Existentialism Existentialism is a term applied to the work of certain late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[1][2][3] shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.[4] In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[5] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[6][7] Definitional issues and background[edit] There has never been general agreement on the definition of existentialism. The term is often seen as an historical convenience as it was first applied to many philosophers in hindsight, long after they had died. Concepts[edit] The Absurd[edit]
Temporal paradox Temporal paradox (also known as time paradox and time travel paradox) is a theoretical paradoxical situation that happens because of time travel. A time traveler goes to the past, and does something that would prevent him from time travel in the first place. If he does not go back in time, he does not do anything that would prevent his traveling to the past, so time travel would be possible for him. However, if he goes back in time and does something that would cause him/her to not make a time machine he would not travel back in the first place causing him to make one then go back and not make one. A typical example of this kind is the grandfather paradox, where a person goes back in time to kill his grandfather before he had any biological descendant. If they succeed, one of their parents would never exist and they themselves would never exist either. Solution[edit] Novikov self-consistency principle[edit] Multiple universes hypothesis[edit] Branching universe hypothesis[edit]
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (/ˈniːtʃə/[1] or /ˈniːtʃi/;[2] German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːt͡sʃə]; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, composer and Latin and Greek scholar. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor[3] and irony. Nietzsche's key ideas include perspectivism, the will to power, the death of God, the Übermensch and eternal recurrence. One of the key tenets of his philosophy is "life-affirmation", which embraces the realities of the world in which we live over the idea of a world beyond. Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist—a scholar of Greek and Roman textual criticism—before turning to philosophy. In 1869, at age 24, he became the youngest-ever occupant of the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. As his caretaker, his sister assumed the roles of curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts.
Lucid dream A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. In relation to this phenomenon, Greek philosopher Aristotle observed: "often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream".[1] One of the earliest references to personal experiences with lucid dreaming was by Marie-Jean-Léon, Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys.[2] Skeptics of the phenomenon suggest that it is not a state of sleep, but of brief wakefulness.[15][16] Others point out that there is no way to prove the truth of lucid dreaming other than to ask the dreamer.[17] Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, with participants performing pre-determined physical responses while experiencing a lucid dream.[18][19] Scientific history[edit] Philosopher Norman Malcolm's 1959 text Dreaming[22] had argued against the possibility of checking the accuracy of dream reports. Hearne's results were not widely distributed. Initiation[edit] REM sleep.
World view Origins[edit] Linguistics[edit] The founder of the idea that language and worldview are inextricable is the Prussian philologist, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt argued that language was part of the creative adventure of mankind[vague]. Culture, language and linguistic communities developed simultaneously, he argued, and could not do so without one another. In stark contrast to linguistic determinism, which invites us to consider language as a constraint, a framework or a prison house, Humboldt maintained that speech is inherently and implicitly creative. Edward Sapir also gives an account of the relationship between thinking and speaking in English. The linguistic relativity hypothesis of Benjamin Lee Whorf describes how the syntactic-semantic structure of a language becomes an underlying structure for the world view or Weltanschauung of a people through the organization of the causal perception of the world and the linguistic categorization of entities. Folk-epics[edit]
Stoicism Philosophical system Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve eudaimonia (happiness, lit. Stoicism flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century CE, and among its adherents was Emperor Marcus Aurelius. History[edit] The name Stoicism derives from the Stoa Poikile (Ancient Greek: ἡ ποικίλη στοά), or "painted porch", a colonnade decorated with mythic and historical battle scenes on the north side of the Agora in Athens where Zeno of Citium and his followers gathered to discuss their ideas, near the end of the 4th century BCE.[4] Unlike the Epicureans, Zeno chose to teach his philosophy in a public space. Scholars[who?] Philosophical system[edit] Logic[edit] Categories[edit] Epistemology[edit] Physics[edit]
Arthur Schopenhauer Life[edit] Schopenhauer's birthplace house, ul. Św. In 1814, Schopenhauer began his seminal work The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung). While in Berlin, Schopenhauer was named as a defendant in a lawsuit initiated by a woman named Caroline Marquet.[18] She asked for damages, alleging that Schopenhauer had pushed her. In 1821, he fell in love with nineteen-year old opera singer, Caroline Richter (called Medon), and had a relationship with her for several years. Schopenhauer had a notably strained relationship with his mother Johanna Schopenhauer. Grave at Frankfurt Hauptfriedhof Schopenhauer had a robust constitution, but in 1860 his health began to deteriorate. Thought[edit] Philosophy of the "Will"[edit] Schopenhauer in 1815, second of the critical five years of the initial composition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung A key focus of Schopenhauer was his investigation of individual motivation. Art and aesthetics[edit] Mathematics[edit] Ethics[edit]
German philosophy German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy in the German language or (2) philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz through Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein to contemporary philosophers. Søren Kierkegaard (a Danish philosopher) is frequently included in surveys of German (or Germanic) philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.[1][2][3][4] 17th century[edit] Leibniz[edit] Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was both a philosopher and a mathematician who wrote primarily in Latin and French. Leibniz is noted for his optimism - his Théodicée[5] tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. 18th century[edit] Wolff[edit] Kant[edit] Immanuel Kant G.
Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology First published Sat Jul 2, 2005; substantive revision Wed Feb 13, 2013 Kant's views on aesthetics and teleology are given their fullest presentation in his Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, also translated Critique of the Power of Judgment), published in 1790. This work is in two parts, preceded by a long introduction in which Kant explains and defends the work's importance in his critical system overall: in the first part, the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,” Kant discusses aesthetic experience and judgment, in particular of the beautiful and the sublime, and also artistic creation; in the second part, the “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” he discusses the role of teleology (that is, appeal to ends, purposes or goals) in natural science and in our understanding of nature more generally. The Critique of Judgment has received less attention than the other two Critiques. 1. 2. Other elements of Kant's theory are sketched in the remainder of the section.
Determinism Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event, including human action, there exist conditions that could cause no other event. "There are many determinisms, depending upon what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event. Other debates often concern the scope of determined systems, with some maintaining that the entire universe is a single determinate system and others identifying other more limited determinate systems (or multiverse). Varieties[edit] Below appear some of the more common viewpoints meant by, or confused with "determinism". Many philosophical theories of determinism frame themselves with the idea that reality follows a sort of predetermined path Philosophical connections[edit] With nature/nurture controversy[edit] Nature and nurture interact in humans. Although some of the above forms of determinism concern human behaviors and cognition, others frame themselves as an answer to the debate on nature and nurture. With particular factors[edit]
Kantianism Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term "Kantianism" or "Kantian" is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Ethics[edit] Simply put, this criterion amounts to a thought experiment: to attempt to universalize the maxim (by imagining a world where all people necessarily acted in this way in the relevant circumstances) and then see if the maxim and its associated action would still be conceivable in such a world. Universalizing a maxim (statement) leads to it being valid, or to one of two contradictions — a contradiction in conception (where the maxim, when universalized, is no longer a viable means to the end) or a contradiction in will (where the will of a person contradicts what the universalization of the maxim implies). The Formulations of the Categorical Imperative: Teleology[edit] See Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology. See also[edit]