Welcome to our series on General Studies for Form Five students. In this first part of the series, we explore the concept of philosophy. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is a field that examines fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, and language. Understanding philosophy is crucial for developing critical thinking skills and gaining deeper insights into various aspects of life. This article will introduce you to the origins of philosophical thought, the importance of philosophical inquiry, and the different branches of philosophy. Stay tuned as we embark on this intellectual journey to uncover the essence of philosophical exploration.
SECTION 1: Concept of Philosophy
Man is the center of discussion because of his/her peculiarity in designing, discovery, innovation, reasoning, thinking, loving, believing and so forth. Thus, various disciplines prevailing in the world have direct relationship with man. Some discipline such as philosophy, science, arts, theology, just mention a few impacts on man and vice versa is true. But, “who is a man?” Should be the first question to probe, what relationship exists between man and philosophy?, Man and religion? What relationship exists between philosophy and religion?, Is there any relationship between the two? This chapter has been designed to conceptualize man and showing relationship exiting between philosophy and religion.
Meaning of Philosophy
Webster dictionary conceptualized man as a human being, but at comprehensive level a man is a human race or being. A human being has direct relationship with philosophy and religion as well. (Ishumi and Nyirenda, 2002:3) conceptualized philosophy at two levels, etymologically and comprehensive ones.
Etymologically the term philosophy is a Greek word which is derived from two words which are “Philos” and “Sophia” meaning “Love” and “Wisdom” respectively. Therefore from the two words, philosophy means love or the pursuit of wisdom. However, from the meaning given here one may not be able to get a real and profound meaning of the concept philosophy.
This is because loving wisdom does not make someone a philosopher, if it could be a philosopher since everyone loves wisdom and wants to be a wise man in a society. Therefore, being a philosopher there is a more than loving the wisdom. The complete meaning of philosophy is in its comprehensives and detailed meaning.
At comprehensive level, philosophy means rational critical thinking in a more or less systematic kind about general nature of the world or reality, the justification of belief, the conduct of life and correct reasoning. It is the study that tries to speculate about the reality of existence of everything in the world.
Since several things of various kinds make up the world, many people have been contradicting on formation or origin of all these things on the Earth .Some believe that everything was created by super natural power known as God, and therefore he is himself responsible in everything relating to creation, formation and existence.
Some people don’t agree with this argument, they try to study many forces and circumstance that cause the formation of different things on the world. These forces to them are seen as the main cause for existence of something on earth like mountain, rivers, lakes and so forth.
Philosophy as a discipline engages fully in these debate to find out the reality of existence of all things on earth through correct reasoning. Philosophy always asks questions like how do we know? What is fact? How much do we know?
APPROACHES TO PHILOSOPHY
Philosophers are seen to have advocated their philosophical ideas focusing on two approaches. These are
TRADITIONAL APPROACH AND MODERN APPROACH
- TRADITIONAL APPROACH
- Idealism school of thoughts
- Materialism/ Realism school of thoughts.
IDEALISM
This is the school of thought which emphasize the reality of anything to have been associated with the mind conscious (idea). These believe that it is only idea which is real and not material object.
The idealists suggest that an idea is the primary unit of material, the idea starts first in our minds then an object is structured and deigned to reality.
The propounders of idealism here are Plato, Hegel and G. Bekerley
MATERIALISM/ REALISM
It is the school of thought criticizing the idealists according to them the existence of objects depends on experience over any material and the inductively reasoning (reasoning/ judging from specific to general). The materialists believe that an object is real simply because even the universe is material in nature. So by them material/ object starts first then ideas are produced from the material. Philosophers here are Karl max, Aristotle, V. I. Lenin who is also considered to develop communism with Karl max who called it socialism.
- MODERN APPROACH
Pragmatism
This approach also emerged as a critique to the traditional approach that they failed to establish the frame work or their ideas and belief on the nature of reality. The modern approach developed their ideas that were said to identify the frame work of thoughts as;
Pragmatism
This was the school of thought which supported the idea of scientific observation and experience in suggesting the nature of reality.
They believed that the nature of reality is an observation of experimental changes of the material rather than basing on beliefs ideas. Basing on scientific observations and experiments, the modern approach also suggest some other ideas given the existentialism, neo Marxism and Marxism which is all much focus on the reality of humanness and consideration of human being as the only unique creature in the world .
Historical background of philosophy
“Philosophy” can be traced back to the time when human being began to wonder about their world with a desire to find answers to physical and non physical phenomena. Man centered on speculation about origin of the universe and its existence of things on the universe.
The philosophical ideas and speculation have been changing on time and space. Some written records available today trace the beginning of philosophy in 6th C (BC) in parts of Asia and Europe.
In case of Africa there are no defined documents revealing an existence of philosophy. This is because in Africa there was absent of written records, however, this cannot deprive the truth of possessing its own philosophy because people of Africa also could examine the question of reality, truth, value and reasoning. As it has been noted above philosophy and philosophical ideas have been changing overtime and space. The changes are closely connected to the developments in all spheres of human society as well as development of science and technology.
