Major Branches of Philosophy

AFTER ADDRESSING THE QUESTION “WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY ”, LET US NOW

DISCUSS THE MAJOR BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY.
Philosophy as a whole is traditionally split into four or
more main branches.
• Metaphysics
• Epistemology
• Ethics
• Aesthetics
• Logic
• Political Philosophy
• History of Philosophy
Metaphysics

• Metaphysics (Greek: μετά (meta)="after," φυσικά (phisiká)="those on

nature," derived from the arrangement of Aristotle's works) is the
branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the nature of the most
fundamental aspects of the world. It addresses questions such as: What
is the nature of reality? Does the world exist outside the mind? What is
the nature of objects, events, places? Is free will possible in a world
governed by causal laws? A central part of metaphysics is ontology,
which is the study of being. The questions being include a wide range
of issues concerning existence such as: the meaning of being or what it
means "to be" for each of such beings as physical entities, souls, God,
values, numbers, time, space, imaginary objects, and others; what is
real existence; why something exists rather than nothing.
Five central questions of metaphysics
• Mind and matter. Human beings seem to have properties of two quite different kinds: physical properties, such as size and weight,
and mental properties, such as feeling pain or believing that Earth is the capital of Outer space, which imply sensation or thought. Among the
properties of persons, mental properties have seemed to many philosophers to be in some sense deeper or more fundamental than physical
properties.

• Objects and their properties. In looking at objects in the world, one often will look for things they "have something
in common." For instance, one might say that two apples have the same color, that two people are the same height, or that two
books have the same number of chapters. But what is the nature of these entities that are "had in common?"

• Identity and change. Puzzles associated with change go back at least to Heraclitus' famous claim that "you cannot step
into the same river twice." As it is most often interpreted, Heraclitus is making the following point: Given that there is a single river
from moment to moment, since there is a change in what is present (for instance, a difference in water levels), it cannot be strictly
true that the same river is there.

• The structure of space and time. Space and time are some of the most basic features of the world. Things have
spatiotemporal locations, and spatiotemporal relations to each other. One of the longest -standing metaphysical questions about
space and time concerns how to understand the relationship between locations and relations.

• Determinism and free will. One of the most recurrent philosophical problems comes from the apparent
incompatibility of two independently plausible claims:

• Everything in the universe is causally determined, and what is causally determined could not have been otherwise.

• In acting in the universe, one sometimes could have done otherwise than he actually did.
Epistemology

• Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature, origin,
and scope of knowledge and belief. The term "epistemology" is based on the Greek words,
"ἐπιστήμη or episteme" (knowledge or science) and "λόγος or logos" (account/explanation);

• Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it
relates to similar notions, such as truth, belief, and justification. In other words, epistemology
primarily addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge," "How is knowledge acquired,"
and "What do people know?“

• The problem or question of a definition of knowledge turns out to be much more difficult and
controversial than it may initially seem to be. Nearly every philosopher who has written on the
topic has a somewhat different understanding and definition—whether this is tacit or explicit—
of knowledge. Broadly speaking, at least until the middle of the nineteenth century, most
philosophers and philosophical approaches to the question can be divided into empiricists (or
empiricism) and rationalists (or rationalism), with empiricists stressing the role of sensory
perception of the sensible world in acquiring knowledge, and rationalists stressing the role of
mind and its activity; the rise of pragmatism, phenomenology, and some other twentieth century
philosophical schools and movements may mean that no longer can all theories of knowledge
can be subsumed under rationalism and empiricism.
Ethics

• Ethics (from the Greek ethos – custom) in the sense of systems of value and codes of
conduct have always been part of human societies. In this sense, there are many
distinct ethical traditions corresponding to the major cultural and religious divisions,
such as Indian, Buddhist, Chinese, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic ethics. These are the
ethical traditions that most people in the world look to for guidance about how to live.
• Philosophical ethics (also called moral philosophy) is divided into three main areas of
inquiry: (1) meta-ethics, (2) normative ethics, and (3) applied ethics. Meta-ethics is a
study of the nature of ethics. A meta-ethical study is concerned, amongst other things,
with the meaning and objectivity of moral judgments, and how human beings can
come to know what is right. By contrast, normative ethics aims to provide specific
guidelines for action by constructing theories about what makes actions right and
wrong. Applied ethics involves the application of normative ethical theories to
particular issues of practical concern such as abortion, euthanasia, criminal
punishment, and the treatment of animals.
Aesthetics

• Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is a branch of philosophy; it is a species of value

theory or axiology, which is the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values,
sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. Aesthetics is closely associated
with the philosophy of art. Aesthetics is sometimes called "the study of beauty," but
that proposed definition will not do because some of the things that many people
find aesthetically valuable or good or noteworthy are not beautiful in any usual or
reasonable sense of the term "beautiful.“
• Today the word "aesthetics" may mean (1) the study of all the aesthetic phenomena,
(2) the study of the perception of such phenomena, (3), the study of art or what is
considered to be artistically worthwhile or notable or "good," as a specific expression
of what is perceived as being aesthetic.
Logic
• Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean
thought or reason or an explanation or a justification or key) is most often said to be the study of criteria for the
evaluation of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers.
However the subject is grounded, the task of the logician is the same: to advance an account of valid and
fallacious inference, in order to allow one to distinguish good from bad arguments.

• Informal logic is the study of arguments expressed in natural language. The study of fallacies—often known as
informal fallacies—is an especially important branch of informal logic.

• An inference possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as a particular application of a wholly
abstract rule, that is a rule that is not about any particular thing or property. (For example: The argument "If
John was strangled he died. John was strangled. Therefore John died." is an example, in English, of the argument
form or rule, "If P then Q. P is true. Therefore Q is true." Moreover, this is a valid argument form, known since
the Middle Ages as Modus Ponens.) We will see later that on many definitions of logic, logical inference and
inference with purely formal content are the same thing. This does not render the notion of informal logic
vacuous, since one may wish to investigate logic without committing to a particular formal analysis.

• Formal logic is the field of study in which we are concerned with the form or structure of the inferences rather
than the content.

• Symbolic logic is the study of abstractions, expressed in symbols, that capture the formal features of logical
inference.
Political Philosophy
• Political philosophy is a branch of philosophy, which studies fundamental questions
concerning the social or communal life of human beings. It inquires into a broad range of
questions, such as the principles of justification of power and social governance, the grounds
for the justification of certain forms of government, social obligations of constituting members
of a society, and the origin, nature, and purpose of government. Interlaced concepts examined
include freedom, control, liberty, suppression, censorship, liberty, rights, property, utopia,
human natures, war, peace, justice, and others.

• Political philosophy deals with both spiritual and material aspects of social life, it is
intertwined with other branches of philosophy including Ethics, philosophy of law, philosophy
of economics, and other fields of study such as sociology, sociology of knowledge, economics,
anthropology, religion, aesthetics, theories of human natures, critique of cultures, and even
metaphysics in some cases.

• Political philosophy focuses on the normative aspects of political theories and practices.
History of Philosophy
• Philosophy of history or historiosophy is an area of philosophy concerning the
eventual significance of human history. It examines the origin, goal, pattern, unit,
determining factors for the process, and the overall nature of history. Furthermore, it
speculates as to a possible teleological end to its development—that is, it asks if there
is a design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the processes of human history.

• A philosophy of history begins with a few basic assumptions. First, it determines what
is the proper unit for the study of the human past, whether it is the individual
subject, polis ("city"), sovereign territory, a civilization, culture, or the whole of the
human species. It then inquires whether there are any broad patterns that can be
discerned through a study of history, what factors, if any, determine the course of
history, and the goal, destination, and driving force of history.
 Conclusion
Philosophy is the systematic study of ideas and issues, a reasoned
pursuit of fundamental truths, a quest for a comprehensive
understanding of the world, a study of principles of conduct, and
much more. Philosophical training enhances our problem-solving
capacities, our abilities to understand and express ideas, and our
persuasive powers. It also develops understanding and enjoyment of
things whose absence impoverishes many lives: such things as
aesthetic experience, communication with many different kinds of
people, lively discussion of current issues, the discerning
observation of human behavior. In these and other ways the study
of philosophy contributes immeasurably in both academic and
other pursuits.