PHI 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Rationality, Foundationalism
Document Summary
William james: philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. A philosopher is a blind man, looking for a black cat, in a dark room, in which there is no cat. There might be as many definitions of philosophy as there are (cid:1) practitioners. (cid:1) Rather than assuming things are true we ask why, being brave enough to have an opinion of your own. (cid:1) Philos = loving + sophia = wisdom : literally love of wisdom (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) Socrates believed that wisdom is: being aware of your own ignorance. Philosophy is the attempt to rationally formulate understand and answer fundamental questions (cid:1) Philosophy is an activity, not primarily a body of questions and answers (cid:1) Should we be asking a different question? (cid:1) What is an argument? supporting suggested answers with reasons (cid:1) that show the answers to be good ones.