Philosophy is the Greek word having the two words. Philo means the love of or pursuit of and Sophia means wisdom (knowledge). The simple meaning two combined words is the love of wisdom or knowledge. Loving wisdom involve seeking to know and understand about what things are in their nature reason of existence and outcome of their existence.
Wisdom is the state of using intelligence in doing anything by acting planning or thinking.
Philosophy can be defined as the rational speculation about the reality of anything existing in this world. This study involves critical thinking which is systematic on the nature of the world by giving justifications under the basis of belief correct conduct of the life.
Philosophy is the study of nature causes and principle of reality, knowledge and values basing on logical reasoning rather than empirical method. It deals with attempt to discover the meaning and purpose of existence through reflection of all dimension of thought.
Being the concept of philosophy in its meaning involves three technical explanation:-
- Philosophy is an activity.
- Philosophy is a set of mind attitude.
- Philosophy is a study of content body of knowledge.
Philosophy as an activity
In this part philosophy is said to involve questions, asking question and think about them all in the nature of all existing things in the world. The people who are concerned in this work (asking question and thinking about them) are termed as philosophers e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Karl mark, Fredrick angels, T. Kennedy Kwame Nkrumah , J. K. Nyerere, Sidhatta Gautama, Jesus Christ, Mohammad.
The activities of asking questions and think about them are categorically put in the following area:
- Synthesizing
It is providing a comprehensive view of the work, reality from questioning and critically thinking on the question. Example saying biology is study of living things or geography is a study of environment.
- Speculation
It is thinking beyond what can be demonstrated physically e.g. talking of shape and appearance of God or gods.
- Prescription
It is establishing a norms, standards, conducts and ethics when performing or approaching a given philosophical idea. It also involves thinking.
- Analysis
It is critical examination of the words to use in communication when operating given philosophical idea.
Philosophy is a set of mind attitude speculation of what are reality and the nature of the world
It start first with the idea develop in active mind. Therefore the first need of a person to have an active mind that will bring to development of new philosophical idea is commitment, self awareness, desire of completeness in work and desire of speculator examination of phenomena (wishing to go deep in understanding of reality). Allowing that to happen our mind needs flexibility and openness so as to allow the new ideas that might be philosophical when examines.
Philosophy as a study of content
Philosophy is found so since, and it deals with the areas of asking question and forming the answer on what is in conjunction with giving justification on the nature of reality. It is a body of knowledge.
Philosophy is the study of the following content.
- What is reality? (Metaphysics)
- What is value/ beauty? (Axiology)
- Rational critical thesis reasoning/ wisdom (Logic).
- What is nature of the truth of knowledge? (Epistemology)
NATURE/ HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy can be traced back to the period when man started to speculate the physical as well as the man’s physical phenomenon in the universe. Philosophy started with wondering or curiosity. That is why it is called search of wisdom.
Philosophy started with rising questions. For example “what next after a person has died? Is there another life part from the Universe life? If there is, where?
By its origin the classical period of philosophy is traced from philosophers in Athens which is divided into four large eras.
THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (600BC – 400BC)
This is the time when philosophical ideas were said to originate and initiated by philosophers like Socrates – (469 – 399 BC), Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY (400BC – 16AD)
The history of western medieval philosophy is generally divided into two periods; early medieval philosophy which began with St. Augustine in mid 4th century to 13th century. The Second period was high medieval philosophy which listed up to 14th with philosopher like St. Thomas Aquinas
RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY
This is sometimes known as modern philosophy and is influenced by technological innovations. During this period new ideas about human experiences had started to gain momentum in the 16th century in Europe, later Asia and other parts of the world like Africa. The prominent philosophers of this period include Karl Max, Fredrick Angles, George W. F, Hegel, Lenin Kwame Nkrumah and J. K. Nyerere.
The Eastern philosophy
Broadly the various philosophers of the East Asia, included China, India, Japan and Persia. Ancient eastern philosophy developed mainly in India and China
THE AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
There is no evidence about time when philosophy started in Africa. However, much like the same historical development in the field of philosophy in other part of the world, philosophy that emerged in Africa was also based on discussing the reality of things in the world.
BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy being an inquiry dealing with every things existing in this world, It is divided in to four branches having sub branches of specification in each as follows;
Changes of Philosophical Approaches in Perspectives
At first philosophy embraced all discipline in arts, science and religion, in case of Western world and Greece by the 3 century (BC) philosophers were concerned with answering questions on theology, law, science, astronomy and all other subjects. At this time philosophy referred to as the mother of all science or queen of science “scientia emenentia”.
