MY PORTFOLIO IN INTRODUCTION TO THE

PHILOSOPHY HUMAN PERSON

SUBMITTED BY: ALTHEA CERO

SUMITTED TO: NELSON C. MAGALLANESS
 table of contents
PHILOSOPHERS
PLATO 07
ARISTOTLE 08
SOCRATES 09
IMMANUEL KANT 10
RENE DECARTES 11
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 12
5 BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
EPISTEMOLOGY 14
LOGIC 15
AESTHETICS 16
METAPHYSICS 17
ETHICS 18

EASTERN AND WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

EASTERN PHILOSOPHY 20
WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 21
 PHILOSOPHERS

PLATO ARISTOTLE SOCRATES

428/427 BCE 384 B.C.E. —322 B.C.E. 469-399 B.C.
 PHILOSOPHERS

IMMANUEL KANT RENE DECARTES FRIEDRICH

NIETZSCHE
1724–1804 1596–1650 1844–1900
 PLATO
428/427 BCE

Plato is one of the world’s best

known and most widely read and
studied philosophers. He was the
student of Socrates and the teacher
of Aristotle, and he wrote in the
middle of the fourth century B.C.E.
in ancient Greece. Though
influenced primarily by Socrates, to
the extent that Socrates is usually
the main character in many of
Plato’s writings, he was also
influenced by Heraclitus,
Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans.
 ARISTOTLE
384 B.C.E. —322 B.C.E.
Aristotle was not primarily a mathematician but
made important contributions by systematising
deductive logic. He wrote on physical subjects:
some parts of his Analytica posteriora show an
unusual grasp of the mathematical method.
Primarily, however, he is important in the
development of all knowledge for, as the authors
of [2] write:-
Aristotle, more than any other thinker, determined
the orientation and the content of Western
intellectual history. He was the author of a
philosophical and scientific system that through
the centuries became the support and vehicle for
both medieval Christian and Islamic scholastic
thought: until the end of the 17th century, Western
culture was Aristotelian. And, even after the
intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow,
Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained
embedded in Western thinking.

 SOCRATES
469-399 B.C.
Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial figure
in his native Athens, so much so that he was frequently
mocked in the plays of comic dramatists. (The Clouds of
Aristophanes, produced in 423, is the best-known
example.) Although Socrates himself wrote nothing, he is
depicted in conversation in compositions by a small circle
of his admirers—Plato and Xenophon first among them.
He is portrayed in these works as a man of great insight,
integrity, self-mastery, and argumentative skill. The
impact of his life was all the greater because of the way in
which it ended: at age 70, he was brought to trial on a
charge of impiety and sentenced to death by poisoning
(the poison probably being hemlock) by a jury of his
fellow citizens. Plato’s Apology of Socrates purports to be
the speech Socrates gave at his trial in response to the
accusations made against him (Greek apologia means
“defense”). Its powerful advocacy of the examined life and
its condemnation of Athenian democracy have made it
one of the central documents of Western thought and
culture.
IMMANUEL KANT
1724–1804
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the central figure in
modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern
rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of
nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and
continues to exercise a significant influence today in
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political
philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The
fundamental idea of Kant’s “critical philosophy” –
especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure
Reason (1781, 1787), the Critique of Practical Reason
(1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment
(1790) – is human autonomy. He argues that the
human understanding is the source of the general
laws of nature that structure all our experience; and
that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is
our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality.
Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious
belief are mutually consistent and secure because
they all rest on the same foundation of human
autonomy, which is also the final end of nature
according to the teleological worldview of reflecting
judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical
and practical parts of his philosophical system.
 RENE DECARTES
1596–1650
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a creative mathematician of the
first order, an important scientific thinker, and an original
metaphysician. During the course of his life, he was a
mathematician first, a natural scientist or “natural philosopher”
second, and a metaphysician third. In mathematics, he developed
the techniques that made possible algebraic (or “analytic”)
geometry. In natural philosophy, he can be credited with several
specific achievements: co-framer of the sine law of refraction,
developer of an important empirical account of the rainbow, and
proposer of a naturalistic account of the formation of the earth and
planets (a precursor to the nebular hypothesis). More importantly,
he offered a new vision of the natural world that continues to shape
our thought today: a world of matter possessing a few fundamental
properties and interacting according to a few universal laws. This
natural world included an immaterial mind that, in human beings,
was directly related to the brain; in this way, Descartes formulated
the modern version of the mind–body problem. In metaphysics, he
provided arguments for the existence of God, to show that the
essence of matter is extension, and that the essence of mind is
thought. Descartes claimed early on to possess a special method,
which was variously exhibited in mathematics, natural philosophy,
and metaphysics, and which, in the latter part of his life, included, or
was supplemented by, a method of doubt.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
1844–1900
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher
and cultural critic who published intensively in the 1870s
and 1880s. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of
traditional European morality and religion, as well as of
conventional philosophical ideas and social and political
pieties associated with modernity. Many of these criticisms
rely on psychological diagnoses that expose false
consciousness infecting people’s received ideas; for that
reason, he is often associated with a group of late modern
thinkers (including Marx and Freud) who advanced a
“hermeneutics of suspicion” against traditional values (see
Foucault [1964] 1990, Ricoeur [1965] 1970, Leiter 2004).
Nietzsche also used his psychological analyses to support
original theories about the nature of the self and
provocative proposals suggesting new values that he
thought would promote cultural renewal and improve
social and psychological life by comparison to life under
the traditional values he criticized.
 5 BRANCES
OF
PHILOSOPHY
EPISTEM O L O G Y

