point of view, we must probably say that it has been –
her traditional history-living in a pre-philosophical stage. This observation does not deny the existence of
some kind of philosophy among the African tribes, but simply states the lack of written documents.
African life was marked by traditional/religious beliefs rather than a critical speculation. It appears that in
Greece, alone in the ancient world, man became aware of the power of thinking and was not afraid to
engage himself in such an activity. It was in Greece alone that philosophy achieved its autonomy and was
explicitly distinguished from religion. Philosophy claimed only the scientific study of purely rational
truths.

The Origin of Philosophy

The earliest thinkers of the Greek world were the poets, the interpreters of traditional religion: Homer,
Hesiod, etc. But during a period of less than two hundred years (600-400 BC) one can notice a
development in the art of philosophical inquiry that is quite unparalleled in world history. According to
Plato and Aristotle, wonder has been and is the matrix of philosophy: ―Wonder is the feeling of
philosophers, and philosophy begins with wonder‖ wrote Plato; and Aristotle said: ―It is owing to their
wonder that men both now begin and at the first began to philosophize.‖ Actually, philosophical thought
is stirred to activity in the main by the fact that man wants to feel at home in the universe, and he also
wants to know what‘s what.With the pre-Socratic thinkers (the Greek philosophers who lived and taught
during the 7th and 6th centuries, that is, philosophy took shape as a critic and foe of the popular mythology
and was manifestly the product of pure reasoning. Confronted by the numerous aspects of life and things,
the Greek thinkers searched for their permanent and immutable roots, which are superior to this
multiplicity and which can give it meaning. Therefore, what is truly interesting is the initial question they
asked: What is all this really? What is nature (physis), the source from which all things emerge? This
wonder gave rise to the philosophers of the elements or the great Greek Ionians.

Philosophy of the Elements

The basic question of the philosophy of the elements or atoms is: What are things made of? The
proponents of this philosophy are: Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Empedocles,
Democritus and Leucippus.

These early Greek philosophers had many arguments over many centuries over how the world works,
how it is made, and how it came into being. Modern natural philosophers, or scientists, still use reason,
logic and observation to argue about many of the same questions that the Greek philosophers argued
about some 2500 years ago. To the above thinkers, each had their own ideas regarding the nature and
composition of the world.

 Thales thought everything was made of water. He believed that water was the ―primary
substance‖ of all things. He thought that water could not be divided any further. Today we know
that water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

 Anaximander rejected water as the primary substance. As we saw earlier, he thought everything
was made of something he called ―the boundless.‖ Nobody is really sure what Anaximander
meant by ―the boundless‖ and this caused problems for him.

 Anaximenes didn‘t agree with either Thales or Anaximander. He rejected both water and ―the
boundless‖ as the primary substance. He believed that air was the primary substance.

 Empedocles disagreed with everyone and said that all things in the world were not made up of
just one substance, but of four- earth, air, fire and water.

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  There were two other philosophers, Democritus and Leucippus who didn‘t agree with anyone
either. For them, the world was made up of ―atoms.‖ They had trouble explaining exactly what
atoms were because they didn‘t know anything about them. However, they thought that all things
were made of one thing that they called atoms. They thought that atoms could be combined, like
logos, to make larger things.

Today we know that Democritus and Leucippus were right and the other philosophers were wrong. But
Democritus and Leucippus didn‘t get very many people to agree with them. Atoms were not considered a
serious possibility until almost 2000 years later during the 17th century! In conclusion and from a
scientific point of view, the philosophers of the elements were concerned with four things: terrestrial
measurements, astronomy, analysis of physical matter and analysis of motion.
 Terrestrial Measurements: Man since antiquity had devised means to measure things. He used his
thumb, foot and stride (inch, foot, yard). Bt how to measure distances that could not be traversed
as when Thales (he lived in Miletus 640 B.C.-550 BC. He has been the first in Greece to express
his ideas in logical and not mythological terms) was concerned to measure the height of the
pyramids and the distance of ships at sea.
 Astronomy: One of the greatest innovations in ancient theoretical astronomy was the shift from
the idea of a flat earth and an absolute up-down relation, to an idea of an earth situated at the
centre of a spherical universe. Anaximander [also lived in Miletus 611 BC-546 BC: he wrote a
book On Nature] came up with this idea explaining the stability of the earth as resulting from a
balanced gravity.
 Analysis of Physical Matter: The questions asked were: What is the world really? What makes it
behave as it does? The Pre-Socratics tended to think to a greater or lesser degree, in terms of
opposing qualities [they thought of opposites such light/darkness, hot/cold, dry/moist, rare/dense
as having the same amount of consistency and not as being one the lack of the other. Since both
opposites of a pair are real and yet drive each other out, it was natural to regard them as mutually
inimical] and also in terms of the supposed four generic substances (i.e., earth, water, air and fire:
each of these four bears a double reference: it is at once concrete and abstract; Earth can indicate
the ground we walk on and the state of solidity; water means what we drink and general
liquidity; air is what we breath and anything in a vaporous state; fire can indicate what burns and
universal change).
 Analysis of Motion: The Greek mind was awed by motion. In Greek, motion means change or
variation. The Greeks distinguished four types of motion: local motion, quantitative motion
(augmentation or diminution); qualitative motion (alteration: Heraclitus and Parmenides); and
substantial motion (generation and decay). All these kinds of motion, and especially the last
named which is the most profound and radical, perturbed and troubled Greek man because they
made the existence of things problematic; they overwhelmed him with uncertainty to the point
that he did not know what to rely on in respect of them: If things change, what are they really? If
a white object turns red, it is and it is not white. Multiplicity and contradiction permeate the very
being of things; thus, the Greek wondered what the things really are, that is, what they are
permanently, behind their many appearances.

BRANCHES OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

Metaphysics
Metaphysics – within the scholastic system – is philosophy, understood in its strictest meaning, since
it studies the whole of reality, seeking its ultimate causes in an absolute sense. It seeks the causes that
in the final analysis account for the being and diverse manners of being of things.

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Metaphysics means literally ―beyond physics,‖ and it is usually understood to be the branch of
philosophy that comes after natural philosophy and has for its study not merely physical being, but
being as such. This discipline is also called ontology (from the Greek onto. i.e., being) in the sense
that it studies the meaning, the structure and the principles of whatever and in as much as it is or
exists. Hence, it is not limited to some types of being, unlike the other branches of philosophy and the
particular sciences. Thus, the material object of metaphysics is all reality. Its formal object, that is,
the aspect under which it studies reality, is being precisely as being. Being, as it is investigated by
metaphysics, can be substantial or accidental, yet it is predicated analogically of substance and
accident, because its meaning as said of accident – i.e., what has no independent and self-sufficient
existence, but exists only in another being – includes its meaning as said of substance – i.e., what
exists in itself, independently from another being – but not conversely.

Being as such carried with itself some fundamental characteristics known as ―transcendental
properties,‖ namely, unity, beauty, truth and goodness. These characteristics are coextensive with
being. Therefore, according to the measure and manner in which a thing shares in these properties, it
possesses being. Along with the study of the transcendentals, metaphysics investigates also the first
principles and the principles of being.

The first principles are the following:-

 The principle of contradiction, which states that a thing cannot at the same time be and not
be;
 The principle of identity, which states that every being is determined in itself, is one with
itself, and is consistent in itself;
 The principle of excluded middle, which holds that there cannot be an intermediate between
contradictions;
 The principle of intelligibility, which asserts that everything that is, in so far as it is, is
intelligible;
 The principle of sufficient reason for its existence;
 The principle of causality, which holds that whatever comes to be has a cause;
 The principle of finality, which maintains that every agent acts for an end, or that all beings,
when acting, tend to some definite effect.

These principles explain how being can be shared by so many entities, and how these many entities,
while differing from one another, can still be similar as beings. They are distinguished into intrinsic
principles – namely, potency and act, essence and existence – and extrinsic principles – namely,
causality and participation. Potency is the aptitude in a being to receive some perfection or perform
some action. The correlate of potency is act, which expresses the fully present realization of potency.
In the ontological order act is prior to potency, for the only source that can effect a transfer from
potency to act is a being that is already in act. Essence signifies a mode or manner according to which
reality might be fashioned. As a principle of the actual existing thing, it is the element that provides a
full explanation of ―what‖ the existent being really is. Existence is the primary component of
actuality; it is the act whereby a thing is present in nature or in mind. Causality or cause is generally
defined as that from which something else proceeds with a dependence in being.

We have said that metaphysics studies causality. The major types of cause studied in metaphysics
are:-
1) Efficient cause, by which any change is brought about in the order of execution;
2) Material cause, that out of which a new being arises – matter in regard to form;
3) Formal cause, the act by which a material substratum is determined towards a new being;

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 4) Final case, that because of which something is or becomes.

Participation in the above properties, principles and causality is a concept closely related to that of
causality; it means the structural dependence of the many beings on the one being. In other words, it
means to receive a part of what belong to another fully and so merely to share in it. Thus, Socrates is
said to share in humanity because he does not have the whole of humanity exclusively. For Aristotle
metaphysics represents the greatest wisdom, because the metaphysician can judge of all things in
terms of their ultimate causes. Through metaphysics the intellect wants to reach the point of
comprehending all in one simple act and idea that attains the full truth of manifold beings and their
principles. Of course, the human mind approaches this ideal only imperfectly. It is important to see
that if these principles are not accepted as true, then nothing we think or say makes any sense, not
even this very sentence. They make our ideas, words and language stand still, as it were, while we
deal with them.

Logic
- Logic as a discipline studies the reasoning process, that is, it deals with the operations of right
reasoning. It studies principles and rules of reasoning with the main aim of distinguishing
between correct and incorrect, good and bad reasoning.

- Logic is a discipline that prepares the mind for the study and practice of philosophy. It can be
defined as the art of sound discourse. Man‘s intellectual life, being in constant development,
proceeds from knowledge already won to knowledge that follows from it. This rational
procedure, or discourse, is regulated by logic.

- Accordingly logic can be described as an instrument proper to man in so far as he has reason or is
rational. It shows how and in accordance with what rules reason attains truth and acquires sound
knowledge. To this end logic studies our mental processes and uncovers the Laws governing
them. There are three orders of rational operation:-
1. Simple apprehension, that is (conception) – grasping mentally an object without
affirming or denying anything about it.
2. Judgment that is, a mental process whereby we affirm or deny something of something
else.
3. Reasoning/inference that is, the mental process whereby we proceed to new knowledge
from previous knowledge.
- These three orders of rational operation suggest a natural three fold division of logic into logic of
term, logic of judgment and logic of reasoning/inference.

Logic of Terms
- The study of terms arises from the fact that they are the verbal means of expressing what we
know through concepts.
- Concepts are emerging in our mind by means of simple apprehension and they are both
intellectual knowledge – that which is understood and the means by which the thing known is
understood. When concepts are verbalized, they become ―terms‖.
- Terms are the ultimate significant elements into which a sentence or proposition may be resolved.
They are always used in a proposition either as subject (that about which something is said) or
predicate (that which gives information about the subject).
- Because of the different types of terms the logical need arises of determining their meaning as
accurately as possible by means of definition and division.

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 - Definition is a mental process of clarifying the meaning of a term by analyzing and relating the
elements involved in it is the subject of the logic of terms.
- Division is a process of clarifying the meaning of a term by showing all its parts.

Logic of Judgment
- Judgment is an act according to which the intellect asserts one object of thought to be identical or
non-identical with another. It is primarily concurred with the existence of a thing and because of
that, it always involves truth or falsity.
- In judgment we affirm that a thing is precisely as our intellect has conceived it and this known
conformity is what is required for formal truth,
- A judgment is verbalized in a proposition. Propositions are analysed in their form, quantity and
quality. Such analysis is necessary for the study of reasoning.

Logic of Reasoning/Inference
- Logic of reasoning is all about the reasoning process and arguments.
- Propositions are in fact used in arguments which are forms of reasoning
- By reasoning our intellect moves from what is already know to what it does not know. It is a
process by which the mind passes from two or several propositions called the conclusion.
- In correct reasoning it is impossible that the premises be true and the conclusion false. We
express our reasoning in the form of arguments.
- In logic arguments are arranged in a schematic form called syllogism.
- There are several types of syllogism. The most common is the categorical syllogism which
involves two premises and a conclusion.
- Logic studies the different types of syllogism and offers rules for conducting correctly any
argument.
- Logician is interested primarily in obtaining order in our thinking process. To this end logic
teaches how to go about making good definitions and divisions, how to make proper implications
and how to conduct correct reasoning so that the mind might attain truth.

Epistemology
- Epistemology is the branch of metaphysics devoted to the study of knowledge and its problems.
It comes from the Greek episteme, meaning knowledge in the true and certain sense.
Epistemology is also called Criteriology, from the Geek criterion, meaning a criterion or rule by
which one may test knowledge to distinguish the true from the false; less frequently it is known
as Gnoseology, from the Greek gnosis, meaning knowledge in a quite general sense. The
diversity of names reflects the controversial aspect of this discipline.
- It is the general questions regarding the nature or essence the scope, the source and finally the
justification of knowledge. Its method is general like any other philosophical method as it has no
interest in particular cases of knowledge but in knowledge itself.
- Epistemology, literary is the theory of knowledge or the study of knowledge or science of
knowledge. It is systematic organized body of knowledge. It attempts to create this systematic
organized body of knowledge of knowledge itself.
- Any philosophical endeavour presupposes the possibility of true knowledge, a possibility attested
by common sense and evident by the light of nature. Epistemology submits this presupposition to
scientific treatment, showing in what the truth of knowledge consists, and establishing by a reflex
argument that true, certain, and scientific knowledge is undoubtedly attainable. It establishes the
truth-oriented nature of our intellect and it investigates the nature of truth. It proves that the truth

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 of knowledge consists in the conformity of the mind with the thing and that it is absurd to doubt
the reliability of our organs of knowledge. Reason is capable of attaining with complete certainty
the most sublime truths of the natural order, but with difficulty and only when duly disciplined.
- Epistemology also investigates the formal object of the intellect and shows that being is that
formal object, i.e., the object which the intellect apprehends primarily and in itself and in function
of which it apprehends everything else. In other words, our mind apprehends naturally what
things are independently of us. So, epistemology shows that being as such is intelligible and that
everything is intelligible in exact proportion to its being.
- The major difference was that while the mythical explanations were traditionally and
dogmatically accepted, the new doctrines belonged to individual thinkers who formulated a
number of doctrines and tried to convince their followers about them. These brought about the
wide spread of doubt once more.
- It is this new type of doubt that led the first philosopher to wonder about knowledge (that is, what
is knowledge how do we know? How do we know what we know is indeed right? And to
formulate various theories about it.
- So, rather than continuing to wonder about the nature of universe (cosmological issues) etc. or
holding discussions on whose answers were right or wrong, they wondered how they know, that
it, they began to reflect on the ultimate nature of knowledge. This served as the origin of
epistemology or theory of knowledge.
- The subject matter and method distinguishes any type of inquiry from the rest of discipline. The
subject matter of epistemology is the concept of knowledge and not a specific kind of knowledge
as dictated by the nature of philosophy as deep, general and wide.
- In accordance with the subject matter, the method of investigation is more rational then empirical;
it uses abstract principles rather than concrete cases for observation and data analysis.
- Epistemology therefore endeavours/attempts to establish the following:-
Q1. What is the nature / essence and scope of knowledge?
Q2. What is the source / origin / foundation of knowledge?
Q3. How do the proof / Justify that we know?

1st Attempt
When a philosopher wonders about the nature of knowledge, his objective is to reflect on
the presupposed and existing knowledge, that is, first order knowledge or knowledge as
perceived when we are directly in contact with the reality or factual knowledge and from
this we develop second order knowledge that is, conceptual knowledge.
- The about explanation has distinguished two levels of knowledge namely:-
i) Empirical level or the level of verification
ii) The conceptual level or the level of abstraction
NB: Empirical level apply senses knowledge while in the conceptual level we use reason. Reason
can reflect on the sense data, factual or direct knowledge but senses cannot perceive rational
activity.

2nd Attempt
In the second question concerning the source/origin/foundation of knowledge, we are
more concerned with what an individual has that helps him to acquire the knowledge both
internal and external realities. For the knowable realities that are external in relation to
the person, the question is how does the person come to know or internalize these
external realities? There are two types of realities:-

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 i) The reality of things and
ii) The reality of the person. Two theories have emerged.
1. That which emphasizes on the role of senses and experiences hence empiricism and
2. That which emphasizes the role of mind or reason in the acquisition of knowledge hence
rationalism.
NB: Both empiricism and rationalism acknowledges the fact of senses and reason in acquiring
knowledge but only gives emphasizes to particular aspects.

- Those who stresses on reason in acquiring knowledge are rationalists and dates right from the
ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates who attached relativism of the sophists on the
ground that if knowledge were relative, they (Sophists) themselves would not teach it because
what you claim you know would be true so no need for a teacher since everyone is an authority.
Socrates concluded that knowledge has an intrinsic value, that is, absolutism or objectivity nature.
- Plato developed this Socratic idea and ended up with the conception of reality as two realms, that
is, that of universal/ (ideal) ideas and that of the corporeal / (changeable)/ shadows of these ideas.
The world of universal ideal, unchangeable ideas is the world of reality or truth. Since it is
independent of our minds, we know these truths through participation that is the soul/mind having
been existing in the ideal world, when it sees things or objects through senses, it attempts to
apprehend these ―shadows‖ or corporeal world as the mind recollect things in the previous world.
It then develops through the formation of particular opinions, to visible intelligible information
such as mathematical knowledge and finally ends up with absolute, universal and objective
knowledge that is, seeing the picture of the ideal world hence the education must be geared
towards training the mind to see things as they are in the ideal world hence the understating of the
philosopher king who contemplate the good, what ought to be in the society. Hence, the famous
Plato‘s view that some educator proceeds from the concrete (particular cases in the corporeal
world) to abstract popularly known to unknown.
- But the thinker who polished up the rationalism is Rene Descartes. He attempted to arrive at the
foundation of our knowledge by doubting all that has been said about knowledge. His methodical
doubt approach made him doubt sense knowledge as it could turn out to be deceitful, then
knowledge through experience as possibly being a dream, and mathematical knowledge as due to
the demon hypothesis, that is, the argument that a powerful evil spirit could easily persuade him
that 2 + 2 = 4, while this is not true. However, while he was in the process of doubting
everything, he found out that he could not deny the fact that he was doubting and therefore
thinking for you could not doubt if you are not thinking hence he is a doubting and thinking being
―cogito ergo sum‖ meaning thinking therefore I am.
- He established that the fact that he was a thinking being is indeed a true knowledge since he
grasped this knowledge clearly and distinctively.
- Rene Descartes categorically did away with sense knowledge, experience and religious
knowledge and paved a foundation for rationalism. At the same time he emphasized that mind or
reason can never deceive but any deceiving could only result from other areas that could
otherwise claim for knowledge such as in the world of empiricism and religious knowledge.

Cosmology
- It studies the universe, from the Greek word Cosmos, which means universe or the world
- This branch of philosophy studies the composition of the universe or the being of the bodies in two
ways: i) Bodies as three-dimensional extensions with breadth, length and height. It investigates about
the nature of quantity, extension and number; ii) Bodies as perceived by the senses, i.e., as possessing
certain active and perceive properties.

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 - Thomistic cosmology depends very much on the Aristotelian philosophy of nature and accepts its
hylemorphism. So, in any material being it differentiates two constitutive principles: material prima
(matter) and forma (form).
 Materia prima is not the imaginable notion of extension, but the idea of matter (that of which
something else is made) in its utmost purity; simply that which things are made, which in itself
is nothing actual, a principle wholly indeterminate, incapable of separate existence, but capable
of existing in conjunction with something else (the form).
 Form is an active principle which determines the purely passive first matter, somewhat as the
form imposed by sculptor makes a statue what it is. Substantial form is an internal principle
which determines the very being of corporeal substance.
- The hylemorphic doctrine accepts the reality of matter, of the corporeal world, and of extension; and
the reality of physical qualities (accidents), and also a distinction of nature or essence between the
bodies which we regard as belonging to different species. Further, it reveals the presence in all
material beings of a substantial principle (the form), immaterial in its nature, which, however, differs
from spirits, in its incapacity to exist apart from matter. It renders also intelligible the union in the
human being of matter and a spiritual soul, which is the form of the human body, but differs from the
other substantial forms inasmuch as it can exist apart from matter.

Ethics
- The term ethics is etymologically connected with the Greek ethos, meaning custom or conduct, and is
equivalent in meaning to moral philosophy, which is similarly connected with the Latin mores,
meaning customs or behaviour. It is generally regarded as a practical science, in the sense that the
objective of the study is not simply to know, but to know what actions should be done and what
should be avoided, so as to properly translate knowledge into action.
- It is the science of human behaviour through his acts: rightness or wrongness of human acts.
- Man is a being in the making; he is becoming, yet differently from all other living beings, he must
determine through his choices the quality of his life. On this duty is grounded his sense of
responsibility. Man must actualize himself according to good reason, and this means that man has the
theoretical ability of self-determination.
- Of course, historical man finds the task of making himself difficult, tiresome and sometimes
impossible. Accordingly, the outcome of man‘s self-actualization is not necessarily always positive.
Man has the true possibility of destroying himself as well as the possibility of building himself up.
Success or failure in the process of self-actualization depends on our human choices. It seems that
choosing what is good leads to existential success, whereas choosing what is wrong leads toward
existential failure. Nonetheless, all men live with the desire and hope that their life might be a good
one. Is there any way of knowing what is the right course, man should be taking in conducting his
life? Can we discover some guiding principles that may assure success to the adventure of life?
Ethics, in fact, is that particular philosophical activity that wants to discover a guiding light for the
successful living of a truly human life.
- Ethics, or moral philosophy, is the study of man‘s responsibility in front of his call to self-
actualization; the study of his freedom and its demands; the study of the knowledge that brings him to
experience greater freedom and greater fulfilment in his life. More formally we can say that ethics is a
rational discipline that studies the moral aspect of human activity, in order to orient such activity
toward what is ―good‖ for man, that is, his self-actualization. What the definition implies is that ethics
studies only those human acts, which entail freedom. And this study wants to uncover the moral

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 character of those acts (good or bad, duty or prohibition), in order to discover some safe precepts
which help man use correctly his freedom to actualize himself. This study is done with the light of
human logos. Furthermore, the definition includes implicitly that ethics is a practical and normative
discipline, i.e. it deals with actions and the norms of right living. In other words ethics does not study
how human beings behave, but how they ought to behave.
- Ethics as a discipline aims at bringing natural morality onto the scientific level.

Natural Theology
 Natural theology is part of metaphysics. The scope of metaphysics is broad enough to reach to God,
but God transcends material substances and the human mind cannot know him directly. Hence it can
seek knowledge of God only as he is related to material things as their principle or first cause. This
intellectual activity is natural theology.

The basic steps whereby philosophy transforms itself into natural theology may be detailed roughly as
follows:
1. The first step is the discovery of being as an intelligible value of the experienced real
(metaphysics).
2. With this initial discovery comes the realization that things need to be evaluated as they are
existent.
3. Through the study of the ways in which things are beings, the mind discovers composition,
imperfection, and limitation and with them comes the knowledge that such beings are not
self-explanatory.
4. At this juncture, the inquiry for an explanation leads to the affirmation of their dependence
on a First cause, origin or God.
 It is the analysis of the dependence of contingent being upon a First cause that philosophy becomes
natural theology. In fact, this very dependence demands that the first cause be free of the same
dependence; as a cause, it must be a being not composed of essence and existence as really distinct
principles. Natural philosophy, then, works out proofs of God‘s existence and attempts to say
something about His essence and attributes.
 Finally, it studies divine causality and the nature of evil.

Psychology
Psychology is the study of the human mind and the origin of ideas: how we are to explain the
presence in us of the ideas which enable us to reason about things and which present things to us as
universal. It deals with the problem of abstraction, and explains how our ideas are extracted
(abstracted) from the sensible datum by the activity of a special faculty (the intellectus agens, or
active intellect) which entirely transcends the sensible order and is the operation by which we extract
our ideas from the store of images accumulated by sense experience, ideas which represent what the
thing is, abstracting from its individuality. The phenomenon of abstraction points to the fact that man
is spirit-in-a-body. As a spirit he is capable of abstraction, i.e., of producing immaterial ideas, but
insofar as it is in a body, our ideas cannot be formed except by means of sensations and images,
which necessarily suppose bodily organs. Psychology is also concerned with the other human
faculties as appetite, volition and love. It develops into a philosophical anthropology and analyzes the
nature of human soul and its immortality. Finally, it examines the mystery of personality and the
individual differences.
FUNCTION OF PHILOSOPHY

Through the history of philosophy it is possible to single out three main interpretations of the function of
philosophy. Apart from getting rid of the illusions, there are other views on the function of philosophy.
We have four major function of philosophy namely:-

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  The contemplative function
 The practical function
 Analytic function
 The critical function
 The rational function
 The speculative function
 Philosophy overcomes illusions of life

The Contemplative Function

- The contemplative function of philosophy is prevailing among the Eastern philosophies which set
as their goal the salvation of man.
- Contemplation as a way of life that promise to man a solution to the problem of his alienation in
the world.
- In ancient Greece, the contemplative character of philosophy was recognized explicitly by
Aristotle, a disciple of Plato, who drew a sharp distinction between learning and wisdom. The
former has to do with decision making, whereas the latter is concerned with the knowledge and
contemplation of what is necessary. Contemplation is considered by Aristotle as the highest and
most rewarding activity; through it man is being elevated and conformed to the divine in him.
- In Aristotle‘s view, philosophy, insofar as it is concerned with what is necessary, does not offer
man anything to do and therefore it is contemplation. Contemplation is understood as a privileged
form of life because it is beatitude itself and a man is truly wise when he succeeds in actualizing
in himself the contemplative life.

The Practical Function

- The practical function of philosophy is a powerful instrument for changing, or modifying or
correcting reality. This was advanced by Plato who was the first to propose philosophy as the
means to transform the world. The aim of his philosophy was to transform society by basing its
life on justice. Example of the allegory of the cave can help to explain the idea. Two people lived
in the cave for a long time; the cove became their habitat. One left the cave and the other
preferred to stay in the cave. The man, who succeeded in leaving the cave and seeing the light of
the outside world, is the philosopher. Whereas the prisoner in the cave represents the majority of
mankind, that multitude of people who remain all their lives in a state of ignorance, beholding
only shadows of reality and hearing only echoes of the truth. Their view of the world is mot,
inadequate, distorted by their own passions and prejudices, and by the passions and prejudices of
other people as conveyed to them by language and rhetoric. They cling to their distorted views
with all the tenacity of adults and if they were suddenly freed and told to look at the realities of
which they had formerly seen the shadows, they would be blinded by the glare of the light, and
would imagine that the shadows were far more real than the realities.
- The man who escapes and realizes that formerly he saw only shadows is now in a state of true
knowledge; he has the mission now to return to the cave and share his knowledge for the
betterment of the others. ―Down you must go then, each in his turn, to the habitation of the others
and accustom yourselves to the observation of the obscure things there. For, once habituated, you
will discern them infinitely better than the dwellers there, and you will know what each of the
‗idols‘ is and whereof it is a semblance, because you have seen the reality of the beautiful, the just
and the good. So, our earthly city will be governed by us and you with waking up minds, and not
as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one
another for shadows and wrangle for office as if that were a great good.‖ (Plato, The Republic,
VII, 520c.)

