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Philosophy has almost as many definitions as there have been philosophers, both as a subject matter and an activity, and no simple definition can do it justice. The issue of the definition of philosophy is thus a controversial subject that is nowadays tackled by Metaphilosophy (or the philosophy of philosophy). The word is derived from the ancient Greek words philo-, to love or to befriend, and -sophia, wisdom. Modern usage of the term is much broader; the concept of philosophy encompasses all of knowledge and all that can be known, including the means by which such knowledge can be acquired. However, in the contemporary English-speaking academic world, the term is often used implicitly to refer to analytic philosophy and, in non-English speaking countries, it often refers implicitly to a different, European strain, continental philosophy.
The ancient Greeks organized the subject into five basic categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. This organization of the subject is still largely in use in Western philosophy today.
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| Branches of Philosophy |
Philosophy ponders the most fundamental questions humankind has been able to ask. These are increasingly numerous and over time they have been arranged into the overlapping branches of the philosophy tree:
- Logic: What makes a good argument? How can I think critically about complicated arguments? What makes for good thinking? When can I say that something just does not make sense? Where is the origin of logic?
- Epistemology: What are the nature and limits of knowledge? What is more fundamental to human existence, knowing (epistemology) or being (ontology)? How do we come to know what we know? What are the limits and scope of knowledge? How can we know that there are other minds (if we can)? How can we know that there is an external world (if we can)? How can we prove our answers? What is a true statement?
- Metaphysics: What sorts of things exist? What is the nature of those things? Do some things exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the relationship of the mind to the body? What is it to be a person? What is it to be conscious? Does God exist?
- Ethics: Is there a difference between ethically right and wrong actions (or values, or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right, and which wrong? Do divine commands make right acts right, or is their rightness based on something else? Are there standards of rightness that are absolute, or are all such standards relative to particular cultures? How should I live? What is happiness?
- Aesthetics: What is art? What is beauty? Is there a standard of taste? Is art meaningful? If so, what does it mean? What is good art? Is art for the purpose of an end, or is "art for art's sake?" What connects us to art? How does art affect us? Is some art unethical? Can art corrupt or elevate societies?
- Philosophy of Language: How are sentences composed into a meaningful whole, and what are the meanings of the parts of sentences? What is the nature of meaning? (What exactly is a meaning?) What do we do with language? How do we use it socially? (What is the purpose of language?) How does language relate to the mind, both of the speaker and the interpreter? How does language relate to the world? (Courtesy of the Philosophy of Language wikipedia page)
- Political philosophy: Are political institutions and their exercise of power justified? What is justice? Is there a 'proper' role and scope of government? Is democracy the best form of governance? Is governance ethically justifiable? Should a state be allowed? Should a state be able to promote the norms and values of a certain moral or religious doctrine? Are states allowed to go to war? Do states have duties against inhabitants of other states?
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| Selected Philosopher |
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Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. His work, like most psychoanalytic work, owes a heavy, explicit debt to Sigmund Freud, but also drew from a number of other fields, including linguistics, philosophy, and mathematics. This interdisciplinary focus in his work has led him to be an important figure in many fields beyond psychoanalysis - particularly within critical theory.
His central idea was that the human subject is a creation of its use of language. From this understanding Lacan develops his study of psychoanalysis and his treatment strategies. His work, while controversial, continues to influence the development of psychoanalysis worldwide. In France and elsewhere various "schools" of Lacanian thought have emerged.
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| Western philosophical schools of thought |
| Agnosticism - Alexandrian school - Analytic philosophy - Anarchism - Atheism - Cambridge Platonists - Cartesian doubt - Christian philosophy - Coherentism - Consequentialism - Contextualism - Contractualism - Continental philosophy - Communism - Critical theory - Cynics - Deconstructionism - Deep Ecology - Deism - Deontology - Egoism - ecosophy - Empiricism - Epicureanism - Ethical egoism - Existentialism - Extropianism - Foundationalism - Frankfurt School - Hegelianism - Hermeneutics - Humanism - Idealism - Integral theory - Islamic philosophy - Jewish philosophy - Liberalism - Logical positivism - Marxist philosophy - Materialism - Modernism - Mysticism - Neoplatonism - Nihilism - Objectivism - Phenomenalism - Phenomenology - Postmodernism - Pragmatism - Psychological egoism - Rationalism - Realism - Relativism - Reliabilism - Platonism - Scholasticism - School of Brentano - Scotism - Situated ethics - Situational ethics - Skepticism - Solipsism - Sophism - Spiritism - Stoicism - Theology - Transcendentalism - Theism - Thomism - Transhumanism - Utilitarianism - Young Hegelians - Verificationism - Vienna Circle - Virtue ethics - Western philosophy |
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| Eastern and other philosophical schools of thought |
| African philosophy - Ayyavazhi - Buddhism - Confucianism - Eastern philosophy - Ethiopian philosophy - Hinduism - Jainism - Karma - Legalism - Maoism - Shinto - Islamic philosophy - Sufism - Taoism - Kyoto School - Baul - Zoroastrianism |
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| General topics of Philosophy |
- Philosophy - main article on Philosophy, leads to many others.
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| Did you know... |
- ...that Francisco de Vitoria, a Spanish Renaissance Roman Catholic theologian, was the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as the School of Salamanca?
- ...that a 2001 discovery of lost manuscripts by Spanish philosopher and writer Ramon Llull showed that he had indeed discovered the Borda count and Condorcet criterion, and as a result he has been called the father of computation theory?
- ...that although the paradox, Buridan's ass, is named after French priest Jean Buridan, it had already been previously stated in De Caelo by Aristotle?
- ...that besides being a philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz was an engineer, lawyer, philologist, sinophile, and a famed mathematician who invented calculus?
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| Selected Philosophy article |
| Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that moral statements lack truth-value and do not assert propositions. A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world." If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.
While the bare term non-cognitivism usually refers to ethics, it can also be applied in other branches of philosophy, as in theological noncognitivism.
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