CHAPTER ONE

1. Meaning and Nature of Philosophy

It is difficult to define philosophy in terms of a specific
subject matter. However, we can define it
etymologically and conceptual(literally).
 We can define it etymologically in the form of
―philosophy comes from two Greek words: ―philo
and ―sophia, which mean ―love and ―wisdom as
love of wisdom.
 The ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras was the first
to use the word ―philosopher to call a person who
clearly shows a marked curiosity in the things he
experiences.
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Conceptual definition of philosophy
• It is a rational and critical enterprise that tries to formulate and
answer fundamental questions through an intensive application
of reason- an application that draws on analysis, comparison,
and evaluation.
• It involves reason, rational criticism, examination, and analysis.
• Philosophy has a constructive side, for it attempts to formulate
rationally defensible answers to certain fundamental questions
concerning the nature of reality, the nature of value, and the
nature of knowledge and truth.
• It deals with giving a rational critic, analysis, clarification, and
evaluation of answers given to basic metaphysical,
epistemological, and axiological questions.
• Philosophy is an activity. It is not something that can be easily
mastered or learned in schools.
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Basic Features of Philosophy
As an academic discipline, philosophy has its own salient
features that distinguishes it from other academic
disciplines, be it natural, social and humanistic disciplines.
The general features of philosophy can be summarized as
follows:
1) Philosophy is a set of views or beliefs about life and the
universe, which are often held uncritically.
We refer to this meaning as the informal sense of philosophy
or ―having a philosophy. Usually when a person says
―my philosophy is, he or she is referring to an informal
personal attitude to whatever topic is being discussed.
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2) Philosophy is a process of reflecting on and criticizing our
most deeply held conceptions and beliefs.
• This is the formal sense of ―doing philosophy. These two
senses of philosophy-having and ―doing- cannot be treated
entirely independent of each other, if we did not have a
philosophy in the formal, personal sense, then we could not do
a philosophy in the critical, reflective sense. However, having a
philosophy is not sufficient for doing philosophy.
• A genuine philosophical attitude is searching and critical; it is
open-minded and tolerant- willing to look at all sides of an
issue without prejudice.
• To philosophize is not merely to read and know philosophy;
there are skills of argumentation to be mastered, techniques of
analysis to be employed, and a body of material to be
appropriated such that we become able to think philosophically.
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3) Philosophy is a rational attempt to look at the world as a
whole.
• Philosophy seeks to combine the conclusions of the
various sciences and human experience into some
kind of consistent worldview. Philosophers wish to
see life, not with the specialized slant of the scientist
or the businessperson or the artist, but with the overall
view of someone cognizant of life as a totality.
• Philosophy, attempts to bring the results of human
inquiry, religious, historical, and scientific into some
meaningful interpretation that provides knowledge
and insight for our lives.
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4) Philosophy is the logical analysis of
language and the clarification of the
meaning of words and concepts.
• It is one function of philosophy. In fact,
nearly all philosophers have used
methods of analysis and have sought to
clarify the meaning of terms and the
use of language.
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5) Philosophy is a group of perennial problems that

interest people and for which philosophers
always have sought answers.
Philosophy presses its inquiry into the deepest
problems of human existence. Some of the
philosophical questions raised in the past have
been answered in a manner satisfactory to the
majority of philosophers. Many questions,
however, have been answered only tentatively,
and many problems remain unsolved. The
followings are some philosophical questions.
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• What is truth?
• What is the distinction between right and wrong?
• What is life and why am I here?
• Why is there anything at all?
• What is the place of life in this great universe?
• Is the universe friendly or unfriendly?
• Do things operate by chance or through sheer
mechanism, or is there some plan, purpose, or
intelligence at the heart of things?
• Is my life controlled by outside forces, or do I
have a determining or even a partial degree of
control?
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• Why do people struggle and strive for their rights, for justice, for
better things in the future?
• What do concepts like ―right‖ and ―justice‖ means, and what are
the marks of a good society? Often men and women have been
asked to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for certain values and
ideals.
• What are the genuine values of life and how can it attained?
• Is there really a fundamental distinction between right and wrong,
or is it just a matter of one‘s own opinions?
• What is beauty?
• Should religion count in a person‘s life?
• Is it intellectually valid to believe in God?
• Is there a possibility of a ―life after death?
• Is there any way we can get an answer to these and many related
questions?
• Where does knowledge come from, and can we have any
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• Philosophy also means the various theories or

systems of thought developed by the great
philosophers, such as
• Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas,
Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel,
Nietzsche, Royce, James, Dewey, Whitehead, and
others.
Without these people and their thoughts, philosophy
would not have the rich content it has today. Even
though we may be unconscious of the fact, we are
constantly influenced by ideas that have come
down to us in the traditions of society.
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Core Fields of Philosophy