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 - Thus, the philosophical project for Plato is oriented to education and political praxis. This active
conception of philosophy re-emerges at a much later date with the modern era: The Humanists
(Humanism is a philosophical and literary movement which originated in Italy in the second half
of the 14th century and diffused into the other countries of Europe, coming to constitute one of the
factors of modern culture) saw only ethics as an active philosophy, but Francis Bacon (Francis
Bacon [1561-1626], a British philosopher who maintained that knowledge must bring forth
practical, concrete fruits; science must be useful to the industry; men must work to improve their
lot) saw the entire philosophy as an activity that aims at dominating nature; John Locke (1632-
1704, an empiricist philosopher who maintained that the only object of human thought is the idea,
and ideas arise only from experience) saw philosophy as a process of liberation from ignorance
and prejudice; the Enlightenment hailed human reason as capable of freeing the world from errors
and of making it progress; Marx (1818-1883, founded the school known as dialectical
materialism; he taught that capitalism is unjust and ought to be supplanted by socialism) wrote
―The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it.‖
[Theses on Feuerbach]; the same vision is inspiring pragmatism (pragmatism is a philosophical
orientation which tries to interpret each motion by tracing its respective practical consequences].

The Analytic Function

- Analytic function of philosophy is analysis of issues and language in order to resolve all
descriptive, complex propositions about reality in their elementary ones, and these latter in their
ultimate unities of names and combinations of names, which represent and mean the ultimate
simples, the logical atoms of the world. In other words, the task of analysis is to make every
statement and adequate picture of the reality it describes.
- Analytic philosophers believed that problems of philosophy, of communication, relationships all
arise due to our misuse of language and therefore it is important to analyze our language into
simple atomic facts for better understanding and communication.
- Analysis is thus a form of linguistic transformation: the reduction of complex propositions, no
matter what their grammatical form, to their atomic constituents and connections, which show
their correct logical form.

The Critical Function

- This function has historically been associated with philosophy as an academic discipline and has
found a lasting expression in the questioning attitude of the Greek Philosopher Socrates.
Accordingly, we speak of the Socratic Method in philosophy, a method that emphasizes critical
questioning. The Socratic method has the critical function of philosophy and tends to encourage
honesty of thought.
- It seeks to protect man from fanaticism and hypocrisy, form intolerance and dogmatism from
slogans and ideologies.
- It aims at liberating man from narrow-mindedness with its critical function.
- Socratic Method is not destructive as people wrongly tend to perceive it but constructive (It
attempts to divide complex ideas into simple ideas then collect and construct coherent argument).
The nature of Socratic Method is such that it is not a negative attitude meant to destroy and
therefore disrupt but instead the critical attitude points to positive evaluation; it seeks to evaluate,
to judge, things in the light of clear and distinct ideas. (Critical means to judge). The critical
attitude of questioning is normally used by philosophers as a means – a method to an end;
ultimately the end is to liberate man and allow him/her to contemplate the truth.
- In being critical, philosophers questions answers. When a philosopher questions an already
established answers the purpose is to have/experience a personal prove whether the answer is
rationally arrived at and therefore, has an opportunity to reject, accept or suspend his/her
judgement, that is, make decision based or founded on rational ground.

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 - If we accept answers based on the ground prescribed by others before us, without scrutinizing
them, we risk using certain ideas even when they have become outdated. At the same time, by
cross examining the answers provided to us, the process builds our personality through enhancing
our capability heading to maturity hence understanding.

The Rational Function

- Related to the critical function in various ways but distinct from it nevertheless is the rational
function of philosophy, which is more of providing the method of philosophy. Professional
philosophers have always emphasized the need for logical and systematic thinking hence their
interest in logic being the study of correct reasoning. The rational function stresses the general
method of logical reasoning which has three major methods namely:-
 Analytic method
 Deductive method
 Inductive method

Philosophy Overcomes Illusions

- Illusion refers to any tendency to error to which we humans are especially vulnerable. For
example, think of the common opinions: wealth makes man happy; cheating during exams is
useful, etc. This is why we have today in our world different misplaced ideas of happiness,
sometimes substituted by pleasure. It is all because of the illusions that we humans have in regard
to how we want to flourish in life. What philosophy does is to help us get into the nature of these
illusions and verify if not clarify them. It induces knowledge or understanding into these illusions
as we carry on with them in our everyday living or existence.
- Illusions can be overcome only by using the mind properly and effectively. However, this is not a
simple matter. The philosopher uses his mind to clarify concepts, to analyse and construct
arguments and theories, to establish the truth of what he has at hand. In doing this the philosopher
wants to reach true conclusions.
- As a matter of fact, a true philosophy usually goes against the stream, or the majority, because the
majority opinion is often a composite of past intellectual struggles or convenient biases. There is
often deeper truth, better and new evidence that disturbs the status quo, which forces us to revise
or even reject some of our beliefs.
- In the final analysis, intelligent inquiry, which philosophy promotes, is liberating, freeing us from
prejudice, from self-deceptive notions, and from half-truths.
- The ancient philosopher Socrates was one day told by a friend of his, that Apollo - the god of
light whose shrine was at Delphi-proclaimed him the wisest man in the world. Such a report
disturbed Socrates, who then got the idea to test the truth of the oracle by consulting renowned
wise people so that he could disprove the report of his friend. So he began his interviews. Plato, a
disciple of Socrates, who reports the inquiry of his master, has him saying:
I went to interview a man with a high reputation for wisdom, because I felt that there, if anywhere, I
should succeed in disproving the oracle and pointing out to my divine authority, ‗You said that I was
the wisest of men, but here is a man who is wiser than I am.‘ Well, I gave a thorough examination of
this person-but in conversation with him I got the impression that although in many people‘s opinion,
and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not. Then when I began to try to
show him that he only thought he was wise and was not really so, my efforts were resented both by
him and by many of the other people present. However, as I walked away, I thought, ‗Well, I am
certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast about,
but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my
ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I
know what I do not know‘.

- Surprised but not discouraged Socrates continued interviewing people in different walks of life
who were believed to be very wise, but his results turned out to be no better than the first one, and
he reported:

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 The outcome of these investigations of mine, gentlemen, has been to stir against me a great
deal of hostility which has resulted in various malicious suggestions, including the description
of me as a professor of wisdom. This is due to the fact that whenever I succeed in disproving
another person‘s claim to wisdom in a given subject, the bystanders assume that I know
everything about that subject myself. But the truth of the matter, gentlemen, is that real
wisdom is the property of God, and this oracle is his way of telling us that human wisdom has
little or no value. I think that he is not referring literally to Socrates, but has merely taken my
name as an example, as if he would say to us, The wisest of you men is he who has realised,
like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

- The story of Socrates indicates that every common illusion is our tendency to overestimate our
knowledge and wisdom. Such an illusion is fatal to intellectual growth. In fact, if one is
convinced of knowing everything, it will be very hard for him to continue researching and
studying. Should such a person think that he is also wise, and then he will never feel the need of
examining his own opinions, thus depriving himself of developing a true knowledge. Knowledge
is something we keep on searching and practice. Socrates seems to have reached philosophical
insight when he discovered the limits of his own knowledge, that is, the extent of his own
ignorance. Philosophical knowledge or wisdom is the capacity of cutting through the
phenomenon of illusion.

Eventually, the practice of philosophy should lead one out of the cave to gain a wider vision of life, and to
appreciate other viewpoints and other people‘s rights and needs. The ability to live by reflective thought
in spite of and in the midst of the noise of the masses is a hallmark of philosophy.

Philosophy and Truth

The philosopher establishes a truth over against an illusion by means of argument. By argument I do not
mean a verbal fight but a process of supporting a thesis (called the conclusion). Philosophical reasoning is
closely allied to scientific reasoning in that both look for evidence and built hypotheses that are tested
with the hope of coming closer to the truth. Arguments are usually constructed ―dialectically‖. Here
―dialect‖ means a particular way of conducting and intellectual conversation in which thesis/counter-
thesis and hypothesis/counter. An argument, for example continues in a way that shows the weaknesses of
proposed solutions to the puzzles of existence and leaves some answers as more or less plausible. In a
dialectical conversation, all sides of an issue should receive a fair hearing, and the participant is left to
make up his or her own mind on the issue. Hence, in this procedure, at least two opposing views are set
forth on almost every issue. The great master of dialectical reasoning was Socrates. It seems that Socrates
did not teach any doctrine but enjoyed raising questions, and had his pupils work out the answer. As an
example of Socrates‘ dialectic I offer the following quotation from the Apology or Socrates’ Defence
written by Plato. In this work Socrates explains himself to his fellow citizens when he is brought before
an Athenian court on a most serious charge of misleading the youth. Socrates gives here below a detailed
account of the way he has lived and the conviction he had reached. Socrates is reported as saying:
I shall never give up philosophising and urging you and making my point clear to everyone I meet, saying what
I always say: ‗My good sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the city which is greatest and most noted for its
wisdom and power; are you not then ashamed to be worrying about your money and how to increase it, and
about your reputation, and about your honour, instead of worrying about the knowledge of good and truth and
how to improve your soul?‘ And if anyone contradicts me and say that he does not worry about his soul, I shall
not let him off at once and go away, but question him and examine him and refute him; and, if I think that he
does not possess virtue, but simply says he does, I shall reproach him for underestimating what is most valuable
and prizing what is unimportant. I shall do this to everyone I meet, young and old, stranger and citizen- but
particularly to you citizens of Athens, because you are nearer me in blood. For this, you must realise, is God‘s
command to me; and I think that no greater good has ever happened to you than this my service to God. For all
that I do id to go round and persuade young and old among you not to give so much of your attention to your
bodies and your money as to the perfection of your souls.

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Socrates, here, claims that he is a practitioner of philosophy, that is, he is engaging himself in examining
and refuting all sham knowledge and artificial virtue. His dialectic procedure consists in examining a
person with regard to a statement he has made, by putting to him questions calling further statements, in
the hope that they will determine the meaning and truth-value of his first statement. If he receives a false
answer, he asks many more questions forcing his interlocutors to move from less adequate definitions to a
more adequate one, or from consideration of particular examples to a universal definition. In another
work, Plato has Socrates describing his way of philosophising also as “maieutic art”, that is, the art of
midwifery:
My art of midwifery is in general like theirs [i.e. of the midwives]; the only difference is that my patients are
men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is travail of birth. And the highest
point of my art is the power to prove by every test whether the offspring of a young man‘s thought is a false
phantom or instinct with life and truth. I am so far like a midwife that I cannot myself give birth to wisdom, and
the common reproach is true, that, though I question others, I can myself bring nothing to light because there is
no wisdom in me. The reason is this. Heaven constrains me to serve as a midwife, but has debarred me from
giving birth. So of myself I have no sort of wisdom, nor has any discovery ever been born to me as the child of
my soul. Those who frequent my company at first appear, some of them, quite unintelligent, but, as we go
further with our discussions, all who are favoured by heaven make progress at a rate that seems surprising to
others as well as to themselves, although it is clear that they have never learned anything from me. The many
admirable truths they bring to birth have been discovered by themselves from within. But the delivery is
heaven‘s work and mine. The proof of this is that many who have not been conscious of my assistance but have
made light of me, thinking that it was all their own doing, have left me sooner than they should, whether under
others‘ influence or of their own motion, and thenceforward suffered miscarriage of their thoughts through
falling into bad company, and they have lost the children of whom I had delivered them by bringing them up
badly, caring more for false phantoms than for the true. And so at last their lack of understanding has become
apparent to themselves and to everyone else. … In yet another way those who seek my company have the same
experience as a woman with child; they suffer the pains of labor and, by night and day, are full of distress far
greater than a woman‘s, and my art has power to bring on these pangs or to allay them. So it fares with these,
but there are some, Theaetetus, whose minds, as I judge, have never conceived at all. I see that they have no
need of me and with all good will I seek a match for them. Without boasting unduly, I can guess pretty well
whose society will profit them. I have arranged many of these matches with Prodicus, and with other men of
inspired sagacity.

For Socrates, truth is already within us. The purpose of his “maieutic art” is to lead a pupil to look inside
himself and get in touch with his own soul. By means of proper questioning (i.e., the dialectical
procedure) the mind of the pupil is awakened and stimulated to generate serious thoughts. Unfortunately,
a great deal of education today consists of filling up the mind of a student with pieces of information,
which is wrongly assumed to generate greater knowledge –philosophy dies not claim to teach anything; it
rather wants to awaken the soul and let it come to life. Only then truth is able to enlighten one‘s mind.
Philosophy is about life; it is a reflection on life – that is the philosophical truth and not just epistemic
truths.

THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY

Analytic Method
- Thinking that is logical and systematic must not be haphazard or confused; it should be clear
thinking which makes the necessary distinctions, separating clearly what is essential, what
matters from what is accidental and of less importance. Such thinking is primarily analytical.
- It cuts issues into parts, analyses concepts and statements with an attempt to clarify and justify
their meanings.
- It aims at synthesizing i.e. putting things together and therefore, seeing things in their totality and
as interrelated within an overall framework.
- It emphasises on dividing each problem and theory into smallest essential components in order to
analyze each unit carefully aiming at clarifying the concept in order to understand their meaning
and implications.

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Deductive Method
- A deductive method is normally found in arguments. An argument is a set of propositions in
which the truth of one of the propositions is claimed to be established on the basis of the truth of
the other propositions (a statement or sentence that is either true or false). An argument can
briefly be understood as a set of premise(s) and a conclusion.
For example:-
P1. All men are mortal
P2. Socrates is a man
C. Socrates is mortal

- The above argument is a perfect form of a deductive argument. A deductive argument is one in
which there is a claim that if the truth of its premises is granted, then its conclusion is also true as
a matter of logical necessity. In a good deductive argument the truth of the premises taken
together implies nothing else but the truth of its conclusion. In other words, the meaning of the
premises taken together implies the meaning of its conclusion. There are few elements to be
observed in a deductive method:-

i) Deductive method moves from universal or general proposition to particular

proposition or case
ii) Deductive method emphasis on the logical truth i.e. the question of validity
and invalid in an argument validity emphasis on the form or structure or
relationship between the premises and conclusion to be true and therefore a
valid argument is one in which the truth of the premises necessarily
guarantees the truth of its conclusion e.g.

P1. All human beings are rational beings

P2. Africans are human beings
C. Africans are rational being

- Deductive method therefore is an attempt to arrive at truth.

Inductive Method
- In an inductive method or argument, the truth of the premises, if granted, only offers a partial or
high probable support to the truth of its conclusion. In other words, if the truth of the premises of
an inductive argument is granted, then the truth of its conclusion is only probable, that is, not
guaranteed e.g.
P1. Most Luos like eating fish
P2. Okiambe likes eating fish
C. Therefore probably Okiambe is a Luo

There are 100 mangoes in a basket.

70 of the mangoes picked at random are found to be rotten.
Therefore probably all the 100 mangoes in the basket are rotten.

- It is reasoning from particular cases to arrive at a general conclusion. It is usually used in

scientific reasoning or experiments in that to arrive at a general scientific theory, there is always
several experiments done to arrive at the same result or to validate the result

Generally, both deductive and inductive methods emanating from the rational function of philosophy
emphasizes on coherent set of ideas, synthesis of thought and comprehensive system of thought has
the bearing on technical philosophy. They have greatly been influenced by the widely – felt need for
scientific analysis. Inspired thus by the sciences, philosophers seeks to analyze concepts, statements

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 and languages used in different contexts in order to clarify and justify meanings. This general
function of philosophy is referred as method of logical reasoning. Its function of analysis and
synthesis has made philosophers to be painted as too logical and too rational. They seem to rely
almost exclusively on the mind as the sole source of knowledge. As a result, philosophers have often
been called ―idealists‖ who live in an ivory tower and who are not down to earth.

The Phenomenological Method

Phenomenology was started by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and later own developed by Heidegger.
Among others members of this school I mention Edmund Husserl Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-
1961), Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-). The phenomenological method is to describe the phenomena in
the flow of consciousness as it occurs in intended human experience. Phenomenology strives for an
essential description of phenomena, as they are in consciousness, in their own pure, pristine and
original manner. To the things themselves, the famous phenomenological motto, which means a
turning towards phenomena that might have been locked from sight by the taken-for-granted
assumptions, or by the prevalent common sense of our daily coping, or indeed by philosophical or
scientific theories or explanations already in place (Husserl 1982). Phenomenology attempts to
describe phenomena faithfully and presupositionlessly, without expecting to arrive at any
understanding of them from any starting point other than the facticity of an always and already
experienced world (Heidegger 1962, Husserl 1970, Merleau-Ponty 1962). As Merleau-Ponty (1962)
noted: ―Phenomenology can be practised and identified as a manner or a style of thinking‖, that is, as
a method, not an epistemological or ontological theory:

―Phenomenologydoes not subscribe to a ‗standpoint‘ or represent any special ‗direction‘; for

phenomenology is nothing of either sort, nor can it become so long as it understands itself. The
expression ‗phenomenology‘ signifies primarily a methodological conception‖ (Heidegger 1962:
50)

Husserl‘s call is to turn to the directly perceived things themselves, denying representation
theories of perception, as John Locke put it, I have ideas in my mind, but the problem is whether
those ideas correctly represent objects outside the mind in the external world. Husserl is against a
representational epistemology that took root in early 20th Century. Phenomenology attempts to
describe sheer experience, whatever is experienced by consciousness without any presupposition,
without any metaphysical additions, without the intrusion of science, without the intrusion of
Aristotle‘s substance metaphysics.

The phenomenological method is structured in the following 4 phases:

(1) Mental phase (intentionality)

(2) Performing the Reduction (epoche)
(3) Investigating the Essence (Eidetic reduction): Watching Modes in Which the Essence
Appears
(4) Interpreting Concealed Meanings (The transcendental Ego: a pole which interprets
things of our conscious experience)

First, the phenomenologist begins with intentionality; that is, directing his mind to the object of
his mental apprehension. To objects that appear to his conscious experience. It is more of a
mental process that does not assume the nature of the object that presents itself. The second phase
is that of “epoche”; the Greek concept which means bracketing. This means that the
phenomenologist should bracket the natural standpoint. The natural standpoint is the belief in our
mind that all our experience are intentional acts and objects; and these are caused by natural
things in the human body. That is to say, normally when I experience the world, I assume that my

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experience is actually taking place in the physical world described by science that somehow
causes my experiences. The whole point of the natural standpoint that experience is inside and is
causally related to the natural world is to be suspended or bracketed. This means that Husserl is a
bit abstemious than Descartes. He is not saying that the natural standpoint is false; he is not
saying even that we should doubt its truth as in Descartes. He is simply asking us to put it out of
place, without making any judgment about the causation of our experiences, about whether our
experiences represent extra-mental objects, or the role of consciousness in nature.

The third element of the method is called ―eidetic‖ reduction. ―Eidetic‖ comes from the Greek
word eidos, which means Form or Idea. What Husserl means is that eidetic reduction is the
attempt to discover the eidos or essences of each type of intentional act or object. So the
phenomenologist should bracket everything idiosyncratic or unique to him or herself, and tries to
describe the essence or form of each kind of intentional act with its specific type of intentional
object. Literally speaking, if I am a phenomenologist, I performing the epoche, I fix my attention
on my perception of material objects, so at this moment, I‘m perceiving a series of material
objects in this room, am not making any decision whether material objects exist outside my mind
or not, I am not concerned about such things. I‘m just saying I perceive objects that are opaque to
light, that are solid, that resist my touch; I experience them in their natural characteristics.

The forth level is that of interpretation of the concealed meanings. Once I look at these
experiences, I try to describe any universal and necessary features of those experiences and in
every visual perception intention of a three dimensional object part of that object is always hidden
at the back. That is to say, there is always something about every intentional object that is not
presented in a single intentional act of perception. Husserl uses the concepts of perception and
apperception, presentation and appresentation to describe this whole level of interpretation.

All this set of reductions are simply ways of trying to get to what he thinks of as the most basic,
inner, determinative, causal sphere of my consciousness, which determines everything else in
experience. The phenomenologist then is an ideal non empirical scientist. Historically it looked
like if you studied experience, you are an empiricist. The empiricists presuppose the existence of
nature (Locke, Berkeley and Hume), they presuppose that I‘m looking at experience but means I
analyze the ideas in my mind and I relate them to what is likely to be the cause of things in the
external world. Husserl doesn‘t want to do that; he wants to perform an ideal study more like a
mathematician or a geometer; someone who contemplates what a triangle is and figures out its
essential features with the mind; but he wants to bring that kind of ideal thought experiment to
whatever appears in consciousness. So, he wants a non natural, non empiricist ideal analysis of
experience. In this, he thinks he has something new that no one had before. Husserl‘s real basic
aim was to produce a pre-scientific systematic study of the essences of things where things mean
whatever appears in consciousness, whatever appears as fundamental evidence in conscious life.
As phenomenologists, the business is to describe the flow of human experience. What is the
relevance of this kind of new science that is non naturalistic, scientific in a broader sense but not
a natural science and not psychologistic analysis of the types of intentional acts and objects? The
phenomenologists distinguish all kinds of intentional objects or acts such as perceptions,
imaginations and memoirs; that is, the structure of memory, the experience of the word ‗ought‘,
structure of experience of beauty. Try to correspond to their objects. But with such kind of
objects, Husserl insisted that all knowledge and sciences, all philosophy and all mathematics
depend on phenomenology.

Phenomenology points out that underlying all knowledge, previous to all scientific investigation
and to all philosophical reflection, there is a direct, original, spontaneous, pre-reflective,
knowledge of or contact with reality, based ultimately on the fact that each one of us is man-in-

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 the-world. Natural science gets its evidence from the conscious experience of scientists which
phenomenologists study. The fundamental aim of phenomenology is the phenomenological
research for the understanding of nature. Phenomenology will become a foundation of all other
disciplines. And that means experience is more philosophically fundamental than natural science.
Phenomenology is a challenge to modern technological forms of expressing reality, where reality
always appears in a calculative and constrained manner, as standing-in-reserve for optimization:
make profit.

THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY

Basically the problems of philosophy are God, man and universe. These three broad areas covers all the
dimensions of philosophy problems and much more as discussed above. They attempt to embrace the
totality of the reality as it is without disregarding the relationship and interaction of all. They all seem to
have four major characteristics namely:-
1. They are broad/wide
2. They are general
3. They are such that they cannot be solved empirically
4. They are appealing to reason

1. Broadness
- Philosophy discusses broad questions whose considerations involve many different issues that cut
across boundary lines that divide other human enquiries. For example in order to discuss the
perennial philosophical mind – body question meaningfully, one might have to bring in some
parts of neurology, (what happens in the brain), electronic (computers and their achievement),
psychology (Experimental study of human behaviour) or theology (for certain doctrines about the
soul). Of course, only a few parts will be involved from each and most of the time will be
directed to clarifying concepts like ―mind‖ and ―person‖, and to examining the various theories
that have been put forward.
- The more one knows about other human enquiries, the better one is likely to progress in
philosophy. Indeed history of philosophy shows that most of the great philosophers were well
grounded in other human enquiries.

2. Generality
- Besides their broadness, philosophical problems can be said to be general. They are general in
that they are concerned with principles and issues at a relatively high level of abstraction. They
are for example not concerned with asking what the real nature of John or Mary is but with the
nature of man in general, not about James or Esther‘s mind but about the human mind, not about
whether Mohammed should visit his sick mother or pay his debts but about duties and obligations
as such philosophical problems do not attempt at giving more general description of the world but
rather are concerned with certain very general problems that are not limited to any branch of
scientific enquiry.

3. Non- empirical
- Philosophy problems cannot be solved empirically, that is through scientific method, that applies
observation and experiment processes. The psychologist, for example, can observe a person‘s
behaviour or device experiments to discover on what factors judgment depends. But a

25
 philosopher cannot learn from more observation whether the mind is a spiritual entity or design
experiments to establish whether we have free will. This is because the observation of any
behaviour study will remain the same.)
- A social scientist may conduct some kind of poll and find that 60% of the population thinks
abortion should be abolished, but counting heads does not in any obvious way have direct bearing
on the question of wrongness or rightness of abortion, i.e., the religious medical or ethical
dimension of the issue at hand. Thus, although there is some overlap in problems in both
philosophy and Science, they differ in that philosophy has little chance in resolving its problems
through empirical investigation. Philosophy relies heavily on analytical and logical examination
or method.

4. Appeal to reason
- The other feature of philosophical problem is the element of asking questions and tendency of
seeking answers while appealing to pure human reasons. Critical and reflective attitude is
essential in solving philosophy problems. These two components are so crucial that philosophy
sometime has been defined in terms of critical and reflective thinking, the discipline that
exercises human reason at its highest level.

The great problems of philosophy can be reduced to three main very general issues, namely, the world,
man and God. All the branches of philosophy have developed round these three issues.

The World
The world, taken in its most general meaning as the totality of existing things, has kept man in a state of
wonder since the beginning. Before philosophy was invented, man used to explain the world and its
phenomena mythologically, that is, by referring to religion. For a very long time the mythological
world-view provided answers to the unsophisticated mind of pre-philosophical man about any question
that could have distressed his intellect. Eventually, the mythological world-view gave way to the
rational world-view, and philosophy began to investigate into the mysteries of the world by using only
reason. Physical phenomena caught first the attention of the early philosophers; but eventually, physical
explorations led to metaphysical investigations and questions about the origin and constitution of the
universe came to be intermingled with questions about the foundations of reality. In Aristotle physics
leads to metaphysics and metaphysics to theology. An example of the earliest approaches to the world
is offered by an ancient thinker called Anaxagoras. He was born in Asia Minor about five centuries
before Christ, and spent most of his life in Athens, that at the same time was the most important centre
of studies. He taught that the world, in spite of all the appearances, was made up with an infinite
number of germs, he called spermata. He maintained that everything was formed by these particles so
that all things are in everything. The most important in his philosophy of the world, however, was his
history of the Mind. The mind caused a revolution at a definite point in the original chaos, which
brought about the separation of the elements and the emergence of order. He wrote:

The Mind is infinite and autonomous and mingled with nothing, but is entirely by itself. It is the thinnest and the
purest of all things and has perfect knowledge of all things and the greatest power. It has power over everything
that has soul, both great and small.

Other early thinkers as well tried to explain why things in this world are undergoing change and
corruption, and yet the world does not come to an end. Some have been so clever as to anticipate
the idea of ―atoms‖ as the fundamental elements of matter and the reason of change.

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Man
Man has become a philosophical problem since the days of the Sophists and Socrates [the Sophists were
professional teachers, who made a living out of the hunger people in ancient Athens had for guidance in
practical affairs. They professed to teach the art of Rhetoric-speech which was absolutely necessary for
political life]. In the pre-philosophical time, man was usually interpreted vis a vis God, and speculation
revolved about his eternal destiny and the nature of his ―soul‖ or ―spirit.‖ With the arrival of
philosophy, man was seen more and more as a ―rational being‖. His rationality, thus, became a rich
field of philosophical investigations that gave origin to epistemological, ethical, psychological,
political, aesthetical and metaphysical reflections. From an early essentialist approach to man,
philosophy in our days has shifted to an existentialist one and has stressed more and more man‘s
capacity and responsibility for self-realization. Socrates might have been the first philosopher to raise
the question: What is the nature and principle of man? His answer was that man is his soul. The soul is
making man what he is. Soul, to Socrates meant the intellect which is the principle of our intellectual
and moral activities. Accordingly, Socrates proposed that man could be healed form his miseries only if
the soul is cured and not only the body. As defence at his trial Socrates said:

This is what my God commands, and it is my belief that no greater good has ever befallen you in this city than
my service to my God. For I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your
first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls,
proclaiming as I go, Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both
to the individual and to the state.

The body, for Socrates, was just the instrument used by the self or soul. It is the self that has priority
and the only knowledge that has a real value is the knowledge of the self. The true excellence, or virtue
of man is the excellence of the soul. That is, that makes the soul excellent. This virtue is identified with
knowledge. Without knowledge no good life is possible. Thus man‘s success is not to be measured in
the light of the physical things he has, but in the light of the wealth of his soul, which is summarized in
knowledge. True values, for Socrates, are of a spiritual and not material nature. From this follows that a
man with knowledge will pursue only what is good, whereas a man without knowledge is bound to
make mistakes and do wrong. Knowledge that is necessary for living a good life. The ideal proposed by
Socrates is a life in which the soul has full control over the body. A life is good in the measure that it is
ruled by rationality rather than by instincts; and freedom consists in reason acting without the
constraints of the body. For Socrates, man himself is the artisan of his happiness or unhappiness:

There is one way, then, in which man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul-if in life he has
abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do more harm than good,
and has devoted himself to the pleasures of acquiring knowledge, and so by decking his soul not with a
borrowed beauty but with its own – with self-control, and goodness, and courage, and liberality, and truth- has
fitted himself to await his journey to the next world.

Today, we have other concerns about man. Man is looked as a relational being – the dialogical concept of
man. We also have the religious conception of man whereby he is looked as Imago Dei – the image of
God, created in his image and likeness. All this justifies Charles the Foucault‘s claim that man was
invented in the 17th century: meaning that only in the 17th century that there evolved other sciences
(psychology, penology, ethics, etc.) that dedicated themselves to the study of man. Before that man was
explained only in relation to his creator determined by religion.

God
God has always been a familiar theme of religious reflections and practices. Yet, with the advent of
philosophy the mythical understanding of the divinity had to undergo a critical review. As a result of
this rethinking what has emerged is the God of the philosophers that has been contrasted with the God
of the believers. God, from the philosophical point of view, has been considered from three different
angles:

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  In his relationship with the world: in this case he is seen as cause [transcendent or
pantheistic].
 In his relationship with the moral order: in this view God is the Absolute Good who
guarantees the moral order of the world, or who himself is the moral order, or who created
the moral order.
 In his relationship with the divinity: in this sense one justifies either polytheism, when
God is differentiated from the divinity, or monotheism, when the divinity is rigorously
identified with God.

Speculations about God crystallized in metaphysical doctrines, known as Natural Theology. An ancient
example of Natural Theology is offered by Xenophanes of Colophon who became notorious for having
satirized Homer who in the classical Greece was held to have been like a prophet. He denounced Homer
and Hesiod, for what they said about the gods. He flourished in the middle of the sixth century B.C.
Xenophanes is the first case we meet of thorough demythologizing beliefs. According to him, God is the
fundamental reality, the absolute ‗principle‘ which is eternal, one, stable and unchangeable. He
maintained that there are no gods but only one God. Pluralism of divinities, in his, mind, was
contradictory. God is almighty and ―It is the whole of God that sees the whole that thinks, the whole that
hears.‖ He also wrote that ―God is one, supreme among gods and men, not at all like mortals in body or in
mind.‖ God remains always the same and he is beyond change: ―He always abides in the self-same place,
not moving at all; it is not appropriate to his nature to be in different places at different times.‖ By means
of this criticism against the anthropomorphic religion and of his view of the oneness of God Xenophanes
has opened the way for investigating the metaphysical existence of God. He can be considered as the first
philosopher of religion whose influence has been great on the West. In some of his fragments we read:

Mortals suppose that the gods have been born, that they have voices and bodies and wear clothing like men.

If oxen or lions had hands which enable them to draw and paint pictures as men do, they would portray their
gods as having bodies like their own; horses would portray them as horses, and oxen as oxen.

Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all sorts of actions which when done by men are disreputable and
deserving to blame- such lawless deeds as theft, adultery, and mutual deception.
Quite evidently the gods have not revealed everything to mortals at the outset: for mortals are obliged, in the
slow course of time, to discover the themselves what best.

No man has existed, or will exist, who has plain knowledge about the gods and the questions I discuss. For even
if someone happened by chance to say what is true, he still would not know that he did so. Yet, everybody
thinks he knows.

The mythologization carried out by Xenophanes becomes impressive when we realize that he took away
the divine that popular mentality attributed to natural phenomena:

All things come from the earth, and they reach their end by returning to the earth at last.
Whatever comes-to-be and grows is earth and water.

She whom men call Iris (rainbow) is a cloud of such a nature as to cause appearances of violet, red and yellow-
green.

After his critique of traditional theology, the West could no longer think of God in the old way.
Xenophanes of Colophon was the first Greek thinker, so far as is known, to apply clear reasoning firmly
and coherently to the central problem of religious theology, the problem of God‘s nature; and he answers
his questions emphatically declaring that God is one and unique, utterly unlike human beings in all
respects but one. Thus, he is the first known critical theologian in the ancient Greece. Xenophanes is very
much a modern thinker in his opposition to anthropomorphism, in his doctrine that investigation and
discovery are more reliable than revelation, and in his recognition of the relativity of sense-perception.

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 THE CLASSICAL TIME OF PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy, after its promising beginnings, left the study of nature in order to concentrate on the problems
of man and his activity. This transition in interest was made possible by the Sophists and Socrates [the
word sophists is formed by adding to the word for wisdom Sophia, a suffix connoting a man who
practices a profession, and who is thus in some way an expert. A sophist therefore mans something like a
―wisdom expert.‖ The sophists claimed that wisdom could be taught]. Socrates (469 B.C.-399 B.C.) is by
far the most influential among the early philosophers. His business was to make men think. The chief
topic of Socrates‘ discussions was the problem of the conduct of human life, the moral problem: man
ought to pursue what is good for him; this good is the ultimate good; but it is impossible to do good
without ―knowledge‖ of what is good. Philosophy, however, attained its maturity only with Plato (427
B.C. - 347 B.C.) and his disciple Aristotle (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.).

Plato [427-347 B.C.]:

Plato was born about 427 B.C and was from a royal family. His father‘s family traced its descent from
Codrus, the last of the tribal Kings of Attica. Plato‘s mother‘s family was related to that of Solon, the
lawgiver of Athens. His uncles, on the mother‘s side, namely Critias [the poet] and Charmides, were
among the leading men of the Thirty Tyrants. Plato understood the importance of true knowledge and of
metaphysics. In his epistemology, he differentiated two levels of knowledge: the level of doxa and the
level of episteme.
 The former involves opinion and is concerned with the material world, whereas
 The latter is concerned with intelligible things
Through these two forms of knowledge, the intellect rises by means of dialectic to the intuitive
contemplation of the idea-essences (Forms) and finally of God, the super-essential Good.

In his metaphysics, Plato taught that since things are less perfect, they are only participation in goodness.
Therefore, he postulated the necessary existence of a being whose goodness, beauty and perfection are
full and entire, unmingled with their contraries; a being which is the ground of beauty and goodness of
everything else. His thought thus ascended to God who transcends the world and is distinct from it. God,
as Plato understood Him, is goodness itself, the absolute Good. In ethics, he established that God alone is
the good (end) of man. And man can achieve this absolute good by means of virtue and contemplation.
Plato in his political philosophy employed the ethical theory of the State, and views the State as a moral
institution, whose essential function is to facilitate good life for its citizens. Consequently the citizens on
their part are morally obliged to obey the State. The core within this theory is that the fundamental
function of the State is basically to direct and enrich the moral quality of the citizenry, by supplying it
with the advantages and the benefits of mutual aid. The State is seen as the moral community; a group of
persons who are governed under the same laws, the objective being the attainment of moral [common]
good. Until or unless the State is a community bent towards ethical purposes and ends, and at the same
time held together by moral ties, then, it is indeed not a worthwhile State. Plato is generally considered to
be one of the most influential philosophers to have ever lived. It is argued by some scholars that Western
Philosophy is no more than footnotes to platonic postulates and views. Plato‘s Dialogues virtually cover
all the broad areas of philosophy namely, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, social and political
philosophy.

Plato’s Theory of Ideas/Forms

The middle of the Republic, Plato is concerned with questions of pure philosophy, as opposed to politics.
His philosophy rests on the distinction between reality and appearance, which was first set forth by
Parmenides. Plato‘s theory is partly logical and partly metaphysical:

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  The logical part has to do with the meaning of general words. There are many individual animals
of whom we can truly say ‗this is a cat‘. What do we mean by the word ‗cat‘? Obviously
something different from each particular cat. An animal is a cat, it would seem, because it
participates in a general nature common to all cats. Language cannot get on without general
words such as ‗cat‘, and such words are evidently not meaningless. But if the word ‗cat‘ means
anything, it means something which is not this or that cat, cut some kind of universal cattiness.
This is not born when a particular cat is born, and it does not die when it dies. In fact, it has no
position in space or time; it is ‗eternal‘. This is the logical part of the theory (Form).
 According to the metaphysical part of the theory, the word ‗cat‘ certain ideal cat, ‗the cat‘,
created by God, and unique. Particular cats partake of the nature of the cat, but more or less
imperfectly; it is only owing to this imperfection that there can be many of them. The cat is real;
particular cats are only apparent.

For Plato, whenever a number of individuals have a common name, they have also a common ‗idea‘ or
‗form‘. For instance, thought there are many beds, there is only one ‗idea‘ or ‗form‘ of a bed. Just as a
reflection of a bed in a mirror is only apparent and not ‗real‘, so the various particular beds are unreal,
being only copies of the ‗idea‘, which is the one real bed, and is made by God. They participate in the real
and ideal one bed. Of this one bed, made by God, there can be knowledge, but in respect of the many beds
made by carpenters there can be only opinion. The philosopher, as such, will be interested only in the one
ideal bed, not in the many beds found in the sensible world. He will have a certain indifference to
ordinary mundane affairs. With his theory of forms, Plato makes a total separation between the physical
or material world and the formal, ideal world. The formal ideal world is considered the archetype of the
material world of our everyday concerns. The Ideal world is the intelligible, perfect world, while the
material world is imperfect and unintelligible. This world is to be given perfection by the Ideal world of
forms.

Plato explains the difference between clear intellectual vision and the confused vision of sense-perception
by an analogy from the sense of sight. Sights, he says, differs from the other senses, since it requires not
only the eye and the object, but also light. We see clearly objects on which the sun shines: in twilight we
see confusedly, and in pitch-darkness not at all. Now the world of ideas is what we see when the object is
illumined by the sun, while the world of passing things is a confused twilight world. The eye is compared
to the soul, and the sun, as the source of light, to truth or goodness.

The soul is like an eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and
is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only,
and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence ... Now what
imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good,
and this you will deem to be the cause of science.

This leads up to the famous allegory of the cave or den, according to which those who are destitute of
philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because
they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. But between then and the wall there
is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the
light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which
they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time
he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of
philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it is his duty to those who were formerly his
fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up.
But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows
less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.

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 ‗And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:- Behold! Human beings
living in an underground den, which has a mouth open toward the light and reaching all along the den; here they have
been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before
them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a
distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built
along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
‗I see.
‗And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels and statues and figures of animals
made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
‗You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
‗Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws
on the opposite wall of the cave.‘

Plato‘s theory of ideas contains a number of obvious errors. But in spite of these it marks a very important
advance in philosophy. For Plato, we cannot express ourselves in a language composed wholly of proper
names, but must have also general words such as ‗man‘, ‗dog‘, ‗cat‘; or if not these, then relational words
such as ‗similar‘, ‗before‘, and so on. Such words are not meaningless noices, and it is difficult to see how
they can have meaning if the world consists entirely of particular things, such as are designated by proper
names.

Aristotle [384-322 B.C]

After the 13th century, one philosophical school of thought became so widespread among major
universities that simply came to be called Scholasticism, meaning, the philosophy of the schools.
Scholasticism was a Thomistic philosophy based in Aristotle‘s logic and metaphysics. Aristotle was a
disciple of Plato and he was down to earth and not speculative like his master Plato. He was concerned
with real existing realities that populate the world. After having been the disciple of Plato for twenty
years, left his master and worked out his own philosophy. In metaphysics he proposed the doctrine of
hylemorphism [Hylemorphism is made up of two Greek words: hyle which means matter and morphe
which means form]. According to this doctrine all material beings are composed of some metaphysical
principles as such as matter and form, act and potency, essence and existence. The crown of his
metaphysics is his doctrine of God, who is Pure Act, or Unmoved Mover. God‘s existence according to
Aristotle can be proved philosophically. In this world there are things in motion (i.e., undergoing change);
but what is moving (i.e., changing) must be moved by another; now, it is impossible to think of an infinite
chain of beings which move and are in turn moved by others; therefore, there must be a First Mover,
which is moved by nothing else.

Now to understand Aristotle‘s metaphysics, (Beings/entities, substance, causality, soul/mind in modern

thought: his metaphysics is built on these elements) we can begin with the question: What is there in the
room, the car, the backyard, the train that you are now in? Just take a little imaginative inventory. If I ask
you: what exists in this classroom? Well, you might mention that there are tables, seats, chairs, people,
books, cups, cell phones, shoes, bags, furniture, et cetera. Now if I ask you to list those things in your
immediate space, I presume that your list will look like the one mentioned, only a little more detailed.
Some smart person might mention not only that there are books, but are pages of books, not only are
chairs, but are chair legs. And some deep minds can also mention that there is light and air in this room.
But, in fact, in all such list, much more has been left out. There is a lot more in this room: there are
colours in this room, standing, breathing, there is listening, there is a direction tight and left, up-down,
before and after. That is, there are relations, activities and properties of things and not just things that are
present. Your list of things is not wrong however, it means that you are thinking like a good Aristotelian.
All realities including properties, relations and activities are beings, or in Greek for Aristotle: ousia,
which simply means beings.

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Aristotle divided all things that are into ten logical categories and it included things like the properties
things have, activities, etc. But out of all these ten categories of whatever is in any sense of the word is,
out of all of them, one is primary. Aristotle gives priority to one of the ten. That one type of being which
is primary is for him relatively independent of physical objects. In fact, tables, chairs, peoples, books, the
kinds of things you mentioned in your imaginative list, the other nine categories of beings are understood
by Aristotle to belong to and to be properties of or predicated of those basic things. This most basic kind
of thing is Parousia in Greek or Primary Being-Primary Substance. For Aristotle, substances exist in the
fullest sense of the word exist. Substances are made of matter and form. Aristotle lists four possible
candidates for being the substance of something: essence, universal, genus, and subject. The dog has
being in the fullest sense, then, its colour or its posture or its activity are properties of the dog. The dog is
not property of the colour, or posture or activity. We say the dog is brown, but we don‘t say brownness
has a dog under it. We say the woman is sitting, we don‘t say sitting is substantiated in the woman. You
notice this has to do with subject and predicate form of language. Aristotle distinguishes what the subject
of things be from the predicates or properties we say about them. This characterization of a subject is
reminiscent/significant/meaningful of the language of the Categories [e.g. quality, quantity, weight,
height, colour, and relation, etc.], which tells us that a primary substance is not predicated of anything
else, whereas other things are predicated of it. Each is compound of substance + attribute:
 A brown horse = horse + brownness
 A scholar = a human + education

So, the way to look at this is simply that Aristotle takes all various features and characteristics of an
environment and sees them as localized into as properties of one particular kind of thing in an
environment: the substances.

The technical definition of substance is: the substance contains parts but is not a part of anything, and
properties are predicated of it, but is not predicated of anything. So, once again, it is natural to say: the
tree is tall but not tallness is substantiated in the tree. The tree is the subject of the sentence and tallness is
a predicate of it. Understood in this way, substance underlies or supports its properties. This means that
every independent existing physical object was for Aristotle a primary substance. I am a primary
substance, the lectern is a primary substance, my car is a primary substance, etc. Substance became the
most important metaphysical term for 2300 years after Aristotle. For it meant the entity in question
independently existed; it exists as anything else does and it contains its own qualities and independent
principle of intelligibility or identity which explains its properties and its motions. It has a nature for
Aristotle, a quality of an explanatory sense. You look at Anthony, then, you figure out elements or
properties (tall, black, fat, round bearded, etc.) that identify or distinguish Anthony from the rest of the
people.

Although Aristotle wrote on every field, his main field was arguably biology. Living things for Aristotle
have what he called psyche - from which we get psychology. For the Greeks, psyche is soul; their
conception of soul is not like the modern Christian notion of soul; is not eternal, an ongoing non-physical
essence. Rather, by psyche, or soul, the Greeks really meant the animating principle; what made
something alive. Aristotle took that quite literally; that is, for Aristotle, there are three levels of soul: the
vegetative soul-characteristic of plants. For him this simply means that plants have in them a level of
psyche or soul which is responsible for the most basic activities of life like metabolism, growth, nutrition,
etc. Animals according to Aristotle have a higher kind of soul, that is, animal soul, characteristic of the
animal life: a moving sensitive passionate soul; they move around, they have perceptions of the world,
they have desires, fears, pursue prey. Lastly, human beings have a yet a higher level of soul. That is, a
rational soul. This is because we can rationally think and speak as complete substances. It is important to
remember that for Aristotle, each higher level, the organism retains the lower level of soul along with its
higher level. In other words, in a human being, I still have a vegetative soul in me because I have to digest

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my food, grow; I have functions: my breathing, etc. I then have my emotional perceptual and instinctual
level of soul and then finally, I have my rational or abstract soul: for speech, abstraction, etc.

The aim of Aristotelian science (Beings/entities, substance, causality and souls) was famously to classify
all types of qualitatively different substances to define them and relate them and to delineate their causes.
Aristotle‘s physics was combined by other ancients with the tolomies, geocentric system of the universe.
This was a picture common in Greece and Rome; conception of the universe as a closed system that is
finite not infinite; the earth is at the centre, that is why it is geocentric; the moon is the super earthly
object which is closest. Everything under the moon, everything sub-lunar which is the earth, is made of
the four classic elements: air, earth, water and fire. Everything on earth (Greeks thought) is composed of
these four basic elements. But the moon and then all the planets and stars beyond them was believed had
to be made of a much more refined substance called etha. The stars rotated around the earth in this closed
picture of the universe. But from the point of view of the Physics, substantial individuals are seen as
predicative complexes; they are hylemorphic compounds — compounds of matter and form — and the
subject criterion looks rather different from the hylemorphic perspective. Therefore, the essence of a
hylemorphic compound is evidently its form, not its matter.

Aristotle and Causality

 Causality simply means that nothing happens by chance, every existing reality is caused either by
itself or by a course outside of itself. That which causes itself is cause per se, and it is only God
who causes Himself; all other realities are caused.

Kinds of Causes
 There are four different things that are responsible for the existence of any one primary substance,
namely, material, efficient, formal, and final.
 Example of a ship in the harbour, what are the four causes of the ship:
One is material: the wood, the nails, the ropes. Without them there is no ship. But suppose the
ropes, the wood, nails, etc; all that material is thrown in the dark. Do I have the ship yet? No.
Because it is not in the shape of a ship, it is not in the form of the ship; so, there is the matter of
the substance and there is the form which we can take to be the structural organization of all those
pieces of matter. But suppose I put in the dark, I have my ship mass, wood, nails, ropes, suppose I
drop a blueprint on the top. Is that a ship yet? No. Because we need an efficient cause which is
the activity that leads to the matter and form being brought together. So, someone has actually to
build the ship. The act of building is the efficient cause. We have one more cause. Aristotle says,
everything also have a final cause.

Final cause is the goal or purpose of a thing; the towards which other thing. The ship‘s final cause is to
trade it, for sailing purposes. Final cause of a pappy is to become a dog; final cause of a rock is just really
lying at the surface of the earth. So, the final causes are not all elaborate purposes.
 Aristotle took causes to comprise both extrinsic and intrinsic ones.
a. Matter and form are said to be intrinsic to the thing, for they are constituent parts of the thing.
Properly speaking the extrinsic causes are principles and the intrinsic causes that are parts of the
thing are elements and both can be called causes. Only those things are properly called elements
that are causes of which the thing is composed, which are properly material, and not just any
material causes, but only those of which the thing is primarily composed.
b. But the efficient and the final cause are said to be extrinsic, for they are outside of the thing.

In the subsequent centuries, philosophy kept growing and the History of Philosophy is the discipline that
studies systematically such a development. A contemporary philosopher, Alfred Whitehead said: ―The
safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of

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footnotes to Plato.‖ Certainly, Plato‘s philosophy has been very influential through the centuries. Yet, his
disciple Aristotle was no less than his master. The principles elaborated, refined and organized by him
were destined to become the foundation of what Jacque Maritain called the perennial philosophy: the
enduring philosophy, the one philosophy which, renewing itself over and over again through all the
vicissitudes of time and history, offers to each new generation the unchanging key to the mysteries of
reality.

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

What is Knowledge?
It is not only impossible strictly to define knowledge, but more it is not even necessary to define it. For
defining it is an act of knowledge. We all know what knowing is, in the same way in which we know
what loving, or seeing, or grieving, or fearing is. These are mental activities which we have been
performing since our earliest years. We know what knowledge is, what reality is, what the world is, even
before we start to investigate these problems. So, we do not need to define or explain knowledge, rather,
we should be aware of it, of the fact that it occurs continually in our life. From the scientific point of
view, knowledge may look very mysterious. From the philosophical viewpoint too it is mysterious as
being itself. On one hand, there must be in our intellectual knowledge some elements coming from
within. On the other hand, our knowledge comes entirely through the subjective elements: the senses,
from without. Both statements are true, and can be reconciled as we have done above. In every act of
intellectual knowledge there are a priori and a posteriori elements. We have two forms of knowledge: A
posteriori knowledge and a priori knowledge. We never have any intellectual knowledge without some
contribution from the senses and some contribution from the intellect. We never have a perception
without an idea, at least some vague idea. In us the intellect and the senses always work together. A
perception is not the same as a sensation. Generally a perception contains several sensations: furthermore,
it is projected into space and completed by a certain number of images supplied by past experience.
Therefore, we have sensitive and intellective knowledge.

a. Sensitive Knowledge (A posteriori Knowledge)

Sensitive knowledge is also called a posteriori. It is subjective knowledge obtained from human
subjective elements of experience. It is basically Aristotelian in nature where the elements of nature are
taken into account. Experience tells us, and traditional philosophy teaches that ―there is nothing in
intellect which has not first been in the senses.‖ All our knowledge passes through the senses; comes from
without, it is a posteriori. It is knowledge obtained through the senses (vision, hearing, touch, fantasy,
smell, taste, etc.). It examines material things in their singularity: the senses always collect, from fact,
material objects, real or apparent, and collect them in their singularity, both as an object taken as a whole,
or as a part or an aspect. Thus, for example, I see this or that colour, this or that tree, not the colour or the
tree. I hear this or that whistle, but not the whistle; I imagine this or that car, but not the car. In other
words, we do not know the objects, but only the impression they make upon us, the representations we
have of them. We are aware only of the way we are affected by the objects. The tree reflects light waves,
which produce physiological and psychological modifications in me. Of these modifications and of them
alone, I am aware.

This knowledge is: transitory, changing, not objective, and not perfect. This is basically because our
senses can deceive us. Subjective knowledge is considered unreliable. For the acquisition of sensitive
knowledge, man disposes himself first of all of the five external senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell and
touch. They are called external senses because the organs by means of which their action develops are
found on the external surface of the body. The external senses are distinguished among themselves, other
than by their different physiological apparati (the vision apparatus is different from the olfactive one,
etc.), also by the perceived object. Every one of the senses perceives a different aspect of things: vision

34
perceives colours, hearing perceives sounds, taste perceives flavours, etc. Other than the external senses,
man (as many animals) is gifted with four internal senses. Traditionally four internal senses have been
mentioned: common sense, memory, fantasy, and instinct/estimative power.
 Common sense gathers and unifies the data which the external senses perceive separately; for
example, the eye perceives that a given thing is white, the taste perceives that it is sweet, the
touch perceives that it is granular or floury: common sense reunites this data and obtains the
image of sugar.
 The fantasy conserves the data gathered by the common sense and reproduces it even when the
objects are absent, and can also reassemble them in a manner different from how they are found
in reality. For example the fantasy can break up the images of man and horse and reassemble
them so as to obtain the image of a centaur.
 The memory reproduces to the consciousness data obtained in the past, conserving their temporal
connotation: memory is the faculty of the past; it perceives things and events inasmuch as they
are in the past. Thus, for example, the image of my teacher is represented to me the way I saw
him the first day I went to school. Without memory man would not only be unable to remember
people, things and events of the past; he would not even be capable of knowing the present. Man
is the being who with his past in the present faces his future: past events have shaped him and
their repercussions persist in his present; he lives in the future through his plans and projects, his
hopes and desires. Since even man‘s present thinking and willing possesses a certain duration, it
has to be synthesized by memory. This is quite evident, for instance, when we listen to a melody
or to a sentence. If we did not remember the first bars or the first words when the last ones have
sounded, we should never be able to hear either melody or a sentence. Therefore, every sensation
or perception supposes the co-operation of memory. There can be no human knowledge without
the co-operation of the internal senses.
 The instinct or estimative power gathers things under the aspect of utility, or under harm of risk.
For example, the lamb in its image of the wolf gathers immediately the danger that the wolf
carries to the lamb‘s existence. This power involves some kind of judgment, but a judgment
which uses no ideas, which is singular, concrete and pragmatic. Squirrels do not know that dogs
in general are dangerous to them; their behaviour shows very well, however, that they are aware
that ―this creature is dangerous for them. Using the principle of proportionality, we might say that
the estimative power is analogous, on the sense level, to reason on the intellectual level. It
observes relations (useful for, harmful for) but it observes them in a concrete way, not as
relations. Man also possesses an estimative power, but it is generally overshadowed by his
reason, which is often more reliable. In man the estimative power is sometimes called the
cognitive power.

