ORAL COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATIONS

IN PHILOSOPHY – PART II

A. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

1. SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN
- Plato emphasized the social aspect of human nature. We are not self-sufficient, we need
others, and we benefit from our social interactions, from other person’s talents,
aptitudes, and friendship.

2. SOCIETY: NATURE, ORIGIN, ELEMENTS END

- Society may be defined as the permanent union of men who are united by modes of
behavior that are demanded by some common end, value, or interest.
- Society consists in mutual interaction and inters relation of individuals and of the
structure formed by their relations. Therefore, society refers not to a group of people
but to the complex pattern of norms of interaction that arise among them. Society is
process rather than a thing, motion rather than structure. The important aspect of
society is the system of relationships by which the members of the society maintain
themselves.
- A society is a collection of individuals united by certain relations or modes of behavior
which mark them off from others, who don not enter into those relations or who differ
from them in behavior.
- Elements of a Society: Culture, Symbols and Gestures, Language, Norms, Rituals,
Changing Norms and Beliefs, Values,
3. MEANING AND ELEMENTS OF A POLITICAL
- The five most important elements of the a political culture are liberty, democracy,
equality, individual responsibility, and civic duty.
- The element of equality presumes that everyone has the same rights and chances to
succeed, which is often not the case in most societies.
- Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary

4. MACHIAVELLI: THE NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS

- The end justifies the means
- For Niccolo Machiavelli, the success of the state or nation is paramount, whoever leads
or governs the state, or the nation must strive to secure his own glory and the success of
the state. In order to this, they cannot be bound by morality.
- a prince who mistreats his people unnecessarily will be despised—a prince should have
a reputation for compassion, not for cruelty. This might involve harsh punishment of a
few in order to achieve general social order, which benefits more people in the long run.
- A ruler must have the ferocity of the lion to frighten those who seek to depose him; A
ruler must have the cunning of the fox to recognize snares and traps.

5. HOBBES: THE SOVEREIGN LEVIATHAN

- Thomas Hobbes – government must be organized in order to avoid civil war which
happens when moral issues arise in the society. To avoid chaos people must accede to a
social contract.
 - SOCIAL CONTRACT – an implicit agreement among the members of the society to
cooperate for social benefits.
- LEVIATHAN – absolute government
Hobbes’ social contract theory states that the ideal form of government is
monarchy. it is the relationship between sovereignty (divine right of kings) and the
sovereign (people).

6. ROSSEAU: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

- Rousseau begins The Social Contract with the most famous words he ever wrote: “Men
are born free, yet everywhere are in chains.” From this provocative opening, Rousseau
goes on to describe the myriad ways in which the “chains” of civil society suppress the
natural birthright of man to physical freedom. He states that the civil society does
nothing to enforce the equality and individual liberty that were promised to man when
he entered into that society. For Rousseau, the only legitimate political authority is the
authority consented to by all the people, who have agreed to such government by
entering into a social contract for the sake of their mutual preservation.
- Rousseau describes the ideal form of this social contract and also explains its
philosophical underpinnings. To Rousseau, the collective grouping of all people who by
their consent enter into a civil society is called the sovereign, and this sovereign may be
thought of, metaphorically at least, as an individual person with a unified will. This
principle is important, for while actual individuals may naturally hold different opinions
and wants according to their individual circumstances, the sovereign as a whole
expresses the general will of all the people. Rousseau defines this general will as the
collective need of all to provide for the common good of all.
- MANS IS BORN GOOD BUT ARE CORRUPTED BY THE WAY SOCIETY IS.
- INDIVIDUALS MUST IGNORE THEIR INDIVIDUAL DESIRES. INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES AND
MUST PRIORITIZE THE WELL-BEING OF THE SOCIETY AS A COLLECTIVE – GENERAL WILL.

7. JOHN LOCKE: THE TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT

THE FIRST TREATISE
- The first treatise defended the theory of divine right of kings: the authority of every king
is divinely sanctioned by his descent from Adam—according to the Bible, the first king
and the father of humanity. Locke claims that Filmer’s doctrine defies “common sense.”
The right to rule by descent from Adam’s first grant could not be supported by any
historical record or any other evidence, and any contract that God and Adam entered
into would not be binding on remote descendants thousands of years later, even if a line
of descent could be identified.
THE SECOND TREATISE
- Locke’s importance as a political philosopher lies in the argument of the second treatise.
He begins by defining political power as a right of making Laws with Penalties of Death,
and consequently all less Penalties, for the Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of
employing the force of the Community, in the Execution of such Laws and in defense of
the Common wealth from Foreign Injury, and all this only for the Public Good.
- The state of nature and the social contract
- Locke’s definition of political power has an immediate moral dimension. It is a “right” of
making laws and enforcing them for “the public good.” Power for Locke never simply
means “capacity” but always “morally sanctioned capacity.” Morality pervades the
 whole arrangement of society, and it is this fact, tautologically, that makes society
legitimate.
- Locke’s account of political society is based on a hypothetical consideration of the
human condition before the beginning of communal life. In this “state of nature,”
humans are entirely free. But this freedom is not a state of complete license, because it
is set within the bounds of the law of nature. It is a state of equality, which is itself a
central element of Locke’s account. In marked contrast to Filmer’s world, there is no
natural hierarchy among humans. Each person is naturally free and equal under the law
of nature, subject only to the will of “the infinitely wise Maker.” Each person, moreover,
is required to enforce as well as to obey this law. It is this duty that gives to humans the
right to punish offenders. But in such a state of nature, it is obvious that placing the
right to punish in each person’s hands may lead to injustice and violence. This can be
remedied if humans enter into a contract with each other to recognize by common
consent a civil government with the power to enforce the law of nature among the
citizens of that state. Although any contract is legitimate as long as it does not infringe
upon the law of nature, it often happens that a contract can be enforced only if there is
some higher human authority to require compliance with it. It is a primary function of
society to set up the framework in which legitimate contracts, freely entered into, may
be enforced, a state of affairs much more difficult to guarantee in the state of nature
and outside civil society.

