Chapter 2 philosophy

• Introduction
In this chapter, we will focus on that first step when man
began to wonder about things around him, when he started
to do philosophy, the modes of doing philosophy.
 In the first part, we begin by aligning how philosophy is
understood in relation to how philosophers conduct their
philosophical activity.
 In the second part, we present such modes of philosophy .

HOW DO WE DO PHILOSOPHY?
• As Pierre Hadot, in his comment on philosophy and philosopher,
claims:
…to be a philosopher implies a rupture with what Skeptics
called bios, that is, daily life, when they criticized other
philosophers for not observing the common conduct of life, the
usual manner of seeing and acting, which for Skeptics
consisted in respecting customs and laws, practicing a craft or
plying a trade, satisfying bodily needs, and having faith in
appearances indispensable to action.

MODES OF DOING PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy as knowledge of reality
Philosophy as knowledge from the self
Philosophy as an exercise of one’s will to power
Philosophy as phenomenology
Philosophy as critique

PHILOSOPHY AS KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY
• Philosophy
In the ancient period, the understanding of philosophy
revolves around the notion, it means to arrive at knowledge that
would lead to wisdom.
How does Pythagoras understand wisdom?
It is “nothing more than the vision of things as they are the
vision of the cosmos as it is the light of reason, and wisdom is also
nothing more than the mode of being and living that should
correspond to the vision.”

• Plato ( 427 – 347 )
- One prominent Philosopher
- he expresses his view on knowledge and by extension,
his way of doing philosophy through the “Allegory of the
Cave.”
- distinguishes different levels of knowledge,
the first two belong to the level of opinion:
- Conjectures and Beliefs
the second two belong to the level of knowledge:
- Understanding and Reason

• Different levels of knowledge
Conjectures
- When we direct our mind to the shadows or reflections of
things, all that we get are conjectures of these things
Belief
- When we know the things through the senses, our
perception of these things is called belief.
- is the content of the mind about things that are still
becoming

• Different levels of knowledge
Understanding
- the mind comprehends ideas or thought-images as it
reflects on such abstract entities as cubes, squares and
other mathematical ideas, which are only arrived at through
thinking
Reason
- knowledge of ideas or ideals, it is arrived at through the
rigorous practice reasoning

• Aristotle ( 384 – 322 BC )
- Considers the kind of knowledge that will lead to wisdom
- For him, two kinds of knowledge can be drawn out:
Empirical ( sensory ) - refers to knowledge informed by the
senses such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch
Theoretical ( speculative ) - refers to knowledge by which
mind or reason contemplates on the principles or
causes of things—the sufficient explanation of things
- For him, empirical knowledge does not lead to wisdom but
speculative knowledge does.

• To both philosophers, Plato and Aristotle,
to do philosophy one has to distinguish opinions from true
knowledge or sensible perceptions from speculative
knowledge

PHILOSOPHY AS KNOWLEDGE FROM DOUBT AND THE SELF
• Rene Descartes ( 1596 – 1650 )
- Father of Modern Philosophy
- for him, we ordinarily suppose that the mind adequately
knows reality as it thinks of the data from the senses
- he proposes a method of philosophy that will ensure
certain knowledge
- he provide certain steps to ascertain that the mind will
have “clear and distinct” knowledge, knowledge that
will have no room for doubt and cannot b mistaken for
something else.

• What are the steps?
1. Accept the truth of phenomenon based only on the criteria
of “clarity and distinctness”.
2. The mind must simplify its object until it reaches in its
apprehension the irreducible parts.
3. The mind must be guided in its reasoning starting from the
simplest and building on it to proceed to the complex.
4. One must conduct complete enumeration and review to
prevent any object of injury left unexamined.

Strictly adhering to these steps, Descartes first doubts
everything doubtable—all knowledge from the senses are. He
discovers that the consciousness or self is certainly a clear and
distinct entity; one cannot doubt the existence of a doubter who
doubts. Thus the existence of the self—he calls this as res
cogitans—is the first clear and distinct knowledge.
in sum, the conduct of philosophy requires that we subject
to doubt everything that can be doubted, and through the strict use
of reasoning, we attain new knowledge. This knowledge, however
is attained from the perspective of the self, the cogito. In this
regard, it is worth examining how Descartes views the human
person using such method.

