Nội dung báo cáo Xemina khoa học bằng tiếng Anh - Tháng 3 năm 2018

Scienific discussion by English - Department of Political Theory

Indicartor: Master. Ngo Minh Thuong

Topic

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy is a broad field of knowledge in which the definition of knowledge itself is one of the subjects investigated. It spans the nature of the universe, the mind, and the body; the relationships between all three, and between people. Philosophy is a field of inquiry – the pursuit of wisdom; the predecessor and complement of science, developing the issues which underlie science and pondering those questions which are beyond the scope of science.

The essence of philosophy is the study and development of fundamental ideas and methods that are not adequately addressed in specialized empirical disciplines, such as physics or history. As such, philosophy provides the foundations upon which all belief structures and fields of knowledge are built. It is responsible for the definitions of, and the approaches used to develop the theories of, such diverse fields as religion, language, science, law, psychology, mathematics, and politics. It also examines and develops its own structure and procedures, and when it does so is called metaphilosophy: the philosophy of philosophy.

Philosophy has a rich literary heritage, including the writings and teachings of profound thinkers from many cultures throughout history. Philosophers seek to understand the principles that underlie all knowledge and being. For this purpose, they develop methods of thinking, including logic, introspection, and meditation. Applying these methods, they investigate the most fundamental questions, such as "What is the nature of the universe?" (metaphysics), "What do we know, and how do we know it?" (epistemology), "What is the difference between good and evil?" (ethics), "What is beauty?" (aesthetics), and "What is the meaning of life?" (teleology).

What is philosophy, is itself a philosophical question. This is a clue to the nature of philosophy. It is very general in scope; so general that it, perhaps uniquely among the disciplines, includes itself in its scope. What is clear is that philosophy is, in some sense, thinking about thinking.In the analytic tradition of Europe and its subsequent transplanting to the Americas, philosophy has reinvented itself with a new set of techniques that would be out of place in the world of the ancient Greeks, where philosophy started. It centres on logic and conceptual analysis. Topics at its centre include the theory of knowledge, ethics, the nature of language, and the nature of mind.

Earlier traditions of philosophy placed more emphasis on the study of the arts and science of life: a general theory and a commendation of way of life. In this sense, philosophy is concerned with the practical bits of how to live rather than a theoretical attempt to understand. This legacy was derived from some of the earliest philosophers known to us: the Sophists, who were the teachers of rhetoric, grammar and science of the ancient world. Though somewhat akin to sages these Sophists played an important role in the development of philosophy.

In the subsequent analytic tradition that developed after the Sophists, philosophy became a subject you could pursue for purely abstract and metaphysical reasons. In the Sophist tradition, philosophy is a body of knowledge to be mastered with which you could gain power or reward. It is possible to exaggerate these differences for when philosophy is not dogma each tradition pays some homage to the other.

In the Western world, at one time the term philosophy covered all disciplines. Over time, as the corpus of human knowledge grew, various disciplines emerged, each with their own methodologies and domains of study, and these disciplines became to a large extent autonomous. For example, if you go into a public library that uses the Dewey decimal classification system, you will find that psychology books have a classmark starting with 150 - right in the middle of the philosophy section. This is because at the time the system was created, in the latter half of the 19th century, psychology was only just beginning to emerge as a distinct discipline. Another example is the term natural philosophy, which was once used to mean science, or more particularly physics. By this view, what is called philosophy at any time in history are those provinces of human knowledge which have not yet come of age, which not yet developed their own autonomous character and status.

These independent disciplines do have their own philosophies; so there is a philosophy of science, a philosophy of mathematics, a philosophy of psychology, and so on. When studying in these areas, one looks at methodological issues or examines some of the core concepts of the discipline, as well as various ethical issues.

There are domains which definitely belong in a philosophy department. Epistemology is concerned with  how do I know what I know? Ontology with  what is real?, Ethics with  how should one conduct oneself? Logic is concerned with proper reasoning. Many other disciplines exist within philosophy.

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Scientific discussion by English - Department of Political Theory

Indicator: Master. Truong Vu Long

Topic

A final level of education was philosophical study 

The study of philosophy is distinctly Greek, but was undertaken by many Roman students. To study philosophy, a student would have to go to a center of philosophy where philosophers taught, usually abroad in Greece. An understanding of a philosophical school of thought could have done much to add to Cicero's vaunted knowledge of 'that which is great', but could only be pursued by the very wealthiest of Rome's elite. Romans regarded philosophical education as distinctly Greek, and instead focused their efforts on building schools of law and rhetoric.

