You are on page 1of 11

1

The following three types of philosophy that we will see then will be related
to practical philosophy, this kind of philosophy is the moral issues of human
behavior and attitude, whether either individually or collectively.

Ethics: This philosophical variety reflects on human morality in its


generality but individually (duty, happiness, rights ...). One of the most
representative questions we can find in this area is the subject of good and evil, a
matter that we will see in the next question: What is right and what is wrong?
We may think that some actions such as helping someone or doing sports such
actions usually would be fine, but if we reflect and inquire more about the
subject we think that everything depends on the perspective we take. We can
explain this with the following example: when helping someone, if we help such
a prisoner out of prison, literally we would be helping a person, but this
assistance can be understood very differently depending on the point of view
from which we say. On the one hand we are helping this guy out of a prison
(right or good deed); while on the other hand we are influencing the arrival of an
offender to society (incorrect or inappropriate action).

Aesthetics: it is a philosophical choice that tries to answer questions about art


and beauty. One of the main questions that exist in aesthetics is the beauty
problem. That is: What is beauty? For beauty, we mean any person, animal or
thing that causes one observes in a sensory, intellectual or spiritual pleasure.

For this reason, we can say that


someone or something we feel handsome
or beautiful, yet in many cases if you ask
someone, this person can tell us otherwise.
Thus we think that beauty has a specific
meaning. Therefore we remain convinced
that there is no beauty as such, as this
usually depends on the point of view of the
person observing this beauty.

Political philosophy: the philosophical branch is part of practical philosophy


and is responsible for work on issues of governance, justice, rights and legal use
of authority. This kind of philosophy is carried out in many situations to which a
country is facing. Political philosophy has some similarities with ethics but
unlike this, the policy addresses issues about the behavior and coexistence of
human beings as part of a society. A common question in this type of philosophy
is: What is the foundation of human sociability? The human being is known as a
social, human quality that is interpreted by many as the most important. For
sociable person we understand a person able to relate and interact with others.
But what the social quality of a person is based? Of course this question for
years many problems for philosophy but some philosophers have tried to give an

answer. The philosopher Aristotle tries to solve this question by saying that "man
is social by nature" and that this quality is part of the biological condition of the
people.

He was born in 428 B.C. He was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle, he
died in Athenas, He traveled East and southern of Italy, where made contact with the
disciples of Pythagoras; After a negative experience at Syracuse as a consultant at the
court of King Dionysius the Elder, he spent some time prisoner of pirates until he was
rescued and was able to return to Athens. There he founded in 387 a school of
philosophy, unlike Socrates, that left no written work of Plato's works they have been
preserved almost complete.
At the end of antiquity, Platonism was enriched by the work of Plotinus and the
Neoplatonic school.

The soul has three parts;


The spirit or rational soul is pure sorrow and contemplation of truth, is located in the
brain.
The irascible soul, the source of noble passions, located in the thorax and inseparable
from the body, so it is deadly.
The concupiscible soul is the source of ignoble passions, like self-preservation and
sensual, located in the abdomen and deadly.
Aristotle was born circa 384 B.C in Greece, his father died when he was young,
Proxenus who was marriaged with his sister looked after him, when he was 17 years old
Proxenus sent him to Athens to improve his knowledge, he met Plato who was the
student of Socrates, Plato died in 347 B.C, Aristotle met and married his first wife
Phythias, they had a daughter with the same name as her mum, Aristotle spend the most
of his live working as a teacher, when his wife died he started a new romance with
Herphyllis, In 322 B.C. Aristotle contracted a disease of the digestive organs and died.

The philosophy of the time should be at the service of theology. The question that arises
in this time is that if you had to have faith and believe in miracles or Christians could

also be accessed Christian truths through reason. Medieval philosophy was based
practically on the question of whether they were compatible faith and reason.