8. HUMAN RIGHTS: THE INTERNATIONAL BILL OF HUMAN RIGHTS

- The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the five core human rights treaties of
the United Nations that function to advance the fundamental freedoms and to protect
the basic human rights of all people. The Bill influences the decisions and actions of
Government, State and Non-State actors to make economic, social and cultural rights a
top priority in the formation and implementation of national, regional and international
policy and law.

The following five documents are the foundation of the International Bill of Human Rights:
1) Universal Declaration of Human Rights
2) International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
3) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
4) Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
5) Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
aiming at the abolition of the death penalty

9. NATION-STATE AND SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES

- National self-determination appears to challenge the principle of territorial integrity (or
sovereignty) of states as it is the will of the people that makes a state legitimate. This
implies a people should be free to choose their own state and its territorial boundaries.

10. DEMOCRATIC SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

- Common to both democracy and sustainable development is participation – the ability
of people to come together and involve in decisions about how we live and the goals we
want to achieve as a society.
 - Sustainable Development’s definition is the “development which meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.”
- Democracy has long been a deeply contested idea and set of practices. Its value rests on
the core principle of political equality. All members of a political community have equal
rights to affect decisions made in their name. This simple formula ensures individuals
and social groups are treated with dignity and respect and have the necessary
autonomy and freedom to flourish.

11. GLOBALIZATION AND THE EMERGING BORDERLESS WORLD ORDER

- Globalization means interaction between the masses in terms of culture, ideas,
economy and politics, across the globe. Through the Internet, people across the world
can communicate with each other within a fraction of a second, regardless of borders. A
global economy has been formed through international trading.
- Globalization has brought innumerable changes, including free movement of goods,
services, information and capital across territorial borders.

B. SEMINAR ON POSTMODERNISM
12. JACQUES DERRIDA
- Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing
not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions. Although
Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word “deconstruction,” its
popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary
criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory.
- Derridean deconstruction consists in an attempt to re-conceive the difference that
divides self-consciousness (the difference of the “of” in consciousness of oneself). But
even more than the re-conception of difference, and perhaps more importantly,
deconstruction attempts to render justice. Indeed, deconstruction is relentless in this
pursuit since justice is impossible to achieve.
- deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by the belief that existence is
structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the
oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than
the other. The first phase of deconstruction attacks this belief by reversing the
Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchies between the invisible or intelligible and the
visible or sensible; between essence and appearance; between the soul and body;
between living memory and rote memory; between mnēmē and hypomnēsis; between
voice and writing; between finally good and evil.

13. MICHEL FOUCAULT

- Foucault is best known for his “analytics of power.” He holds that a thorough
understanding of power in our society requires abandoning analytical frameworks – e.g.
Liberalism or Marxism – that locate power in state institutions. Power is everywhere, he
asserts. To understand subjection as well as resistance and change, we must examine
power at the micro-level – relations between boss and worker, therapist and client,
teacher and pupil, husband and wife. It is at this level that systems of
“power/knowledge” are produced and reproduced and are sometimes disrupted and
overthrown. Power is not something that one person or group holds while others lack it;
power exists only in relation, only in “exercise.” Power relations must be constantly
 repeated if institutionalized dominations are to be maintained. Thus power relations are
always reversible or alterable, which means that the institutions and dominations they
support are always vulnerable. Freedom, Foucault insists, is an ever-present feature of
power relations.
- He argues that power is immanent in all social relations and that all social relations are
relations of power, whether in family or in the hierarchies of government and others
social institutions.

14. JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD

- Jean-François Lyotard bases his definition of Postmodernism on the idea that
postmodernist thought questions, critiques, and deconstructs metanarratives by
observing that the move to create order or unity always creates disorder as well. Instead
of ‘grand narratives’, which seek to explain all totalizing thought, Jean-François Lyotard
calls for a series of mini-narratives that are ‘provisional, contingent, temporary, and
relative’. Jean-François Lyotard, then, provides us with an argument for the postmodern
breakdown or fragmentation of beliefs and values instead of Jürgen Habermas’ proposal
for a society unified under a ‘grand narrative’.

15. MICHAEL RORTY

- Rorty argued instead that knowledge is an internal and linguistic affair; knowledge only
relates to our own language. Rorty argues that language is made up of vocabularies that
are temporary and historical and concludes that " since vocabularies are made by
human beings, so are truths."

