Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[1][2] It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth) by being critical and generally systematic and by its reliance on rational argument.[3] It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.

The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek philosophia (φιλοσοφία), which literally means "love of wisdom".[4][5][6]

Branches of philosophy

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The branches of philosophy and their sub-branches that are used in contemporary philosophy are as follows.

Aesthetics

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Aesthetics is study of the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and the creation of personal kinds of truth.

Epistemology

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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the source, nature and validity of knowledge.

Ethics

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Ethics – study of value and morality.

  • Applied ethics – philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment. It is thus the attempts to use philosophical methods to identify the morally correct course of action in various fields of human life.
  • Discourse ethics – discovery of ethical principles through the study of language.
  • Normative ethics – study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act.
  • Metaethics – branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments.

Logic

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Logic – the systematic study of the form of valid inference and reasoning.

Also regarded as the separate formal science.

Metaphysics

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Metaphysics – concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it.

  • Ontology – philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.
  • Philosophy of space and time – branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time.

Other

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Philosophic traditions by region

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Regional variations of philosophy.

Africana philosophy

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Eastern philosophy

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Middle Eastern Philosophy

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Indigenous American philosophy

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Western philosophy

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History of philosophy

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The history of philosophy in specific contexts of time and space.

Timeline of philosophy

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Ancient and classical philosophy

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Philosophies during ancient history.

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy

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Classical Chinese philosophy

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Classical Indian philosophy

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Medieval and post-classical philosophy

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Philosophies during post-classical history.

Christian philosophy

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Islamic philosophy

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Jewish philosophy

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Post-classical Chinese philosophy

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Modern and contemporary philosophy

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Philosophies during the modern era.

Renaissance philosophy

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Early modern philosophy

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Contemporary philosophy

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Philosophical schools of thought

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Philosophical schools of thought not tied to particular historic contexts.

Aesthetical movements

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Epistemological stances

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Ethical theories

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Logical systems

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Metaphysical stances

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Political philosophies

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Philosophy of language theories and stances

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Philosophy of mind theories and stances

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Philosophy of religion stances

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Philosophy of science theories and stances

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Philosophical literature

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Reference works

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  • Encyclopedia of Philosophy – one of the major English encyclopedias of philosophy. The second edition, edited by Donald M. Borchert, was published in ten volumes in 2006 by Thomson Gale. Volumes 1–9 contain alphabetically ordered articles.
  • Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – a free online encyclopedia on philosophical topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995. The current general editors are James Fieser (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin) and Bradley Dowden (Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Sacramento). The staff also includes numerous area editors as well as volunteers.
  • Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy – encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Edward Craig that was first published by Routledge in 1998 (ISBN 978-0415073103). Originally published in both 10 volumes of print and as a CD-ROM, in 2002 it was made available online on a subscription basis. The online version is regularly updated with new articles and revisions to existing articles. It has 1,300 contributors providing over 2,000 scholarly articles.
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely-accessible to internet users. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from many academic institutions worldwide.
  • Chan, Wing-tsit (1963). A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01964-2.
  • Huang, Siu-chi (1999). Essentials of Neo-Confucianism: Eight Major Philosophers of the Song and Ming Periods. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-26449-8.
  • The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy by Robert Audi
  • Edwards, Paul, ed. (1967). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Macmillan & Free Press.; in 1996, a ninth supplemental volume appeared that updated the classic 1967 encyclopedia.
  • International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
  • Directory of American Philosophers. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
  • Routledge History of Philosophy (10 vols.) edited by John Marenbon
  • History of Philosophy (9 vols.) by Frederick Copleston
  • A History of Western Philosophy (5 vols.) by W.T. Jones
  • History of Italian Philosophy (2 vols.) by Eugenio Garin. Translated from Italian and Edited by Giorgio Pinton. Introduction by Leon Pompa.
  • Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies (8 vols.), edited by Karl H. Potter et al. (first 6 volumes out of print)
  • Indian Philosophy (2 vols.) by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
  • A History of Indian Philosophy (5 vols.) by Surendranath Dasgupta
  • History of Chinese Philosophy (2 vols.) by Fung Yu-lan, Derk Bodde
  • Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming by Chan, Wing-tsit
  • Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy edited by Antonio S. Cua
  • Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion by Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Kurt Friedrichs
  • Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy by Brian Carr, Indira Mahalingam
  • A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English by John A. Grimes
  • History of Islamic Philosophy edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Oliver Leaman
  • History of Jewish Philosophy edited by Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman
  • A History of Russian Philosophy: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries by Valerii Aleksandrovich Kuvakin
  • Ayer, A.J. et al., Ed. (1994) A Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations. Blackwell Reference Oxford. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd.
  • Blackburn, S., Ed. (1996)The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
  • Mautner, T., Ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. London, Penguin Books.
  • Runes, D., ed. (1942). The Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc. Archived from the original on 24 April 2014. Retrieved 27 December 2005.
  • Angeles, P.A., Ed. (1992). The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, Harper Perennial.
  • Bunnin, Nicholas; Tsui-James, Eric, eds. (15 April 2008). The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-99787-1.
  • Hoffman, Eric, Ed. (1997) Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
  • Popkin, R.H. (1999). The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York, Columbia University Press.
  • Bullock, Alan, and Oliver Stallybrass, jt. eds. The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. xix, 684 p. N.B.: First published in England under the title, "The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought". ISBN 978-0-06-010578-5
  • Reese, W.L. Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980. iv, 644 p. ISBN 978-0-391-00688-1

General introduction

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Topical introductions

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African

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Eastern

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Islamic

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Historical introductions

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General

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Ancient

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  • Knight, Kelvin. Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre. ISBN 978-0-7456-1977-4

Medieval

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Modern and contemporary

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  • The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill by Edwin Arthur
  • European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche by Monroe Beardsley
  • Existentialism: Basic Writings (Second Edition) by Charles Guignon, Derk Pereboom
  • Curley, Edwin, A Spinoza Reader, Princeton, 1994, ISBN 978-0-691-00067-1
  • Bullock, Alan, R.B. Woodings, and John Cumming, eds. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thinkers, in series, Fontana Original[s]. Hammersmith, Eng.: Fontana Press, 1992 [1983]. xxv, 867 p. ISBN 978-0-00-636965-3
  • Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-415-26763-2
  • Contemporary Analytic Philosophy: Core Readings by James Baillie
  • Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Thinking it Through  – An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-513458-2
  • Critchley, Simon. Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN 978-0-19-285359-2

Lists

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide (Blackwell Publishing, 1999), p. 1: "Philosophy is a study of problems which are ultimate, abstract and very general. These problems are concerned with the nature of existence, knowledge, morality, reason and human purpose."
  2. ^ A.C. Grayling, Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1: "The aim of philosophical inquiry is to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth, reason, reality, meaning, mind, and value."
  3. ^ Anthony Quinton, in T. Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 666: "Philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved."
  4. ^ Philosophia, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus
  5. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary
  6. ^ The definition of philosophy is: "1.orig., love of, or the search for, wisdom or knowledge 2.theory or logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe". Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College ed.).
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