Aurelius Augustine was born in Roman Africa, on 13 November 354. He studied


liberal arts and then rhetoric in Carthage. He stressed his concern about the problem of
evil, to accompany him all his life, was decisive in its accession to Manichaeism. He
had an insatiable curiosity and the constant search for truth, died 28 August 430.
Its starting point is close to Hellenistic philosophy, a period of Greek culture dominated
by Egypt, Syria and Macedonia. Augustine's philosophy is similar to Platos philosophy
but not the same adaptation, this does not conceive the body as the prison of the soul but
as the physical opportunity to approach God or sin and the soul conceived as the image
of God.
According to him happiness is only possible with the supernatural, the only way to
get it is based on the interior of the human soul ascends to the Supreme Being, here the
influence of plasma when Plato speaks of the soul returning to the world of ideas, the
philosopher is responsible for Christianizing the Platonic philosophy.
For him faith and reason are means or instruments to achieve truth, or believe is
irrational or rational knowledge destroys faith, for that Augustine proposes that faith is
placed at the beginning and end of rational speculation.
The problem of man's knowledge is achieving happiness, seek God, God is greater
knowledge of the human being, this vision is thanks to the illuminating action of God is
not a supernatural help but something strictly rational. Augustine's theology deals with
three topics: The proof of the existence of God, the problem of the metaphysical essence
of God and the problem of creation.

The proof of the existence of God:


It provides a series of arguments among which the truths presented as the
input for the demonstration of their existence.
The problem of the metaphysical essence of God:
Then you need to study its essence, it is impossible to think that God will
change, because it has everything, which does not mean it is static, it means
it's perfect. Its key attributes are known, create and love with a diffusive
power reaching the man he allows it to meet him.
The conception of man is dualistic Augustine. on the origin of the soul the
thought goes through two stages. In the first defends the translation, that is,
the soul is directly transmitted from parent to child at the time of generation,
this plan well in order to defend a Christian dogma. In a second step chooses
creationism, that is, the spiritual soul of man is created directly by God, but
does not define the moment of that creation. The structure of the soul

manifests the image and likeness of God to create it therefore by nature man
makes it possible to find God within.
After the sacking of the Barbarians in 410 Augustine wrote a book called
'The City of God' 'is about the eternal struggle between the forces of good
and evil, directed by divine providence.

3.2 Toms de Aquino


Thomas was born in 1225 in Roccasecca, when he was five, he entered the
monastery, he studied in Naples and Paris, where he met Albert the Great strengthened
the interest of Thomas by the thought of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, He
wrote his own description of Aristotle's thought on what he meant sensory perception
and intellectual knowledge, The result of his work was a strong impulse of
Aristotelianism that originated the period known as the Renaissance.
La existencia de dios.

In my point of view if I had to choose one of this philosophers I would choose


Plato, I like the conception that he express in his essays, the way that the body is
the is the cell of the soul, when the body is done the soul breaks the jails and goes
to the ''ideas world'' or if the soul is not pure it goes to another cell so it goes to
another body, this is a mystical way to express the conception of the human,
called deism, on the other hand Aristotle it's more material.
Agustn of Hipona and Toms of Aquino are philosophers who are related to
religion, they followed the ideas of different philosophers, Agustn followed Plato,
taken some ideas from him and transforming them to keep it in the religion,
Toms the Aquino did the same but with the other philosopher. Descartes was the
first great modern philosopher, he became a dogmatist rationalist, he grew a new
famous method called ''methodical doubt; he was obsessed with the truth.

3. Biological naturalism
The biological naturalism is a theory that proposes a new relation between the brain
and the mind. This theory was created by the philosopher John Searle.

He thinks that there are a material body and an immaterial mind but contrary to the
dualism and monistic theories, the biological naturalism says that they interact with
each other in a material form and form our own thoughts.
Usually, this theory gets confused with the dualism of properties because both are
very similar. However, the dualism of properties says that the mind properties are
different that the physical properties and the biological naturalism says that the mind
properties can be explained by chemistry process.

3.1 John Searle


John Searle was born the 31 of July of 1931
in Colorado and was a teacher in the
Berkeley University of California. He is
very famous for his contributions to the
philosophy and actually hi is 83 years old.