16. JEAN BAUDRILLARD

- Jean Baudrillard's philosophy stands on the concepts of simulation and hyper-reality,
which refers to the unrealistic nature of the modern culture. In today's world of mass
communication and consumption, all of our feelings and emotions are simulated
through unnatural means.

C. CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
17. HEGEL: THE DIALECTIC PROCESS
- Hegelian/DIALECTIC process starts with a thesis (the current status quo or the truth
accepted), then the thesis on its own generates its own anti-thesis (to counter the thesis
statement) and with these two derives the synthesis which becomes a new thesis, and
the process turns on until it arrives to an absolute truth or absolute spirit.

E.g., Thesis- water is Liquid. Anti-thesis- Water boiled to 200 degrees Fahrenheit turns
into Gas. Synthesis – Water depends on temperature.

18. COMTE: THE POSITIVIST PHILOSOPHY

- Philosophy of science is positivism; Positivism is more a philosophy, method rather than
a theory. It is that philosophy which preaches that the interpretation of the world is
based on human experience. It insists on the application of scientific method of natural
sciences to the study of social world.
- It deals with the application of scientific method by natural scientists and by the
sociologists in understanding human-behavior. positivism is a scientific
 method/knowledge. he argues that knowledge can only be derived from scientific
method such as, observation, experimentation and the like.

19. SCHOPENHAUER: ETHICS OF PESSIMISM

- Schopenhauer states that the world is in its very nature chaotic and painful. The only
good or in order in the world is a feeble and inevitably doomed creation of humans. The
world cannot be divided nicely into separate understandable objects. Rather the world
is a driving will, which when humans try to understand and separate it into
comprehendible pieces will inevitably tear itself apart and revert to incomprehensible
chaos.
- Schopenhauer’s view is that the world is made of suffering. Pain outpaces pleasure
throughout the world. The first-person experiential view of extensive suffering leads him
to conclude that the world is the kind of thing that will always make us want that which
we cannot have and pit us against each other to get it. Because we cannot fully
understand the world, we will inevitably suffer and be frustrated.

20. JAMES: PRAGMATIC THEORY OF TRUTH

- William James's version of the pragmatic theory is often summarized by his statement
that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only
the expedient in our way of behaving." By this, James meant that truth is a quality the
value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to actual
practice (thus, "pragmatic"). James's pragmatic theory is a synthesis of correspondence
theory of truth and coherence theory of truth, with an added dimension. Truth is
verifiable to the extent that thoughts and statements correspond with actual things, as
well as "hangs together," or coheres, fits as pieces of a puzzle might fit together, and
these are in turn verified by the observed results of the application of an idea to actual
practice.
- "Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their
'agreement', as falsity means their disagreement, with 'reality'. Pragmatists and
intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel
only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term
'agreement', and what by the term 'reality', when reality is taken as something for our
ideas to agree with."

21. KIERKEGAARD: RADICAL CHRISTIAN FIDEISM

- For Kierkegaard, as for the so-called evangelical fideists, faith is characterized by
passionate commitment and thus requires a decision or “qualitative leap” (1846, 384).
His claim is not simply that having evidence is unnecessary in this context, but that it
would, so to speak, destroy the whole endeavor, since it would alter the meaning of the
beliefs in question and the spirit in which they could be believed. “If I am able to
apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must
have faith. If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast
the objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am ‘out on 70,000
fathoms of water’ and still have faith” (1846, 204). Any belief that depended on the
outcome of historical or scientific approximation – and which could be undermined by
its results – would not be genuine faith, and anything whose existence could be
established purely on the basis of philosophical argument – and so could be believed in
“indifferently,” without this belief making a significant difference in one’s life – would by
 definition not be God. “Anyone who wants to demonstrate the existence of God…proves
something else instead, at times something that perhaps did not even need
demonstrating, and in any case never anything better.”
- Religion, for Kierkegaard, is a matter of what one does with one’s life, a matter of
“inwardness.” In this context, to observe that religious believers lack evidence for their
beliefs is not to render a negative verdict on their entitlement but to comment
conceptually on the kind of beliefs they are.

22. HEIDEGGER: AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE

- Heidegger wants to recover a firm sense of the wholeness of the existing individual. But
this wholeness is found in the connectedness of what Heidegger calls the “happening”
or “movement” of a life—that is, in the unfolding and constantly “in-progress” storyizing
that continues until death. What is at stake in the ideal of authenticity is not being true
to some antecedently given nature, then, but being a person of a particular sort.
Heidegger emphasizes that being authentic presupposes that one instantiates such
virtues as perseverance, integrity, clear-sightedness, flexibility, openness, and so forth.
It should be obvious that such a life is not necessarily opposed to an ethical and socially
engaged existence. On the contrary, authenticity seems to be regarded as a “executive
virtue” that provides the condition for the possibility of being a moral agent in any
meaningful sense whatsoever.

23. THE VALUE THEORY

- Also known as Axiology – coming from two Greek words; “Axios” meaning worth, and
“logos” meaning study. Therefore, etymologically speaking, axiology is a branch of
philosophy which deals with the study of value or worth.
- AXIOLOGY seeks to understand the meaning, nature, and origin of the notions of
“values” and “value judgment.”
- It is closely related to 2 other branches of Philosophy: Ethics and Aesthetics
- It is related to ethics and aesthetics because one needs to use the concept of “worth” or
“value” in defining and understanding the notions of “good” or “goodness”, and
“beauty.”
- Through Axiology, one can meaningfully determine what is “valuable” and why
something can be said to be valuable.

