School of Thought

1. Stoicism- an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium.

The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge.
2. Scholasticism- the system of theology and philosophy taught in medieval European
universities, based on Aristotelian logic and the writings of the early Church Fathers and
having a strong emphasis on tradition and dogma.
3. Renaissance/Enlightenment- a period in European history, covering the span between
the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to
modernity.
 Humanism- a Renaissance cultural movement which turned away from medieval
scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.
 Rationalism- a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on
reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.
 Empiricism- the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.
Stimulated by the rise of experimental science, it developed in the 17th and 18th
centuries, expounded in particular by John Locke, George Berkeley, and David
Hume.
 Social and Political Philosophy- An area of research that includes
examinations and evaluations of all aspects of social life, from the family, to the
nation-state, to international relations.
4. Modern
 Existentialism- a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the
existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining
their own development through acts of the will.
 Pragmatism- an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or
beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application
 Phenomenology- an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness
and the objects of direct experience.
 Absurdism- the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic
universe.
5. Post-Modernism- a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and
criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general
distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any
notion of “art.”.
6. Post-Structuralism- an extension and critique of structuralism, especially as used in
critical textual analysis.
Is it possible to merge the practice of both Eastern and Western philosophy?

It’s hard to merge the western and eastern philosophy but it is not impossible. For us,
some of the merging points of the eastern and western philosophical practices is when the
eastern philosophy said that “life is a journey towards eternal realities” and the western said
“Life is a service to God, money, business etc” I believe that we can merge those examples
because I believe in both of the philosophical statements of both sides. It’s both meaningful and
not impossible because the two statements are not quite far to each other. We can apply it both
for a better result.