3.2 The Chinese Room


In this experiment, Seale told us that we have to imaging that there is a person alone
inside a close room in china. He only has a manual and another people out of the room
give him papers with symbols in a language that he doesnt know (Chinese for
example).
He only knows that with the manual
he can answer in Chinese to the other
people who are out of the room (without
having idea of this language).

With this experiment, Searle argued that the machines, as the person who was inside
the room they could give the sensation of understanding and dominating a language
without knowing it really. So he ended with the theories of artificial intelligence and the
Turing Test.

* The Turing test consists in some questions that a computer can analyze and can
answer with complete sense. If this computer was very powerful and had billions of
answers, it could answer all type of questions like a human been. The Turing test isnt
very important yet due to John Searle and the Chinese Room

4. Spanish theories
In Spain we can find many important philosophers like Jaime Balmes, Menndez
Pelayo, Unamuno, Zubiri, Pedro Lan Entalgo or Amor Ruibal.
One of the principal philosophers related to the topic about which we are speaking is
Pedro Lan Entalgo.

4.1 Pedro Lan Entalgo


He was born on 1908 and died on 2001. First he became director of the University of
Madrid and later became director of the Royal Spanish Academy.
Pedro development too a new
theory called structuralism. These
theories maintain that the mind is
an extension of the brain so, the
brain produce the human
intelligence.

Also he thought that the brain is the live of the body and continues develop
throughout our lives.
Based on the above arguments, Lain said that the human been lives as lives and does
what it does by the power of their brains.

5. Personal opinion
After having compared all the dualistic and monistic theories I have decided that
none of them is correct, because if we know how to create life and intelligent, we
probably would ended destroyed by the new life that we would created.

By the moment, the theory that I prefer between all that I have read is the
structuralism because, in my opinion, is the most convincing of all the theories.

This quote wants to explain that over the years humans have been accumulating
doubts about what exactly is. Personalistics believe we should ignore all the traditions
that talk about man and the group that they make together and look strictly on what is
important, the man himself. I agree with them because if you want to get the answer on
something, you must look at that thing, not what surrounds him. You must look at how
the world reacts and how it behaves himself.
Emmanuel Mounier was the main representative of the Personalism. This
movement became famous because of the Mouniers books and the Esprit magazine.
He got a lot of philosophers together with the same ideas and he created a new concept
of person linking an ancient tradition with the modern philosophy.
Mounier describes the Personalism like a perspective (in which man is material but a
transcendent and inner self too), a demand (of total engagement) and a method ( to
analyze the human action and its history since our point of view).

Mounier made five necessary points to get a personalistic society:


-Leaving yourself: leaving your own love, called egoism, narcissism or individualism
nowadays.
-Understanding: having empathy and being under the skin of someone, accepting him,
without finding yourself in himself.
-Assuming: not sympathize with others but accepting the happiness, the sadness that
they feel.
-Donating: giving with lack of interest, without thinking if you are going to receive
something back.
-Keeping loyal: you should be loyal to yourself and assume that being a person not
means having a invisible twin, it means that the human is spiritualizing meat.

This philosopher wanted to mix Christian philosophy with modern philosophy


because they always collided. That made that Mounier proposed the called Refaire la
Renaissance (building again the Renaissance).

7. 5. 2. Immanuel Kant.

Kant, a modern philosophy, thought that the person has the absolute value. He said
that you must have transcendent ethics and pure reason to get the objective knowledge.
For him, the knowledge of the ethics laws are an obligation to have the good nature.
Finally, his priority is the humans dignity. Human is a goal not a resource. Things have
price, human has dignity.

7.5. 3. Gabriel Marcel.


This philosopher who was born in 1889 and die in 1973, made two different
concepts, problem and mystery.
Problem: is everything that you can solve using the reason. Moreover, it is a
technical question.
Mystery: you cant resolve a mystery using the logical or the reason, it not has
solution. You should believe in it.
The human being is a mystery, so like it, humans live forever. Love, trust and
admiration are the things that make the human a mystery.

7.5. 4. Soren Kierkegaard.

Soren considered that the human nature is the central point of the meeting with the
being. For him, the human, formed by soul and body, believes in him existence because
of God.

10

11

You might also like