Bachelor in Philosophy - Year one

Metaphysics is the study of things in their ultimate causes. As such, the specialty of metaphysics is that it seeks the final explanation or the ultimate causes of things precisely in so far as they are, in so far as they exist, or in so far as they are real. Aristotle called it “First Philosophy” or “Theology” since it leads to the first principle or the ultimate explanation of all things.

All human knowledge begins with sense experience but can terminate sometimes in the senses, or in the imagination or in the intellect alone . Accordingly we can distinguish between three levels of scientific knowledge corresponding to the three degrees of abstraction from matter which can be made by the intellect in its examination of reality.

Ethics, like philosophy, is in search of principles and universals. Ethics reflects on a particular human experience, namely, the experience of the good or of being good, and sets it in the context of the whole. One could also say that ethics reflects on what is the good and how our lives are oriented towards it

Social Political Philosophy tries to establish norms, rules and ideal standards, how the social and political life should be. Different from Political science, which is the art of governing people. Political science is the Discipline and the practice of assuring the “common good” of a certain society. Different from Social Sciences, which are descriptive disciplines, they try to know the social facts and to find connections (cause/effect) among them as sociology does.

Philosophy of religion is also known as philosophical theology or philosophy of God. Other names include natural theology and theodicy.

The validation of the course is done at the end of the second part

Philosophy of religion is also known as philosophical theology or philosophy of God. Other names include natural theology and theodicy.

The course aims to show that from its origins through the early efforts made by the earliest oriental thinkers before the era of ancient great Greek thinkers, philosophy has remained a branch of knowledge concerned with fundamental questions concerning existence, human values, language, knowledge and many other matters.

Etymologically, the word "Epistemology", from the Greek, means the science of knowledge. It is an investigation of knowledge and its problems. A synonymous term is Criteriology which again from the Greek means to distinguish or judge. It deals with testin g knowledge to find truth or detect error.

The modern epistemological problem has two aspects:

1. The opposition between science and philosophy or truth and error. We find this basically in Descartes and Kant.

2. The conflict between science and science or that of contemporary and classic physics and not an opposition between science and philosophy or truth and error.

According to Gibelin in his Foreword to Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Freedom is the central theme of Kant’s philosophy. This course will introduce to Kant, centering on Freedom as a key concept to understand his philosophy, in the three spheres defined by the critical project: Metaphysics, Moral and Aesthetics.

Essential Questions of Philosophy in this very complete course about Being and Knowing.