Philosophy is a little hard to defineIt is therefore also very difficult to classify the different types of philosophical currents that exist. However, this is not an impossible task
Then you can see the main types of philosophy and ways of thinking who have driven the work of most of mankind’s most important thinking minds. While they do not serve to fully describe the work of philosophers, it does help in understanding the ideas from which they sprang and the goals they pursued.
Type of philosophy according to its content
Philosophy can be classified according to its branchesIn other words, from the problems and the problems that arise from them. In this sense, the classification is as follows:
1. Moral philosophy
Moral philosophy is responsible for examining the problem of what is good and bad and what kinds of actions are considered good and bad, and also thinks about whether there is a single criterion to determine the latter. It is a type of philosophy which is concerned with the direction that our lives should take, either in a general sense (without taking into account the personal characteristics of each one), or more individual (by differentiating according to different types of individuals). .
For example, Aristotle was one of the most prominent moral philosophers and opposed the moral relativism of the Sophists because he believed that good and evil were absolute principles.
Ontology is the branch of philosophy responsible for answering this question: What is there and how does it do it? For example, Plato believed that the material world of what we can see, touch and feel exists only as the shadow of another world above it, the world of ideas.
It is not a branch of philosophy so preoccupied with morality as with what, beyond good and evil, exists and shapes reality.
Epistemology is the part of philosophy that deals with the examination of what it is what we can know and how we can find out. It is a very important branch of philosophy for the philosophy of science, which is responsible for checking that claims based on scientific research are founded, in addition to the methods of scientific research itself.
However, the philosophy of science is not the same as epistemology. In fact, the former focuses on knowledge systems that emerge through scientific methods, while epistemology deals with all the processes of knowledge extraction in general, whether scientific or not.
Types of philosophy according to their description of reality
Different classes of philosophers think about reality differently: some are monists and others are dualists.
1. Dualist philosophy
In dualistic philosophy, the ideas and consciousness of the human mind is part of an independent reality of the material world. In other words, there is a spiritual plane that does not depend on the physical world. The philosopher René Descartes is an example of a dualistic philosopher, although he also recognized a third fundamental substance: that of the divine.
2. Philosophy of many
Monist philosophers believe that all reality is made up of a single substance. Thomas Hobbes, for example, embodied this idea by claiming that man is a machine, which implies that even mental processes are the result of the interaction between the components of that which is material.
However, monism does not need to be materialistic and consider that everything that exists is matter. For example, George Berkeley was an idealistic monist because he believed that everything is made up of the divided component of the Christian god.
In all cases, in practice, monism has been it has historically been closely linked to mechanism and materialism in general, because it is a way to monopolize questions that many thinkers considered too abstract and insignificant to be pure metaphysics.
Types of philosophy according to their emphasis on ideas
Historically, some philosophers have emphasized the importance of the above ideas which influences the material context, While another showed the opposite trend.
1. Idealistic philosophy
Idealistic philosophers believe that changes in what happens in reality appear in people’s minds, And then extend by modifying the hardware environment. PlatoFor example, he was an idealistic philosopher because he believed that intellectual tasks arose in the mind “remembering” the absolute truths that are found in the world of ideas.
2. Materialist philosophy
Materialist philosophy emphasizes the role of material context and aim to explain the emergence of new ways of thinking. For example, Karl Marx asserted that ideas are the product of the historical context in which they arose and the stage of technological advancement associated with it, and BF Skinner accused the idealists of being “creationists of the mind.” thinking. That ideas are born spontaneously regardless of the context in which individuals live.
Types of philosophy according to their conception of knowledge
Historically, two blogs have stood out in this context: rationalist and empiricist philosophers.
1. Rationalist philosophy
For rationalists, there are truths which the human mind accesses regardless of what it can learn about the environment, and these truths allow knowledge to be built from them. Again, René Descartes is an example in this case, because he believed that we have acquired knowledge “Remember” the truths which are already embedded in our minds and are taken for granted, like mathematical truths.
One way or another, researchers like Steven Pinker or Noam Chomsky, who have championed the idea that humans have innate ways of handling information that comes to us from the outside, could be considered the defenders of some of these ideas.
2. Empiricist philosophy
empiricists they denied the existence of innate knowledge in humans, and they believed that everything we know about the world stems from the interaction with our environment. David Hume was a radical empiricist, arguing that there are no absolute truths beyond the beliefs and assumptions we have learned that are useful to us without necessarily being true.