At a Philosophy Lecture Series address, adjunct professor Michael Arts taught that all branches of philosophy are vital to a happy life.
PROVO, Utah (December 3, 2014)—Over the course of the winter semester, the Philosophy Lecture Series has taught students majoring in philosophy and those interested in doing so a wide range of topics. Speaker Michael Arts of the philosophy department described his objectives as twofold: to explain why everyone should study philosophy and to demonstrate how all of the branches of philosophy are connected.
Concerning the first objective, Arts introduced three premises. His first stated that life is conditional – in order to survive, human beings must make deliberate efforts to survive. Second, humans can only survive by using their minds. And third, the human mind is not infallible – the ultimate penalty for being wrong is death; the penultimate is unhappiness.
“Therefore, we need criteria of correctness in what we believe and what to do,” Arts said. “And all humans must ask the questions ‘Which values should I pursue?’ and ‘How can I secure for myself a happy life?’” A study of philosophy helps answer these questions.
With that, Arts moved to the five major branches of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, politics and aesthetics.
“What is the right thing to do is not immediately observable,” Arts said, speaking first of ethics. “We have to ask ‘How can we know for sure that something is true?’ and, therefore, ethics must be preceded by epistemology.”
Epistemology questions how knowledge is obtained or truth is verified. These questions in turn create more questions about what knowledge can be considered the most basic – questions that are answered in the study of metaphysics.
Arts described metaphysics as the most fundamental branch of philosophy. “The principle that guides metaphysics is the law of identity,” Arts said. Metaphysics helps explain the nature of existence. Any particular thing is the same with itself and different from another, or A is A, but A is not not A.
With these three branches providing the base, Arts introduced the final two branches: politics and aesthetics. He described politics as the study of how to cooperate with other human beings. Politics is dependent upon ethics. Aesthetics, however, required more explanation.
Because human beings cannot interact with the past or future in the present, we must rely on our abilities to remember and to imagine. However, both of these abilities are limited. “Therefore, human beings have this urge to make objects for the purpose of enhancing thought,” Arts said. Whether we experience these creations through touch, taste, sight, etc., they can trigger conceptual responses that Arts referred to as “aesthetic experiences.”
Arts ended his presentation by tying his objectives back together, saying, “Therefore, as we study philosophy, we should study metaphysics and remember that metaphysics ought to be done with the purpose of providing the foundation for our epistemology; that the value of our epistemological conclusions are ultimately tested in our ethics; and that our ethical conclusions are then applied to both politics and aesthetics. This is what all human beings need in order to make the decisions necessary for a happy and meaningful existence.”
—Samuel Wright (B.A. American Studies ’16)Image courtesy of Alan Miller