To correctly resolve the question of the objective value of sensitive knowledge, it is necessary to consider
the physiological and intentional aspects very distinctly. Under the physiological profile, this knowledge
is without doubt something objective (which occurs internally to the subject which knows). Instead, under
the intentional profile, it possesses an exquisitely intentional character. That is to say, it calls the attention
of the knowing subject to something distinct from itself, or at least to something different from the
perceptive act. Berkeley, for example, observes that ―as far as the power I have over my thoughts, I must
note that the ideas perceived with the sense do not depend on my will. When in the full light of day I open
my eyes, it is not in my power if I see or not, or to determine which particular objects present themselves
to my sight; and thus as well for the hearing and the other senses, the ideas impressed on them are not the
creatures of my will.‖ (Cf. G. Berkeley, Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, tr. It., Sansoni,
Florence 1933, n.39.). This does not resolve the veracity of the data referred by the senses. These senses
can very well furnish imprecise, inexact, inadequate data (as to represent a straight stick as crooked, etc.),
and yet, it is permissible to state with Aristotle, St. August, St. Thomas, etc, that the senses never deceive:
they are not directly responsible for the truth, nor for error, because truth and error, inasmuch as a faculty
of judgment, does not pertain to the senses, but to the intellect. It is the intellect that fails into error when

35
it does not ponder, does not adequately examine the data which is furnished by the senses. Since all
knowledge is not sense knowledge, we now turn to intellective knowledge.

b. Intellective Knowledge/ The A Priori in Knowledge

On the other hand intellective knowledge is supported by Plato and other philosophers of rationalism like
Kant, Descartes, etc. In the study of knowledge, we discover a fundamental principle:
 “A priori” is a term used to identify a type of knowledge which is obtained independently of
experience. A proposition is known a priori if when judged true or false one does not refer to
experience.
 ―The more perfect knowledge is, the more it is a priori,‖ and vice versa. ―The more knowledge is
a priori, the more perfect it is.‖ At first sight this statement seems to be false.
 Is knowledge from abstraction, of the first principles, perfect, pure, universal, unchangeable,
trustworthy, true, sure and infallible in nature

However, our principle applies especially to God‘s infinitely perfect knowledge. God knows everything
perfectly without ever having to ―look outside himself,‖ he knows all reality in himself. God does not
look at me in order to know what I am and what I do, He knows all this in himself, without experiencing
any influence from outside. Yet, although his knowledge is entirely a priori, from within, it is absolutely
perfect. All knowledge which really comes from within a faculty shares in this certitude. But then the
question arises: Is there anything similar in us? Are there in human knowledge elements coming from
within? In God, the infinite spirit, all knowledge is a priori. The existence of intellective form of
knowledge in the human mind is supported by many facts.
 First of all it is supported by the possession of universal ideas. Man, for example, knows not only
this or that book, this or that pine tree, but the apple as such, the book as such, and the pine tree as
such. Moreover, man has the ideas of goodness, of virtue, sport, work, society, etc., all of them
ideas that do not refer to anything material or concrete, but to something universal and abstract.
 Sensations and images are always of single objects or single groups of objects: I see or imagine
this cat, I perceive this plane, I touch this table, I see this crowd, etc. In other words, intellective
knowledge is grounded on the capacity to judge and reason. Man formulates judgments, universal
propositions, general laws, such as ―heavy objects fall,‖ ―fire burns‖, ―glass, though transparent,
is impenetrable‖, etc.
 Universal ideas are the centre of human knowledge. The seat of universal ideas is the
understanding. Inasmuch as the understanding collaborates intimately with the senses, universal
ideas put us into contact with outside reality, with the material world, ultimately with
undetermined cosmic energy. Inasmuch as the Understanding is ―animated‖ or ―informed‖ by the
intellect, universal ideas put us in contact with the unity of Being, with the Pure Act. Whenever
we affirm a universal idea, we embrace the whole extent of reality, from pure potency to Pure
Act.
 Man reasons: he arrives at certain ideas by reflecting on others, he arrives at the existence of
certain things from the existence of other things. We also possess ideas which apply to absolutely
every reality. Such are the ideas of ―being‖, ―reality‖, ―something‖. As the ultimate basis of
intellective knowledge, we bring to mind science. Humans know how to co-ordinate their
knowledge in systematic form; they divide it, classify it according to arguments, and thus obtain
general theories for the various spheres of reality, as science wishes.
 In admitting that human knowledge has an intellective character (that is, not reducible to the
senses and the imagination), and excluding the possibility of explaining its origin a priori, with
extra-worldly intervention, we must conclude that the source of such a knowledge is found in
man. This source is collect intellect or reason, or also mind. By means of this faculty man extracts
from the data that is supplied to him by the senses general ideas, universal judgements, and

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 systems of information. Three distinct operations make up this development: apprehension,
judgements, and reasoning. In apprehension, the intellect abstracts the universal idea; in the
judgment, it associates or separates two ideas; in reasoning, it extracts a new idea from a previous
idea.

Aristotle and the Scholastics habitually distinguish two functions in the intellect, one active and one
passive. In the active one, it elaborates the universal idea and in the passive one it receives and conserves
this idea. The intellect which develops the active function is called the agent intellect, and the one which
develops the passive function is called the possible intellect.

iii. Levels of Intellective Knowledge.

Before getting into the levels of knowledge, we have to note that there are three levels of abstraction:
understanding, judgment and inference (explain each of these). Just as we have three levels of abstraction,
there are also three principal levels of intellective knowledge given: ordinary, scientific and philosophical.
 Ordinary knowledge is that knowledge of things which from the age of reason on could be
obtained, and obtained without any force, without mathematical and profound studies. It is the
knowledge which is the fruit of good sense than of reasoning, which is dictated more by the
circumstances and by the chances of life than by logic or by some pre-established program.
Apparently superficial, this knowledge in fact can be very profound, above all as far as it
concerns the solutions of ultimate problems.
 Scientific knowledge is an ordered and systematic knowledge of determined aspects of reality; it
is essentially sectorial or specialized knowledge. For the aspects with which it occupies itself, it
surpasses ordinary knowledge in its exactitude, organic nature, and extension. About medicine,
biology, astronomy, physics, etc., scientists specialized in these matters know much more than the
common man. But this scientific knowledge is always limited. Effectively, it explains many
things, but it does not know what life, time, history, consciousness, truth, liberty, and being are.
Science knows many things, even regarding man, and knows him infinitely more so today than in
the past, but nevertheless science today comprehends even less than in the past who man is, who
the person is, what love, virtue, justice, goodness, etc., are.
 Philosophical knowledge constitutes the third level of intellective knowledge. Its fields of
research are the ultimate problems (of knowledge, being and will, to which correspond the three
fields of gnoseology, metaphysics, and ethics). Its method is ―pure‖ reasoning. The data is
furnished either by ordinary knowledge or by scientific knowledge. Philosophy is a knowledge
that projects itself towards pure data such as it is in itself, to gather it in its essence and acquire a
pure absolute concept. The question of all questions for philosophy, the mystery of all mysteries,
is man. To know who man is; to discover if this possibility tending towards the infinite is an
impossibility or a realizable possibility – this is the principal task of philosophy.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHRISTIANS

Christianity is not a philosophy but a religion; centred upon the living person of Christ; it is less a
speculative view of reality than a way of life. It does not seem possible to find in its Holy Scripture any
systematic use of philosophy. Where philosophical terms appear in these writings, their ultimate import is
not a philosophical one; they are meant to convey, in words familiar to their readers, the essentially
religious meaning of the Christian message. Yet, it is part of the Christian consciousness, from its very
beginning, that any believer should be able to explain his or her faith in a meaningful way to any inquirer.
St. Peter warns his readers, ―Should anyone ask you the reason for this hope of yours, be ever ready to
reply, but speak gently and respectfully.‖ [1 Pet. 3: 15]

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Hence, we can securely state that with the emergence of Christianity and its development with the Greco-
Roman cultures a new intellectual process arises that eventually will bring about the integration of the
rational world-view with the religious world-view, that is, the integration of faith and reason. Christianity
to all effects marks the most profound division in the history of philosophy; it separates the two great
phases of Western thought. Christianity has, in fact, essentially altered the presuppositions upon which
man bases his thought and actions and therefore his thinking is also different; for example, different from
the Greek way of thinking. Christianity, from the outset, has introduced entirely new ideas to interpret the
existence of the world and man; as a matter of fact, it has brought with itself a ―divine Wisdom‖, i.e.,
divine revelation. From a philosophical point of view, the biblical message breached some key-ideas or
elements that were bound to exert a deep influence on philosophy as such. Among these ideas we have:
monotheism, creationism, anthropocentrism, divine providence, original sin, life in the Spirit, agape, new
values, resurrection of the body, and a new vision of history.
 Monotheism: In classical Greek philosophy the divine (Theos) does not denote the unity of a
specific personality in the monotheistic sense. It rather expresses what is felt to be the unity of the
religious world in spite of its multiplicity. The Greek concept of God is essentially polytheistic,
not in the sense of many individual gods, but in that of an ordered totality of gods, of a world of
gods, which forms an integrated nexus or system. The Biblical message, on the other hand,
proposed a strictly personalistic and monotheistic view of God. God is one, almighty and ruler of
all. The Biblical teaching prevents any confusion between the divine (transcendence) and the
world (immanence) which was very common even in Plato and Aristotle.
 Creationism: In order to fully appreciate this Christian idea one should recall the most
fundamental problem of Greek philosophy, namely, motion or change. For the Greek mind,
things were problematic because they were fundamentally unstable and constantly undergoing
change. Being was viewed as opposed by non-being, i.e., by something‘s not being what it is.
They never questioned the existence of all things. Thus, God in this view was necessary only as
the first unmoved mover of the cosmic mechanism (Aristotle), or as the foundation of the
intelligibility of true reality (Plato). In a word, so conceived, man did not have, properly speaking,
a destiny and the mystery of human existence found no clear answer. Christianity, on the other
hand, by acknowledging the person of God and by recognizing Him as the absolute Creator of
everything, could understand the world as intrinsically contingent, that is, without inner reasons
for its existence. The Christians radicalized the problem of change by pointing out that the world,
since it was coming from ―nothing‖, it was constantly threatened by nothingness. The concept of
Creation allows the being of the world to be interpreted through the being of God. On one hand
we have God, the true being, the Creator; on the other hand, we have the created being, God‘s
creature, whose being is received. The religious truth of Creation proposed by Christianity
required in time the interpretation of this being, and it also posed the philosophical problem of the
creative and created being; that is, God‘s being and that of His creature. Thus, Christianity, even
though not a philosophy, was bound to affect philosophy in a decisive way. According to this
metaphysical view, the foundation of man‘s greatness was not in his apparent autonomy, but in
his freely embraced heteronomy, that is, in his readiness to become fully obedient to his Creator.

 Anthropocentricism: Greek thought is mainly cosmo-centric: man and cosmos are always
correlated rather than sharply differentiated, the reason being that both possess life and soul. Man
is not the highest being in the cosmos as Aristotle witnesses: ―Man is not the best thing in the
world (…) for there are things much more divine in their nature even than man, e.g., most
conspicuously, the bodies of which the heavens are framed.‖ (Nic. Eth. VI, 1141a 23, 1141b 1)
According to Biblical thought, instead, man is at the centre of the world and the highest creature,
the reason being that ―God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him.‖ Thus,
for the Bible everything in the world together with history is centred on man.

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 Divine Providence: The classical thought of Greece has no clear perception of a personal
providence and stoicism (Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium – Cyprus
in the year 308 B.C. It upheld virtuous life and it maintained that all the universe is followed
some fundamental – natural laws established by the World-Reason) identified it with Fate.
Scripture, on the other hand, teaches that God has everything under control even what is
incomprehensible to men. Further, God is personally involved in the life of all, even the most
insignificant beings:
―I warn you, then: do not worry about your livelihood, what you are to eat or drink or use or clothing. Is not
life more than food? Is not the body more valuable than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They do not
sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you more important
than they? Which of you by worrying can add a moment of his life-span? As for clothes, why be concerned?
Learn a lesson from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work, they do not spin. Yet, I assure you,
not even Solomon in all his splendour was arrayed like one of these. If God can clothe in such splendour the
grass of the field, which blossoms today and is thrown on the fire tomorrow, will he not provide much more
for you, o weak in faith! Stop worrying, then, over questions like: what are we to eat, or what are we to drink,
or what are we to wear? The unbelievers are always running after these things. Your heavenly Father knows
all that you need.‖ [Mt. 6: 25-32].

 Original Sin: Evil, whose presence in the world constitutes an insoluble puzzle for man, is
explained by the Bible as originated by man‘s disobedience. It cannot be overcome by man, but
only God can resolve it, and through Jesus Christ God has offered his divine solution to it. St.
Paul teaches:
―Are you not aware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Through
baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, we too might live a new life. If we have been united with him through likeness to his death, so
shall we be through alike resurrection. This we know: our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful
body might be destroyed and we might be slaves to sin no longer. A man who is dead has been freed from
sin. If we have died with Christ, we believe that we are also to live with him. We know that Christ, once
raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no more power over him. His death was death to sin,
once for all; his life is life for God. In the same way, you must consider yourselves dead to sin but alive for
God in Christ Jesus. Do not, therefore, let sin rule your mortal body and make you obey its lusts; no more
shall you offer the members of your body to sin as weapons for evil. Rather, offer yourselves to God as men
who have come back from the dead to life, and your bodies to God as weapons for justice. Sin will no longer
have power over you, you are now under grace, not under the law.‖ [Rom. 6: 3-14]

Such a vision upset deeply the Greek way of thinking which attempted to resolve the evil in the
world by means of gnosis [‗Gnosis‘ is a Greek word which means ‗knowledge‘. In the first and
second centuries A.D, it came to mean a secret knowledge of higher religious and philosophic
truths to be acquired by an elite group of intellectually developed believers] or metempsychosis
[‗metempsychosis‘ is a doctrine that teaches that the same soul can successfully reside in more
than one body, human or animal], but which could never offer a radical solution for eradicating it.

 Life in the Spirit: For the Greek philosophers, the highest form of life was a life of episteme (i.e.,
scientific knowledge) and not of pistis (belief). Also on this score, the Bible proposes a reversal
and proclaims faith as the highest form of knowledge. In faith can experience a higher form of
life, the life in the Spirit which lies far beyond the Greek dimension of nous (mind) as St. Paul
teaches:
―The message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin, but to us who are
experiencing salvation it is the power of God. Scripture says, ‗I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
thwart the cleverness of the clever.‘ Where is the wise man to be found? Where is the Scribe? Where is the
master of worldly argument? Has not God turned the wisdom of this world into folly? Since God‘s wisdom
the world did not come to know him through ‗wisdom‘, it pleased God to save those who believe through the
absurdity of the preaching of the gospel. Yes, Jews demand ‗signs‘ and Greeks look for ‗wisdom‘, but we
preach Christ crucified – a stumbling block to Jews, and an absurdity to Gentiles; but to those who are called,
Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God‘s folly is wiser than men
and his weakness more powerful than men. Brothers, you are among those called. Consider your situation.

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 Not many of you are wise, as men account wisdom; not many are influential; and surely not many are well-
born. God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise; he singled out the weak of this
world to shame the strong. He chose the world‘s lowborn and despised, those who count for nothing, to
reduce to nothing those who were something; so that mankind can do no boasting before God. God is who
has given you life in Christ Jesus. He has made him our wisdom and also our justice, our sanctification and
our redemption. This is just as you find it written, ‗Let him who would boast, boast in the Lord‘. As for
myself, brothers when I came to you I did not come proclaiming God‘s testimony with any particular
eloquence of ‗wisdom‘. No, I determined that while I was with you I would speak of nothing but Jesus Christ
and him crucified. When I came among you it was in weakness and in fear, and with much trepidation. My
message and my preaching had non of the persuasive force of ‗wise‘ argumentation, but the convincing
power of the Spirit… Of this wisdom it is written: ‗Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as
dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him.‘… Similarly, no one knows what lies at the
depths of God, but the Spirit of God. The Spirit we have received is not the world‘s spirit but the Spirit of
God…. The spiritual man on the other hand, can appraise everything, though he himself can be appraised by
no one. For who knows the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?‖ but we have the mind of Christ [1 Cor. 1:
18-2:16].

 Agape: Philosophy in Greece had discovered the power of Eros (love) as that mediating tension
which makes possible the ascent from the material world to the spiritual one. Christianity,
instead, speaks of love as agape. Agape is the love which belongs primarily to God. Because of
that love God has descended among men in order to rescue them. For the Greeks only man is
capable of loving, whereas for Christians, only God is the true lover. The Christian can learn
agape by means of a radical conversion that brings him to imitate God.

 New Values: The Christian message marked the most radical revolution in the history of human
values. A quotation from the Gospel of St. Matthew on beatitudes suffices:
―How blest are the poor in spirit, the reign of God is theirs. Blest too are the sorrowful, they shall be
consoled. Blest are the lowly, they shall inherit the land. Blest are they who hunger and thirst for holiness,
they shall have their fill. Blest are they who show mercy, mercy shall be theirs. Blest are the single-hearted
for they shall see God. Blest too the peacemakers, they shall be called sons of God. Blest are those persecuted
for holiness‘ sake, the Kingdom of God is theirs. Blest are you when they insult you and persecute you and
utter every kind of slander against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in
heaven.‖ [Mt.5: 3-12]

According to the gospel, man should become again as simple as a child and humble of heart.
Such a vision was totally unknown to the Greeks.
 The Resurrection of the Body: The soul, psyche, has been a discovery of the Greeks. For
Socrates, the soul was the very essence of man; Plato took pains to demonstrate its immortality
and Plotinus elevated it to the rank of one of the three hypostases [‗hypostasis‘ means a singular
substance that is completely subsisting. A rational hypostasis has the same meaning as the term
‗person‘]. Man, in Greek thought is seen as made up of a body and a soul. The Christian
understanding of man is quite different: the Christian message does not speak of the immortality
of the soul but of the resurrection of the body, and this implies an entirely different anthropology.
 New understanding of History: For the Greeks history is cyclical and progress is only apparent;
for the Christian, history is linear with a beginning that will culminate in the eschaton [‗Eschaton‘
derives from the Greek ta eschata which means ‗death‘. It refers to the realities expected at the
end of time, when this world will have reached its end], with the full establishment of the
Kingdom. In this view, human action acquires meaning, insofar as man is called to contribute in
making the future.

The Christian way of thinking and the life that issued from it were bound sooner or later to clash with the
philosophical wisdom or world-view of the day. Consequently, even though Christianity was born out of
divine revelation and is a religion, little by little, it had to deal with speculative themes. This was brought
about particularly by two stimuli of a polemic nature: the intellectual reaction of paganism and the

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heresies. Thus, in the course of time, a process of assimilation takes place that will produce a real
philosophy of the Christians.

Philosophy and Christian Religion

Christian doctrine is accepted in faith and it is believed by faith. God‘s grace is directly involved in
making the act of faith possible. Yet, it is a firm Christian belief that God‘s activity in human history is
never accomplished without man‘s cooperation. Therefore, the act of faith by means of which a person
accepts the Christian message is always also a human act involving human activities such as trust and
intelligence. Faith, as is experienced in Christianity, is not a blind surrender of reason, but it is reason
transcending itself in an ultimate acceptance of mystery. Therefore, Christianity rejects simplistic forms
of fideism and insists on the importance of the intellectual activity in order to ground divine revelation in
reality. Yet, it shuns the perils of rationalism, by recognizing the incapacity of reason to solve the
mystery. Human reason possesses an intrinsic dynamism that brings it from a state of potentiality to its
full actualization, given the right conditions. Thus, we can observe that a child lives on ready-made truths
he receives passively from parents, elders and educators, yet, as he grows, he begins to think by himself
and in the light of his experiences he becomes ―critical‖, that is, he does not content himself to accept
what he has received, but he wants to understand it, to be convinced. What fails to convince him, he
rejects; what succeeds to, he accepts. This critical activity will accompany man throughout his life and
manifests itself as a natural desire to know the truth, i.e., how things really are in this world of ours. Of
course, to investigate reality with responsibility and depth is a very demanding task that only a few
pursue. For this reason many people still live on the level of ―opinions‖ rather than of ―truth‖ (wisdom). It
is the purpose of philosophy to lead man on the level of wisdom by outlining a method on how to use
reason properly, by disclosing the realm of human knowledge, and by determining the limits and
possibilities of human knowledge. Reason and religious truths, at least as Christianity is concerned, are
not in mutual contradiction; rather, they are such as to enlighten each other. St. Peter in his letter warns
his Christians with the words:

―Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you.‖ [1 Pet. 3: 15b]

What Peter recommends is possible only on the condition that the Christian message may be grounded to
a certain extent on reality. Unless human reason is able to establish the ability of human knowledge to
attain certitude, the existence of God, the nature of God, the existence and immortality of the human soul,
the principles of moral life, it is impossible and useless to proclaim the Christian message as the definitive
and normative Word of God addressed to mankind for its salvation. It is here that philosophy becomes an
indispensable tool for the believer and it is here that one can see why theological studies should be
preceded by a philosophical training. It is, then, the duty of philosophy to investigate into the
reasonableness of out Christian faith. By doing that, the Christian philosopher does not intend to
challenge what he already believes as the a member of a particular Church, but rather he wants to gain as
much understanding as possible of Christian belief. After all what makes us ―human‖ is our intellectual
faculty and as rational beings we are ―images and likeness‖ of God our Creator. The natural goal of our
knowledge is truth as such, yet in its absoluteness it cannot be possessed in a complete way here on earth.
Hence, Truth is an everlasting ―call‖ upon our intellect and it is the main spring-even though very often
unconscious-of all its activities.

a. Faith and Reason

Every philosophical system must imply a principle of selection, a value-judgment, or what can be called a
―faith-principle‖, which, however, self-evident it may have appeared to the thinker or to the age which
first decided upon it, does not appear at all self-evident or self-justifying to other philosophers or to other
ages. An act faith is prior to the construction of a metaphysics or to the acceptance of the philosophy of

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life. Christian philosophy has given expression to its recognition of this universal truth about human
thinking in the classical formula, credo ut intelligam (I believe in order to understand). This insight
implies that reason itself must be ―justified by faith‖, by believing something which is not in fact self-
evident or demonstrable to all men in virtue of the fact that they are rational beings. We come to possess
reality through knowledge and it is through knowledge that we realize that we realize ourselves. It is in
the context of our human self-realization that we ask: ―What is the role of faith? Is faith related to
knowledge or is it just a distraction from pursuing understanding?‖ The task of a Christian philosopher
will be to show the consistency between the faith of the Christian community and the modes of reasoning
distinctive of our age and culture. In our Christian tradition, however, we find a double and opposite
attitude toward the issue of the relationship between faith and reason.
 One trend of the Christian tradition has been suspicious of philosophy and has tended to stress the
irrationality and absurdity of Christian faith (Tertullian).
 Another trend, on the other hand, has acknowledged that faith cannot be arrived at by reason but
has nevertheless maintained that there can be no conflict between Christian religion and
philosophy (Aquinas).
The two trends are not-against all appearances-mutually exclusive.

According to Christianity, reason becomes fruitful and capable of reaching a relatively reliable view of
the universe and the purpose of man‘s existence in it, when it is guided by the insights of Christian faith.
Faith does not replace empirical knowledge, but it supplies the clues or categories of interpretation by
which alone the empirical data of science and religion can be rightly understood. Unless we free ourselves
from these ideological conditionings, it is very difficult to overcome their dangers. The ideological
trappings can be avoided by recognizing the ―fallen‖ state of human reason, which is prey of its own self-
interested motives.

According to the Christian view, reason cannot walk by its own light, and must seek the illumination of
some principle of interpretation which reason itself does not contain. Reason is blind until faith takes it by
the hand. The adequacy of any particular faith-principle must be judged by its ability to order the whole
range of data supplied by the empirical sciences (including theology) in a rational and coherent
philosophy of life and of the world. Such a view of the relation of faith and philosophy represents a
central line of development in Christian thought upon this subject since the second century. Faith has its
peculiar nature and dynamism that must be recognised and preserved. This means that faith cannot be
reduced to another form of human reasoning-i.e., one must recognize an irrational element in it; but it also
means that it cannot be so separated from reason that it is no longer a human activity. Faith, thus,
demands to be understood both in its uniqueness and in its relatedness to reason. At the time of St.
Thomas Aquinas, what needed justification was reason in the form of Aristotle‘s philosophy. In modern
times, however, the situation in which Aquinas found himself has been completely reversed- reason is
now in command and it is Christian faith which has to be reconciled with it. Christian faith does not have
much to contribute to the discussion about how we perceive objects, and in what sense they are there to be
perceived; but it has much to say when we discuss the proper problems of the human mind and therefore
of the philosophia perennis: God, freedom, and immortality. When a philosopher becomes a Christian, he
will at least be confronted with the central problems of philosophy once again. St. Augustine was strongly
convinced that Christian faith alone enables a man to be rational, to be a philosopher. Faith is a light and
guide without which reason cannot work. It is an indispensable condition of understanding. Thus, the
classical Christian view of the relation of revelation and reason, faith and philosophy, may be represented
in three words, ―Believe to understand,‖ and these three words sum up the whole matter. In the activity of
a Christian philosopher we do not see reason searching for a faith to believe and live by; we rather faith
itself seeking understanding, as St. Anselm so clearly saw: fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking
understanding). This is the very essence of the philosophy of the Christians, as distinct from philosophies
that are merely compatible with Christian truth. Faith is not a short cut; it is not a substitute for

42
understanding but a condition of it. ―Blind faith‖ is a contradiction in terms, as far as Christian faith is
concerned, for faith is the source of light and understanding.

