West Visayas State University

College of Education
Graduate School
La Paz, Iloilo City

Foundation of Education

FND. 502

Second Semester

School Year 2013-2014

Meaning of Philosophy and its Branches

“Education is an important human activity. It was born with the birth of the human race and shall
continue to function as long as the human races live. The importance of education may be summed up
as an essential human virtue, a necessity for society, important for integration of separate entities,
gives significance to life, educated men are superior, sign of freedom, a controlling grace and the basis
of a good life.”

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy is the earliest and the most original discipline. Philosophy is a systematic and
thorough attempt to relate the universe and human life to each other in a meaningful way.
Derivative meaning of philosophy: the term philosophy has been derived from the two Greek
words ‘philos’ which means love of and Sophia which means wisdom.
Aristotle’s view: Aristotle defines philosophy as ‘a science which investigates the nature of
being, as it is in itself.

Plato’s view: according to Plato, ‘philosophy aims at knowledge of the eternal nature of things’.
In short philosophy is an attempt to answer all the questions of life. This is so because human
mind is moved by ‘intellectual curiosity and by the desire for order’

In order to narrow the aims of discussion philosophy was broken into branches.
Traditionally philosophy has been broken into four main branches; however we would like to
add a fifth branch in our text
Epistemology
Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the
branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge and love.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics however (derived from the Greek words "ta meta ta physika biblia") - meaning 'the
book that follows the physics book'. It was the way students referred to a specific book in the
works of Aristotle, and it was a book on First Philosophy. (The assumption that the word means
"beyond physics" is misleading) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the
study of "first principles" and "being" (ontology). In other words, Metaphysics is the study of
the most general aspects of reality, such as substance, identity, the nature of the mind, and
free will.In other way is a study of nature and the nature of the world in which man lives
Logic
Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, but
coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments. Logic is
the study of correct reasoning. However, the subject is grounded, the task of the logician is the
same: to advance an account of valid and fallacious inference to allow one to distinguish good
from bad arguments.
Ethics
Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the "science (study) of morality". In
philosophy, ethical behaviour is that which is "good" or "right." The Western tradition of ethics
is sometimes called moral philosophy.

Main branches of philosophy

Traditionally, there are five main branches of philosophy. They are:

 Metaphysics, which deals with the fundamental questions of reality.

Metaphysics is the area of philosophy which deals with the ultimate nature of reality.
Metaphysics can emcompass large areas of philosophy, and most other philosophical schools
turn back to it for basic definition.

In that respect, the term metaphysics is a broad one, encompassing the philosophical ideas
ofcosmology and ontology.

Metaphysics or First Philosophy

The term “metaphysics” comes from Greek, meaning “after the Physics”. Although the term
metaphysics generally makes sense in the way that it partially refers to things outside of and
beyond the natural sciences, this is not the origin of the term (as opposed to, say, meta-ethics,
which refers to the nature of ethics itself). Instead, the term was used by later editors of
Aristotle. Aristotle had written several books on matter and physics, and followed those volumes
with work on ontology, and other broad subjects. These editors referred to them as “the books
that came after the books on physics” or “metaphysics”.

Aristotle himself refers to metaphysics as “first philosophy”. This term was also used by some
later philosophers, such as Descartes, whose primary work on the subject of metaphysics is
called Meditations on First Philosophy.

Branches of Metaphysics

The main branches of metaphysics are:

 Ontology
 Cosmology

 Epistemology, which deals with our concept of knowledge, how we learn and what we
can know.
 Epistemology is the area of philosophy that is concerned with knowledge. The main
concerns of epistemology are the definition of knowledge, the sources of knowledge
(innate ideas, experience, etc.), the process of acquiring knowledge and the limits of
knowledge. Epistemology considers that knowledge can be obtained
through experience and/or reason.
  Defining Knowledge
 A primary concern of epistemology is the very definition of knowledge itself. The
traditional definition, since Plato, is that knowledge is justified true belief, but recent
evaluations of the concept have shown supposed counterexamples to this definition.
 In order to fully explore the nature of knowledge and how we come to know things, the
various conceptions of what knowledge is must first be understood.
 Definition of knowledge
 Sources of Knowledge
 The sources of knowledge must also be considered. Perception, reason, memory,
testimony, introspection and innate ideas are all supposed sources of knowledge. Are
they equally reliable?
 Sources of knowledge
 Scepticism
 There also seems to be reason to doubt each of these sources of knowledge. Could it be
that all knowledge is fallible? If that is the case, do we really know anything? This is the
central question to the problem of scepticism.

 Logic, which studies the rules of valid reasoning and argumentation

Logic is the systematic process of valid reasoning through inference — deriving conclusions
from information that is known to be true. It is the area of philosophy that is concerned with
the laws of valid reasoning.

 Ethics, or moral philosophy, which is concerned with human values and how individuals
should act.

Ethics or moral philosophy is the branch of philosophy concerned with human conduct and its
moral value.

There are generally three branches of ethics:

 Meta-ethics, which is concerned with questions about what whether or not morality
exists, and what it consists of if it does;
 Normative ethics, which is concerned with how moral values should be developed; and
 Applied ethics, which deals with how moral values can be applied to specific cases.

 Aesthetics or esthetics, which deals with the notion of beauty and the philosophy of art.
 Aesthetics is the area of philosophy which covers the concepts of beauty and art.
 “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
 There are two basic standings on the nature of beauty: objective and subjective
judgement. Subjective judgement of beauty suggests that beauty is not the same to
everyone — that which aesthetically pleases the observer is beautiful (to the observer).
Alternatively, those partial to the objective description of beauty try to measaure it.
 They suggest that certain properties of an object create an inherent beauty — such as
symmetry and balance. Both Plato and Aristotle supported the objective judgement.
Some, such as Immanuel Kant, took a middle path, holding that beauty is of a
subjective nature, but there are qualities of beauty which have universal validity.
 Classical and Modern Aesthetics
 The classical concepts behind aesthetics saw beauty in nature, and that art should
mimic those qualities found in nature. Aristotle's Poetics describes this idea, which he
develops from Plato's teachings. Modern aesthetic ideas, including those of Kant, stress
the creative and symbolic side of art — that nature does not always have to guide art
for it to be beautiful.
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