The followings are the core fields of philosophy.
A. Metaphysics,
B. Epistemology,
C. Axiology, and
D. Logic
A. Metaphysics:
The term metaphysics is derived from the Greek words “meta”
means (―beyond ―upon or ―after) and physika, means
(―physics). Literally, it refers ‗those things after the
physics.‘ Aristotle‘s writings on ‗first philosophy‘ came
after his treatise on physics, therefore, Aristotle‘s editor,
Andronicus of Rhodes, named them metaphysics.
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Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that

studies the ultimate nature of reality or existence.
It deal with issues of reality, God, freedom,
soul/immortality, the mind-body problem, form
and substance relationship, cause and effect
relationship, and other related issues.
Metaphysicians seek an irreducible foundation of
reality or ‗first principles‘ from which absolute
knowledge or truth can be induced and deduced .
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Here are some of the questions that Metaphysics primarily deals with:
 What is reality?
 What is the ultimately real?
 What is the nature of the ultimate reality?
 Is it one thing or is it many different things?
 Can reality be grasped by the senses, or it is transcendent?
 What makes reality different from a mere appearance?
 What is mind, and what is its relation to the body?
 Is there a cause and effect relationship between reality and
appearance?
 Does God exist, and if so, can we prove it?
 Are human actions free, or predetermined by a supernatural force?
 What is human being? A thinking mind? A perishable body? Or a
combination of both?
 What is time?
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Metaphysical questions may be divided into four
subsets or aspects.
i) Cosmological Aspect: it study about the origin, nature, and
development of the universe as an orderly system. Questions
such as these populate the realm of cosmology are:
 How did the universe originate and develop?
 Did it come about by accident or design?
 Does its existence have any purpose?
ii) Theological Aspect: it is part of religious theory that deals
with conceptions of and about God.
 Is there a God? If so, is there one or more than one?
 What are the attributes of God?
 If God is both all good and all powerful, why does evil exist?
 If God exists, what is His relationship to human beings and
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iii) Anthropological Aspect: It deals with the study of

human beings and asks questions like the following:
 What is the relation between mind and body?
 Is mind more fundamental than body, with body
depending on mind, or vice versa?
 What is humanity‘s moral status?
 Are people born good, evil, or morally neutral?
 To what extent are individuals free?
 Do they have free will, or are their thoughts and
actions determined by their environment,
inheritance, or a divine being?
 Does each person have a soul? If so, what is it?
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iv) Ontological Aspect: Ontology is the study of the nature

of existence, or what it means for anything to exist.
Several questions are central to ontology:
 Is basic reality found in matter or physical energy (the
world we can sense), or is it found in spirit or spiritual
energy?
 Is it composed of one element (e.g., matter or spirit), or
two (e.g., matter and spirit), or many?
 Is reality orderly and lawful in itself, or is it merely
orderable by the human mind?
 Is it fixed and stable, or is change its central feature?
 Is this reality friendly, unfriendly, or neutral toward
humanity?
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B. Epistemology:
Etymologically, the word epistemology has been
derived from the Greek words episteme, meaning
knowledge, understanding, and logos, meaning .
It studies about the nature, scope, meaning, and
possibility of knowledge.
It deals with issues of knowledge, opinion, truth,
falsity, reason, experience, and faith.
 Epistemology is also referred to as theory of
knowledge.
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• It seeks to answer the basic questions as:

o What is true?
o How do we know? Thus, epistemology covers two areas: the
content of thought and thought itself. The study of epistemology
deals with issues related to the dependability of knowledge and
the validity of the sources through which we gain information.
• The following are among the questions/issues with which
Epistemology deals:
 What is knowledge?
 What does it mean to know?
 What is the source of knowledge? Experience? Reason? Or
both?
 How can we be sure that what we perceive through our senses
is correct?
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What makes knowledge different from belief or

opinion?
 What is truth, and how can we know a statement
is true?
Can reason really help us to know phenomenal
things without being informed by sense
experiences?
 Can our sense experience really help us to know
things beyond our perception without the
assistance of our reasoning ability?
What is the relationship and difference between
faith and reason?
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• Epistemology seeks answers to a number of

