Main branches of philosophy

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

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

 Epistemology, which deals with our concept of knowledge, how we learn and what we can know.
 Logic, which studies the rules of valid reasoning and argumentation
 Ethics, or moral philosophy, which is concerned with human values and how individuals should act.
 Aesthetics or esthetics, which deals with the notion of beauty and the philosophy of art.

Moral Relativism
 Moral relativism is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint (for
instance, that of a culture or a historical period) and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. It has
often been associated with other claims about morality: notably, the thesis that different cultures often exhibit radically
different moral values; the denial that there are universal moral values shared by every human society; and the
insistence that we should refrain from passing moral judgments on beliefs and practices characteristic of cultures
other than our own.

Ethical Subjectivism

 Ethical or moral subjectivism, sometimes called individualist ethical subjectivism, is the view that moral truths
exist, but they are determined on an individual level.

As a cognitivist approach to subjectivism, ethical subjectivism holds that moral statements can be propositions, but that they
describe the attitudes of an individual agent rather than something social, cultural or objectively universal.

According to the ethical subjectivist, all moral statements are true if the person stating them believes them to be true.

 Moral Absolutism is the ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be
judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act. Thus, actions are inherently
moral or immoral, regardless of the beliefs and goals of the individual, society or culture that engages in the actions.
It holds that morals are inherent in the laws of the universe, the nature of humanity, the will of God or some other
fundamental source.

 Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is simply the view that normative properties depend only on
consequences. This historically important and still popular theory embodies the basic intuition that what is best or
right is whatever makes the world best in the future, because we cannot change the past, so worrying about the
past is no more useful than crying over spilled milk. This general approach can be applied at different levels to
different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is probably
consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only
on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general
rule requiring acts of the same kind.

 Egoism can be a descriptive or a normative position. Psychological egoism, the most famous descriptive position,
claims that each person has but one ultimate aim: her own welfare. Normative forms of egoism make claims about
what one ought to do, rather than describe what one does do. Ethical egoism claims I morally ought to perform
some action if and only if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest. Rational egoism claims
 that I ought to perform some action if and only if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest.
(Here the “ought” is not restricted to the moral “ought”.)

 Altruism is when we act to promote someone else’s welfare, even at a risk or cost to ourselves. Though some
believe that humans are fundamentally self-interested, recent research suggests otherwise: Studies have found that
people’s first impulse is to cooperate rather than compete; that toddlers spontaneously help people in need out of
a genuine concern for their welfare; and that even non-human primates display altruism.
 Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories. Like other forms of consequentialism, its
core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their effects. More specifically, the only effects
of actions that are relevant are the good and bad results that they produce. A key point in this article concerns the
distinction between individual actions and types of actions. Act utilitarians focus on the effects of individual actions
(such as John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln) while rule utilitarians focus on the effects of types
of actions (such as killing or stealing).

Utilitarians believe that the purpose of morality is to make life better by increasing the amount of good things (such
as pleasure and happiness) in the world and decreasing the amount of bad things (such as pain and unhappiness).
They reject moral codes or systems that consist of commands or taboos that are based on customs, traditions, or
orders given by leaders or supernatural beings. Instead, utilitarians think that what makes a morality be true or
justifiable is its positive contribution to human (and perhaps non-human) beings.