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Prof Piper: Heidegger: Retrieving the Meaning of Philosophy
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Heidegger: Retrieving the Meaning of Philosophy. Is it because our own historical period has witnessed such a rush of scientific progress and technological innovation that we have outrun the need for the quiet contemplation of what may seem to be the arcane musings of philosophy? Perhaps we have simply run out of time: is it too late to hope to discover any meaning. In the rush of “civilization”? Respectively, are essentially akin in their reliance on the premise of historical progression. In the terms i...
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Prof Piper: Can We Prove that God Exists?: Anselm's Proslogion
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Can We Prove that God Exists? In principle at least, no single subject would seem more important to metaphysics than the existence of God. Metaphysics is the study of reality, of being, of what is and why what is is. The way it is, and if God exists, then that would, in the profoundest conceivable way, influence everything about the subject. From God, and nothing that happens could be. Our skeptical inclinations might lead us to assert, however, precisely because of the transcendent. But even if true, do...
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Prof Piper: The Art of Civil Disobedience: The Life and Death of Socrates
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The Art of Civil Disobedience: The Life and Death of Socrates. However, in the case of the Apology. We are surely observing a fairly faithful portrait of Socrates the man, in his own words. We can be fairly sure of this because, at least as to the Apology. What Socrates refers to as “the examined life,” which for Socrates is the only kind of life “worth living” for a human being. How Did Socrates’s Trial Come About? In the repulsion of the Persians,. It was the denizens of this fearful, materialistic com...
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Prof Piper: The Empiricism of David Hume: The End of Metaphysics?
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The Empiricism of David Hume: The End of Metaphysics? Introduction: The Roots of Empiricism. We have considered various metaphysical and epistemological theories, various views, that is, of reality and of knowledge. We started with Plato’s idealism, according to which reality is limited to the realm of Being. Wherein are found eternal forms or ideas and mathematical truths, and knowledge consists of the “recollection” of these unchanging truths through the unchanging human soul. We confronted the perhaps...
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Prof Piper: Does Social Inequality Make Sense?: Rousseau Responds to Hobbes
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Does Social Inequality Make Sense? Rousseau Responds to Hobbes. We have seen Thomas Hobbes construct a coherent account of human nature and society from a materialist metaphysics. According to this view, because all that exists is material, so human beings are purely material and their actions and motivations can be accounted for and predicted according to physical laws. 8220;goodness” or “justice,” and therefore that our complaint of “unfairness” is essentially meaningless. Things are as they are becaus...
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Prof Piper: How do we Know that 2+3=5?: Plato’s Theories of Recollection and Reality
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How do we Know that 2 3=5? Plato’s Theories of Recollection and Reality. What Do We Mean. By “2 3=5”? Let us first agree that it is true. That 2 3=5, and let’s be clear that when we use these five terms, “2,” “ ,” “3,” “=” and “5,” we are not. Referring to the symbols as here written or the words that identify those symbols; rather, we are referring to the things themselves. A “sign,” such as a symbol or a word, is a sign for. Something else: there’s no reality in the sign itself. Admittedly, we can.
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Prof Piper: Descartes’s Meditations I and II: What Do You Know―Is Anything Real or is Everything Doubtful?
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Descartes’s Meditations I and II: What Do You Know―Is Anything Real or is Everything Doubtful? Introduction: An Epistemological Project. At the beginning of the First Meditation of René Descartes (1596-1650), he observes that he had never yet taken the time to consider whether there was any good reason. To believe that what he thought. Was in fact reliable knowledge. Or not; therefore, he lacks any firm foundation. On which to establish the reliability of what he thought. Anything with absolute certainty.
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Prof Piper: Erich Fromm Responds to Freud: The Art of Loving
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Erich Fromm Responds to Freud: The Art of Loving. As Rousseau offers an eloquent and spirited response to Hobbes, so Erich Fromm (1900-1980) does to Freud. And whereas Hobbes and Rousseau were concerned primarily with political institutions and economic inequality and thus focused on the physical development of human nature and society, Freud and Fromm are primarily psychologists and thus concerned with the human psyche and how the psyche forms and adapts itself to society. And Fromm, taking his point of...
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Prof Piper: Distinguishing Science, Philosophy and Religion
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Distinguishing Science, Philosophy and Religion. The practices of science, philosophy and religion constitute a big part of what makes human beings different from other animals: no other animal that we know of engages in a systematic effort to understand the physical universe, or to ask why we are here, or to contemplate and appeal to an ultimate Being. It is also important to note that there is no intrinsic. Conflict among them, indeed they should properly be mutually supportive. By the term “scie...
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Prof Piper: Freud: Psyche and Civilization
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Freud: Psyche and Civilization. In our consideration of Hobbes and Rousseau, we have seen radically competing views of human nature and the origins and basis of human society. Based on his materialist metaphysics, Hobbes views human beings as mechanical machines whose actions are determined, as they can only be in a purely material universe, by material motives and constraints. Thus is justified Hobbes’s social contract theory, with which he props up his commitment to the Divine Right of Kings, whe...