The single most important philosophy in Rome was Stoicism, which originated in Hellenistic Greece. The contents of the philosophy were particularly amenable to the Roman world view, especially since the Stoic insistence on acceptance of all situations, including adverse ones, seemed to reproduce what the Romans considered their crowning achievement: virtus, or "manliness," or "toughness." The centerpiece of Stoic philosophy was the concept of the logos. The universe is ordered by God and this order is the logos , which means "rational order" or "meaning" of the universe.

After the death of Zeno of Citium, the Stoic school was headed by Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and its teachings were carried to Rome in 155 by Diogenes of Babylon. There its tenets were made popu­lar by Panaetius, friend of the great general Scipio Aemilianus, and by Posidonius, who was a friend of Pompey (see your textbook if you don't recognize these names); Cicero drew heavily on the works of both.

Stoic ideas appear in the greatest work of Roman literature, Vergil's Aeneid , and later the philosophy was adopted by Seneca (c. 1-65 A.D.), Lucan (39-65; poet and associate of the Emperor Nero), Epictetus (c. 55-135; see passages from the Enchiridion ), and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (born 121, Emperor 161-180; author of the Meditations ). Stoicism is perhaps the most significant philosophical school in the Roman Empire, and much of our contemporary views and popular mythologies about Romans are derived from Stoic principles.

This is actually not a philosophical school, but one could generally group a number of Hellenistic schools under this rubric, including the Second Academy (Hellenistic Platonists), the Second Sophistic, the Cynics, the Skeptics, and so on, and, for the most part, the Stoics as well. What is important for our purposes is that all these schools to some degree or another espoused the idea that human beings cannot arrive at certain truth about anything (not all denied certainty was impossible, only that human beings could never be certain).

Basically, life became this great guessing game: the lot of humanity is to be cast into a twilight world in which all that we know and think is either false or occupies some middle position between the false and the true (which was called the "probable," or "readily believable,"). This comes to dominate thought in late antiquity; the first philosophical attacks Christianity levels against the thought of antiquity are refutations of skeptical principles. Of all the philosophies of antiquity, this is perhaps the most familiar to you: the skeptic principle of doubting everything became, in the modern era, the fundamental basis of the scientific method.

Logos is a linguistic term; it refers particularly to the meanings of words. The meaning of an individual word all by itself is semeion ; the meaning of an individual word in the context of a sentence is logos . For the Stoic, the meaning (logos ) of each individual life, action, and situation is determined by its place in a larger whole, which is, of course, the whole course of history. In this view, history becomes a kind of speech by God.

It is progressive, it is teleological, it is meaningful (but only when it's all done: a sentence has no meaning until it's completed). Each and every event, physical and historical, has a place within this larger rational order or meaning. Since the order is rational and meaningful, that means nothing happens which is not part of some larger reason or good (Christianity will adopt this idea wholesale; check out Boethius' Christianization of this concept).

For the Roman, this larger good came to mean the spread of law across the face of the planet; this law was to be spread through Roman imperial conquest and was called the Law of Nations. The grand design for history, then, was the spread of the Roman Empire and her laws.

Therefore, each and every function a Roman undertook for the state, whether as a farmer or foot-soldier, a philosopher or emperor, partook of this larger purpose or meaning of world history. The central values of this complex are officium, or "duty," which is the responsibility to perform the functions into which you have been born to the best of your abilities, and pietas, or "respect for authority." Each station in life has its duties; every situation in life has duties or obligations incumbent on it.

The primary duty one owes is to the state; since God is using the Roman state to further law and civilization, performing one's duty is a religious act. The principal being to which one owes respect is, of course, God; since God is working out his will in history by using the Roman state and Roman officials (derived from officium ), the respect one shows for Roman authorities is also a respect shown for God and the logos.

Key words: Stoicism, manliness, Platonists, Boethius, Cicero./.