24. CONTEMPORARY RENEWAL OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: NEO-SCHOLASTICISM

- neo-scholasticism, philosophical viewpoint, prominent in the 19th and 20th cent., that
sought to apply the doctrines of scholasticism to contemporary political, economic, and
social problems. It is often called neo-Thomism for its close links to St. Thomas Aquinas,
but it is more properly called neo-scholasticism, as the movement encompassed the
principles of other scholastics, such as Duns Scotus. Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson
were eminent neo-scholastics.
- Neo-Scholasticism is characterized by systematic investigation, analytical rigor, clear
terminology, and argumentation that proceeds from first principles, chief among them
that objective truth is both real and knowable." Neo-scholasticism sought to restore the
fundamental doctrines embodied in the scholasticism of the 13th century.
- The essential conceptions may be summarized as follows: God, pure actuality and
absolute perfection, is substantially distinct from every finite thing, Each substance is in
its nature fixed and determined, and Man, a compound of body (matter) and of soul
 (form), puts forth activities of a higher order—knowledge and volition. Through his
senses he perceives concrete objects, e.g. this oak; through his intellect he knows the
abstract and universal (the oak). Natural happiness would result from the full
development of our powers of knowing and loving. We should find and possess God in
this world since the corporeal world is the proper object of our intelligence. But above
nature is the order of grace and our supernatural happiness will consist in the direct
intuition of God, the beatific vision.

25. NIETZCHE: WILL TO POWER, SUPERMAN

- The “will to power” is a central concept in the philosophy of 19th-century German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It is best understood as an irrational force, found in all
individuals, that can be channeled toward different ends.
- The will to power as Nietzsche conceives of it is neither good nor bad. It is a basic drive
found in everyone, but one that expresses itself in many different ways.
- the drive of the superman in the philosophy of Nietzsche to perfect and transcend the
self through the possession and exercise of creative power
- Nietzsche’s Superman is a mythological creature that overcomes all obstacles to achieve
its goals. In essence, it is a symbol of “strength.”
- This idea was popularized through Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch or
“Superman.” It is a person who has transcended or gone beyond good and evil by
perfecting oneself by going through the amor fati — loving one’s fate and destiny with a
will strong enough to embrace everything one encounters in life, including suffering pain
and sorrow.
- In addition, Nietzsche’s Superman also embodies the concept of self-creation by going
beyond traditional Christian morality and creating a new set of rules. According to
Nietzsche, Superman is an individual who has surpassed both the Christian morals and
values of humanity and transcends pure rationality.
- Superman is beyond good and evil in that he recognizes that morality only exists
concerning human beings. He can create his values through his actions.
- Nietzsche believed that “God is dead” because he felt it was an old-fashioned idea from
a less civilized society. In his mind, this meant there were no universal morals or values
to abide by, which led to moral relativism. This type of thinking can be applied in religion
and other areas, such as politics and economics.

26. SARTRE: ATHEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

- Sartre argues that atheistic existentialism is defined by the belief that, for humans,
“existence precedes essence.” While Sartre rejects the existence of God, at the end of
his lecture he suggests that “even if God were to exist, it would make no difference.”
Rather, atheist existentialists believe that humans are morally responsible for their
actions and beliefs regardless of God’s existence and still need to “rediscover”
themselves either way.
- We are not made for any purpose, so our existence precedes our essence, We have to
create our purpose for ourselves.
- Because Sartre’s philosophy releases us from the constraint of a human nature that is
preordained, it is also one of freedom. We are free to choose how to shape ourselves,
although we do have to accept some limitations.

27. MARCEL: THEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

 - Marcel was concerned that modern life, and a near-religious embrace of technology,
was leading to the denial of God’s existence. Without a belief in God there is no hope —
life is meaningless, according to Marcel and other theists. Like others concerned with
the influence of technology, Marcel feared that technology and science were defining
life in terms of human function: workers are simply the operators of technology, devoid
of any other value. In modern nations, workers were becoming objects, without dignity.
This is the existence of the factory worker, for example, regardless of political system.
The value of the person is not how he or she relates to others and God, but how well
machinery is operated.
- In Marcel’s model, the human-God relationship leads to better human-human
relationships.

28. RUSSEL: VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE

- Russell’s argument that understanding a proposition requires one’s direct acquaintance
with all the parts of a proposition relates the two fields, namely philosophy of language
and epistemology, with each other. He pointed out that ordinary language manifests
two senses of knowledge. Knowledge of things has to be differentiated from the
knowledge of truths. Knowledge of things is rather like identifying or recognizing things.
Knowledge of things is like knowing a definite person or a city. Knowledge of truths, on
the other hand, is knowledge of true propositions. In order to have knowledge of truths,
knowledge of things is required, which is the assertion that led Russell to focus on the
knowledge of things.
- By means of the things that we know by direct acquaintance we acquire a language, the
use of which enables us to attain the knowledge of the outside world. In order to have
knowledge by description, we have to go beyond the boundaries of our own immediate
and private experience, in such a way that we share common knowledge and language.
To go beyond the boundaries of knowledge of direct acquaintance, Russell claims that
we have to deduce universals from particulars. Universals are drawn from the
similarities among the particulars by a process of abstraction. Abstraction is a function
of mind. For all the universals that we deduce, there exists a predicate for each in a
language. However, to be able to comprehend a predicate one has to be acquainted
with the universal. Briefly, in order to understand and speak a language, one has to be
acquainted with things, have sense data and know universals.

