Key Philosophical Terms & Concepts

1. Key Philosophical Terms & Concepts

2. Materialism • A doctrine which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions.

3. Idealism • The theory that all reality is mental (spiritual, psychological). Matter, the physical, does not exist.

4. Rationalism • The philosophic approach that emphasizes reason as the primary source of knowledge and of spiritual truth.

5. Empiricism • The view that experience, through the senses, is the only source of knowledge. The scientific method is based on this view.

6. Fatalism • The belief that a person cannot in any way direct his or her behavior or destiny, or that of history. “What will be will be.”

7. Skepticism • The view that, although answers to philosophical questions may exist, man cannot know the truth about the riddles of nature and of the universe. • “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing” (68).

8. Dualism • A view that insists on the existence of two independent, separable, irreducible, unique realms: supernatural/natural, spirit/matter, mind/body, good/evil.

9. Romanticism • A movement in art, literature and philosophy associated, in part, with the following: a tendency to personify nature; an emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual; a distaste for the orderly, rational, intellectual and moderate.