3. THE DIALECTIC METHOD
•This method of philosophizing was conceived by the Greek
philosopher Socrates, (born 470 BCE) one of the great
philosophers of the ancient world.
•The method starts with eliciting the definition of a certain
word from a person who appears to be familiar (or
“pretends” to be familiar) with its meaning.
4. THE PRAGMATIC METHOD
•What pragmatism aims is to test the dogma of science,
religion and philosophy by determining their practical
results. The pragmatic test is: if I practice this belief, will it
bring success or failure? Will I solve problems or create
problems? Successful experience is the verification
process of truth for the pragmatists (Stumpf 2008).
5. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD
•conceived by Edmund Husserl (born in 1859), one of the greatest
intellects of of the 19th century.
•to know the truth, we have to put aside one by one all our limiting
beliefs about the world which represents our biases. Husserl calls
this process phenomenological epoche (epoche is the Greek word
for bracketing).
•an act of stepping back at our biases and prejudices to make sure
that they do not influence the way we think. Only facts provided by
immediate experience must influence us.
6. THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY REFLECTIONS
•Nowadays, we try to answer this question by filling up a form given by our
school for example. The form asked us to write our name, age, gender,
address, name of parents, etc. To answer this, of course we have to think
to distinguish who we are (the self) against other things (the non-self or
objects). This is the primary reflection.
•Yet, we had an uneasy feeling that all the information we put on the form
(although true) do not fully capture who we really are (Marcel 1970). We
view that our self is bigger and more expansive than what is there on the
form. Thus, we are not merely thinking but we are thinking about thinking
and about the process we perform in answering the form. This is the
secondary reflection.
7. THE ANALYTIC METHOD
•initiated by philosophers at Cambridge University (England): George
Edward Moore (1873-1958), Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951).
•The task of analytic approach is not to create another system of ideas to
counter the Hegelian system but to clarify how philosophers used words
through an analysis of language (Stumpf 2008).
•Wittgenstein used the analogy of “tools in a tool box” (Wittgenstein 1968).
If we look at the tools inside a tool box ‘there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a
screw driver, a ruler, a glue pot, glue nails and screw. The functions of
words is as diverse as the functions of these objects’ (quoted by Stumpf
2008).