To speak of faithless reason is to be ignorant of the very nature and constitution of reason; it is also to
deprive faith of its most important function, that of making possible rational assent to the address of God.
Our knowledge of God in this life is essentially a rational knowing made possible by faith in the Biblical
revelation. The knowledge of God is mediated by the word, that is, by the address of God as of one
rational being to other rational beings. The final New Testament category for the understanding of God‘s
address to the world in Jesus Christ is the conception of Christ as God‘s incarnate Word. If we turn to the
present situation in Africa, it seems that we are moving from a pre-critical stage into a critical form of
thinking in regard to mythological world-view. The mythological world-view has been abandoned by
most African intellectuals. Yet, how is the African mind reacting to ―belief‖ in general and to ―Christian
belief‖ in particular? In front of the traditional soul of Africa, Christianity has to show that it does not
constitute a ‗religious rape‖, but is a kairos (i.e., a time of grace) of God. Within the pluralism of
Christian churches we need to find a reasonable ground for justifying and commending the Catholic faith.
Africa needs a true Christian philosophy.

b. Faith, Belief and Gullibility/Credulity

From a phenomenological point of view, we encounter in man a natural optimism that informs his
openness to the world, so that he is usually confident that the Real is not deceiving him. On the ground of
this confidence, man, at least in his pre-critical stage, has very little doubt about the validity of his sense
perception. Even when hard evidence makes him aware of the limitations of the deliverances of his sense,
still man finds himself inclined to think that deception is not substantial but only accidental. Even when
man reaches the critical level of thinking, he gives a vote of confidence to his natural capacity to knowing
truth in general. As a philosopher he distinguishes between appearances and reality; he analyzes the
possibilities and causes or error; he establishes the scope and limits of his knowing power; but by just
doing this he clearly subscribes to his conviction that his mind is made for truth. This is a fundamental
trust that even the sceptical‘s argument is not able to diminish. Yet, when we look at the words used for
describing this fundamental trust, we find in the English language three interesting terms: faith, belief
and gullibility. More than the sceptical argument, what is occasionally casting doubts on our fitness for
truth is the experience of the immensity of human gullibility. This is a form of naïve faith or naïve trust
that makes a person easily vulnerable to being cheated. The credulous person has no protection, lacks a
critical spirit and can be easily taken advantage of. Every man sooner or later makes his own experiences
about the tag-price attached to gullibility and naturally enough he tries to protect himself by developing
scepticism. Unfortunately, scepticism does not bring about any security; actually, it destabilizes our
natural optimism about our ability to know the truth, and consequently, impoverishes our life. The
discovery of the weak nature of gullibility should not lead the mind to scepticism but to critical thinking.

Belief and faith are describing a mental attitude profoundly different from that of gullibility, insofar as
naivety is largely reduced. Usually the two terms are used interchangeably, and from an epistemological
point of view, they refer to an act of the mind, or better to an ascent of the mind to the truth of a
declaration, proposition, or alleged fact, on the ground of evidence, distinct from personal knowledge.
Personally, I prefer to draw a distinction between belief and faith. Belief is the result of an action
described by the verb to believe; faith, on the other hand, comes before and is what makes possible the act
of believing but without determining it. If this distinction is acceptable, we can maintain that faith is an
existential, that is, an essential trait of being and therefore common to all men; whereas ―belief‖ is
capable of a plural and refers more to a ―subjective‖ response to some data than to an ―objective‖
perception of facts. I would use the word ―faith‖ for our essential inclination to trust, whose basic
orientation is the whole of reality and therefore Transcendence; and I would employ the word ―belief‖ for
the epistemological act made possible by faith. While ―faith‖ has no thematic content, ―belief‖ is a form

43
of knowledge and therefore is capable of undergoing an epistemological analysis. Within the notion of
―belief‖, in religion, it is necessary to differentiate between ―natural belief‖ and ―supernatural belief‖.
What is the truth of gullibility, belief and faith? Of course, gullibility has no great value on the level of
critical thinking; faith as the ground or condition of possibility of belief cannot be true or false; hence
what the philosopher can examine is only ―belief‖. I claim that without a Christian attitude toward
philosophy it is not possible to offer an accurate examination of Christian belief. In other words, it seems
that only a Christian philosopher is properly equipped for an adequate philosophical analysis of Christian
belief.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

The Muslim philosophers, concerned themselves with the problem of goodness. Similar to Greek ethics,
these philosophers dealt with an investigation into the ultimate good or good in itself, which is happiness
or saadah.

At the 2nd century of the Hijra, a new movement arose in the theological school of Basra, Iraq. This new
school was called Mutazilite (from i'tazala, to separate oneself, to dissent) that lasted from the 8 th to 10th
centuries. Its principal dogmas were three:

1. God is an absolute unity, and no attribute can be ascribed to Him.

2. Man is a free agent.
3. All knowledge necessary for the salvation of man emanates from his reason; humans could
acquire knowledge before, as well as after, Revelation, by the sole light of reason. This fact
makes knowledge obligatory upon all men, at all times, and in all places.

Muslim philosophers also shared the same view with Greek ethics in analyzing moral in terms of virtues
of the faculties of the soul; the rational, the animal, and the appetitive. The virtue of the rational was
wisdom, the virtue of the animal was courage, the virtue of the appetitive was temperance, and the virtue
of the entire soul was justice. Muslim philosophers followed this division and tried to categorize all the
virtues of life under these four heads.

The Meaning of Islam

The word Islam in Arabic means, among other things, peace, purity, submission and obedience. In the
religious sense, the word „Islam‘ means to submit, a total surrender, a total resignation to the Will of God
and obedience to His Law. Only through submission to the Will of God and by obedience to His Law can
one achieve true peace and enjoy lasting purity. The will of God is defined by the Qur'an as good and
compassionate, and His law as the most beneficent and equitable.

Therefore, a ‗Muslim‘ is ‗one who submits to God.‘ Islam means to submit to Allah alone, to worship and
serve Allah alone, and to believe and follow the prophet sent to them.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Islam or submission to the Will of God, together with obedience to
His Law, does not mean in any way loss of individual freedom or surrender to fatalism. Anyone who
thinks or believes so has certainly failed to understand the true meaning of Islam and the concept of God
in Islam. The concept of God in Islam describes Him as the Most Merciful and Gracious, and the Most
Loving and most concerned with the well-being of man, and as Full of Wisdom and care for His
Creatures. His Will, accordingly, is a Will of Benevolence and Goodness, and whatever Law He
prescribes must be in the best interest of mankind.

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The person who submits to the Will of God, which is good Will, and obeys the law of God, which is the
best Law, is a sound and honest person. He gains protection of his own rights, showing genuine respect
for the rights of others, and enjoying a high degree of responsible, creative freedom. Submission to the
good Will of God, therefore, does not take away or curtail individual freedom. On the contrary, it gives
freedom of a high degree in abundant measures. It frees the mind from superstitions and fills it with truth.
It frees the soul from sin and wrong and quickens it with goodness and purity. It frees the self from vanity
and greed, from envy and tension, from fear and insecurity. It frees man from subjugation to false deities
and low desires, and unfolds before him the beautiful horizons of goodness and excellence.

Submission to the good Will of God, together with the obedience to His beneficial Law, is the best
safeguard of peace and harmony according to Islam. It enables man to make peace between himself and
his fellow men on the one hand, and between the human community and God on the other. It creates
harmony among the elements of Nature.

THE FUNDAMENTAL ARTICLES OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

1. Islamic Philosophy explains God as One God, Supreme and Eternal, Infinite and Mighty, Merciful and
Compassionate, Creator and Provider

This thinking requires complete trust and hope in God, submission to His Will and reliance on His aid. It
secures mans dignity and saves him from fear and despair, from guilt and confusion. The reader is invited
to see the meaning of Islam as explained above.

2. Believe in all the messengers of God (Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes; and that which
was given to Moses and Jesus), without any discrimination among them.

Every known nation had a warner or messenger from God. These messengers were great teachers of the
good and true champions of the right. They were chosen by God to teach mankind and deliver His Divine
message. They were sent at different times of history and every known nation had one messenger or
more. They were, with the exception of Muhammad, known as national or local messengers. But their
message, their religion, was basically the same and was called ISLAM, because it came from One and the
Same Source, namely, God, to serve one and the same purpose, and that is to guide humanity to the
Straight Path of God. Among them Muhammad stands as the Last Messenger and the crowning glory of
the foundation of prophethood.

3. The belief in all the scriptures and revelations of God

These are the guiding light which the messengers received to show their respective peoples the Right Path
of God. In the Quran a special reference is made to the books of Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus. The
only authentic and complete book of God in existence today is the Quran. In principle, the Muslim
believes in the previous revelations and lost books or corrupted, others forgotten, neglected, or concealed.
They could be still at the bottom of the Dead Sea, and there may be more Scrolls to be discovered. The
Quran is complete and authentic. Nothing of it is missing and no more of it is expected. Its authenticity is
beyond doubt, and no serious scholar or thinker has ventured to question its genuineness. The Quran was
made so by God Who revealed it and made it incumbent upon Himself to protect it against interpolation
and corruption of all kinds. Thus it is given to the Muslims as the standard or criterion by which all the
other books are judged. So whatever agrees with the Quran is accepted as Divine truth, and whatever
differs from the Qur'an is either rejected or suspended. God says: Verily We have, without doubt, sent
down the Quran; and We will assuredly guard it (15:9; cf. 2:75-79; 5:13-14, 41, 45, 47; 6:91; 41:43).

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4. The belief in the angels of God.

They are purely spiritual and splendid beings whose nature requires no food or drink or sleep. They have
no physical desires of any kind nor material needs. They spend their days and nights in the service of
God. There are many of them, and each one is charged with a certain duty. If we cannot see the angels
with our naked eyes, it does not necessarily deny their actual existence. There are many things in the
world that are invisible to the eye or inaccessible to the senses, and yet we do believe in their existence.
Belief in the angels originates from the Islamic principle that knowledge and truth are not entirely
confined to the sensory knowledge or sensory perception alone (16:49-50; 21:19-20. See also the
references in article two above).

5. The Position on the Last Day of Judgment

This world will come to an end some day, and the dead will rise to stand for their final and fair trial.
Everything we do in this world, every intention we have, every move we make, every thought we
entertain, and every word we say, all are counted and kept in accurate records. On the Day of Judgment
they will be brought up. People with good records will be generously rewarded and warmly welcomed to
the Heaven of God, and those with bad records will be punished and cast into Hell. The real nature of
Heaven and Hell and the exact description of them are known to God only. There are descriptions of
Heaven and Hell in the Quran and the Traditions of Muhammad but they should not be taken literally. In
Heaven, said Muhammad, there are things which no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, and no
mind has ever conceived. However, the Muslim believes that there definitely will be compensation and
reward for the good deeds, and punishment for the evil ones. That is the Day of Justice and final
settlement of all accounts.

Belief in the Day of Judgment is the final relieving answer to many complicated problems of our world.
There must be some way to reward goodness and arrest evil. If this is not done here on this earth – and we
know that it is not done regularly or immediately – it has to be done some day, and that is the Day of
Judgment. This is not to condone injustice or tolerate mischief in this world. It is not to sedate the
deprived or comfort their exploiters. Rather, it is to warn the deviants from the Right Path and remind
them that the Justice of God shall run its full course sooner or later (see, for example, the previous
references).

6. The timeless knowledge of God and in His power to plan and execute His plans

God is not indifferent to this world nor is He neutral to it. His knowledge and power are in action at all
times to keep order in His vast domain and maintain full command over His creation. He is Wise and
Loving, and whatever He does must have a good motive and a meaningful purpose. If this is established
in our minds, we should accept with good Faith all that He does, although we may fail to understand it
fully, or even think it is bad. We should have strong Faith in Him and accept whatever He does because
our knowledge is limited and our thinking is based on individual or personal considerations, whereas His
knowledge is limitless and He plans on a universal basis.

This does not in any way make man fatalist or helpless. It simply draws the demarcation line between
what is Gods concern and what is mans responsibility. Because we are by nature finite and limited, we
have a finite and limited degree of power and freedom. We cannot do everything, and He graciously holds
us responsible only for the things we do. The things which we cannot do, or things which He Himself
does, are not in the realm of our responsibility. He is Just and has given us limited power to match our
finite nature and limited responsibility. On the other hand, the timeless knowledge and power of God to
execute His plans do not prevent us from making our own plans in our own limited sphere of power. On

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the contrary, He exhorts us to think, to plan and to make sound choices, but if things do not happen the
way we wanted or planned them, we should not lose Faith or surrender ourselves to mental strains and
shattering worries.

7. The Concept of God’s creation as meaningful and that life has a sublime purpose beyond the physical
needs and material activities of man.

The purpose of life is to worship God. This does not simply mean that we have to spend our entire lives in
constant seclusion and absolute meditation. To worship God is to know Him; to love Him; to obey His
commandments; to enforce His law in every aspect of life; to serve His cause by doing the right and
shunning the evil; and to be just to Him, to ourselves, and to our fellow human beings. To worship God is
to live life not to run away from it. In brief, to worship God is to imbue ourselves with His Supreme
Attributes. This is by no means a simple statement, nor is it an oversimplification of the matter. It is most
comprehensive and conclusive. So if life has a purpose and if man is created to serve that purpose, then he
cannot escape the responsibility. He cannot deny his existence or ignore the vital role he has to play.
When God charges him with any responsibility, He provides him with all the required assistance. He
endows him with intelligence and power to choose his course of conduct. Man, thus, is strongly
commended by God to exert his utmost to fully serve the purpose of his existence. Should he fail to do
that, or misuse his life or neglect his duties, he shall be responsible to God for his wrong deeds (see
21:17-18; 51:56-58; 75:37).

8. The Position of Man in the Universe

The thinking is that man enjoys an especially high-ranking status in the hierarchy of all the known
creatures. He occupies this distinguished position because he alone is gifted with rational faculties and
spiritual aspirations as well as powers of action. But the more his rank excels, the more his responsibility
grows. He occupies the position of Gods viceroy on earth. The person who is appointed by God to be His
active agent, must necessarily have some power and authority, and be, at least potentially, endowed with
honour and integrity. And this is the status of man in Islam; not a condemned race from birth to death, but
a dignified being potentially capable of good and noble achievements. The fact that God chose His
messengers from the human race shows that man is trustworthy and capable, and that he can acquire
immense treasures of goodness (2:30-34; 6:165; 7:11; 17:70-72, 90-95).

9. The Freedom of Man

Every person is born free from sin and all claims to inherited virtue. He is like a blank book. When the
person reaches the age of maturity he becomes accountable for his deeds and intentions, if his
development is normal and if he is sane. Man is not only free from sin until he commits sin, but he is also
free to do things according to his plans on his own responsibility. This dual freedom: freedom from sin
and freedom to do effective things, clear the Muslims conscience from the heavy pressure of Inherited
Sin. It relieves his soul and mind from the unnecessary strains of the Doctrine of Original Sin.

This Islamic concept of freedom is based upon the principle of Gods justice and the individuals direct
responsibility to God. Each person must bear his own burden and be responsible for his own actions,
because no one can expiate for another‘s sin.

Thus, a Muslim believes that if Adam had committed the First Sin, it was his own responsibility to
expiate for that sin. To assume that God was unable to forgive Adam and had to make somebody else
expiate for his sin, or to assume that Adam did not pray for pardon or prayed for it but it was not granted,
would be extremely unlikely and contrary to God‘s mercy and justice as well as to His attribute of
forgiveness and power to forgive. To assume the said hypothesis, would be an audacious defiance of

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common sense and flagrant violation of the very concept of God (see the references in article nine above;
Quran, 41:46; 45:15; 53:31-42; 74:38; the concept of Sin below): On the rational basis as well as on the
authority of the Our an, the Muslim believes that Adam realized what he had committed and prayed to
God for pardon, as any other sensible sinner would. It is also on the same basis, the Muslim believes, that
God, the Forgiving and Merciful, granted Adam pardon (2:35-37; 20:117-122).

Hence, the Muslim cannot possibly accept the doctrine that Adam with the whole human race had been
condemned and unforgiven until Jesus came to expiate for their sins. Consequently, the Muslim cannot
entertain the dramatic story of Jesus death on the cross just to do away with all human sins once and for
all.

The Muslim does not believe in the crucifixion of Jesus by his enemies because the basis of this doctrine
of crucifixion is contrary to Divine mercy and justice as much as it is to human logic and dignity. Such a
disbelief in the doctrine does not in any way lessen the Muslims reverence for Jesus, or degrade the high
status of Jesus in Islam, or even shake the Muslims belief in Jesus as a distinguished prophet of God. On
the contrary, by rejecting this doctrine the Muslim accepts Jesus but only with more esteem and higher
respect, and looks upon his original message as an essential part of Islam. So let it be stated, again, that to
be a Muslim a person must accept and respect all the prophets of God without any discrimination. The
general status of Jesus in Islam will be further discussed in a later chapter.

10. The Concept of Salvation

Man must work out his salvation through the guidance of God. This means that in order to attain salvation
a person must combine Faith and action, belief and practice. Faith without action is as insufficient as
action without Faith. In other words, no one can attain salvation until his Faith in God becomes dynamic
in his life and his beliefs are translated into reality. This is in complete harmony with the other Islamic
articles of Faith. It shows that God does not accept lip service, and that no true believer can be indifferent
as far as the practical requirements of Faith are concerned. It also shows that no one can act on behalf of
another or intercede between him and God (see, for example, the Quran, 10:9-10; 18:30; 103:1-3).

11. Human nature

In human nature, which God created, there is more good than evil, and the probability of successful
reform is greater than the probability of hopeless failure. This belief is derived from the fact that God has
tasked man with certain assignments and sent messengers with revelations for his guidance. If man were
by nature a hopeless case, impossible to reform, how could God with His absolute wisdom assign him
responsibilities and invite him to do or shun certain things? How could God do that, if it were all in vain?
The fact that God cares for man and takes a stand in his interest proves that man in neither helpless nor
hopeless, but is more appreciative of and inclined to good than otherwise. Surely with sound Faith in God
and due confidence in man miracles can be worked out, even in our own times. To understand this
properly, one has to carefully study the relevant passages in the Quran and reflect on their meanings.

12. The Quran

The Quran is the word of God revealed to Muhammad through the agency of the Angel Gabriel. The
Quran was revealed from God piece by piece on various occasions to answer certain questions, solve
certain problems, settle certain disputes, and to be mans best guide to the truth of God and eternal
happiness. Every letter in the Quran is the word of God, and every sound in it is the true echo of Gods
voice. The Quran is the First and most authentic Source of Islam. It was revealed in Arabic, it is still and
will remain in its original and complete Arabic version, because God has made it His concern to preserve

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the Quran, to make it always the best guide for man, and safeguard it against corruption (cf. 4:82; 15:9;
17:9; 41:41-44; 42:7, 52-53).

In testimony to God‘s conservation, the Quran is the only Scripture in human history that has been
preserved in its complete and original version without the slightest change in style or even punctuations.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY

From the discoveries of the Americas (1492) onwards, a new cultural situation in Europe called for a new
philosophy that could better cope with the scientific revolution. This revolution had begun with
Copernicus (1473-1543) and marked a great break with medieval mentality of Scholasticism. Scientific
knowledge was no longer gained through the abstract speculations but through a methodic activity of
experientiae literatae, educated experiences.

THE THREE CENTRAL SCHOOLS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

The enthusiasm for scientific thinking brought about two main philosophical trends in modern
philosophy: Empiricism, Rationalism and Scepticism. About the middle of the eighteenth century
rationalism and empiricism stood fully developed, confronting each other, and the contest began.
However, rationalism was far much earlier founded on the Plato‘s philosophy. The dispute between
rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our
effort to gain knowledge. These three ideas or principles are universal throughout science; without them,
there would be no scientific or critical thinking.

1. Rationalism: The Practice of Logical Reasoning

 The term ―rationalism‖ comes from the Latin ratio (reason) and has been used to refer to several
movements of ideas. Generally speaking rationalism is the intellectual attitude of those who
maintain that reason alone is the appropriate tool in determining the truth and values of both
beliefs and techniques in a given field.
 In its philosophical sense, ―rationalism‖ refers to the metaphysical orientation of modern
philosophy from Descartes to Kant. According to this philosophical orientation man‘s only valid
criterion in establishing truth is reason which is common to all men.
 Rationalism stresses the theory of innatism [‗Innatism‘ is a philosophical theory which maintains
that some ideas, or principles are present in the mind at birth, either actually or virtually] as
explanation of the origin of some fundamental ideas which are the condition of possibility for
human knowledge.

In rationalism, reason is the sole arbiter. What reason cannot comprehend and accept can never form part
of the rationalist‘s conviction. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and
knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the
ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways:
 First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the
information that sense experience can provide.
 Second, they construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional
information about the world.
To be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of the claims. The Intuition/Deduction thesis concerns how we
become warranted in believing propositions in a particular subject area.
 The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable
by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions.

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 Intuition is a form of rational insight. Intellectually grasping a proposition, we just ―see‖ it to be
true in such a way as to form a true, warranted belief in it. Deduction is a process in which we
derive conclusions from intuited premises through valid arguments, ones in which the conclusion
must be true if the premises are true. We intuit, for example, that the number three is prime and
that it is greater than two. We then deduce from this knowledge that there is a prime number
greater than two. Intuition and deduction thus provide us with knowledge a priori, which is to say
knowledge gained independently of sense experience. Some rationalists take mathematics to be
knowable by intuition and deduction. Some place ethical truths in this category. Some include
metaphysical claims, such as that God exists, we have free will, and our mind and body are
distinct substances. The more propositions rationalists include within the range of intuition and
deduction, and the more controversial the truth of those propositions, the more radical their
rationalism. Some take intuition to be infallible, claiming that whatever we intuit must be true.
Others allow for the possibility of false intuited propositions.

 The second thesis associated with rationalism is the Innate Knowledge thesis.
The Innate Knowledge Thesis implies that we have knowledge of some truths in a particular
subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. Like the Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate
Knowledge thesis asserts the existence of knowledge gained a priori, independently of
experience. The difference between them rests in the accompanying understanding of how this a
priori knowledge is gained. The Intuition/Deduction thesis cites intuition and subsequent
deductive reasoning. The Innate Knowledge thesis offers our rational nature. Our innate
knowledge is not learned through either sense experience or intuition and deduction. It is just part
of our nature. Experiences may trigger a process by which we bring this knowledge to
consciousness, but the experiences do not provide us with the knowledge itself. It has in some
way been with us all along. According to some rationalists, we gained the knowledge in an earlier
existence. According to others, God provided us with it at creation. Still others say it is part of our
nature through natural selection.

 The third important thesis of rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis.

The Innate Concept Thesis basically mean that we have some of the concepts we employ in a
particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. According to the Innate Concept thesis,
some of our concepts are not gained from experience. They are part of our rational nature in such
a way that, while sense experiences may trigger a process by which they are brought to
consciousness, experience does not provide the concepts or determine the information they
contain. Some claim that the Innate Concept thesis is entailed by the Innate Knowledge Thesis; a
particular instance of knowledge can only be innate if the concepts that are contained in the
known proposition are also innate. This is Locke's position (Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, Book I, Chapter IV, Section 1, p. 91).
 The Indispensability of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area, S, by intuition and
deduction, as well as the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to us, could not
have been gained by us through sense experience. Experience cannot provide what we gain from
reason.

 The Superiority of Reason Thesis: Reason is superior to experience as a source of knowledge. The
knowledge we gain in subject area S by intuition and deduction or have innately is superior to any
knowledge gained by sense experience. How reason is superior needs explanation, and

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 rationalists have offered different accounts. One view, generally associated with Descartes, is that
what we know a priori is certain, beyond even the slightest doubt, while what we believe, or even
know, on the basis of sense experience is at least somewhat uncertain. Another view, generally
associated with Plato (Republic 479e-484c), locates the superiority of a priori knowledge in the
objects known. What we know by reason alone, a Platonic form, say, is superior in an important
metaphysical way, e.g. unchanging, eternal, perfect, a higher degree of being, to what are aware
of through sense experience.

Most forms of rationalism involve notable commitments to other philosophical positions. One is a
commitment to the denial of scepticism for at least some area of knowledge. If we claim to know some
truths by intuition or deduction or to have some innate knowledge, we obviously reject scepticism with
regard to those truths. Rationalism in the form of the Intuition/Deduction thesis is also committed to
epistemic foundationalism, the view that we know some truths without basing our belief in them on any
others and that we then use this foundational knowledge to know more truths.

Summary: The Theory of Rationalism:

Proponent is Rene Descartes Germany, Holland, France
 Rationalism regards mathematics as the type of all knowledge
 All knowledge comes from general principles
 Knowledge is innate since these principles are innate
 Knowledge is a priori; that is, prior to experience. It emphasizes a priori propositions
 Facts of experience are preceded by abstract, a priori knowledge
 Emphasizes on the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will
 Very little attention given to perception and experience
 In order to know anything, it is necessary to show the systematic connection of every fact with
some fundamental first principle
 It holds that perception gives us only the bare facts; it is reason which enables us to trace the
mutual connections and derivations of these facts from some general law.
 Use deductive method: deducing facts from general propositions which are assumed to be true,
without sufficient criticism and examination.
Limitations of Rationalism
 Not all knowledge is innate, abstract and reflective.
 It leads to doubt of religious beliefs since everything is dependent upon the mind and not on some
other external reality. In other words, the realization that one thinks, is not only the proof that one
exists but it is also an undeniable and indubitable fact upon which the certainty of everything else
is based.
 Whatever exists, including God is the product of the human mind. God is understood with the
mind and its explanations. God is identified with a concept, whereby, He is subjected entirely to
human thinking.
 The human individual is placed in the first place and God takes the second or third place, since
the human mind has to exist first to determine God‘s existence. This leads to the exoneration of
the human individual and his reasoning process. We can only know being because we already
think.
 Rationalism can lead to atheism, such that man with his mind is conceived to create reality and
himself and not God anymore.
 Rationalism tends to create the disparity between faith and reason, considering reason to be
beyond faith and that man does not need faith to know and acknowledge the existence of God.
This is evident in the Gnostics claim that man does not need the grace of God to be saved; rather,
he has to believe in his knowledge to achieve salvation.

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  Rationalism denies the religious experience that provides us with knowledge of God; a logical
consequence is to assert that only ideas about God and reality exist. Accordingly, God as the
cause (creator) of the universe is rejected and ideas are proposed as the constituent of reality and
the reason for reality. The Providence of God, which governs and organizes the world, is replaced
by the belief that the happenings in the world are the result of mental ideas and combinations, all
being controlled purely by the rational mind.

René Descartes (1596-1650)

René Descartes is justly considered the father of modern philosophy and the founder of the rational
method as applied to philosophical research. In fact, he is the first philosopher to begin with the
impressions which are in our intellect (intellectual phenomenalism) and lay down the laws which reason
must follow in order to arrive at reasonably certain philosophical data. Indeed, Descartes reaches
metaphysical conclusions which are no different from those of Scholastic philosophy. He maintains the
transcendence of God, upholds human liberty and Christian morality.

The Laws of the Cartesian Method

Descartes, in his work Discourse on Method, after giving a criticism of the education which he had
received (a criticism which is indirectly an attack on the Scholasticism of his day), goes on to set up the
new method, which according to him, must be the basis of all scientific and philosophical research. These
laws are four:
 To accept nothing as true that is not recognized by the reason as clear and distinct;
 To analyze complex ideas by breaking them down into their simple constitutive elements, which
reason can intuitively apprehend;
 To reconstruct, beginning with simple ideas and working synthetically to the complex;
 To make an accurate and complete enumeration of the data of the problem, using in this step both
the methods of induction and deduction.