29. KAROL WOJTYLA

- Man as a human being, is endowed with free will; through his free will, he determines
his own actions; he is free to determine the course and the objective of his own actions
and life. But free will comes with it responsibility. Since man is a free agent, he is
responsible for his actions. However, his responsibility as free agent does not end with
his own actions, he must also take responsibility for their consequences and for the
quality of the choice that he makes.
- Freedom and responsibility are the concerns not only of philosophers; they are
everybody’s concerns. Because of human freedom and responsibility, people are always
concerned with what is right and what is wrong. People contemplate on the right thing
to do, and what is the bad thing to avoid. The purpose of all these considerations is the
desire to live a well-lived life. Human beings do not just want to live their lives; they
want to live life well, as the saying goes: a well-lived life is a happy life.
 - Karol Wojtyła appeals to the ancient concept of 'person' to emphasize the particular
value of each human being. The person is unique because of their subjectivity by which
they possess an unrepeatable interior world in the history of humanity. Their rational
nature grants them a special character among living beings, among which is the
transcendence to the infinite. Wojtyła magisterially shows how each human being's
personhood is rooted in a conscious and free subjectivity, which is marked also by
personal and social responsibility. Wojtyła's original philosophical analysis takes for its
starting point the human act, in which consciousness and experience consolidate
voluntary choices, which are objectively efficacious. By their acts, the person determines
their own personhood. This self-dominion manifests the person and enables them to
live together in a community in which one's neighbor can be a companion on the voyage
of life.
- Karol Wojtyla’s works focus on man as a personal being – who exists and acts in a
certain way towards his proper end.

30. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY

- In the Phenomenology of Perception, which is arguably his major work, Merleau-Ponty
sets about exposing the problematic nature of traditional philosophical dichotomies
and, in particular, that apparently age-old dualism involving the mind and the body.
- Merleau-Ponty criticizes the tendency of philosophy to fall within two main categories,
neither of which is capable of shedding much light on the problems that it seeks to
address. He is equally critical of the rationalist, Cartesian accounts of humanity, as well
as the more empirical and behavioristic attempts to designate the human condition.
- Rationalism is problematic because it ignores our situation, and consequently the
contingent nature of thought, when it makes the world, or at least meaning, the
immanent property of the reflecting mind.
- The Phenomenology of Perception is hence united by the claim that we are our bodies,
and that our lived experience of this body denies the detachment of subject from
object, mind from body, etc (PP xii). In this embodied state of being where the
ideational and the material are intimately linked, human existence cannot be conflated
into any particular paradigm, for as Nick Crossley suggests, “there is no meaning which
is not embodied, nor any matter that is not meaningful” (Crossley 14). It should be clear
from this that Merleau-Ponty’s statement that ‘I am my body’ cannot simply be
interpreted as advocating a materialist, behaviorist type position. He does not want to
deny or ignore those aspects of our life which are commonly called the ‘mental’ – and
what would be left if he did? – but he does want to suggest that the use of this ‘mind’ is
inseparable from our bodily, situated, and physical nature. This means simply that the
perceiving mind is an incarnated body, or to put the problem in another way, he
enriches the concept of the body to allow it to both think and perceive. It is also for
these reasons that we are best served by referring to the individual as not simply a
body, but as a body-subject.

31. EMMANUEL LEVINAS

- Levinas’ philosophical project remains largely constant: to rethink the meaning of
existence in terms of the ethical transcendence of the other.
 - Transcendence is one of his words for the spontaneity of responsibility for another
person. Responsibility is experienced in concrete life and is variously expressed, from
words like “here I am” to apologies and self-accounting.
- Levinas’ first original essay, On Escape (De l’évasion, 1935), examined the relationship
between the embodied (sentient) self and the intentional ego[4] from the perspectives
of physical and affective states including need, pleasure, shame, and nausea. In this
succinct philosophical work, Levinas was less concerned than was Heidegger with the
question of existence as it opens up before us when we experience the dissolving of
things in the world in anxiety.
- Levinas’ question was not: “Why is there being instead of simply nothing?” His concern
was to approach existence differently, through the (human) being as Heidegger had also
done, but in light of more embodied experiences like the above-mentioned ones (OE:
§6). Enlarging Heidegger’s hermeneutics of being-in-the-world, Levinas gave priority to
lived moods and physical states that revealed existence as oppressive and
indeterminate.

32. EDITH STEIN

- she became acquainted with Edmund Husserl and became interested in his philosophy,
phenomenology, which sought to describe phenomena as consciously experienced,
without employing theories about their causal explanation. Also at Göttingen, she first
came into contact with Roman Catholicism. When Husserl moved to the University of
Freiburg, he asked Stein to join him there as his assistant; she received her d octorate in
philosophy (1916), became a member of the faculty, and established a reputation as
one of the university’s leading philosophers.
- she completed her metaphysical work Endliches und ewiges Sein (“Finite and Eternal
Being”), an attempt to synthesize the diverse philosophies of Aquinas and Husserl.

D. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

33. DEFINITION
- Popper is interested in the method by which science finds out about the world. Science
depends on experiment and experience, and if we want to do science well, we need to pay
close attention to what philosopher David Hume called the “regularities” of nature—the fact
that events unfold in the world in particular patterns and sequences that can be
systematically explored. Science, in other words, is empirical, or based on experience, and to
understand how it works we need to understand how experience.
-
34. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

35. LOGICAL POSITIVISM

- Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also
known as neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was
the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning).[1] This
theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or
logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information, or factual
content.
36. VERIFICATIONISM
- Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of
meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which maintains that only statements that are
empirically verifiable (i.e., verifiable through the senses) are cognitively meaningful, or else
they are truths of logic (tautologies).

-Verificationism thus rejects as cognitively "meaningless" statements specific to entire

fields such as metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics. Such statements may be
meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior, but not in terms of conveying truth value,
information or factual content.[1] Verificationism was a central thesis of logical positivism,
a movement in analytic philosophy that emerged in the 1920s by the efforts of a group of
philosophers who sought to unify philosophy and science under a common naturalistic
theory of knowledge.

37. FALSIFICATIONISM
- A scientific philosophy based on the requirement that hypotheses must be falsifiable in
order to be scientific; if a claim is not able to be refuted it is not a scientific claim.
- Falsificationism, as opposed to verificationism, claims that the main activity of a
researcher
is to invalidate a theory by observation or experiment. The confirmation or corroboration
of
a theory can only rely on the failure of attempted falsifications. Following D. Hume, Popper
denied the validity of induction, i.e., the inference from a limited number of observations
to universal regularities. According to Popper, the dynamics of theories consists of
replacing falsified hypotheses with better ones, with the aim of approaching objective
truth.

38. PARADIGMS
- In science and philosophy, a paradigm (/ˈpærədaɪm/) is a distinct set of concepts or
thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what
constitute legitimate contributions to a field.

a. NORMAL SCIENCE
- Normal science, identified and elaborated on by Thomas Samuel Kuhn in The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, is the regular work of scientists theorizing, observing, and
experimenting within a settled paradigm or explanatory framework. Regarding science as
puzzle-solving, Kuhn explained normal science as slowly accumulating detail in accord with
established broad theory, without questioning or challenging the underlying assumptions of that
theory.

b. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
- The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern
science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics,
astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society
about nature. The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe starting towards the end of the
Renaissance period, with the 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publication De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) often cited as its beginning.
 - A scientific revolution is a non-cumulative developmental episode in which an older
paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one.

c. ANOMALIES AND CRISIS

- Crisis is the essential tension implicit in scientific research. There is no such thing as
research without counterinstances. These counterinstances create tension and crisis. Crisis is
always implicit in research because every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be
seen, from another viewpoint, as a counterinstance and thus as a source of crisis.
- All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the
rules for normal research. As this process develops, the anomaly comes to be more generally
recognized as such, more attention is devoted to it by more of the field's eminent authorities.
The field begins to look quite different: scientists express explicit discontent, competing
articulations of the paradigm proliferate and scholars view a resolution as the subject matter of
their discipline. To this end, they first isolate the anomaly more precisely and give it structure.
They push the rules of normal science harder than ever to see, in the area of difficulty, just
where and how far they can be made to work.
- All crises close in one of three ways. (i) Normal science proves able to handle the crisis-
provoking problem and all returns to "normal." (ii) The problem resists and is labelled, but it is
perceived as resulting from the field's failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve
it, and so scientists set it aside for a future generation with more developed tools. (iii) A new
candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues. Once it has achieved
the status of paradigm, a paradigm is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available
to take its place. Because there is no such thing as research in the absence of a paradigm, to
reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. To
declare a paradigm invalid will require more than the falsification of the paradigm by direct
comparison with nature. The judgement leading to this decision involves the comparison of the
existing paradigm with nature and with the alternate candidate. Transition from a paradigm in
crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is not a cumulative
process. It is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals. This reconstruction changes
some of the field's foundational theoretical generalizations. It changes methods and
applications. It alters the rules.

d. SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM
- dogmatism does not refer to a system of beliefs, but to a system of norms; not to the
specific content of knowledge but to the way that scientific knowledge is authenticated,
organised, and transmitted by scientific communities. The institutional structure of science, that
is to say its social organisation trough training, textbooks, scientific communities and so on, is a
precondition for the organisation of meaningful scientific discourse (i.e. for the production and
organisation of empirically verifiable or falsifiable statements). That is the nature of the
paradigm: it creates and constrains the possibilities of scientific practice. In normal
circumstances, dogmatism and certainty are concerned with such pragmatic a priori, while
criticism and doubt are concerned with the empirical statements articulated through it.
- Dogmatism does not refer to a system of beliefs, but to a system of norms, not to the
specific content of knowledge but to the way scientific communities authenticate, organise, and
transmit scientific knowledge. Although the way we organise knowledge inevitably influences
the possible content of such knowledge (and so a distinction between formal and material
aspects of knowledge is not satisfactory), paradigms are roughly, in a Kantian attitude, the
formal matrix of our knowledge or a matrix for the construction of knowledge.
 e. SCIENTIFIC REALISM
- Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best
theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the
world described by the sciences.
- Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of
how it may be interpreted.