The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek words

“episteme” and “logos”. “Episteme” can be translated as
“knowledge” or “understanding” or “acquaintance”, while
“logos” can be translated as “account” or “argument” or
“reason”.
Epistemology investigates KNOWLEDGE. Questions:
What does it mean “to know”?
What can we know?
What is the difference between knowing andbelieving?How
do you know that you know?
How much evidence does one need for abelief to be
considered knowledge?
 LOGIC
This reasoning activity can be done well and
it can be done badly; it can be done correctly
or incorrectly. Logic is the discipline that
aims to distinguish good reasoning from
bad.
Logic studies right reasoning and
argumentation. Questions:

Do all claims have a truth value?

What is an argument?
What is a good and bad argument?
aes t h e t i c s
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a
branch of philosophy that deals
with the nature of beauty and
taste, as well as the philosophy
of art (its own area of
philosophy that comes out of
aesthetics). It examines
aesthetic values, often
expressed through judgments
of taste.
 is th e h ea r t o f
Metaphysics
philosophy. o f th e
a te s t h e e x is te n c e
It in vesti g n g s in
f A L L th i
universe and o ons:
it.Questi in to
th e u n iv e r s e c o m e
Ho w d id e a n d n on-
? W h a t is e x is t e n c
existence
existence? in t he
S o f t h in g s e x i st s
What K I ND s t?
e s G o d e x i
universe?Do is t?
Do s o u ls e x

METAP H Y S I C S
ETHICS

Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject

consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision
making, and its major concerns include the nature of
ultimate value and the standards by which human actions
can be judged right or wrong.
Ethics studies what actions are morally right and wrong.
Questions:
Is there a right and wrong?
Is right and wrong the same for everyone?
What makes an action morally right andwrong?
How can we know what is morally right orwrong in any
given situation?
eastern and western
PHILOSOPHY
eastern p h i l o s o p h y
Generally, Eastern philosophy views "the self" as an
illusion. Eastern religions believe that we are all
interconnected and part of a greater universal whole.
Hindus believe that the Atman, or human soul, is a part of
Brahman, the soul of god. Atman is part of Brahman, and
therefore cannot be a completely separate entity or "self."
Buddhists believe that we are all so interconnected that
there can be no distinctions of "self" made between us,
and "the self" is ultimately an illusion.
Eastern philosophy believes that "the self," composed of
each person's personal identity, consciousness, and core
philosophies, is an illusion. They deny the existence of the
independent entity of self that Westerners posit does
exist.
Though Eastern concepts of the self are based on many
of the same principles, individual religions and belief
systems each have their own unique explanations of "the
self". Hinduism and Buddhism are two prominent Eastern
religions that have different beliefs about the human self.
west e r n p h i l o s o p h y
Western philosophy, history of Western philosophy from its
development among the ancient Greeks to the present.
This article has three basic purposes: to provide an overview of
the history of philosophy in the West, to relate philosophical
ideas and movements to their historical background and to the
cultural history of their time, and to trace the changing
conception of the definition, the function, and the task of
philosophy.
Western Philosophy refers to philosophical thinking in the
Western or Occidental world, (beginning with Ancient Greece
and Rome, extending through central and western Europe and,
since Columbus, the Americas) as opposed to Eastern or
Oriental philosophies (comprising Indian, Chinese, Persian,
Japanese and Korean philosophies) and the varieties of
indigenous philosophies.