Philosophy: Fundamental Questions and Answers
What is Philosophy?
Philosophy is the love for wisdom, the desire to know. It responds to the natural curiosity of human beings.
What is the Purpose of Philosophy?
Philosophy is not intended to teach one how to make shoes, but it helps in discovering the most convenient way to manufacture good shoes. Without philosophy, we would not know the ultimate meaning of manufacturing shoes.
The Beginning of Philosophy
The origins of philosophy are related to its first steps in history.
Myth
Myths are veracious, fantastical explanations transmitted from generation to generation in an unalterable form, together with religious phenomena. Concerning the origin of the world, myth provides answers and guarantees security. Myth works with imagination and faith.
Why Such Concern for the Origins?
It was believed that to know was to imagine how something had come into existence, how it had begun to be.
When Did We Start to Call it Philosophy?
When humans tried to find answers beyond those they already possessed, not because they were false but because they were insufficient. This situation appeared to be associated with another: philosophical thought begins its story with a new attitude, wonder. To speak of wonder is to talk about the marvelous surprise, that which is worthy of admiration. Wonder comes from the contemplation of everything that exists. Man remains in awe. Wonder is the starting point of philosophizing, that is, reflective thinking, of asking oneself and expressing the question. Schematically we can say: overcoming insufficient responses leads to observing reality from wonder, leading to further questions to define rational responses, leading to the birth of philosophy.
The Birth of Philosophy: The First Philosophical Question
What is all this around us? What is the world? What is the origin of the world? What represents us? What is the first foundation or the first principle? Where does everything come from? Not content with poetic forms or lyrics, they pretended to find a scientific explanation for many doubts. They sought a first principle or foundation of everything, “Arje”, a sure thing from which to build a system of explanations that would help to know and dominate everything real.
How do the philosophical questions of our own existence arise? Conceptual thought was discovered in the Greece of Thales of Miletus, in the sixth century.
Children’s Thinking
We all have a stage abundant in unusual questions. We ask and are satisfied with logical answers without too much trouble. Karl Jaspers says that children’s questions have a high philosophical level because there is no intention in them, but the adult who listens carefully captures the reflection, which is difficult to match. Children have a certain genius that they lose when they grow up. It is as if children fall into the prison of current opinions, the occultations of things that do not matter, losing the innocence of children.
Adolescent Thinking
Adolescence becomes a new age qualified by “why”, but this time the critic takes over. The teenager is aware of the answers they receive and carefully analyzes them. The teenager is fishing for logical failures or weaknesses in the foundations of everything established. Their questions are intended to spread insecurity to the world presented to them until they gradually overcome their insecurities.
The source of philosophy, in every human being, regardless of age, can obey other sources:
- Wonder: It is the wonder of the unknown, the infinite, the imposing, the unruly, the majestic. Wonder is the original meaning: it emerges versus a reality that we cannot dominate or understand. Wonder leads to exploring and learning. Those who admire desire to know, to become aware of not knowing, not to satisfy a need or to make money, but for the sake of knowledge itself.
- Doubt: To begin to distrust what surrounds us, the knowledge we are offered.
- Limit Situations: If things are not as we want, we can work to change them. But there are situations whose essence cannot be changed; they must be accepted.
- Boredom: The everyday can become the source of the fourth question. The feeling of boredom, of daily fatigue at what we do. Boredom is a privileged place. Questions arise: Does all this make sense? Is it useful for something? Why am I alive? Is this living?
Socrates: Man as a Question and Truth as Law
Socrates did not write anything, and yet his figure is the protagonist of Plato’s dialogues. Son of a sculptor (Sophroniscus) and a midwife (Phaenarete), he considered that he had inherited both trades: from his father because his teachings contributed to men, and from his mother because she gave birth but assisted in the birth.
His method, called Mayeutica, consists of three steps:
- Protrepticus: Harmless questions are raised. Once the response is obtained, the second time begins.
- Irony or Refutation: This is the detailed analysis of the response, identifying contradictions until the interlocutor acknowledges their ignorance about the matter they thought they knew. The third time begins.
- Mayeutica: This is being able to deliver the truth.
What is Happiness?
It is a story much like a myth, which serves to help understand a number of truths. An allegory is intended to transmit a message, and the myth invents a small story to be understood.
What is Known?
It is when we issue statements affirming or denying the truth we mean. If we realize that what we truly believed is false, we discover an error. Whether to resolve a difficult situation, we suspend judgment and fall into doubt. Against knowledge, man can adopt various attitudes:
- Ignorance: It is not knowing, having no relationship to the truth, and it can be: a) not seeking to know or being interested in knowing; b) wanting to know many things and ignoring others; c) the self-taught who are wise in their ignorance, “who not only know nothing”.
- Doubt: Indecision, it is to suspend judgment, and it can be: a) out of disinterest; b) deciding to suspend judgment because one does not have what is necessary to define oneself. It is the question of the wise, the methodical doubt of Descartes.
- Opinion: It is likely, between doubt and certainty.
- Certainty: It is recognizing the truth; it is evidence.
- Falsehood: It is the opposite of truth; thought does not conform to the thing. It is not a way of knowing but the negation of knowledge.
- Error: It is the consequence of falsehood. It is not believing that one knows the truth, but taking as true a judgment whose value is false.
Three Major Problems of Knowledge
- The possibility of knowing.
- The origin of knowledge.
- The essence of knowledge.
1. The Possibility of Knowledge
Regarding the question of whether man can know, and if the answer is affirmative, how far? We approach the problem of the possibility of knowledge. The most important solutions we can classify as follows:
a. The Response of Dogmatism: It is a naive and optimistic position regarding knowledge because, for dogmatism, there is no problem, and it also takes for granted that knowledge is possible. Kant called the previous philosophers dogmatic. Dogmatic is: the naive who does not question (pre-critical attitude); the one who does not focus on the problem of knowledge independently and, therefore, does not analyze it but affirms that it is possible to know; the one who separates the issue of knowledge and says it is possible; the one who says that truths do not exist or cannot be subjected to rational criticism.
b. The Response of Skepticism: It is the opposite of dogmatism because it denies that the relationship between subject and object is possible.
c. The Response of Relativism: It denies the possibility of knowing universally valid truths.
d. The Response of Kantian Criticism: The analysis of knowledge, although it ends by saying that it is possible.
2. The Origin of Knowledge
This question of the origin and foundation of knowledge leads to the following questions: What is the source of knowledge? How does man know? What role do the senses and reason play? What do we know?
Solutions to this problem of origin can be:
Rationalism: The faculty that man has in relation to knowledge is reason. For rationalists, knowledge originates and is supported by reason. Descartes, a rationalist of the modern age, accepted certain ideas as evident, clear, and distinct, modeled on mathematical knowledge.
Empiricism: Knowledge is founded on experience. For empiricists, there are no innate ideas, but consciousness is a blank slate, and experience is what writes on it.
Intellectualism: An intermediate position that has something in common with rationalism and empiricism. The senses and reason are necessary for knowledge.
Apriorism: Also an intermediate position between rationalism and empiricism. Both are necessary for knowledge.
3. The Essence of Knowledge
Questions also arise. To answer what is the essence of knowledge, there are several responses:
Realism: Realistic philosophers say that we know reality as it is. They point to real objects that are independent of the knowing subject. Naive realism is when someone states that things are as the senses present them.
Idealism: These philosophers believe that we do not know things as they are in themselves, but as they appear in consciousness. They maintain that there are no objects independent of the subject.
Phenomenalism: