Units #6 and #7 Flashcards
Übermensch (5)
- Nietzsche’s theory of a SUPERMAN (beyond + man):
- ideal man of the future who gives himself values/morality
- far superior to all other human beings psychologically
- has overcome nihilism
- independent individual, very much NOT A CHRISTIAN
Nietzsche’s Slave or Average Man (3)
- inferior because he is traditional, domestic and cowardly
- believes in metaphysics and God, especially Christianity
- lives a life of change: death, sickness, decline etc.
Nietzsche Philosophy
- sexist, vitalist and nihilist
- critical of metaphysics
Things Nietzsche hated (3)
- Christianity, as it reflects slave morality
- Previous philosophers (history of philosophy is a grave error)
- Metaphysics
Nietzsche Vitalism
- Affirms the importance of life
- Understands individual experience as full of intensity and fulfillment
Nietzsche’s Problem with Metaphysics (2)
- It belittles everything and makes all seem sad
- Rejection of metaphysics (God, the soul and the world) affirms the fullness of life
Wittgenstein Philosophy
Philosopher who also believed metaphysics and other philosophical problems were nonsense
- Wrote about these in his famous book Tractatus logico-philosophicus
Nietzsche’s two types of humans
the higher human beings (supermen), and those who belong to the herd (slaves)
Wittgenstein
A 20th century philosopher who wrote about language
Wittgenstein Language (4)
- Solves philosophy’s problems, as philosophy is just a misinterpretation of language
- Language is like a box of tools
- Language is perfect, all though some people deform it
- Ethical creative mystique
Two classes of Sentences (according to Wittgenstein)
Prepositions that don’t make sense
Prepositions that do make sense (well-constructed and scientific)
Wittgenstein: if you can’t speak….
then shut up
Idealist Philosophers believed…
reality (last reality) is spiritual and formed of ideas
“The Change” for Aristotle
the change is produced when a being of potential becomes a being of action
Hegel’s Philosophy
a dialect on the continuous change of reality caused by confrontation between opposing elements
Atheism
philosophical current that denies the existence of God
Agnosticism
philosophical current that believes it is impossible to get an answer to the question of the existence of God
A priori (religious definition)
arguments that start from the concept of God to try to prove that He is not only an idea in our mind, but also has a real existence
A posteriori (religious definition)
based on the observation of the world around us that God has already created, so they are based on after the experience
Movement
change from a being of potential to a being of action (Aristotelian idea)
Telos
the final cause of a natural organism or entity (Aristotelian idea)
What is a man?
a free being
Existentialism (3)
- essence has priority over existence
- considers freedom to be the most important characteristic of people
- freedom is a fundamental reality and is a unique feature of human beings
Ideas philosophers responded to the question of god (4)
theism, deism, agnosticism and atheism
Ontology definition and roots of the word
a branch of philosophy that asks the meaning of everything that exists
Onto means “what is”
Logy means logic/logos
idea of Jean-Paul Santre
a man is responsible for what he is (his essence)
the relation between the sensible world and the intelligible world
ideas, specifically pure ideas
Pure Ideas (2)
- substantive beings that exist by themselves
- they are the fundamental cause and reason for our existence
deepening of the crisis of metaphysics
scientific and technical development deepened the crisis of metaphysics in the contemporary era (1940-present)
Contemporary philosophers who helped the crisis of metaphysics
Jean-Paul Sartre (France), Martin Heidegger (Germany) and José Ortega y Gasset (Spain)
For Hegel true reality is….
immaterial and is formed by what he called “Spirit,” which is pure reason
Parmenides’ metaphysics
the idea of Being, which is true reality and permanent
Non-Being is not
3 parts of Hegel’s dialectic idea
thesis is an intellectual proposition
the antithesis the reaction/discussion of the thesis
the synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by forming a new proposition
Metaphysics
God, soul and the universe
Pantheism
philosophical doctrine that identifies God with everything that exists
Essence
the characteristics that a thing has by itself, and that makes it what it is and not something different
Four Causes (Aristotle)
material cause, formal cause, efficient cause and final cause
Material Cause (Aristotle)
what is it made of (what is its matter)?
Formal Cause (Aristotle)
how is it made? the way the matter is structured and organized
Efficient Cause
what or who has made it?
Final Cause
what was it made for? Aristotle believed that everything
exists for a purpose
Wilhelm Leibniz
- German philosopher who believed that there were infinite substances,
- Reality was composed of a mix of these substances called monads
Three States of Human Question about the World Around Us
theological stage, metaphysical stage and positive stage
Theological Stage
the belief in gods and supernatural beings
Metaphysical Stage
people abandon the belief in gods and try to explain reality by means of abstract reasoning
Positive Stage
- affirms faith in science offer clear and effective answers to our questions
- we know the laws of nature and use them improve our living condition
Plato vs. Aristotle Learning
People thought we already knew ideas because we have them in mind, our interior
learning new things in reminiscence
Aristotle thought reality was made sense of and understood by individuals, particulars of the sensible world
Theism
believers in the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent creator God, who intervenes in the history of humanity and who can maintain a personal relationship with us
Deism
philosophical current that believes the only truths about God we can know for certain are we those that reason shows us
Nominalism
believe universals have no difference other than the language describing them
Descartes (2)
doubted metaphysics and applied a radical method of questioning absolutely everything, called Cartesian methodical doubt
he did not however doubt his own existence, “I think therefore I am”