The transformation in philosophy came in the time of scientific revolution, whereby the notion of philosophy to embrace all discipline started to liquidate, at this time the scientific method and its discoveries tended to run counter to some of the answer put forward by philosophy i.e. the empirical set of evidences were put in place including seeing, touching, hearing, tasting and smelling. The speculation reasoning and faith issues coupled with philosophy started to get an answer. This was during the time of Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Kepter and Bacon, (Coplestone, 1953:91). Some philosophers emerged in the realm of religion/faith and thus philosophy changed in its orientation; many philosophers like Thomas Aquinas wrote much on theology detached from philosophy. Theology answered the questions of faith, religion and belief.
Theology became the philosophy that helped people to understand what they believed in, reasoning as a method of studying reality was now left to philosophy alone.
After scientific revolution a quite detachment from philosophy was, realized natural sciences such as physics, biology and chemistry emerged. The changes brought in an epoch of empirical science of nature on which empirical methods opposed to reasoning or faith i.e. subject matter limited to observed reality as opposed to an abstract (coupled with experimentation and observation). Later in the 19th century (AD) natural sciences were followed by the social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and History. From this time philosophy stood alone as a discipline of study.
Relationship between Man, Religion and Philosophy
As has already been observed above the questions posed were whether there is relationship between man and philosophy, man and religion and philosophy with religion. The fact is that man posses very complicated questions which their answers are from philosophy. Thus, the relationship which is into existence between man and philosophy is that the later answer the question to the former.
Also between philosophy and religion, the relationship which exists is that religion had essence from philosophy in the branch of theology. Religion also answers various questions relating to man on issues of believes, faith and generally the essence of the universe.
Role of Philosophy in Man’s Life
Philosophy is an important discipline to man’s life in general it has played a great role in shaping man’s life in different areas from time immemorial such importance are as follows:-
- Philosophy as a discipline works as a bridge between reality and assumptions, this means that with philosophical knowledge one is able to trace the hidden truth through passing and studying available assumptions on the desired truth without which it could be difficult or impossible for philosophers.
- Philosophy is the core of all science in the world. From this notion all science reasoning have been derived from philosophical ideas which were to be proved scientifically in order to solve the tension of material things and ideal things no any scientific immigration can be done properly without thinking critically which is an important aspect of philosophy
- Philosophy has been playing a great role in putting clear what philosophers do. That is through traditional activities such as speculation on things that exists in the world, formulating norms, and customs and determines the acceptable conduct of people in the society as well as making analysis and scrutinizing the language use and individual words such as intelligent, motivation, good, bad self reliance and many others.
- Philosophy also act as a prescription tools, it seeks to established norms and standards of performance and conduct, it sets the goals and criteria for evaluating achievements of goals, it defines what is good or bad what is right and wrong
- Also philosophy involves scrutinizing the language use in an attempt to clarify what we say. It involves a critical examination of the words we use as well as statements we make i.e. it evaluate their meaning in carrying context
- Philosophy involves making research through gathering of relevant information on certain case from a wide variety of sources before coming to conclusion.
Importance of philosophy to man
- Philosophy as a discipline contributes a lot in human life. This contribution enhances good direction and competence to the people’s well being.
- Philosophy has been used to boost social service such as education and others. Some ideas from philosophers have been used in the scope of education for example Nyerere, 1982: 17 – 32, came with idea that education has to liberate a person in order for such person to liberate the whole society or his/her neighbours. Thus, the purpose of education to him was liberation and development.
- Philosophy also induces critical thinking; a person applies deep logical and analytical process of materials so as to get the reality, for example a person can ask him/ herself why should stone fall down? Why should be a non-believer?
- Philosophy also induce hardworking and responsibility of the society, for example the philosophy of socialism and self reliance (Nyerere, 1968) encouraged people to work hard for self dependence on basis of socialism philosophy, besides other philosophies have been developed by many leaders in the world to guide their leadership performance.
- Philosophy has been regarded as a core or mother of other subjects in the world, because all scientific finding or procedure are logically thought and proved scientifically. Moreover all arguments and ideas, which are ambiguous, are taken to be proved scientifically in a logical sequence of assumptions and premises to reach the intended fact or reality.
- Philosophy also put norms or standard of conduct. Philosophy normally set out the goals and ideals to guide practice and criteria for evaluating achievement of the goals. It prescribes how people ought to act or react in a given society. Through philosophy we also defined what is good or bad, right and wrong and so forth.
- It helps to understand about the existence of man in the world through speculation. This idea is raised in an aspect of reality, existence of man in the universe and how the universe existed. From this concept there is no real answer, every argument has enabled man to undergo further critical thinking and come up with the rationale conclusion
In conclusion, the concept of philosophy serves as the foundation for understanding the world around us and our place within it. By exploring the origins and evolution of philosophical thought, recognizing the importance of philosophical inquiry, and familiarizing ourselves with the various branches of philosophy, we equip ourselves with the tools to critically analyze and interpret the complexities of life. This foundational knowledge paves the way for further exploration into different philosophical ideas and their applications. Remember, ajirababa.com is your go-to blog for comprehensive educational content and the latest job posts. Stay connected for more insightful articles in our General Studies Form Five series.
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