To better understand these laws, we must note that for Descartes the point of departure is the ideas,
clearly and distinctly known by the intellect – the subjective impressions on the intellect. Beyond these
clear and distinct ideas one cannot go, and hence the ultimate principle of truth consists in the clearness of
the idea. Clear and distinct intuitions of the intellect are true. For Descartes, such clear and distinct
intuitions are thought itself (―cogito‖) and the idea of extension (res extensa). Having arrived at this
starting point (clear and distinct ideas), the intellect begins its discursive and deductive operation
(represented by the second and third rules). The second law (called analysis) directs that the elementary
notions be reunited with the clear and distinct ideas (the minor of the Scholastic syllogism). The third law
(synthesis) presents them as the conclusion flowing from the premises. (General ideas, Particular ideas
and the Conclusion). The final law (complete enumeration) stresses that no link in the deductive chain
should be omitted and that every step should be logically deduced from the starting point (i.e., from the
clear and distinct ideas). Thus, working from one step to the next, there will be achieved a system of
truths all of which are clear and distinct, because all participate in the same degree of truth enjoyed by the
first idea, which was clear and distinct. This, as we know, is the method adopted in mathematics.
Descartes transferred it to philosophy with the intention of finding clear and distinct concrete ideas, and
of deducing from these, through reason alone, an entire system of truths which would also be real or
objective.

The Aristotelian-Scholastic method (as well as that of classical realism in general) is also deductive,
but it is very different from that of Descartes. Scholastic deduction is connected with objective
reality because ideas are abstractions of the forms of the objects which experience presents. Thus

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both the concreteness of the ideas and the concreteness of the deductions based on these ideas are
justified.

In Descartes ideas do not come from experience, but the intellect finds them within itself. Descartes
declares that only these ideas are valid in the field of reality. Thus the concreteness (or the objective
validity) of an idea is dependent upon its own clearness and distinction.

Metaphysics: From Methodical Doubt to “Cogito Ergo Sum”

Descartes, as a result of the principles already established in his method, had first of all to seek out a solid
starting point (a clear and distinct concrete idea), and from this opens his deductive process. He asks the
question: Can we know anything with certainty? He answers by saying ―We cannot know anything with
certainty. To arrive at this solid starting point, he begins with methodical doubt, that is, a doubt which
will be the means of arriving at certitude. This differs from the systematic doubt of the Sceptics, who
doubt in order to remain in doubt. I can doubt all the impressions that exist within my knowing faculties,
whether they be those impressions which come to me through the senses or through the intellect. Indeed, I
may doubt even mathematical truths, in so far as it could be that the human intelligence is under the
influence of a malignant genius which takes sport in making what is objectively irrational appear to me as
rational. I doubt the presumptions of religion; I doubt the truths of culture; I doubt my own existence and
rationality.

Doubt is thus carried to its extreme form. But notwithstanding this fact, doubt causes to rise in me the
most luminous and indisputable certainty. Even presupposing that the entire content of my thought is
false, but the one incontestable truth is that I think: one cannot doubt without thinking; and if I think, I
exist: ―Cogito ergo sum.‖ It is to be observed that for Descartes the validity of ―Cogito ergo sum‖ rests in
this, that the doubt presents intuitively to the mind the subject who doubts, that is, the thinking substance.
In Descartes, ―Cogito ergo sum‖ is assumed, not only in order to overcome the Sceptic position, but as a
foundation for the primary reality (the existence of the ―res cogitans‖), from which the way to further
research is to be taken. This is the point which distinguishes the classic realistic philosophy from
Cartesian and modern philosophy. With Descartes, philosophy ceases to be the science of being, and
becomes the science of thought (epistemology). Whereas, at first, being conditioned thought, now it
is thought that conditions being. This principle, more or less realized by the philosophers immediately
following Descartes, was to reach its full consciousness in Kant and modern Idealism. (See: Meditations
on First Philosophy, I and II; Discourse on Method, IV.)

From “Cogito” to the Proof of the Existence of God

The ―cogito‖ reveals the existence of the subject, limited and imperfect because liable to doubt. It is
necessary to arrive at an objective and perfect reality, i.e., to prove the existence of God. Descartes
makes use of three arguments which can be summarized thus:
 ―Cogito‖ has given me a consciousness of my own limited and imperfect being. This proves that I
have not given existence to myself, for in such a case I would have given myself a perfect nature
and not the one I have, which is subject to doubt.
 I have the idea of the perfect: If I did not possess it, I could never know that I am imperfect. Now,
whence comes this idea of the perfect? Not from myself, for I am imperfect, and the perfect
cannot arise from the imperfect. Hence it comes from a Perfect Being, that is, from God.
 The very analysis of the idea of the perfect includes the existence of the perfect being, for just as
the valley is included in the idea of a mountain, so also existence is included in the idea of the
perfect. (the argument of St. Anselm). (See: Meditations on First Philosophy, V; Discourse on
Method, IV.)

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  Also the idea of God perceived to be perfect, God must have put the idea of himself in my mind
the time my mind was created.

Regarding the nature of God, Descartes ascribes to it more or less the same attributes as does traditional
Christian theistic thought. In Descartes, however, these attributes assume a different significance and
value. God, above all, is absolute substance: the only substance, properly so-called (hence the way is open
to the pantheism of Spinoza). An attribute which has great value for Descartes is the veracity of God.
God, the most perfect being, cannot be deceived and cannot deceive. Thus the veracity of God serves as a
guarantee for the entire series of clear and distinct ideas. They are true because if they are not true, I,
having proved the existence of God, would have to say that He is deceiving by creating a rational creature
who is deceived even in the apprehension of clear and distinct ideas. Thus, with the proof of the existence
of God, the hypothesis of a malignant genius falls of its own weight. Regarding the origin of ideas,
Descartes holds that the idea of God, all primitive notions, all logical, mathematical, moral principles, and
so forth, are innate. God is the guarantee of the truth of these innate ideas. Regarding the question of
material world (matter), Descartes claims that God has not given me other faculty to deny the existence of
matter; therefore, matter exists.

2. Empiricism: The Use of Empirical Evidence

Empiricism is a philosophy based upon experience; it maintains that all concepts and all knowledge of
matters of fact are based on, or the world can be justified only by experience. This general thesis,
however, can receive different emphases and refinements. The statement that experience is the source of
knowledge means that knowledge depends ultimately on the use of the senses and on what is discovered
through them. The empiricist understanding of knowledge does not demand that the knowledge in
question should possess absolute infallibility so that possibility of error is logically excluded. Yet,
empiricism maintains that knowledge can arrive at certainty, which is to be found in the deliverances of
the senses themselves and not in the deliverances of reason. On these certain data it seeks to build up or
construct a rigorous knowledge. Empiricism, whether concerned with meaning or knowledge, can be held
with varying degrees of strength. The main characters of Empiricism are: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679),
John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776).

Empirical evidence is evidence that one can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell; it is evidence that is
susceptible to one‘s senses. Empirical evidence is important because it is evidence that others besides
yourself can experience, and it is repeatable, so empirical evidence can be checked by yourself and others
after knowledge claims are made by an individual. Empirical evidence is the only type of evidence that
possesses these attributes and is therefore the only type used by scientists and critical thinkers to make
vital decisions and reach sound conclusions. Another name for empirical evidence is natural evidence: the
evidence found in nature. Naturalism is the philosophy that says that ―Reality and existence (i.e. the
universe, cosmos, or nature) can be described and explained solely in terms of natural evidence, natural
processes, and natural laws.‖ This is exactly what science tries to do.

Another popular definition of naturalism is that ―The universe exists as science says it does.‖ This
definition emphasizes the strong link between science and natural evidence and law, and it reveals that
our best understanding of material reality and existence is ultimately based on philosophy. This is not
bad, however, for, whether naturalism is ultimately true or not, science and naturalism reject the concept
of ultimate or absolute truth in favour of a concept of proximate reliable truth that is far more successful
and intellectually satisfying than the alternative, the philosophy of supernaturalism. The supernatural, if it
exists, cannot be examined or tested by science, so it is irrelevant to science. It is impossible to possess
reliable knowledge about the supernatural by the use of scientific and critical thinking. Individuals who
claim to have knowledge about the supernatural do not possess this knowledge by the use of critical
thinking, but by other methods of knowing.

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Summary: The Theory of Empiricism
 It is the opposing theory to rationalism; the proponents are Bacon, Locke. This school belongs to
English thinkers.
 Empiricism maintains that knowledge is derived from experience
 Empiricism does not admit that we possess any store of first principles or general truths which are
innate to the mind.
 All knowledge is experiential
 It is impossible for the mind to know anything of which it has no perception
 Knowledge is from the senses
 Since knowledge is from perception, then the mind is passive, tabula rasa or empty slate on which
we write our experiences on.
 Source of knowledge are the senses
 Ideas are supposed to be furnished to the mind by the channel of the senses
 Ideas only are associated to some fact which leads to judgment. No judgment of the mind
 Empirical theories undertake to explain knowledge without reference to the mind and its mode of
activity.
 Do not deny the existence of the mind, only that empiricists do not want to go beyond the
particular facts to experience
 They use the principles of explanation
 All inference is based upon perception of resemblance between cases
 Observation is the principle for establishing facts, e.g., we are immortal when we actually see
someone dead or when we see a dead body lying without life: resemblance.

3. Scepticism: Possessing a Sceptical Attitude

The final key idea in science and critical thinking is scepticism, the constant questioning of your beliefs
and conclusions. They believe that we cannot reach at certainty and objective truth because everything is
changing; principles of science are changing, new things are invented every time, cultural truths are
changing. Human thinking is ever evolving. Therefore, there is no reason to maintain an absolute
position on the objectivity of truth. We are faced every day with fantastic, bizarre, and outrageous claims
about the natural world; if we don‘t wish to believe every pseudoscientific allegation or claim of the
paranormal, we must have some method of deciding what to believe or not, and that method is the
scientific method which uses critical thinking. (For idealism, see Modern Philosophy)

Good scientists and critical thinkers constantly examine the evidence, arguments, and reasons for their
beliefs. Self-deception and deception of yourself by others are two of the most common human failings.
Self-deception often goes unrecognized because most people deceive themselves. The only way to escape
both deception by others and the far more common trait of self-deception is to repeatedly and rigorously
examine your basis for holding your beliefs. You must question the truth and reliability of both the
knowledge claims of others and the knowledge you already possess. One way to do this is to test your
beliefs against objective reality by predicting the consequences or logical outcomes of your beliefs and
the actions that follow from your beliefs. If the logical consequences of your beliefs match objective
reality – as measured by empirical evidence – you can conclude that your beliefs are reliable knowledge
(that is, your beliefs have a high probability of being true). Many people believe that sceptics are closed-
minded and, once possessing reliable knowledge, resist changing their minds – but just the opposite is
true. A sceptic holds beliefs tentatively, and is open to new evidence and rational arguments about those
beliefs. Sceptics are un dogmatic, i.e., they are willing to change their minds, but only in the face of new
reliable evidence or sound reasons that compel one to do so. Sceptics have open minds, but not so open
that their brains fall out: they resist believing something in the first place without adequate evidence or

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reason, and this attribute is worthy of emulation. Science treats new ideas with the same scepticism:
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to justify one‘s credulity.

MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS

The most important philosophical systems that have been created during the last two centuries are
Idealism, Marxism, Positivism, Existentialism, Phenomenology and Analytical Philosophy. Though it is
fundamental to note that Existentialism is more of a movement that does not form systems, but rather it
enters into a system building.

a. Idealism

In its philosophical sense, it is the view that the mind and spiritual values are fundamental in the world as
a whole. Further, it is a denial of the common-sense view that material things exist independently of being
perceived. The immediate philosophical background of the idealist movement was provided by the critical
philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and the true spiritual successors of Kant. Things were regarded in their
entirety, by the Idealists as products of thought. This, of course, does not mean that the extra-mental
world is the product of conscious creative mind, but rather it is the product of a supra-individual
intelligence, and absolute subject. We can say that for idealism, in general, reality is the process of the
self-expression or self-manifestation of infinite thought or reason. Absolute thought or reason is regarded
as an activity, as productive reason which posits or expresses itself in the world. Now if reality is the
unified process by which absolute thought or reason manifests itself, it is intelligible. And it is intelligible
by the human mind, provided that this mind can be regarded as the vehicle of absolute thought reflecting
on itself.

Thus the idealist philosophy is conceptual reconstruction of this dynamic activity, this self-unfolding
infinite life. It is the business of philosophy to give systematic articulation to this life, reliving the
process, as it were, on the plane of reflective awareness. Hence, the rational process is reality becoming
aware of itself in and through man‘s philosophical reflection. In this case, the history of philosophy is the
history of absolute reason‘s self-reflection. In other words, the Universe knows itself in and through the
mind of man. And philosophy can be interpreted as the self-knowledge of the Absolute. The main figures
of idealism are Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich W. von Schelling (1775-1854), and Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Kant.

a. Kant 1724-1804

Kant is generally considered the greatest of modern philosophers. Throughout his life, Kant lived in
Konigsberg-Germany. His outer life was academic and wholly uneventful. He was educated in the
Wolfian version of Leibniz‘s philosophy, but was led to abandon it by two influences: Rousseau and
Hume. Hume by his criticism of the concept of causality awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Kant
was a man of such regular habits that people used to set their watches by him as he passed their doors on
his constitutional, but on one occasion his time-table was disrupted for several days when he was reading
one of Rousseau‘s books. Kant is the founder of German Idealism. There are certain common
characteristics of German Idealists, which can be mentioned before embarking upon them in detail.
 The critique of knowledge, as a means of reaching philosophical conclusions, is emphasized by
Kant and accepted by his followers: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.
 There is an emphasis upon the mind as opposed to matter, which leads in the end to the assertion
that only mind exists.
 There is a strong rejection of utilitarian ethics in favour of systems which are held to be
demonstrated by abstract philosophical arguments.

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  There is a Scholastic tone which is absent in the earlier French and English philosophers; Kant,

Kant‟s Theory of Knowledge

Kant wrote several books, but his most important books are: The Critique of Pure Reason (first edition,
1781; and second edition, 1787). The problem of the Critique may be stated in outline and approximately
in Kant‘s own words as follows:

―Human reason is called upon to consider certain questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own
nature, but which it cannot answer. These questions relate to God, freedom of the will, and immortality. And the name
for the subject which has to deal with these questions is metaphysics. At one time metaphysics was regarded as the
queen of all the sciences, and the importance of its aim justified the title. At first the subject, propounding as it did a
dogmatic system, exercised a despotic sway. But its subsequent failure brought it into disrepute. It has constantly been
compelled to retrace its steps; there has been fundamental disagreement among philosophers, and no philosopher has
successfully refuted his critics. Consequently the current attitude to the subject is one of weariness and indifference.
Yet humanity cannot really be indifferent to such problems; even those who profess indifference inevitably make
metaphysical assertions; and the current attitude is a sign not of levity but of a refusal to put up with the illusory
knowledge offered by contemporary philosophy. Now the objects of metaphysics, God, freedom, and immortality, are
not objects of experience in the sense in which a tree or a stone is an object of experience. Hence our views about them
cannot be due to experience; they must somehow be apprehended by pure reason, i.e. by thinking and without appeal to
experience. Moreover, it is in fact by thinking that men have always tried to solve the problems concerning God,
freedom, and immortality. What, then, is the cause of the unsatisfactory treatment of these problems and men‘s
consequent indifference? It must, in some way, lie in a failure to attain the sure scientific method, and really consists in
the neglect of an inquiry which should be a preliminary to all others in metaphysics. Men ought to have begun with a
critical investigation of pure reason itself. Reason should have examined its own nature, to ascertain in general the
extent to which it is capable of attaining knowledge without the aid of experience. This examination will decide
whether reason is able to deal with the problems of God, freedom, and immortality at all; and without it no discussion
of these problems will have a solid foundation. It is this preliminary investigation which the Critique of Pure Reason
proposes to undertake. Its aim is to answer the question, ‗How far can reason go, without the material presented and the
aid furnished by experience?‘ and the result furnishes the solution, or at least the key to the solution, of all metaphysical
problems.‖

Kant‘s problem, then, is similar to Locke‘s. Locke states that his purpose is to inquire into the original,
certainty, and extent of human knowledge; The purpose of The Critique of Pure Reason, therefore, is to
prove that, although none of our knowledge can transcend experience, it is, nevertheless, in part a priori
and not inferred inductively from experience. The part of our knowledge which is a priori embraces,
according to him, not only logic, but much that cannot be included in logic or deduced from it. He
separates two distinctions which, in Leibniz, are confounded. On the on the one hand there is the
distinction between ‗analytic‘ and ‗synthetic‘ propositions; on the other hand, the distinction between ‗a
priori‘ and ‗empirical‘ propositions. What do these distinctions mean?
 An „analytic‟ proposition/knowledge is one in which the predicate is part of the subject; for
instance, ‗a tall man is a man‘, or an ‗equilateral triangle is a triangle‘. Such propositions follow
from the law of contradiction; to maintain that a tall man is not a man would be self-
contradictory. The law of contradiction, which says that no contradiction is true, thus underlies
the truth of the analytic proposition that all bodies are extended·.
So, all analytic propositions are a priori judgments, even those that contain empirical concepts
as does the judgment ‗Gold is a yellow metal‘. ·I must have experience if I am to have the
concepts of gold, of yellow, and of metal; but· to know that gold is a yellow metal I need no
further experience; all I need is to analyse my concept of gold, which contains the concept of
being a yellow metal.

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 A „synthetic‟ proposition/knowledge is one that is not analytic. Some synthetic judgments have
an empirical origin, and can be known only a posteriori; other synthetic judgments have a priori
certainty, and originate in pure understanding and reason. All the propositions that we know only
through experience are synthetic (a posteriori propositions). We cannot, by a mere analysis of
concepts, discover such truths as ‗Tuesday was a wet day‘ or ‗Napoleon was a great general‘. But
Kant, unlike Leibniz and all other previous philosophers will not admit the converse, that all
synthetic propositions are only known through experience. This brings us to the second of the
above distinctions. Two kinds of synthetic judgment:
o Judgments of experience are always synthetic. It would be absurd to base an analytic
judgment on experience: why go to experience when the judgment can be derived purely
from my concept? That everybody is extended is a proposition that holds a priori, and not
a judgment of experience. For before I look to experience I already have in the concept of
body all that I need for that judgment: I need only to extract the predicate (‗extended‘)
from that concept according to the law of contradiction. In doing that, I also become
conscious of the necessity of the judgment—and ·that‘s further evidence that this analytic
judgment isn‘t based on experience, because· experience can never teach me that
something is necessary.
o Mathematical judgments are all, without exception, synthetic. This is certainly true and is
very important, but it seems to have escaped the notice of all previous analysers of human
reason, and indeed to be directly opposed to all their theories. Those earlier thinkers saw
that all the inferences of mathematicians proceed according to the law of contradiction,
and wrongly slipped into thinking that mathematical truths were known from the law of
contradiction. This was a great mistake. The law of contradiction can lead one to a
synthetic proposition, but only from another synthetic proposition. (Still, it must be borne
in mind that mathematical propositions are always a priori judgments, not empirical ones.
They carry necessity with them, and that can‘t be learned about from experience. If you
disagree, I shan‘t argue; I shall merely make this claim about the propositions of pure—
i.e. non-empirical—mathematics!) One might think that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is
analytic, and that it follows according to the law of contradiction from the concept of the
sum of 7 and 5. But if we look more closely, we find that the concept of the sum of 7 and
5 contains only the uniting of 7 and 5 into a single number; and in thinking this we don‘t
have the least thought of what this single number is in which the two are combined. I can
analyse my concept of the uniting of seven and five as long as I please—I shall never find
12 in it. I have to go outside these concepts and—with the help of an intuition that
corresponds to one of them (my five fingers for instance)—add the 5 given in intuition to
the concept of 7, adding them one by one. Thus in this proposition 7 + 5 = 12 we really
amplify our concept ·of 7 + 5·, adding to it a new concept that wasn‘t thought in it. That
is to say, arithmetical propositions are always synthetic. It will be easier to grasp this if
we take larger numbers.
How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? The answer to this question, with its
consequences, constitutes the main theme of The Critique of Pure Reason. According to Kant,
the outer world causes only the matter of sensation, but our own mental apparatus orders this
matter in space and time, and supplies the concepts by means of which we understand experience.
Knowledge of objects as such, ―things in themselves‖ or noumena, is impossible since we can
only know our ordered sense-impressions (phenomena).
 An „empirical‟ proposition/knowledge is one which we cannot know except by the help of
sense-perception, either our own or that of someone else whose testimony we accept. The facts of
history and geography are of this sort; so are the laws of science, whenever our knowledge of
their truth depends on observational data.
 An ‘a priori’ proposition/knowledge, on the other hand, is one which, though it may be elicited
by experience, is seen, when known, to have a basis other than experience. A child learning

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 arithmetic may be helped by experiencing two marbles and two other marbles, and observing that
altogether he is experiencing four marbles. But when he has grasped the general proposition ‗two
and two are four‘ he no longer requires confirmation by instance; the proposition has certainty
which induction can never give to a general law. All the propositions of pure mathematics are in
this sense a priori.
Must there not, however, be some problem peculiar to a priori judgements? Otherwise, as in the
text above, why should Kant have been led to suppose that his problem concerned them only? A
priori judgements, presuppose a conformity between the connexions which we discover and all
possible instances. Now Kant‘s treatment of this conformity as a conformity between our ideas
and things has two implications:

Kant‟s De- Ontological Theory of Ethics

The Critique of Practical Reason is basically to give Kant‘s Metaphysics of Ethics. Kant moves away
from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysic of morals. For many years philosophers have discussed
the possibility of the existence of right and wrong. In fact, the issues of morality and ethical decision-
making figure predominantly in the studies on human conduct. Various theories have been offered
throughout the centuries in an attempt to answer the question, ―Do morals exist?‖ Kant, as the great
German Idealist gave considerable thought to this question. When we say ethics we mean theories or
systems that reflect personal actions, decisions, and relations. Morality refers to the belief and conformity
of acts of right and wrong. For example, ethics refers to such systems as Utilitarianism and Hedonism
where general principles of moral decision-making are employed, and morality refers to such things as
―lying is wrong‖ and ―it is good to be sacrificial‖ which refer to actions cloaked under a particular ethical
theory. For most people, ethics and morality are used interchangeably. This will be the case in this study
as well.
Finally, while we hear about ethical theories that are broadly teleological/end based we will only be
interested in the branched ethical system that is commonly referred to as deontology/act based.

The Concept of Duty

The particular work under consideration here will be Kant‘s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
translated by H. J. Paton. This work, although relatively short, contains Kant‘s working definition of his
concept of morality. For Kant, the central radix of morality concerns obligation or reasons of ought. If it
is defined in terms of ought, we must understand if conditional or unconditional usages are being applied
here. That is:
 A conditional ought means that one ought to perform some act in order for something else to
happen (i.e. possibly some type of reward).
 If something is an unconditional ought then one ought to perform some act apart from any
consideration of merit.
Kant adopts the view that morality is the unconditional ought. It is without regard to reward or merit. L.
Miller of the University of Colorado states:
For Kant, only the unconditional ought is the moral ought. Why? Because, as we all recognize-don‘t we?
Morality must be necessary and universal, that is, it must be absolutely binding, and absolutely binding on
everyone alike: Whoever you are, whatever your situation, you ought to do X.

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The implication here is that moral acts are to be accomplished independent from any alternate
considerations such as merit and reward. This challenges the ethical egoists and utilitarianism. In fact,
Miller suggests that this morality must be ―binding‖ and ―universal.‖ After all there would be something
wrong with the idea suggesting ―murder is wrong‖ if it only applied to person Q and not person R. Indeed,
Kant himself states:
I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law. Here,
now, it is the simple conformity to law in general, without assuming any particular law applicable to certain
actions, that serves the will as its principle, and must so serve it, if duty is not to be a vain delusion and a
chimeric (something not real) vision.

Kant further dismisses the notion that morality operates in a meritocracy:

The moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which
requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect.

When one understands the independence of a moral act from its consequences then it becomes clear what
Kant was attempting to convey. This is what he and others refer to as duty. The fulfilment of our duty then
does not rest on the consequences of our actions. However, the results of an action may be necessary in
determining duty, while it must be remembered that this is not to be confused with the consequences that
result from human action. In the terms of 19th century philosophy, the results of the thing-in-itself (the
moral act) affect both the subject (the moral agent) and other individual(s). By making the act universal
and necessary, the highest good must be achieved in the inter-subjective relationship. This determines
what our duty is. In understanding what the proper ideal is in the maximization of the highest good of
each action, we look through it in our perception of the world and how we ought to act in it. So now the
categorization of morality as a priori must be established.

Morality as a Priori
Kant emphasizes the absolute necessity of separating genuine morality from all empirical considerations.
Instead, the necessity of deriving it a priori, or from the categorization of claims alleged to be true apart
from experiencing them first, is derived from pure reason. For Kant, morality must be a priori. If it is not,
then morality falls into the realm of ―anthropology‖ or empirical truths about human nature. This means
that morality must be “freed from everything which may be only empirical.” For Kant, morality simply
must be separate from experience due to the very idea of duty (duty as my moral responsibility, something
that I must do) itself. In his Foundations Kant makes this argument:
Everyone must admit that a law, if it is to hold morally, i.e., as a ground of obligation, must imply absolute
necessity; he must admit that the command, ―Thou shalt not lie,‖ does not apply to men only, as if other
rational beings had no need to observe it. The same is true for all other moral laws properly so called.

Again, the clear message of duty‘s transcendence of human experience becomes the idea shared by all
rational beings who embrace an objective ethic. So, if all of us are wearing the rose-colored glasses of
morality (the ―idea‖) then the world must look rose-colored in perception to all of us (the ―projection‖). If
morality appears to exist universally then it seems that all of us share the same idea, namely that morality
exists a priori. This is how Kant‘s ethical system roots itself in the a priori assumption. Since Kant‘s
system is known a priori then this presents us with a universal and necessary view of morality. That is,
objectivity of morality. It might be said that morality is a matter of discovery (because of human reason)
and not one of invention. We have to do (act) according to what reason requires.

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i) The Morality of the “Good Will”
Kant gives a concise definition of what makes morality a priori, but the matter remains as to where
these a priori assumptions derive from. He (Kant) has provided a foundation for these intuitions about
morality, namely the “Good Will.” Consider what Kant states:
Nothing in the world-indeed nothing even beyond the world - can possibly be conceived which could be
called good without qualification except a good will.

As seen in alternate/other ethical theories, such things as pleasure and happiness, virtues are seen as
basic or foundations of moral action (and in some case its motive). But Kant wishes to avoid linking
moral intuition to natural proclivities such as these. Thus morality must be rationally conceived apart
from our human inclinations. Kant, through analogy, shows why morality cannot be based on such
inclinations:
Intelligence, wit/ability to think what is right, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they be
named, or courage, resoluteness, and perseverance as qualities of temperament, are doubtless in many
respects good and desirable. But they can become extremely bad and harmful if the will, which is to make
use of these gifts of nature and which in its special constitution is called character, is not good.

