History of Western Philosophy in Five Minutes

1. History of Western Philosophy in Five Minutes Video

2. Philosophy 1010 Class #1 Title: Introduction to Philosophy Instructor: Paul Dickey E-mail Address: pdickey2@mccneb.edu http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/dickey.htm Course: Introduction to Philosophy Phil 1010 Class Websites: www.quia.com Create your own userid & password.

3. Reading Assignment for Class #2: Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With Readings (11e) Chapter 1, Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 & Complete Syllabus Quiz on www.quia.com

4. Introductions • 1) State a theoretical claim about your • instructor, yourself, or the class. • Support your claim with a reason • why your classmates should believe • it to be true. • 2) Give a one-word description of • Philosophy. • A Philosophical “Attitude” / The Nature of a Question • Syllabus • Break • Discussion / Videos • Writing Assignment

5. Philosophy Begins with Wonder! Wonder is an emotion comparable to surprise and awe that people feel when perceiving something rare or unexpected. It is specifically linked to curiosity and is the emotion leading to philosophy and science. Video

6. What is a Philosophical Question?

7. What is true love? – Is beauty a matter of fact or a matter of taste? – Is there a God? – What do I want to do with my life? – What is the purpose of art? – Is there a difference between health and beauty? – Do I want to be beautiful? – Is everything I think I know true? -- Is lying always wrong? -- Does every question have an answer? – Do I have to accept reality or can I determine my own reality? -- Why can’t people just get along together? – Who should take care of the environment? -- What would happen if there were no government? – Why do bad things happen to people? -- What is the meaning of my life? – Will getting married make me more or less free? Is love more important than freedom? …. What is true love? …..

8. Why are these questions philosophical questions? What the characteristics of these questions so that we say they are philosophical? Is there a difference between philosophical questions and scientific questions? Is there a difference between philosophical questions and speculation?

9. Questions, So Many Questions … What Kind of Questions are These Anyway? • May be deeply personal • Answers cannot be “proven” but some opinions make more sense than others and generally arguments can be given for our views (thus, they are not entirely subjective) • Necessary to ask for our world to “make sense” • Often confuse us • We have to answer for ourselves. • We cannot expect everyone to agree with us and they may also have good arguments for their views • Throughout our life we may have to reconsider our answers

10. Some Shots at Defining Philosophy . . . • Do these definitions give YOU a satisfactory understanding of what the lady on the beach is doing? • Philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. …www.fsu.edu (Florida State University) • Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. … In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.…Ayn Rand, Philosophy, Who Needs It (p. 2)

11. What is Philosophy? • Well, maybe…. • Philosophy is the “audacity of hope” for obtaining knowledge and wisdom about the world and about ourselves. – Yes, we can! (Thanks, Barack.) • Philosophy is the application of critical reasoning to our wonder about the world and ourselves. • Philosophy is the willingness to ask questions about what we have assumed we already know. • Philosophy is each individual person’s opportunity and responsibility to live their own life, to be who they are, to become autonomous.

12. What is Philosophy? • “We can help one another to find out the meaning of life. But in the last analysis , the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ‘finding himself.’ Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.” ….Thomas Merton • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” • “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” • ….Socrates

13. Is Philosophy Important to Living a Good Life? Some claims for Studying Philosophy – Do you agree? Why or why not? • Philosophy enlarges our understanding of the world and expands freedom of thought. Philosophy can release us from the "prejudices derived from common sense", from the "habitual belief of an age or nation", and from convictions that have grown up "without the cooperation or consent of (our) deliberate reason". (Russell) • Philosophy may help develop the capacity to look at the world from the perspective of other individuals and cultures. It develops tolerance and critical sense. • By discussing political and social issues, philosophy raises public awareness and helps in forming engaged and responsible citizens.

14. Is Philosophy Unavoidable? Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no man can abstain. Anyone can say that he dispenses with a view of reality, knowledge, the good, but no one can implement this credo. The reason is that man, by his nature as a conceptual being, cannot function at all without some form of philosophy to serve as his guide. …Leonard Peikoff

15. Oh what the heck, philosophy is fun!!! Video

16. What is Philosophy? • (15 minutes) • Graham Priest, • Professor of Philosophy • University of Queensland Video

17. So How Should We DOPhilosophy? • Not “just anything goes!” Philosophy is guided by the commitment to careful reasoning which is “playing by the rules.” Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop ...

18. The Father of Western Philosophy • Socrates, 460-399 B. C. • Socrates' deserves credit for rigorous, ethical investigation. His conversations with his fellow Athenians are the first records we have of an individual, by careful reasoning, trying to discover the guiding principles of moral choices. • But be careful. There were many Greek thinkers (actually known as “The Pre-Socratics”) prior to Socrates who developed profound insights into the nature of the universe and man’s place in it. • Socrates built a reputation on questioning conventional beliefs, thus embodying the nature of philosophy itself.

19. What is the Socratic method? • “Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling” • Socrates engaged himself in questioning students in an unending search for truth. He sought to get to the foundations of his students' and colleagues' views by asking continual questions until a contradiction was exposed, thus proving the fallacy of the initial assumption. • This became known as the Socratic Method, and may be Socrates' most enduring contribution to philosophy. • Socrates was both a real philosopher and the major character in Plato’s (his student’s) dialogues. Thus, it is not clear to what degree Socrates was a precursor to Plato’s ideas or was a mouthpiece for Plato to put forward his own views. Video

20. Plato Plato is history's first great philosopher because, among other reasons, he provided the first set of answers to some of the largest and most difficult questions: What is the structure of reality? What can be known for certain? What is moral virtue? What is the nature of the ideal state? No philosopher before Plato had ever attempted such a wide and deep exploration of philosophical problems.

21. Plato’s Dialogues & the Socratic Method • Plato’s dialogues demonstrate the Socratic Method. • In The Euthyphro, Plato shows Socrates questioning traditional religious beliefs and the nature of religious duty. He asks: what makes a thing holy? Is an act holy because it is loved by the godsor do the gods love what is holy because it is holy? If the first, are the gods capricious and random and be able to select anything to be holy? If the latter, then we have not answer the original question at all. • In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates questions Thrasymachus who states that justice is whatever is to the advantage of the strong, that “might makes right.” Socrates asks what if the powerful pass laws that in error do not benefit themselves. Would not justice then be following laws that do not benefit the strong?

22. Writing Assignment Worth 5 points in Participation Category. Pose a philosophical question that is important to you and attempt to answer it in 250 words or less.  Please do not use any sources. Just use your own reflection.