PHILOSOPHY AS AN EXERCISE OF ONE’S WILL TO POWER
• Friedrich Nietzsche ( 1844 – 1900 )
- has a far more radical view on philosophy which, for him,
philosophy is not able to grasp the elusive truth—if there is
such a thing.
- He considers philosophy as looking for something that is
nowhere to be found.
- according to him, “there are no facts, everything is in flux,
incomprehensible, elusive; what is relatively most enduring is—
our opinions.”

• Friedrich Nietzsche
- the search for knowledge miserably veered off when Socrates
( the Greek stonemason who was regarded as the teacher of
Plato ) attempted to moralize our way of understanding reality.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- Nietzsche called this saying for the acceptance of things
based on the general standard of reason—the measure is
passing the scrutiny of reason.

- This call, is under the illusion that reason or mind can
completely comprehend reality and that only things that are
true or rational is good, while things that are irrational and
unacceptable are evil.
- The unpredictability of the phenomenal world, of the things
around us has misled Socrates, and even some philosophers
today, to think that there are things in themselves or beings in
themselves.

- The world’s impermanence makes it difficult for the human
mind to cope with the changes in the physical world to the
point that the mind imposes itself on them.
- The drive towards knowledge of things our curiosity towards
knowing things merely shows how we try to impose our will
of things or phenomena or assimilate them to our will. In the
end, we merely express our will to power.

• Nietzsche writes
- That in order to think and infer things is necessary to
assume beings: logic handles only the formulas of what
remains the same
- The fictitious world of subject, substance, reason, etc. is
needed; there is in us a power to order, simplify, falsify,
artificially distinguish.
- “truth” is the will to be master over the multiplicity of
sensations, to classify phenomena into definite
categories.

- His analysis led us to rethink our mod of doing philosophy.
- To do philosophy entails that we accept that the world
around us is unpredictable, including ourselves as we
confront the uncertainty of life in the midst of the certainty of
death. To do philosophy is to find ways in which we can
exercise power as long as we exist.
- In this method, we can expect Nietzsche to avoid the
question “what makes a human person truly human?”

PHILOSOPHY AS PHENOMENOLOGY
• Edmund Husserl ( 1859 – 1938 )
- Develops a different method of doing philosophy
- “ natural attitude”, one that is akin to the empiricist or
positivist attitude towards things
- In the view of Husserl, is the presumed principle that “every
knowledge is rooted in experience”
- Eidetic reduction is an activity of the consciousness that
seeks the foundation of knowledge in the essence or ideas
of the phenomenon

PHILOSOPHY AS PHENOMENOLOGY
• How does one apply the phenomenological method?
- The first step in conducting such method is to apply the
phenomenological epoche’.
- Phenomenological bracketing or parenthesizing yields the
“Pure Ego”. In other words when we put and hold all these
individual perceptions and other contents of the mind, as in
the case of fantasies, what remains is that “consciousness”.
- As a method, phenomenology summons an alternative way
of viewing things or gaining knowledge about the world.
When this method is applied, it will provide a new way of
viewing things.

PHILOSOPHY AS CRITIQUE
• Richard Rorty ( 1931 – 2007 )
Holds that philosophy miserably fails in claiming that it is a
“mirror” of reality; philosophy cannot fully represent reality,
philosophers of today, at best, merely carry on the conversation wit
the West.
• Michel Foucault ( 1926 – 1984 )
A 20th century French philosopher, describes what can be
considered a philosophical activity of the present:
“In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know and what it
might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is
already known.”

• What does it mean to critique?
- For Foucault, offering criticisms does not entail saying
negative things about the object. It is not about putting the
object of critique to a bad light. Often, we misconstrue
criticism as pointing out the infirmities, the errors, or the
negativities of the object of our thought.

• Foucault writes:
Criticism
- does not consist in saying that things aren’t good the way
they are, it consists in seeing on what type of assumptions,
of familiar notions
- It consists in uncovering that thought and trying to change it
- To do criticism is to make harder those acts which are now
too easy
- Is utterly indispensible for any transformation, transformation
that would remain within the same mode of thought

To do philosophy, in this regard, is to examine the
foundations of what we deem as true and not to gullibly absorb
them. After all, when we think of other things, we venture into
other ways of thinking about them.

Chapter 2 philosophy

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Chapter 2 philosophy

Recently uploaded

Chapter 2 philosophy