Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge)
The meaning of the greek word "Episteme"
knowledge
This philosopher believed "that actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness," intending to maximize the quality and quantity of happiness.
John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism)
Student of Socrates, prominent philosopher, who wrote down most of his teacher's beliefs
Plato
An area of political philosophy which primarily concerns how the state is created and justified, defining its reaches of power. Pioneered by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes.
Social Contractualism
The school of Epistemology which holds that the mind has the ability to hold a priori truths— truths that are attained without external experience and are innate.
Rationalism
The three branches of Ethics
Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Applied Ethics
A form of argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions in order to find problems and possibly even solutions.
Socratic Method
An intellectual philosophical movement in the 17th and 18th century Europe which gave rise to discourse on the nature of liberty, freedom, and science.
Enlightenment
A French philosopher's most influential quote in Epistemology, accounting for the existence of the consciousness in the otherwise all-uncertain world.
Cogito Ergo Sum
This philosopher believed that an action is ethically correct because it is the right thing to do, not because of the consequences.
Immanuel Kant (Deontology)
The method in which Socrates paid for the hate he accumulated within Athens
Execution (drinking a potion of the poisonous plant hemlock)
The 20th century view that societal development is driven by material economic forces and human’s material contradictions, with changes in the mode of production shaping new social behaviors which allows the rise of new classes of workers, or the proletariat.
Karl Marx's Dialectics (accept class struggle, communism, historical materialism)
Compared to the traditional beliefs that man is born with inherent truths, this British philosopher's phrase emphasizes how a man's knowledge is comprised of external experiences.
Tabula Rasa
This philosopher rejected the majority of moral systems, labeling them as stuck under the dichotomy of "the master/slave" and advocated for a new self-authentic form of values.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Famous allegory used by Socrates (or Plato?) to describe how the reality we live is a prison to keep humans from the truth.
Allegory of the Cave
Coined by Hannah Arendt in “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” served to understand why history’s greatest evils (such as the Holocaust) were carried out by ordinary people who accepted their societal conditions and such acts as “normal.”
Banality of Evil
The school of Epistemology which holds that all knowledge are unattainable and false, or so inadequate that proper judgement cannot be made.
Skepticism
A normative ethics approach which emphasizes the role of virtues, or character dispositions, in moral decision making and accomplishing eudaimonia, or the good life.
Virtue Ethics
Quote by Socrates which emphasizes the importance of self-contemplation and careful thought in living a good life— entailing the importance of philosopher as a whole.
"An unexamined life is not worth living"
(In historical analysis) A method employed by G.W.F Hegel in which history can be viewed as a continual progression in stages. Every period is a thesis, which reacts and conflicts with its opposition, the antithesis— resulting in the best of the two, which is the synthesis.
Hegel's Dialectic