E. SEMINAR ON PILIPINO/BIKOL PHILOSOPHY

39. POSSIBILITY OF AND METHODOLOGY IN DEVELOPING INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHY
40. WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF PAGPAKAYAON?
41. WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF MABOOT?
42. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PAGKAMOOT AND LOVE?
43. WHAT IS THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN KATALINGKASAN AND KATUNGDAN?
44. WHAT IS THE PLACE OF ACTUAL PAGTIOS AND HYPOTHETICAL KAGADANAN
45. WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF KAPWA AND PAKIKIPAGKAPWA?
46. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PAGKAYAON AND PAGKAIGWA?
47. WHAT IS TINGOG NIN PAGKAYAON?
48. WHAT IS PAKIKIPAGKAPWA IN THE PAMILYA, BANWAAN, KAPALIBUTAN, ASIN
SIMBAHAN?

F. NATURAL THEOLOGY
49. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REASON AND FAITH
- Anselm held that the natural theologian seeks not to understand in order to believe, but to
believe in order to understand. This is the basis for his principle Intellectus Fidei. Under this
conception, reason is not asked to pass judgment on the content of faith, but to find its
meaning and to discover explanations that enable others to understand its content. But
when reason confronts what is incomprehensible, it remains unshaken since it is guided by
faith’s affirmation of the truth of its own incomprehensible claims.
- Reason helps explain faith; faith illumines and elevates reason.

50. THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY IN THEOLOGY

- According to a traditional metaphor, philosophy is the servant of theology (ancilla
theologiae, literally “handmaid” of theology). In a more contemporary idiom, theology uses
conceptual tools provided by philosophy in the pursuit of its own distinctive intellectual
task: elucidating the meaning and truth of revealed Christian doctrines.

51. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

-
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

(Craig also develops certain reasons why the best explanation for the cause of the universe must
be something like the Christian God.)
 One frequent objection to this argument is, “If everything has a cause, then what caused God?”
But this objection fails to understand the argument correctly. The argument does not say that
“everything has a cause” but rather that “everything that begins to exist, has a cause.” Since
God did not begin to exist, there is no (external) cause of His existence.

52. GOD: HIS ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE

- God, who has his necessity from himself and not from another, is therefore identical to
his existence. One can say, if one likes, that God exists in all metaphysically possible worlds, but
that is true only because in God essence and existence are the same. The divine simplicity is the
ground of the divine necessity.
- Everything whose existence is other than its nature gets its existence from something
other than itself. But, if everything’s existence were separate from its nature, then there would
be an infinite regress. Therefore, there must be a thing whose existence just is its nature. This
way it can be the cause for the existence of everything else without being its own cause. If we
accept this, then we have neither the problem of infinite regress nor the problem of something
ontologically preceding itself. And, this thing must be the first cause, since otherwise something
before it would either be subject to another regress or would cause itself. Since God is the first
cause, the being with existence as its essence is God.

53. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

- GOD IS, through the limitation of man’s language, we define the attributes of God
through accidentals such as infinite, beauty, good, supreme, transcendental.
- Supreme Being, All Just, Eternal Being, All Perfect, Beneficent Being- All good,
Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. The uncaused cause.

54. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOD AND NON-GOD

- Since no creature exists through itself of itself, every creature is continually kept in
existence through continual active causality of God. God is the cause of the being of all things
precisely because He is Subsistent Being Itself (ipsum esse subsistens).
- non-god participates in the being of God, we share of his goodness, he is the ultimate
good or the SUMMUM BONUM and our end in life is to reach that Goodness with the SUMMUM
BONUM.

G. PHILOSOPHY OF ART
55. ART AND REPRESENTATION
- Representation always involves a certain degree of abstraction—that is, the taking
away of one characteristic or more of the original.
- The term "representation" suggests a type of description or portrayal of someone or
something. In the visual arts this implies that the art object depicts something other than or
outside itself. In some cases, the mode of representation is iconic and relies on ideas or symbols.
- A representation is a type of recording in which the sensory information about a
physical object is described in a medium. The degree to which an artistic representation
resembles the object it represents is a function of resolution and does not bear on the
denotation of the word. For example, both the Mona Lisa and a child's crayon drawing of Lisa
del Giocondo would be considered representational, and any preference for one over the other
would need to be understood as a matter of aesthetics.

56. ART AND EXPRESSION

 - art is expression. Instead of reflecting states of the external world, art is held to reflect
the inner state of the artist. This, at least, seems to be implicit in the core meaning of
expression: the outer manifestation of an inner state. Art as a representation of outer existence
(admittedly “seen through a temperament”) has been replaced by art as an expression of
humans’ inner life.
-
57. ART AND FORM
- Formalists do not deny that art is capable of being a representation, or a expression,
but they believe that the true purpose of art is subverted by its being made to do these things.
“Art for art’s sake, not art for life’s sake” is the watchword of formalism. Art is there to be
enjoyed, to be savoured, for the perception of the intricate arrangements of lines and colours,
of musical tones, of words, and combinations of these. By means of these mediums it is true
that objects in the world can be represented, scenes from life depicted, and emotions from life
expressed, but these are irrelevant to the principal purpose of art. Indeed, art is much less
adapted to the telling of a story or the representation of the world than it is to the presentation
of colours, sounds, and other items in the art medium simply for their own sake.