fundamental issues.
i. reality can even be known.
• Skepticism: in its narrow sense is the position
claiming that people cannot acquire reliable
knowledge and that any search for truth is in
ineffective(vain).
• A term closely related to skepticism is
agnosticism. Agnosticism is a profession of
ignorance in reference to the existence or
nonexistence of God.
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ii. all truth is relative, or whether some truths are

absolute. Is all truth subject to change? Is it
possible that what is true today may be false
tomorrow? If the answer is ―Yes to the previous
questions, such truths are relative. If, however,
there is Absolute Truth, such Truth is eternally
and universally true irrespective of time or place.
Closely related to the issue of the relativity and
absoluteness of truth are the questions of whether
knowledge is subjective or objective, and
whether there is truth that is independent of
human experience.
 Con’d….
Sources of human knowledge
a. Empiricism
• Central to most people‘s answer to that question
related to (knowledge obtained through the senses
is empiricism). Empirical knowledge appears to be
built into the very nature of human experience.
• i.e Knowledge that can be gained from human
experience is called empiricism. The questions are:
If one accepts the fact that there is truth and even
Truth in the universe, how can human beings
comprehend such truths? How do they become
human knowledge?
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b. Rationalism(reason): The view that reasoning,

thought, or logic is the central factor in knowledge is
known as rationalism. The rationalist, in emphasizing
humanity‘s power of thought and the mind‘s
contributions to knowledge, is likely to claim that the
senses alone cannot provide universal, valid
judgments that are consistent with one another.
Rationalism in a less extreme form claims that people
have the power to know with certainty various truths
about the universe that the senses alone cannot give.
In its extreme form, rationalism claims that humans
are capable of arriving at irrefutable knowledge
independently of sensory experience.
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• Formal logic is a tool used by rationalists.
c. intuition: expressions as immediate feeling of
certainty.
Intuition occurs beneath the threshold of
consciousness and is often experienced as a sudden
flash of insight.
Intuition has been claimed under varying
circumstances as a source of both religious and
secular knowledge. Certainly many scientific
breakthroughs have been initiated by intuitive
hunches that were confirmed by experimentation.
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d. revelation: Revealed knowledge has been of prime

importance in the field of religion.
It presupposes a transcendent supernatural reality that
breaks into the natural order. Christians believe that
such revelation is God‘s communication concerning
the divine will. Believers in supernatural revelation
hold that this form of knowledge has the distinct
advantage of being an omniscient source of
information that is not available through other
epistemological methods. The truth revealed
through this source is believed by Christians to be
absolute and uncontaminated
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e. Authority: knowledge is accepted as true because it comes from
experts or has been sanctified over time as tradition. In the
classroom, the most common source of information is some
authority, such as a textbook, teacher, or reference work.
C. Axiology: is the study or theory of value. The term Axiology stems
from two Greek words- ―Axios, meaning ―value, worth, and
―logos, meaning ―reason/ theory/ symbol / science/study of.
Hence, Axiology is the philosophical study of value, which originally
meant the worth of something. Axiology asks the philosophical
questions of values that deal with notions of what a person or a
society regards as good or preferable, such as:
 What is a value?
 Where do values come from?
 How do we justify our values?
 How do we know what is valuable?
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 What kinds of values exist?

 Can it be demonstrated that one value is better than
another?
 Who benefits from values?
 Etc
Axiology deals with the above and related issues of
value in three areas, namely;
I. Ethics,
II. Aesthetics, and
III. Social/Political Philosophy.
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I. Ethics: which is also known as Moral Philosophy.

 It is a science that deals with the philosophical study of
moral principles, values, codes, and rules, which may be
used as standards for determining what kind of human
conduct/action is said to be good or bad, right or wrong.
 Ethics raises various questions including:
 What is good/bad?  What is right/wrong?
 Is it the Right Principle or the Good End that makes
human action/conduct moral?
 Is an action right because of its good end, or it is good
because of its right principle?
 Are moral principles universal, objective, and
unconditional, or relative, subjective and conditional?
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 What is the ultimate foundation of moral principles?

