A portmanteau of the Ancient Greek words φίλος (philos) ‘love’ and σοφία (sophia) ‘wisdom’, philosophy is the love of wisdom.
It is the exploration of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, and reality through critical thinking and argumentation.
Major branches of philosophy
- Metaphysics: reality and existence
- what is Being
- materialism
- idealism
- how many Beings exist
- monism
- dualism
- pluralism
- what is Being
- Epistemology: knowledge
- how knowledge is acquired:
- rationalism
- empiricism
- irrationalism
- voluntarism - taking the will as being the only real source of knowledge
- intuitionism - taking intuition as the proper means of acquiring knowledge
- the limits of human cognition and knowledge:
- agnosticism - humans cannot know the world to the fullest
- dogmatism - man can indeed know the world to the fullest
- skepticism - medium option between the two
- how knowledge is acquired:
- Ethics: values and morality
- Logic: inference and reasoning
- Aesthetics: beauty, art, and taste
Schools of thought
- on free will
- on the meaning of life