58. ART AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

- aesthetic experiences as those pleasures associated with occasions when one judges
something to be beautiful. Kant asserts that one recognizes that this pleasure does not result
from a realization that an object is useful or agreeable to one because of special things about
oneself. Instead, the pleasure arises simply because the form of the object is delightful and
could and should be enjoyed by anyone.
- John Dewey (1958), for example, argues that aesthetic experiences are the most
complete, the richest, and the highest experiences possible. One is actively engaged and
conscious of the world's effect on one but at the same time appreciative of one's possibilities for
acting on the world. One senses an organization, coherence, and satisfaction as well as an
integration of the past, present, and future that ordinary nonaesthetic experiences lack.

59. ART DEFINITION AND IDENTIFICATION

- the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a
visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their
beauty or emotional power.
- Art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions,
intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it’s about sharing the way we
experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of
intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone
are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. But the content that we
instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Art is to be found in how the media is
used, the way in which the content is expressed.
- Art is a means to state an opinion or a feeling, or else to create a different view of the
world, whether it be inspired by the work of other people, or something invented that’s entirely
new. Beauty is whatever aspect of that or anything else that makes an individual feel positive or
grateful. Beauty alone is not art, but art can be made of, about or for beautiful things.
- However, art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it
can make you think about or consider things that you would rather not. But if it evokes an
emotion in you, then it is art.
 - The identification of works of art follows the same general procedures as detecting a
forgery or determining the treatment needed to restore a damaged item. The technical
specialist works with the art historian or curator to discover who was the actual executor of a
particular painting, drawing, or sculpture.

H. PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE & CULTURE

60. COMPOSITION & PARTS
- The five main components of language are phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, syntax,
and context. Along with grammar, semantics, and pragmatics, these components work together
to create meaningful communication among individuals.

61. MEANING
- John Stuart Mill examined the meaning of words in relation to the objects they refer
to. Mill claimed that in order for words to hold meaning, one must be able to explain them
based on experience. Therefore, words stand for impressions made from the senses.
- According to John Locke, words do not represent external things; rather, they
represent ideas within the mind of the person saying them. While these ideas are presumed to
then represent things, Locke believed the accuracy of the representation does not affect that
word’s meaning.
- Frege believed that it is not simply the objects that are relevant to the meaning of a
sentence, but how the objects are presented. Words refer to things in the external world—
however, names hold more meaning than simply being references to objects.

62. REFERENCE
- The reference, or meaning, of a sentence is the object in the real world that the
sentence is referring to. The reference represents a truth-value (whether something is true or
false) and is determined by senses.
-
63. MIND AND LANGUAGE
- languages are forms of symbolic representation.
- Mind holds a multilayered relationship with language, which takes as well as displays
disparate strata of meaning and significance. In fact, language is the embodiment of human
mind as it is impalpable and invisible. Through language mind comes out of human body and
gets introduced to and understood by the outer world.

64. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

- Language is a symbolic tool that we use to communicate our thoughts as well as
represent our cognitive processes. Language is the mirror of thinking, and it is one of the ways in
which we communicate our rich cognitive world. As Wittgenstein suggests, we may see the
world within the boundaries of our language, and we think that way. Therefore, we can argue
that the language we speak not only facilitates thought communication but also shapes and
diversifies thinking.
- there is a nested relationship between language and thought. In the interaction
processes mentioned above, the role of language changes. Even though the limits of our
language are different from the limits of our thinking, it is inevitable that people prioritize
concepts in their languages. This, however, does not mean that they cannot comprehend or
think about concepts that do not exist in their language. Future research on abstract notions
 such as emotion transfer or expression of time will shed light on the interaction of language and
thought.

65. SOCIAL INTERACTION AND LANGUAGE

- Language is so fundamental to the rituals and events of everyday life that its role is
taken for granted. Language and Social Interaction deals with how we use language to negotiate
relationships, actions and events in our daily lives.

I. SPECIAL ETHICS
66. SEXUAL ISSUES: MASTURBATION, FORNICATION, HOMOSEXUALITY, ADULTERY,
PORNOGRAPHY
67. LIFE ISSUES: ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION,
BIOTECHNOLOGY, CONTRACEPTION
68. SOCIAL ISSUES: JUSTICE AND RIGHTS, DRUG ADDICTION, CORRUPTION
69. AXIOLOGICAL ISSUES: MORAL VIRTUES, PRUDENCE, TEMPERANCE

ADDENDUM:
70. RIGHTS AND DUTIES
71. MAN'S DUTY TOWARDS GOD MAN'S PERSONAL OFFICE
72. DUTIES TOWARDS ONE'S GOD B. DUTIES TOWARDS ONE'S BODY
73. THE WORLD-FAMILY OF NATIONS
A. INTERNATIONAL LAW
B. PEACE AND WAR
- jus ad bellum
- jus in bello
- jus post bellum