What he is saying here is that just as qualities such as intelligence, wit, and judgment are neutral tools
of the person, so are pleasure and happiness. It could be the case that pleasure and happiness motivate
evil or morally forbidden acts. Slavery in one sense made many Europeans complacent but such acts are
undeniably sinister in today‘s world. L. Miller explains what Kant connotes in the concept of the good
will:
For Kant a good will, or a pure will, is an intention to act in accordance with moral law, and moral law is
what it is no matter what anything else is. To act out of a good will is, then, to do X because it is right to do
X, and for no other reason. This would be rational morality.

Kant‘s motivation by the ―Good Will‖ to enact a duty differs from acting in accordance with duty. Such
difference neglects motivation. For example, someone who saves the life of a woman from a murderous
man so that he may later rob her, may be considered to act only in accordance with duty in regard to her
deliverance from the murderer. He did not act out of the “Good Will” since his motivation was also to
rob her. Therefore, to take both intent and motivation into account in order to do the right thing
considers one to be acting morally or dutifully. This act is said to proceed from that universal “Good
Will.” The Good Will, therefore, is the Will which acts from freedom and respect for the moral law. A
person can act rightly, (in accord with the moral law), but such action have no moral worth if it is
motivated by selfish or emotional factors. Consider if one is forced to give money to charity or if one
donates money to a charity organization merely to get one‘s picture in the paper. These would be
actions in accord with the moral law but not done out of respect for the moral law and as such lack
moral worth. Neither would be instances of a ―good will.‖
To summarize, we have to Note that Kant places a great deal of stress on the intention behind the
action, something completely overlooked by consequentialist ethics with their focus on ―the bottom
line.‖ An act has moral worth (i.e., is morally good, right) if and only if it:
1. Is in accordance with the moral law (right- morally permissible or obligatory);
2. It is not performed merely from inclination, regardless of whether or not the inclination be
selfish or benevolent and;
3. Is performed from respect for the moral law.

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A person who has respect from the moral law is to be moved to act. Respect for the moral law may
motivate a person to do what he otherwise would not choose to do and not to do what he does want to
do.

ii) The “Categorical Imperative” (Moral Law and Right Action)

Kant presents us with a method of determination on whether or not a particular act is considered to be
morally right, morally wrong, or somewhere beyond the moral realm. For Kant the source of moral
justification is the categorical imperative. An imperative is said to be either hypothetical or categorical.
Kant writes:
―If now the action is good only as a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is conceived as
good in itself and consequently as being necessarily the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it is
categorical . . . .‖

What Kant says here is that in order for an act to be categorically imperative, it must be thought to be
good in itself (an end in itself) and in conformity to reason. As a categorical imperative, it asks us
whether or not we can ―universalize‖ our actions, that is, whether it would be the case that others would
act in accordance with the same rule in a similar circumstance.
 This is seen in Kant‘s statement about the categorical imperative:
Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become
a universal law.
The point Kant makes in his presentation of the categorical imperative is that an act becomes imperative
(or commanded) when it ought to be applied to everyone. L. Miller comments:
[A] categorical imperative would command you to do X inasmuch as X is intrinsically right, that is, right in
and of itself, aside from any other considerations - no ―ifs,‖ no conditions, no strings attached . . . a
categorical imperative is unconditional (no ―ifs‖) and independent of any things, circumstances, goals, or
desires. It is for this reason that only a categorical imperative can be a universal and binding law, that is, a
moral law, valid for all rational beings at all times.

This means that because a moral act is the right thing to do, it is universal and binding on the agent to
follow through with the moral act. However, the act should not be done out of any condition (―ifs‖ or
―if . . . thens‖). When the categorical imperative becomes the guiding principle of morality, it becomes
the impetus for determining whether an act is moral or not. At this point it should be emphasized that
Kant‘s categorical imperative is concerned only with general and abstract moral actions. Therefore, the
categorical imperative determines whether or not any act is right or wrong. It is at this point that to do
the opposite (to not will to do an act that everyone in similar circumstances would do) would be to
invite contradiction. This is to say that something is morally wrong when it would result in a
contradiction. By contradiction we are not referring to a logical one (i.e. A = -A) but a practical one
(i.e. when something is self-defeating).

The Categorical Imperative is Kant‘s term for the ―Moral Law.‖ By this phrase he implies that it is an
obligation binding of all moral agents without exception. This amounts to something like ―Do the right
thing!‖ The question then become, how does one come to know WHAT the right thing is in a given
situation. Kant offers ―formulations‖ of the Categorical Imperative to help us figure out what our moral
duty is. This are not meant to be separate rule or duties, but rather different articulations of the universal
moral command.

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Different Articulations of the Categorical Imperative (Universal Moral Command)
 The First Formulation: Always act in such a way that you could will that the maxim of your act
become a Universal Law.
 The Second Formulation: Always act in such a way that you treat Humanity, whether in your
own person or in the person of another as an end in itself and never merely as a means. The
―Anti-coercion‖ Principle or Requirement of Human Dignity (don‘t just use people).
According to Kant there are two types of beings: persons and things. Persons have infinite worth, while
things have finite worth and a price and can be bought or sold. The second formulation of the Categorical
imperative is based on this distinction between persons and things. Like Aristotle, Kant believes that our
rationality was the most salient feature of our nature. It was the source of our autonomy and dignity. One
is morally obliged to respect this dignity and value in oneself and in others. It is not the human body that
gives human beings their dignity, but their rationality and their status as rational beings as moral agents.
We have, therefore, duties toward the humanity in ourselves and others.
Kant is not saying never treat another as a means; rather, never treat human beings as a merely a means.
We use other people differently or for various purposes and this can be perfectly moral.
a. You are using me as a means toward earning 3 credits in philosophy (and perhaps as a means
toward greater understanding of philosophical issues).
b. I am using you as a means to a paycheck (and perhaps as a means to greater understanding of
philosophical issues).
c. You go to the s shop to buy something, use the grocer as a means to a loaf of bread, while he
uses you as a means to a dollar bill.
However, if these are to be MORAL exchanges, all parties must treat each other not merely as object of
instrumental values alone (things with finite value) but as objects of intrinsic values as well. That is we
must recognize one another as autonomous, rational beings capable of willing freely. We must not
frustrate that freedom and autonomy, but rather enhance it by allowing the other to make a free
autonomous choice. Any attempt to frustrate that freedom through coercion (force, threats of force,
deception), is always immoral.

Hegel the Last Great System

The greatest of the German Idealists and the most influential philosopher of the 19th Century was Fredrick
Hegel. He wrote many books and enormous system of philosophy, truly a systematic philosopher we have
ever had. By system I mean a set of books covering virtually every philosophical question and in a
language that is coordinated to fit together. We will spend most of our time looking at his first great work,
which is arguably his most beautiful work ―The Phenomenology of Spirit‖ written in 1807. This work
was intended merely as an introduction to Hegel‘s complete system, his encyclopaedia which was later
worked out in several volumes. It is the most difficult introduction to a text one could ever read. Hegel
famously was working on Phenomenology in Vienna (which was later conquered by Napoleon when he
marched into the city during his conquest of Europe). The aims of the Phenomenology of the Spirit was to
illustrate the shapes or forms of Geist (Geist just means Spirit or Mind) as they evolve in human history,
from the most narrow and limited toward the perspective of the whole/absolute, which means the
perspective of God himself. Actual human history makes possible the progressive, more mature and
inclusive shapes of Spirit.

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As emphasized in Schelling‘s idealistic philosophy, the notion is that God is evolving and, human beings
are part of that evolution, by which God comes to full self-consciousness or self-recognition. What Hegel
is adding to Schelling is a detailed analysis of human history; each step in human history must be a step in
that growing consciousness of everything, which leads to the final, to the total awareness of God‘s
awareness of himself. Hegel was concerned to justify the new philosophy and politics of freedom
emanating from the West, particularly France and England. But he wanted to do it in the German way,
namely, in a way that is consonant with Christianity and the historical community where we can say the
moral value of the historical community. Hegel was influenced by Kant in the Western enlightenment,
also by Fichte and Schelling and, even more by ancient Greeks and his historical studies. The question of
the meaning of Christianity in the light of enlightenment is crucial for Hegel. In the above mentioned
work, Hegel‘s question is: Can we create a truly systematic philosophy of everything (this is what Fichte
and Schelling wanted to do) based on a pantheistic spirit (again following his fellow German Idealists),
but one that does not exclude the reality of human history? History marks the biggest difference he has
with his contemporaries Schelling and Fichte. For all these German writers (Fichte, Schelling and Hegel),
they thought that their German culture needs to be re-invented. That would mean re-invention through
education and culture. Germany at this time had very little political powers conquered by Napoleon and
also being feudal country with very advanced literary and artistic culture.

The Germany alternative to the Western versions of the enlightenment would have to be compatible with
the German Pietist tradition of Christianity (as we tried to describe earlier) as well as with the historical
and cultural embeddedness of the rational mind. That is, from the German point of view and as the most
traditional society, there was a tendency to understand the human being‘s personality and consciousness
as embedded in a network of traditional relationships to others; rather than as a sheer individual actor in a
capitalistic economy. So, there is a communitarian feeling to German philosophers at this point to
challenge that traditional tendency.

The Concept of the Dialectic

The great difference between Hegel and his fellow German Idealists is that the evolution of the Absolute
Spirit/Mind takes place in the actual events of human history and all the limitations of the latter must be
patiently worked through before reaching the perspective of the Whole; all leads to integration in the
Whole/plenitude. This to Hegel means that you cannot just leap over the negative; you have to work
through the negative. What that means is that you actually have to look at human history and see how you
could claim that this historical period had gained an insight, a more inclusive or comprehensive view of
the world than the earlier era. Comprehensive in the earlier era, but not yet so comprehensive enough, and
that leads to the next period, etc. You have to show this piece by piece, by piece. To explain that, Hegel
formulated a new philosophical language; key among his terms is dialectic. Dialectic is an old word used
by Plato and Kant (for Kant it was something negative, when reason tries to know more than it can know
and ends up landing into self-contradiction). But Hegel is using the term dialectic in another form. He
uses dialectic to refer to the manner of transition or development.

The famous way of describing this is that all development of any kind, of everything: biological, ideas
about the universe, and et cetera, any dialectical development takes place or begins from somewhere,
from some entity or idea which given the context of which it operates naturally generates opposition or
conflict with something else (some people call this a theory of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; but those
words were actually from Fichte and not Hegel, but they do capture the basic idea). This conflict then,
eventually leads to a resolution, a transformation of the opposed elements to form a new unity. It is in
such dialectic that we find the creative advance of spirit in history; to bridge or re-incorporate differences
at a higher level and that makes progress. In effect, Hegel is giving a generalized theory of what he
considers to be progress. Best example of this is in the political field; in politics we find people fighting,

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and fighting and again fighting and later decide to settle their differences and unify into a larger
community where everybody‘s rights are somehow respected under a different set of rules. In that case,
there has been a conflict leading to integration at a higher level. This is a kind of thing Hegel is talking
about. Any finite or limited idea, thing or perspective must imply its opposite or its limitations in the face
of that opposition. Anything limited or finite must undergo this dialectic. What doesn‘t undergo this
process? For Hegel, it is obvious, God; God in his full, total self-realization does not go through the
dialectical process of development. All other things must go through this process of opposition, which
means limitation: having a negation, something other than itself, and then incorporation. The point of this
dialectical scheme is that it helps Hegel to conceive the development of ideas, philosophy, historical
movements, politics, etc., all under one roof. This is the whole Hegelian idea of dialectic.

The Understanding of Selfhood and Class Struggle

The movement of Spirit that we have been describing continues from the objective consciousness; my
awareness of myself can only be achieved in relation to another self-consciousness, and being
acknowledged by another. In the ancient world, the relationship between aristocratic lord and the slave,
servant prevented this mutual recognition. There was a limitation on each because of their unequal
relationship, which prevents each from attaining true self-consciousness. That is Hegel‘s point. The slave
sees himself as unfree object; the master sees himself as free but only abstractly and fails to recognize the
sense to which he too is an object. For example, the slave‘s (who suffers from this much more than the
master) selfhood is denied by failing to understand his own freedom, his higher nature. The master‘s
selfhood is also denied because the master looses the physical creative act of working on things in the
world, which is also part of selfhood. Each eventually looses himself in the other. Hegel says, they must
engage (he is thinking about the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and gradual historical revolutions and revolts
whereby slaves classes ended their slavery) at some point in a life and death struggle with the master or
the ruling classes over who can attain independent self-consciousness. In the struggle, the slaves come to
recognize their free will. How? The slaves win by the mere act of struggle because the slaves (servants) at
the moment when they fight he/she has recognized his/her free will by his/her willingness to breathe
death. Once that is realized, then, they are equal to the master. The lord or master on the other hand,
comes to recognize that he is not mere omnipotent negative power; he must deal with the slaves on equal
footing as another independent self. In this act, according to Hegel, both come to realize their combined
freedom-independence and turn their mutual differences as he called it unhappy consciousness, to
worship the external cause as the unification they lack. That is how the ancient world gave up slavery and
becoming Christian. This is quite remarkable. On one hand, Hegel is giving us a social commentary that
has to do with the French revolution, the end of servitude, development of freedom and, the rights of the
slaves. On the other hand, he is making a philosophical point, not just that it is morally good to set the
slaves free, rather, the master also fails as a human being; the master has to recognize in the other as
another free equal person. Only when I freely relate to another free equal do I recognize my true self.

Hegel is actually giving us an actual history of Western civilization and how this recognition eventually
worked out. This goes on hundreds of pages in the ―Phenomenology of Spirit‖ whereby the middle ages‘
devotion and service eventually leads to modern reason in both scientific and practical moral reason in the
17th Century. It begins the stage of what he calls Spirit proper, we can‘t get into here. Hegel cuts up the
history of all societies, especially Western society and civilization into certain eras and get into stage of
Spirit proper, into its ethical and cultural objectification, where reason begins to have mastery of nature.
That is to say, in the modern age when humans beings through science and through political freedom, and
through the development of machine technologies and commercial progress, Western humanity comes to
recognize that it can control nature to a certain level, nature is not just something other and foreign but
something into which we can enter and control. In other words, we begin to recognize Spirit in us, Spirit
or consciousness begin to recognize that things are not foreign, they are part of itself; they are part of the
Spirit.

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Hegel’s Moral and Political Thought

The enlightenment in the French revolution represents a great step forward in which reason makes itself
the master of history and tradition. But only in an abstract sense according to Hegel. Hegel looked at the
French revolution and the British and philosophy of freedom that preceded it, they were important stages
of history; however, they were only abstract. They leave the concrete life of Spirit out. They think of
freedom in a purely abstract way, the result being the terror. Hegel is diagnosing the future of the French
revolution of the late 18th Century as an expression of the inadequate conceptions of freedom common
among philosophers. In the enlightenment Hegel distinguished two particular notions: Moralitet (Moral
rules) and Moral Community, a custom. Custom not in a degraded sense, and the moral community is a
morally embedded rules of a community with a given history and set of practices. In other words, it is far
less abstract, you could see in a traditional community a lot of community morality, where community
determines morality and the moral rules, not like Kant whereby morality was individual based and
individually discovered through the moral rule and the good will. These two (Moralitet and Moral
Community) are in a continuous conflict. This conflict between the two leads the Spirit to incorporate
itself in the universal moral community of the State (as the synthesis), to its full self-expression of the
Whole: the unified Germany. This required a unified constitution of German State. This is what Hegel
and his contemporaries wished to promote after the chaos of revolution and Napoleon‘s invasion of
Germany. So, morality evolves from simple rules and the moral customs to the rational community which
Hegel believed was the State by which he meant a unified Germany, a State in which we have both
tradition, culture identity as Germans. What this means is that, I have modern science integrated into an
ethical stage, Spirit should then be capable of reviewing all its former stages and recognizing them as
partial steps on the road to the full revelation of God in human Spirit, which is the Absolute Idealism that
Hegel sought. This is the perspective of the Absolute, which philosophy can now study. Which means
that the phenomenology is supposed to take us from our everyday experience of the world and show how
if we attend to it, dialectically each experienced or belief takes us through the whole history of human
relations to the level of science and the ethics of the State. The level at which we are now ready to try to
do philosophy as it should be properly and truly be done, to try to understand the nature of God. Some
people think that this is a kind of rational mysticism: one which thinks to the history of the world,
redeeming the actual historical limitations of human existence that includes everything. Hegel emphasizes
against romanticism, the negative must be worked through, that is, all the partial perspectives of history,
you can‘t just transcend them into a view of the Whole; we must confront each one and show how they
force us to move to the Whole.
To sum up, we can say this: Hegel‘s influence was incomparable, for it seemed that he had rivalled
Aristotle on the one hand and Scholasticism on the other. He presented a total system of the world, which
included not only physics and the sciences, religion, ethics but even history of the world. A total system
which was supposed to be ultimately religious while at the same time actually describing in detail what
actually happened in the history of the world. It was truly a theory of everything, not only everything
metaphysical, but everything historical. We could truly say that he was the last great system, and the rest
of the 19th Century was a period of dealing with Hegel either for or against

b. Marxism
Marxism consists of the philosophical, social and economic theories developed by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. The philosophical aspect of Marxism is known as the dialectical materialism. Marx
succeeded in making a very close connection between economics and philosophy in his thought, and
emphasized the role of praxis. In Marx‘s view, human life was entirely determined by economic
relationships. Upon the basis of its analysis of capitalism, Marxism erects the ethical conclusion that
capitalism is unjust and ought to be supplanted by socialism. It predicts for the more or less immediate
future the decay of capitalism, an inevitable and victorious revolution of the workers, and the establishing

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of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It looks forward to the ultimate goal of the withering
away of the state leading to a classless society, communistic in economy and self-regulatory in politics.

c. Positivism
Positivism designates a great philosophical movement which in the second half of the 19th century and the
first decades of the 20th century was powerful in all the countries of the Western world. The characteristic
theses of positivism are that science is the only valid knowledge and facts the only possible objects of
knowledge; that philosophy does not possess a method different from science; and that the task of
philosophy is to find the general principles common to all the sciences and to use these principles as
guides to human conduct and as the basis of social organization. Positivism, consequently, denies the
existence or intelligibility of forces or substances that go beyond facts and the laws ascertained by
science. It opposes any kind of metaphysics and, in general, any procedure of investigation that is not
reducible to scientific method is not valid and sound: the verification principle. The main philosophers of
this school are August Comte (1798-1857), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and Ernst Mach (1838-1916).

d. Existentialism
Is a philosophical approach that is concerned primarily with human existence in the world. Man is seen as
a defiant, free individual who, even though he is a part of nature, a unity in a collectivity, a being in the
world, nevertheless ex-sists or stands out from his grounding in nature and from submersal in the
collectivity. The authentically free individual stands up against all that appears to threaten his personal
responsibility and his unique existence as a self-creating subject. Is a philosophy of existence and
responsibility. In this type of dramatic existential situation, the term existence is restricted in its
connotation to that specific mode of being of man which can be called ex-sistent (or outstanding)
individual existence. Existentialist philosophers are Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1969), Gabriel Marcel
(1889-1973), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Jean-Paul Sartre.

a. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Soren Kierkegaard was unique and one of the two modern sources that later became existentialism in the
20th Century. The other 19th century source was Nietzsche. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche: one religious and
the other antireligious. Both exceptional writers among philosophers, lonely geniuses. But more than
Nietzsche, Kierkegaard had no precursors; it is very difficult to say whose thought leads to Kierkegaard
except for people he disagreed with and he is trying to run away from them. Kierkegaard was the most
complicated philosophical writer since Plato; not in the difficulty of his work like the case with Hegel
who is quite difficult to read, but due to the fact that he intentionally wrote under pseudonyms so that as
in Plato‘s dialogues, we cannot directly ascribe the claims made in his books to him as the author. He
remained an aesthetic and ironic figure, putting his words in a mouth of a character who then wrote every
particular book. And almost all his books are written pseudonymously. Kierkegaard was a son of a very
religious father and all his life he struggled to define Christianity for himself. He lived on an inheritance
which ended around the time of his death. He was lonely, well known and often ridiculed; it is said
perhaps apocryphally that the children in Copenhagen sometimes chased him down the street shouting the
name of one of his books ―Either-Or, Either-Or‖. Kierkegaard‘s real question was: What does it mean to
be a Christian? We will examine this question in line with his thought in his work ―Fear and Trembling‖
and we will end up examining his legacy. The most decisive moments of his life is the breaking down of
his engagement to Regina Olsen at the age of 28 when he decided that marriage would be incompatible
with his life‘s work. That is, Kierkegaard‘s mission of explicating the true meaning of Christianity
required him to live a certain kind of life, and the married life is not compatible with it.

Kierkegaard is a critic of modernity; a century later in a scientific society, just as Rousseau saw cultural
progress does not indicate moral and true spiritual or religious progress. His opposition was not to
promote secularism which arguably had not become explicit. That is to say, if I want to say that the

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modern Western world became increasingly secular, it is best argued in the later 19 th century not mid 19th
century when Kierkegaard is writing. But the development of Christian civilization that was compatible
with reason, a rational Christianity represented above all by Hegel, is what Kierkegaard is upset by; not
anti-Christians or non-Christians, but mistaken Christians. Kierkegaard‘s message to still overwhelming
Christian Western Europe the time he was writing was that they actually have no idea about what
Christianity actually meant. Kierkegaard loved Hegel in ironical sense. He is one of the clearest examples
of the anti-Hegelian reaction of the middle 19th century. Kierkegaard once famously crept that:
―If Hegel had written this whole logic and in the preface disclosed the fact that it was merely a thought experiment,
then, Hegel would have been the greatest thinker that has ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.‖

That is the worst put down about Hegel by Kierkegaard. One can hear one philosopher by another. What
Kierkegaard despised was Hegel‘s attempt to systematically incorporate all forms of human experience;
all what Hegel called shades/shapes? of Spirit into one comprehensive form. In other words, for Hegel
there was no aspect of human life and no feature of reality which was not commensurable, that couldn‘t
be put together, which couldn‘t be synthesized and integrated into part of a Whole. In contrast for
Kierkegaard, the human way of life is rent: there are different moments or forms of living, shapes of
Spirit that cannot be reconciled. One has to then make choices, real choices; choices between
incompatible ways of life. That is part of Kierkegaard‘s existentialist legacy. He had a set of categories
which summarize three different stages of perspectives of life:

The First is the Aesthetic

The man in the first stage, the aesthetic, is looking for fulfilment from his outside activities and from
within himself. He may seek romance, pleasure, or intellectual pursuits as means to satisfy himself; things
that are interesting to the individual. However, these activities are not enough. They are not ultimately
satisfying. The man becomes bored with himself and his activities. This boredom turns to despair. If not
checked, the despair ends in suicide. This level is more of individualistic. We shouldn‘t take this as
somehow intrinsically immoral, but it is amoral. That is to say, aesthetic level of life doesn‘t set out to do
immoral things, but it does what it does without concerns that are moral. The pidemy of this life, he wants
to describes in a section of his writings called ―The Diary of the Seducer.‖ In it Kierkegaard wrote of a
fellow who went into a meticulous planning to slowly enter into a woman‘s life, eventually meet her, and
make her fall in love with him. Literally, Kierkegaard says: ―the man arranges first to pass by the
periphery of the woman‘s vision and then a few days later to bump into her without speaking to her. And
then a few days later to have a third party to introduce his name to her, mention his name in a
conversation, and then, eventually they meet briefly to win her slowly into his life, make her fall in love
with him, and then abandone her immediately and forever. The aim of all this is not to be cruel, it is to do
something interesting.‖ This is the aesthetic level.

The Second mode of life of level of life is the Ethical

What is the remedy for this aesthetic despair? Kierkegaard replied that commitment gives meaning to life.
Commitment to some arbitrary absolute, and the ordering of one‘s life around that commitment, brings
one out of the aesthetic stage and into the second or ethical stage. The person achieves selfhood through
commitment. The individual becomes aware. His choices are made with passion and emotional
commitment. The person now chooses and acts, thereby establishing his selfhood and integrity. He is a
man of duty.

The ethical is intrinsically social and rational. It is the form of life of human society in which we act and
explain our acts according to reasons shared amongst social members. Our normal lives are ethical ways
of living. Kierkegaard is not saying we never do anything wrong, but he is saying that the social life we
endure and experience with our own bodies is a life that is ruled, governed and motivated by reasons; we
communicate with each other, we try to be in harmony with each other. The most extreme case of the

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ethical consciousness which would be important in a moment, is what he calls the knight of infinite
resignation. Not everybody that is ethical is capable of this kind of behaviour. But the knight is the
epidemy of the ethical consciousness. The knight of infinite resignation is capable of resigning himself to
the destruction of all his hopes and desires, in fact, to give up all aesthetic concerns on the basis of a
moral obligation.

The Third and most important of the categories is the Religious

The third and greatest stage, the stage where man finally finds contentment, is the religious stage. The
person commits himself, as in the second stage, and is looking for fulfilment, as in the first stage, but in
this religious stage his commitment is to One who is able to satisfy completely: God. Unlike Hegel, this
third is not a synthesis of the first two; these stage are incommensurably; they cannot be stitched together.
This is the first hint, we are not getting into Hegelian explanation, we are getting into three things, just as
Hegel was in love in analyzing phenomena into three; but in Hegel the third was always an intermediary
between and integrates two opposing factors. In Kierkegaard, the third, which is the religious, is not the
synthesis of the first two. Religion is in fact somewhat like the aesthetic, it is individualistic, it is not
social; it is an absolute and as Kierkegaard would say, unimmediated relation of an individual to God. In
this stage man is finally content because of his commitment to God. Selfhood cannot be achieved
ultimately and completely within the self. The self must be committed to the One beyond, to God.

So, we have the aesthetic: what Kierkegaard thinks is the first, something relatively primitive, even if it
can be more sophisticated but it is pleasure oriented to the senses and is interesting. Then we have the
ethical/moral which is the social and it involves people. And lastly, we have the religious and the essence
of the religious is not social, and neither is aesthetic. Kierkegaard‘s task is to try understand this third: the
religious category of life. His claim is actually that it has never been understood; and Hegelian attempt to
merge the social, the rational and the religious has made this task harder than ever. In fact, in one of his
books Kierkegaard once said: ―I live here in the middle of the 19th Century when everyone seems to be so
sophisticated; everyone has read Hegel‘s encyclopaedia and logic; everyone is learning from the events of
science, everybody is creating new machines for the convenience of the population. Our century seems
far more sophisticated, I am stack on the basics,‖ as he would say later, ―I don‘t understand even
Abraham, the Biblical Abraham and his faith. That is what I want to understand.‖

Irrationality of Faith
For Kierkegaard, the religious way of life by its nature cannot explain itself to us. Why? You will see
soon. And the ethical is constitutionally incapable of understanding the religious. These are actually rather
shocking issues. It is very common for people to think that religion and the ethical work together.
Kierkegaard denies that; the ethical view of religion is a misinterpretation. The two have virtually nothing
to do with each other. To explain this, the Biblical God makes demands that violet any possible human
ethics, even the primary Christian value: forgiveness is unethical. Why in a world can anybody call
forgiveness unethical? Forgiveness for many religious, and especially for Christianity above all,
forgiveness seems to be a height of a religious ethics, however, this is not the way Kierkegaard sees it;
ethics requires rules of justice-the rule says if you do this, it is wrong and you are supposed to be
punished. And those rules of justice are supposed to be obeyed, and their consequence if they are not
obeyed. Forgiveness as employed in Christianity, in Kierkegaard‘s language is the intervention of the
religious to undermine the requirements of ethics and justice. Because as he says, if you will get out of
jail free-card to the person who has committed injustice, even though you deserve to be punished, you are
not going to be punished because of forgiveness. That is actually religion interfering in the ethical
domain, and cancelling one of its crucial demands. In fact, this gets worse for Kierkegaard; religious faith
cannot be made compatible with reason or rationality.