The supernatural God? Human reason? Mutual social
contract? Social custom?
 Does God exist? If so, is He Benevolent and
Omnipotent?
 If God is Benevolent, why He creates evil things? If
God does not create evil things, then, there must be
another creator who is responsible to creation of the evil
things? But, if it is so, how can God be an Omnipotent
creator?
 Why we honor and obey moral rules? For the sake of
our own individual benefits?, or for the sake of others?,
or just for the sake of fulfilling our infallible duty?
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• Ethics, or ethical studies, can be grouped into three

broad categories:
1. Normative ethics,
2. Meta-ethics, and
3. Applied Ethics.
1. Normative Ethics: refers to the ethical studies that
attempt to study and determine precisely the moral rules,
principles, standards and goals by which human beings
might evaluate and judge the moral values of their
conducts, actions and decisions. It is the reasoned search
for principles of human conduct, including a critical
study of the major theories about which things are good,
which acts are right, and which acts are blameworthy.
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• Consequentialism or Teleological Ethics,

• Deontological Ethics, and
• Virtue Ethics are the major examples of normative ethics.
2. Meta-ethics: is the highly technical philosophical discipline
that deals with investigation of the meaning of ethical terms,
including a critical study of how ethical statements can be
verified. It is more concerned with the meanings of such ethical
terms as good or bad and right or wrong than with what we
think is good or bad and right or wrong.
 Moral Intuitionism,
 Moral Emotivism,
 Moral Prescriptivism,
 Moral Nihilism, and
 Ethical Relativism are the main examples of meta-ethical
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3. Applied Ethics: is a normative ethics that attempts

to explain, justify, apply moral rules, principles,
standards, and positions to specific moral problems,
such as capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion,
adultery, animal right, and so on.
II. Aesthetics: is the theory of beauty. It studies about
the particular value of our artistic and aesthetic
experiences. It deals with beauty, art, enjoyment,
sensory/emotional values, perception, and matters of
taste and sentiment.
 Con’d….
• The following are typical Aesthetical questions:
 What is art?
 What is beauty?
 What is the relation between art and beauty?
 What is the connection between art, beauty, and truth?
 Can there be any objective standard by which we may judge
the beauty of artistic works, or beauty is subjective?
 What is artistic creativity and how does it differ from
scientific creativity?
 Why works of art are valuable?
 Can artistic works communicate? If so, what do they
communicate?
 Does art have any moral value, and obligations or constraints?
 Con’d….

III. Social/Political Philosophy: studies about of the value

judgments operating in a civil society, be it social or political.
The following questions are some of the major Social/Political
Philosophy primarily deal with:
 What form of government is best?
 What economic system is best?
 What is justice/injustice?
 What makes an action/judgment just/unjust?  What is
society?
 Does society exist? If it does, how does it come to existence?
 How are civil society and government come to exist?
 Are we obligated to obey all laws of the State?
 What is the purpose of government?
 Importance of Learning Philosophy

There are many characteristics of self-actualization to

whose achievement studying philosophy has a
primordial contribution. Here below are some of
them.
1) Intellectual and Behavioral Independence:- This is
the ability to develop one‘s own opinion and belief.
2) Reflective Self-Awareness:- Philosophy helps us to
intensify our self-awareness by inviting us to
critically examine the essential intellectual grounds of
our lives.
3) Flexibility, Tolerance, and Open-Mindedness:-
evolutionary nature of intellectual achievement and
 Con’d….

4) Creative and Critical Thinking: - this is the ability

to develop original philosophical perspective on
issues, problems, and events; and to engage them
on a deeper level.
5). Conceptualized and well-thought-out value
systems in morality, art, politics, and the like: -
since philosophy directly deals with morality, art,
politics, and other related value theories, studying
philosophy provides us with an opportunity to
formulate feasible evaluations of value; and
thereby to find meaning in our lives.
 CHAPTER SIX
THE CONCEPT OF LOGIC
The word logic comes from Greek word logos, which
means sentence, discourse, reason, truth and rule.
Logic in its broader meaning is the science, which
evaluates arguments and the study of correct
reasoning.
It could be also defined as the study of methods and
principles of correct reasoning or the art of correct
reasoning.
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Logic can be defined in different ways. Here below are some

definitions of logic:
 Logic is a science that study methods for evaluating arguments
whether the premises of arguments adequately support or provide
a good evidence for the conclusions.
 Logic is a science that helps to develop the method and principles
that we may use as a criterion for evaluating the arguments of
others and as a guide to construct good arguments of our own.
 Logic is the attempt to codify the rules of rational thought.
Logicians explore the structure of arguments that preserve truth or
allow the optimal extraction of knowledge from evidence.
 Logic is one of the primary tools philosophers use in their
inquiries. The precision of logic helps them to cope with the
subtlety of philosophical problems and the often misleading nature
of conversational language.
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What is the Benefit of Studying Logic?

‘Logic sharpens and refines our natural gifts to think,
reason and argue.’’ (C. S. Layman)