Ways of Doing

Philosophy
“my way”
Lesson Objectives
• Distinguish opinion from truth
• Analyze situations that show
the difference
Methods of Philosophizing

Philosophizing is to think or
express oneself in a philosophical
manner.
Phenomenology: On Consciousness

• Phenomenology was founded by

Edmund Husserl.
• It comes form the Greek word
phainómenon meaning
“appearance.”
• It is the scientific study of the
essential structures of
consciousness.
• A method for finding and guaranteeing
the truth that focuses on careful
inspection and description of
phenomena or appearances.
• Husserl’s phenomenology is the
thesis that consciousness is
intentional.
 Every act of consciousness is
directed at some object or another,
possibly a material object or an
“ideal” object.
 Phenomenology uncovers the
essential structures of experience
and its objects.
Husserl’s Phenomenological
Standpoint
 The first and best known is the
epoche or “suspension” that
“brackets” all questions of truth or
reality and simply describes the
contents of consciousness.
 The second reduction eliminates
the merely empirical contents of
consciousness and focuses instead
on the essential features, the
meanings of consciousness.
 Phenomenologists are interested in the
contents of consciousness, not on things
of the natural world as such.
Existentialism: On Freedom
Existentialism is not primarily a
philosophical method nor is it exactly a set of
doctrines but more of an outlook or attitude
supported by diverse doctrines centered on
certain common themes.
 the human condition or the relation of the
individual to the world;
 the human response to that condition;
 being, especially the difference between the
being of person (which is “existence”) and the
being of other kinds of things;
 human freedom;
 the significance (and unavoidability) of
choice and decision in the absence of
certainty and;
 the concreteness and subjectivity of life
as lived, against abstractions.
• Existentialism emphasizes the
importance of free individual choice,
regardless of the power of other
people to influence and coerce our
desires, beliefs, and decisions.
• To be human, to be conscious, is to be
free to imagine, free to choose, and
responsible for one’s life.
AUTHENTICITY
Postmodernism: On Cultures

• Postmodernism is not a philosophy.

• “Postmodernism” has come into vogue as the

name for a rather diffuse family of ideas and
trends that in significant respect rejects,
challenges, or aims to supersede “modernity”.
• Postmodernists believe that humanity should
come at truth beyond the rational to the non-
rational elements of human nature, including
the spiritual.
• Beyond exalting individual analysis of truth,
postmodernists adhere to a relational, holistic
approach.
Analytic Tradition
• For analytic philosophers, language
cannot objectively describe truth because
language is socially conditioned.
 Analytic philosophy is the conviction that to
some significant degree, philosophical
problems, puzzles, and errors are rooted in
language and can be solved or avoided by a
sound understanding of language and careful
attention to its workings.