Scientific discussion by English - Department of Political Theory

Indicator: Master. Nguyen Nam Hung

Topic:

BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 

1        Buddhist philosophy is the branch of Eastern philosophy based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (563 BCE – 483 BCE). Early sources say that the Buddha was born in Lumbini (now in Nepal), and that the died aged around 80 in Kushinagar (India). He lived in or around the fifth century BCE, according to recent scholarship. Buddhist philosophy deals extensively with problems in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics, and epistemology. Buddhism spread throughout the Indian sub subcontinent in the five centuries following the Buddha’s passing, and thence into Central, Southeast and East Asia and Eastern Europe over the next two millennia. Eventually, Indian Buddhism became virtually extinct, except in parts of Nepal. Most scholars classify present-day Buddhism into the same three traditions, though describing or naming them differently.

2        Some have asserted that Buddhism as a whole is a practical philosophy rather than a religion. It is “practical” in that is has a specific method of application known as the Noble Eightfold Path (from which notions of divinity are entirely absent) of a particular set of philosophical principles (the Four Noble Truths). According to the scriptures, the Buddha taught that in life there exists sorrow / suffering which is caused by desire and it can be cured (ceased) by following the Noble Eightfold Path regarding suffering state what is its nature, its cause, its cessation, and the way leading to its cessation. The Noble Eightfold Path is, in the Buddhist tradition as taught by the Buddha Sakyamuni, considered to be the way that leads to the end of suffering. It forms the fourth part of the Four Noble Truths, which are among the most fundamental Buddhist teachings.

3        The Noble Eightfold Path is essentially a practical guide of ethics, mental rehabilitation and mind deconditioning, and is believed, by Buddhists, to result in an end to dukkha, or suffering, which is a goal that has informed and driven part of the Buddhist tradition. Proponents of such a view may argue that (a) Buddhism is non-theistic i.e., it has no special use for the existence or non-existence of a gods or atheistic and (b) religions necessarily involve some form of theism. Others might contest either part of such an argument. Other arguments for Buddhism as philosophy may claim that Buddhism does not have doctrines in the same sense as other religions; the Buddha himself taught that a person should accept a teaching only if one’s own experience verifies it and it is praised by the wise. According to the scriptures, in his lifetime, the Buddha had not answered several philosophical questions. On issues like whether the world is eternal or non-eternal, finite or infinite, unity or separation of the body and the self, complete inexistence of a person after nirvana and then death, nature of the Supreme Truth, etc, the Buddha had remained silent. The scriptures explain that such question distract from practical activity for realizing enlightenment.

4        A third perspective might take the position that Buddhism can be practiced either as a religion or as a philosophy. A similar distinction is often made with reference to Taoism. Lama Anagorika Govinda expressed it as follows in the book ‘A Living Buddhism for the West’. It should also be noted that in the South and East Asian cultures in which Buddhism achieved most of its development, the distinction between philosophy and religion is somewhat unclear and possibly quite spurious, so this may be a semantic problem arising in the West alone.

5        Buddhism was established in the northern regions of India and Central Asia, and kingdoms with Buddhist rulers such as Menander I and Kaniska. Under the rule of tolerant or even sympathetic Greco-Bactrian and Iranian Achaemenid kings, Buddhism flourished. The rulers of the Kushana Empire adopted Buddhism, and it continued to thrive in the region under the rule of the Turk-Shahis. Buddhists were briefly persecuted under the Zoroastrian priest-king Kirder. Syncretism between Zoroastrianism and Buddhism had resulted in the rise of a ‘Buddha-Mazada’ divinity, which Kirder treated as heresy.

6        The philosophical outlook of Earliest Buddhism was primarily negative, in the sense that it focused on what doctrines to reject more than on what doctrines  to accept. This dimension has been preserved by the Madhyamaka school. It includes critical rejections of all views, which is form of philosophy, but it is reluctant to posit its own. Only knowledge that is useful in achieving enlightenment is valued. The cycle of philosophical upheavals that in part drove the diversification of Buddhism into its many school and sects only began once Buddhists began attempting to make explicit the implicit philosophy of the Buddha and the early Suttas.

7        After the death of the Buddha, attempts were made to gather his teachings and transmit them in a commonly agreed form, first orally, then also in writing (The Tripitaka). In addition to collecting the Buddha’s speeches and rules for monastic life (Vinaya), monks soon undertook to condense what they considered the essential elements of Buddhist doctrine into lists of categories, provided with extensive commentary. This process took shape from about the 2^nd century BCE to probably the 2^nd century CE. Very soon after, additional teachings began to be added to the list of important Buddhist texts. Many of these altered and refined Buddhist philosophy.