Kierkegaard contradicts Hegel and the whole Scholastic tradition that argued for the compatibility of faith
and reason. Thomas Aquinas for example merged Christianity with Aristotle and certainly thought that

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reason and faith were compatible. This argument went through the history of Western thought, especially
in the Christian era that faith and reason are compatible. Of course there were some thinkers who tried to
call the attention in the incompatibility of the two, but they are just many or perhaps more who held
claims that they compatible. Aquinas never thought that reason and faith were incompatible; as a
Christian, first and foremost, faith is more important and higher than reason. Aquinas would agree, if you
have faith in the Gospels and faith in Jesus Christ, and faith in the dictates of Christ and the Church, then
you would live a good life and go to heaven for eternal life. For the Thomists, reason doesn‘t take us
away from faith, a rational understanding of the world that God has made, the beauty of creation, this
incredible work that God has made for us is a way of worshiping God. So, not always but in many times
of Western history actually one could say with greatest amount of optimism people have thought that
these two different powers of the human soul or spirit (faith in the Almighty and reason are the ability to
inquiry to win the Truth; people have nicely thought those two go together. Kierkegaard is not one of
those; for him faith is not merely a rational thing, it is actually irrational, and it is the immediacy after
reflection. Kierkegaard is making a very strong point here.

The most famously example of Kierkegaard that comes from his work ―Fear and Trembling‖ to illustrate
this point is the example the Biblical Abraham; it is an exemplary of what he calls the knight of faith. As
you remember the Biblical story of Isaac the beloved miraculous son of Abraham‘s old age. An angel of
the Lord commands Abraham to kill Isaac, and Abraham sets out to do so. Kierkegaard‘s question (in
Fear and Trembling) is: What is the internal state of Abraham as he climbs the mountain, knife in the
hand, knowing that when he reaches the top he is going to kill his only and beloved son? What is going
on with Abraham? What is he telling himself to explain his behaviour to himself? That is what
Kierkegaard wants to understand and explain. Before, Kierkegaard was saying that ―all philosophers are
talking about the universals, and understanding the nature of reality and the way science is going on but I
am stack in the Old Testament trying to understand Abraham‖. His first claim is that Abraham does not
regard this event as a test or a trick of God, neither is Abraham‘s obedience tragic resignation. That would
make Abraham what Kierkegaard calls the knight of infinite resignation. And it would be perfectly a
rational philosophical perspective that came to Buddha‘s statement that ―all life is suffering.‖ In other
words, when Abraham was walking up the hill, and would be perfectly a philosophical thing to do to say
to himself, I was wrong to become attached to this beloved son of mine, all life is suffering or all life is an
illusion! I will do what the angel of the Lord commanded me and I will feel nothing about it. He is
doomed and I am resigned to that fact! If Abraham was to say that, then, it would be an understandable
intellectual reaction. In fact, in Kierkegaard‘s view that in a sense would be a kind of ethical reaction in a
hard way, which would be as well resigning oneself to the will of God. For Kierkegaard, what he says is:
Abraham must both believe that he will kill Isaac and also believe that that he will not lose Isaac; that
somehow Isaac would remain alive even though he is going to stub a knife into him. What Kierkegaard
literary means is Abraham must believe something irrational, that may not look to make any sense, but it
does. For Abraham, he would do what God commands and he will not lose a particular concrete
expression of his love, which is Isaac. Thus, for Kierkegaard, faith is irrational literally; faith and reason
are not compatible; ―I believe it because it is absurd‖ a phrase that is attributed to Tertullian, and
Kierkegaard is the closest believer of this phrase in this notion among all modern philosophers. So, for
Kierkegaard, faith is literally commitment to the irrational.

Related to the above is that faith is not related to the ethical. God‘s command to kill Isaac is literally
unethical; ethics is the domain of human social relations. In the domain of human social relations, the
murder of an innocent child is wrong. Just as we saw forgiveness which cancels the just ethical retribution
is also an interference of religion in the human ethical social domain. The same way, God‘s command to
Abraham is sacking Abraham out of the human social ethical domain. Furthermore, faith is individualistic
and cannot even be communicated. It is completely incommensurable with the social, rational and the
ethical.

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Kierkegaard is being very smart here saying something modern. I don‘t mean to underline irrationalism,
but I mean the rational and the social together. Being rational is to be able to give other people good
reasons for why you do what you do. That is one possible way to understand rationality. Communication
is necessary then, rationality. Faith, however, is not rational, not social and incommunicative. As a result
one cannot understand the knight of faith by any external or behavioural matters, e.g., Abraham will not
be able to explain his behaviour of wanting to kill his beloved son to another human being. No one would
understand, they cannot, he is doing something irrational. In the same way, there is no way that you could
recognize a knight of faith externally. In this Kierkegaard has a wonderful passage in which he says: A
knight of faith could look like a tax collector who in the morning gets out of bed, he was his hands, face,
reads a news paper and drinks some coffee, then goes to work. And as Kierkegaard says, we who want to
understand faith are looking at it scrutinizing his behaviour, searching for some little mark of the
transcendent, something ontological incredible about this person. But you would never see it because this
person if they embody religious faith which is highest of all things cannot be communicated and there is
no relationship between what they carry inside them and their outward manifestations.

The distinction between the aesthetic, ethical and the religious is what Kierkegaard calls
incommensurable relation; there is no bridge between them. For Kierkegaard, the only person who could
understand the knight of faith is one who has the experience of the knight of faith, nobody else can
understand it; and they are few and far between. When we try to understand the knight of faith, we can
only see them from either the aesthetic point of view or from the ethical point of view, both of which give
some kind of misunderstanding of the two. But it is quite clear that Kierkegaard thinks that aesthetic point
of view somehow gives a clear picture of what the religious point of view is; it doesn‘t mean that
aesthetic is religious but as a lens it is more useful in looking at the nature of the religious. The transition
between these two is very difficult to understand. How could someone move from the aesthetic to the
ethical or even harder from the aesthetic to the religious. It appears that there is no ladder, no dialectic of
progress, no pedagogy that could make this transition. This is where Kierkegaard again is unlike Hegel.
Kierkegaard divides shapes of spirit (as they unfold in human life) into types that are incommensurable:
you can‘t walk from one to the other; you can‘t walk from the third, and the third does not incorporate the
first two. It is a distinct highest other choice. And this is why Kierkegaard wrote a book called ―Either-
Or‖ as the children of Copenhagen apocryphally ran behind him on the streets.

―Either-Or‖ means that regarding these three ultimate forms of life, we must just choose. We choose
without reasons. Why? Because the reasons that could be given for a choice can only come from the form
life you are currently embodying. In other words, if you are embodying the ethical form of life, the ethical
form of life can‘t give you reasons to live it behind; if the ethical form of life could give you reasons,
then, would be reasons to stay/remain ethical. This is the incommensurability and it creates a real problem
in understanding Kierkegaard. Would Kierkegaard be disturbed by this problem? Not particularly because
Kierkegaard would say, ―like I said it is irrational.‖

Kierkegaard also holds that Truth is Subjectivity

Truth is inwardness; the quality of our individuality. For Kierkegaard, truth has something to do with the
individual subject, the personality, what is internal to the individual subject. Important philosophical
questions are those that lead us to ask how the individual subject experiences the world and decides to
respond to that experience and, not how the world is. For him it was paradoxically that truth is the only
thing one could be sure about and yet the one thing one was anxious about. Truth as subjectivity is the
highest expression of subjectivity is passion. To think existentially is to think with inward passion.
Objectivity accents what is said, but subjectivity accents how it is said. The inward how is passion;
decision is found only in subjectivity. Subjectivity is the truth; truth is defined as ―an objective
uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness‖. Uncertainty creates
anxiety which is quieted by an exercise of faith. The preceding definition of truth also serves as a

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definition of faith. There is no faith without risk, choice, passion, and inwardness; nor is there truth
without them. Uncertainty always accompanies subjectivity, calling for the leap of faith. While not
denying that there is such a thing as objective scientific truth, the existentialist does not consider that kind
of truth important, at least not nearly as important as subjective truth. Indeed, Kierkegaard declared ―truth
is subjectivity‖. By that he did not mean that any subjective belief is true, but that unless one believes
something subjectively and passionately he does not possess the truth. Truth is always personal and not
merely propositional. One never gains truth by mere observation, but by obedience: never by being a
spectator, but only by being a participator in life. Truth is found in the concrete, not in the abstract: in the
existential, not in the rational. In fact, one places himself in the truth only by an act of his will, by a ―leap
of faith‖ It is not deliberation of the mind but a decision of the will by which one comes to know truth.
The explicitly idea that all scientific knowledge is made second hand knowledge, has been put off by
Kierkegaard. Being human is not something that can be understood with the kind of rationality we apply
in science; the internal is unlike the external.

Kierkegaard feared that in modern scientific consumer society, the individual is becoming absorbed into
the crowd, a mere member of the public. The spiritual life of the individual was being stiffed by political
and religious illusions. This is certainly one of the reasons that later drew the earlier phenomenological
movement in particular Martin Heidegger to Kierkegaard. The reason is partly because the ultimate and
fundamental question is a way of life. And the way of life is passion, not merely intellectual. When one is
to decide whether to live the aesthetic, ethical or the religious way of life, objective science will be of no
help because the question between them is passionate, it is a question of human existence; I must make a
better choice of one of the three. I cannot be sure which one is the right one, but I must choose.

Conclusion

To sum up, Kierkegaard has a kind of unique status among contemporary-modern philosophers
particularly some associated with 20th century existentialism that part with the concept ―Irrationalism‖.
There is a book by William Barret called ―Irrational Man‖ and there are many other philosophers that try
to explain what other philosophers in history had considered irrational. But Kierkegaard stands alone as
the most sophisticated critic of rationality itself in the history of contemporary-modern philosophy; he is
also the most passionate, the most emotional philosophic writers. Now what legacy did he leave us with?
He had two different kinds of influences in the later philosophy, 20th century philosophy in particular.

On the one hand, he was read very seriously by liberal protestant theologians in the 20 th Century. There
was the whole movement of the protestant theology in the 20th century. In other areas of philosophy he
wasn‘t very influential because he was so strange. However, interestingly enough, his religious
existentialist view became very important for the most important atheist existentialist of the 20 th century,
and that is Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. For instance, Heidegger relies quite heavily in his first
book Being and Time on Kierkegaard. Among the many things we could say is that Kierkegaard did what
he set out to do. He sought a philosophy that was deeply personal, for a truth that was subjective-that had
to do with the deepest and most difficult decisions to be made n human life and how they are made. He
pursued the criteria of typical rationalism and brought his philosophy to bear on anybody‘s life as an
individual with only one life to live and one has ultimate choices that would determine the value and
content of that life. And Kierkegaard‘s advice to me among other things if I ask: What shall I do? His
advice on this is CHOOSE. What is important are our personal decisions. The choices we make are what
we become.

On the other hand, Kierkegaard thinks that it is not Christianity, religion or doctrines that ought to be
revised, rather, the individual and our existences that ought to be revised in order to conform to our
believe in God. In other words, we have to become truly individuals with God; we have to become
ourselves, taken away from the crowd. Remember that Kierkegaard lived in an era of modern mass

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culture or communication: the telegram, the railway, the daily press. And he could see a time coming
when most people could spectators of life rather than active; many people would drift, dream and watch
the few. Kierkegaard would advice that we could only become an individual by action and decision. For
Kierkegaard, religious belief is not a matter of accepting or reassuring information about how things are
out there; religious believe is a challenge to commit yourself to a way of life. Faith is an active pure
freedom by which we choose ourselves, choose our path in life. He says Christianity is a doctrine, it is an
existence, communication, it can only be explained by being realized in men‘s lives‖. He conceives of
Christianity as a spiritual discipline that leads us to true selfhood, it tunes up our individuality to the
highest pick-God.

Finally, Kierkegaard, developed a philosophy that later came to be called Existentialism.

e. Phenomenology
Is a philosophical school that proposes the phenomenological method as the best way of philosophizing
today. It emphasizes the data of consciousness. The word phenomenon is applicable to that which is
apparent or manifest to our consciousness. The ultimate source of all statements is a seeing of the things
immediately given in consciousness (without any effort to decide whether the thing that is there is a
reality or an appearance). The phenomenological method consists in pointing to what is given and
elucidating it. It elucidates it by pointing to the necessary and invariant features, the essential structure, or
essence, of the object. Please, refer to Phenomenological method above.

f. Analytic Philosophy
Analytic philosophy was developed at the beginning of 20th century as a response to methodological
exigencies imposed on philosophy by the scientific spirit of modern time. In that sense, it can be viewed
as an attempt to determine the true nature of philosophy and its most appropriate method. It has become
established practice to divide Analytic Philosophy into:
a) Realism,
b) Logical Analysis or Logical Atomism,
c) Logical Positivism and,
d) Analysis of Ordinary Language, or Conceptual Analysis
All these philosophical trends maintain that the main (and perhaps the sole) function of philosophy is
analysis of the use and function of language. Hence, philosophical problems are thought of being, at least
in part, linguistic problems are due to our misuse of language, and accordingly insofar as these problems
can be solved, it is through some sort of clarification of language.

POSTMODERNISM AND ITS CHALLENGES

First we understand the postmodernism in general. The word has a complex history; it was first used in
1917 by Rudolf Padmicks, the German thinker to refer to what he considered to be post-Nietzschean
nihilism of the 20th century. Then it came into use in literature and most famously in architecture. In each
case, it indicated the obsolescence of earlier modernist movements I art and in architecture in the earlier
20th century; a kind of post 1950s artistic and architectural style. But then the term came to be adapted in
late 1960s and 70s in philosophy and also in social theory as a name for something about the new post-
second world war period. For some people, the term post-modern is an historical claim that post-world
war II advanced societies have entered a new cultural social period where older and earlier modern
notions no longer apply. Postmodernism in this form is the name for the cultural post industrial society;
this is how some people use it, especially in the social sciences. For others, it signifies a political critique
of the modern world. It is a period of oppression and imperialism that more recent thinkers wished to
criticize and supersede. Certainly much of postmodern writings appeared as most radical as they could be.

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This we see in its general sense in the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer, Marcuse, Ellul Jacques,
Winner Langdon, etc. Virtually, all postmodernists accept a couple of ideas:
a. That perception and cognition presuppose science and representation. This we see in Derrida.
That is, from postmodern perspective, there is no direct immediate access of mind to the world;
all knowledge and cognition and action is mediated by science, by technology, by language, by
culture, by representation.
b. Postmodernists also hold what other philosophers have traditionally to be the fundamental units
or unities of reality: substance, self, God, knowledge, the notion of reality verses appearance, etc.,
postmodernists look at these terms as on the one hand as attempts to mask differences and to
suppress them. That these terms according to postmodernists are mistaken attempts to reduce the
pluralistic playfold complexity of the world and putting it to very narrow categories, as we will
see often for a political or social reason.

a. Jean-Francois Lyotard
One feature of some postmodernism is directly historical and for that we can turn to the French writer
Jean-Francois Lyotard. Lyotard makes the argument that the advanced/developed societies after WW2,
also called post-industrial societies no longer posses or require what he called meta-narratives of
legitimation like Marxism or Hegelian notion of integrated moral State or progress. These post-industrial
societies are postmodern. The desperate practical linguistic context of social activity, Lyotard holds,
justify themselves by achieving their own goals. In short, what Lyotard claims is that ours is the first
civilization that no longer has any unity and it doesn‘t need it either. That is crucial. And if Lyotard was
to say our society has no unity and that is a terrible thing and we need to get it back, he would sound like
a conservative. But the postmodernists say we have no unity and we don‘t need it. For Lyotard, the life of
social members is contextualized by practical linguistic contexts; Wittgenstenian language games with
their own internal norms. Society functions without a high level of coordination among those games.
Example, you go to work, there is a set of practical rules, and linguistic rules about what can be said and
done in the work place. You to church and participate in a different language game; there is a family
sitting in your home, there are professional organizations you participate in; there are rules that govern the
disappointments of mass culture in society. All these contexts of life from the postmodern point of view
have their own distinct and separate rules in Lyotard‘s sense of language games, and there is no need to
have an overrating set of rules that unifies them. Postmodern society, the implication is that, it is
fragmented and it works as fragmented. The fragmentation is not a problem to be solved. Lyotard claims
this as well about science itself. Postmodern science, according to him, is a proliferation of independent
research programs that cannot be integrated. The whole notion of unity of science, which is certainly
promoted by the Positivists is for Lyotard an achronistic. Distinctive sciences are for him even
incommensurable; their modes of knowledge cannot be integrated, and we shouldn‘t try to integrate them.
In other words, not only is the case that physics and chemistry, biology, engineering, psychology,
cognitive science, each have their own research programs, but even within them, sub and subfields have
their own research programs, creating and producing knowledge. Lyotard would say that this postmodern
practice of science neither needs nor tolerates any attempt to unify and integrate the views and the
conclusions of all the sciences. In short, postmodern society and its disciplines of inquiry are all radically
fragmented.

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Conservatives may make the same criticism but for Lyotard, this fragmentation is inevitable and
desirable. Why desirable? Because, from the point of view of Lyotard as a postmodernist, it endangers
human freedom. Individuality and freedom comes from the transitions between language games. In other
words, fragmentation is in a sense good, and unity and integration would always mean the suppression of
some differences and the rule of power of a few. Lyotard bring a normative implication from his
sociological description. And I quote: ―the recognition of the isomorphic nature of language games, (what
he means from that is simply that language games are very different from each other) obviously implies a
renunciation of terror, which assume language games are isomorphic and tries to make themselves.‖ That
is what Lyotrad claims is terror or the heart of authoritarian rule in society, the loss of freedom comes
from the attempt to make all language games function according to the same rules; it is the fragmentation
and the differences among language games that make them possible. Now at the same time postmodern
techniques of analysis have often been yielded for political purposes. You can only get a taste of that from
what Lyotard has just said.

b. Michael Foucault
Most of this treads under the work of another French postmodernist and post-structuralist, Michael
Foucault. Foucault was a critic of the way human sciences like psychiatry and penology have been used to
define deviants, and then segregate average humans in order to construct a notion of normal selfhood. As
noted earlier, Foucault once said that ―man was invented in the 16th century.‖ What he meant by that is
typical of what structuralists or poststructuralists thinkers say; what he meant was that following
structuralism, man is a signifier, a word which is constituted by a set of discourses, that is, by a linguistic
and practical activities human beings engage in. The ones Foucault is most interested in, the most notable
are those of the human sciences like psychology, medicine, psychiatry and penology. When Foucault says
that man was invented in the 16th century, what he means is that it is only in the 16th century that Western
society invented a new set of sciences of being the ones already mentioned above. And these sciences
describe human being in a certain way. Foucault‘s way of describing it is that sciences constructed a
normative normalizing picture of what it means to be human. Foucault‘s approach was taken sometimes
along with Derrida‘s to argue that Europeans had in the modern period an imperial age repressed non-
whites to construct their own racial and class identity as a preferred category, just as males had repressed
women in order to construct an ideal masculinity as a repository of political power. This is similar to the
views of Adorno and Horkheimer from their book ―Dialectic of Enlightenment.‖ The notion that a class
of people in order to feel secure about their own identity need some other class to rule and they need to be
able to constitute or construct or imagine the selfhood of the people as being very different, in effect
projecting their unattractive qualities on to this group so that they can constitute themselves as different.

Foucault went on in his career to do a variety of works especially historical analysis of sexuality and the
study of sexuality as a set of techniques for constructing and controlling the self. Politically, we could say
that Foucault was a left Nietzschean, following Nietzsche. Foucault accepts that all life including inquiry
into truth is power. In other words, science, the social science is seeking power. If all science is power
and all knowledge is power, how are we to seek knowledge and yet have a society of freedom? For
Foucault, a bit like Lyotard, the goal of social liberation is not to transcend power relationships, but to
loosen them up, to fragment them, to make sure that there are no overwhelming centres of power.
Foucault with Derrida one of the most famous representatives of the postmodern movement, Foucault
represented the social and political side particularly by exploring sexuality which he also did in his

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personal as well as in his intellectual life. He was the high priest of the political side of postmodernism.
Foucault died of AIDS in 1984. Derrida represented the more cognitive epistemological and philosophy
of language implications of postmodernism. Their thought and the work of other French poststructuralists
spurned a slew of political formulations, especially in the US, e.g. feminists epistemologists argued that
modern epistemology (Descartes, Beckon, Galileo, Boil, etc.) of the 17th century had expressed a
gendered or characteristically a male conception of knowledge. A feminist alternative might seem
knowledge as arising of the interaction of inquirer with the subject matter, or more interactive model of
coming to know rather than the scientific ideal of maintaining an objective distance from the subject of
knowledge. Husserl, Heidegger and the existential philosophers had already pointed out this problem and
had tried to give their own response to it. The feminists postmodernists extended the critique of subject-
object distance to a critique of classical epistemology, reason itself (was held by some) was a male
construction based on a political need to maintain power in male hands.

African American philosophy also made a contribution. The well known professor Cornel Wett, showed
how the very notions of reason and of rights which were used since the enlightenment and which certainly
had some role in the development of human freedom were nevertheless projected by the ruling classes of
the West as guarantors of their own liberty and equality, but were simultaneously used to repress racial
minorities,, considering those minorities as objects, disgusting and maintaining the identity of the ―best‖
(whites). The black Americans called for a pluralistic politics of difference against homogeneity pretence
of the whites.

So, the common claim of the postmodernists in this political sense is that the very norms modern writers
and philosophers like to think of as guaranteeing a decent progressive society: norms like truth, morality,
reason, beauty, individuality, rights themselves, all these notions that have been fought for and thought of
by modern philosophers as crucial to the morality of the modern era. The postmodern thinkers we have
just described regard these as tools of repression. In effect, the use of these notions despite their best
appearances has in fact been employed to repress the whole segments of society. E.g., in traditional liberal
democracy, we have the notion of the melting part of assimilation in the US, the ideal of equality. These
were not simply applied or were put into practice; they required that the other (contrasting itself with the
other: women, blacks, homosexuals, minorities, etc.) or we project unattractive qualities to those other
groups and we have to deny that there is any commonality between the self and the other. Now the
antidote of this from the point of view of postmodernism is a recognition of difference, of diversity and
embrace diversity often found at the margins of official discourse. Diversity is a value that will call for
equal respect and equal respect to attain diversity. To wipe away differences and regard people the same
from the postmodernists‘ point of view is a SIN against reality difference. The philosophical issue
between the postmodernists and their progressive political allies (more traditional liberals who support
rights, individualism-commonality); progressives were concerned with trying to increase government
control over wealth and government concern for the poor, i.e., the politics of class which is more
traditional politics, especially in the US and parts of Europe especially Germany. The postmodernists
were more concerned with the politics of identity in diversity; with skin (race), gender, weak, sexual
orientation. In doing this, the postmodernists were sometimes criticized by their more traditional liberal
friends because if the postmodernists attack every form of unity, norm that can be asserted and every goal
by which we would unify society in some way, in traditional liberal sphere this will actually take support
from the kind of social movements they most desired. There is always a kind of friendship of convenience
and conflict between the traditional liberals and postmodern progressives.

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Some postmodernists became what we would call post-critical. This is a different group of
postmodernists. By post-critical I mean and I am a little unfair unfair, (every philosopher is critical of
something, so they certainly did not lack criticism of some other ideas) what I mean is that this group of
postmodernists came to apply their radical critique of political and social norms so fully that they
undermined the use of those norms to criticize the status quo, e.g., it became an ironic celebration of mass
culture. For Bodriag, postmodern society has abandoned reality all together in its massive production and
consumption of science from film, television, recorded music, the print media and the internet. His claim
is that we in the modern society now inhabit the hyper reality, a condition in which a relation to reality
has not only been replaced by our relation to science. In other words, we deal with advertisement and not
the thing itself. And it is not just that, but also science purport not to represent anything at all. In such
condition, our criterion of the real is whether something can be reproduced or signed. Bodriag was
claiming something extremely radical, so radical that it unhinges any political critique of society that you
might reproduce. In other words, from Bodriag‘s point of view people on the left, the right and the centre,
everybody is dwelling in a world of hyper reality where all what they see are the products of mass culture
and they no longer can get through or reach through those cultural images to the reality behind them.

Some scientific view is developed by German sociologist Nicholas Lumann. Lumann radicalized Max
Webber‘s distinction of social action into instrumental spheres governed by discrete values. Webber was
the first person to say that modern society or late modern society in the 20 th century that ―lacking religion
as a way to give total integration to our view of the world, we modern people are left with a bunch of
different competing ultimate values non of which can e reduced to the other, and non of which can gain
an obvious superiority to the other.‖ In other words, I am committed to the value of my family life, of my
country, the value of my profession, etc., each of these roles that I occupy has rules I need to follow and
value but which takes precedence over which how to integrate them all. In Webber‘s mind, there is no
way to do that, you must merely choose among them and you can‘t help but in Webber‘s terminology SIN
against one value while trying to promote another value. Lumann took this even much further arguing that
essentially modern society has nothing like unity at all (he is speaking much like Lyotard: that modern
society does not present what traditional sociology would have thought as a collective consciousness or a
collective culture or a common point of view that plays a normative role in determining social behaviour,
that is not we act; we move between social situations, we follow the rules of those situations. There is no
way to integrate them.

Bodriag‘s work and Lumann‘s illustrate a problem which many of the writers acknowledge.
Postmodernism or poststructuralism more broadly may provide the means to critique the status quo and
they can also provide the resources for a normative solution; a theory of justice or rights or identity
necessary to justify an alternative. In other words, if the postmodern critic attacks every statement that a
policy maker or philosopher, or social theorist might make, every time any of these persons says that this
is what is wrong with society and this is what we are going to do, this is the definition of society; if
postmodernism gives an external critique of those norms and ideas, which they are using the radical
methods of Foucault and Derrida, it would seem they would simply unhinge any positive statement we
might make at all. In other words, they would leave us with inability to criticize anything. If we are to
change society in any way we think is best, this would require justifications of unity, identity, rules and
privileged conditions that postmodernism must by its very nature undermine. It removes the basis of any
criticism and view. So, postmodernism is a self.

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