Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Plato’s The Republic Overview              The Republic is an ancient Greek dialogue by the philosopher, Plato, about Socrates’ discourses about justice, ethics, and creating an ideal society.   Book 1 Main Ideas: Socrates asks for a definition of justice and is met with three responses: 1. To give each what is owed to them. 2. To give to each what is appropriate to them. 3. Whatever is advantageous to the strongest. Socrates then attempts to refute each definition. For the first definition, Socrates gives an example of returning a weapon to a madman. While a knife may be what was owed to them before they lost their sanity, returning it to them may cause them to harm someone. For the second definition, if doing good to one’s friends is appropriate and acting the reverse to one’s enemies is harmful, but harming someone tends to make one unjust, then harming one’s enemies will lead to justice creating injustice. Furthermore...

Notes on the Basics of Hume     David Hume (1711-1776) was an influential figure in the Scottish Enlightenment who challenged traditional and rationalist notions of knowledge, causality, and ethics. Empiricists like Hume say that sensory experience is the only source of knowledge. Unlike rationalists who believe in innate ideas or truths accessible through reason alone, Hume argues that our ideas are derived from impressions, which are the immediate data of sensation or reflection. There are two categories of human knowledge for Hume, matters of fact and relations of ideas. Relations of ideas can be known prior to experience such as mathematical principles like the Pythagorean theorem. Matters of facts, on the other hand, are only known through experience or a posteriori. Furthermore, both of these types of knowledge are derived from either sensation or reflection. Therefore, Hume’s revolutionary move was to say that all of our ideas are derived from these impressions. If you ...

Notes on the Basics of Schopenhauer         Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher known for his pessimistic philosophy which is exemplified in his work, “The World as Will and Representation”. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics drew from Kant whom I have several blog posts on but in short, Kant believed in the Noumena-Phenomena distinction or Transcendental Idealism. Phenomena are the things we perceive through our senses which are shaped by our mind’s faculties and subject to the categories of understanding. Noumena, on the other hand, are things as they are in themselves that are beyond human perception and conceptualization. Kant argues that while we can understand phenomena through empirical investigation, we can never truly know noumena because they lie beyond the limits of human cognition. Thus, noumena represent the realm of things as they exist independently of our perception that are ultimately unknowable. Since we can never know the t...

Notes on the Basics of Gnosticism            The Gnostics were an early sect of Christianity who had various beliefs, scriptures, and branches. Gnosticism derived its name from the Greek word “gnosis” which means knowledge. However, for them it signified an intimate, experiential knowledge of the divine and esoteric wisdom that are necessary for liberation. The Gnostics generally claimed that this world was created by a false God known as the Demiurge who is the god of the Hebrew Bible and is an evil vengeful god. While the Demiurge claims to be the highest God, in reality it is a creation of an emanation or Aeon, Sophia, of the absolutely transcendent real God, the Monad or the Neoplatonic idea of the One. Human beings are essentially divine spirits trapped within physical bodies and through proper gnosis or knowledge, one can achieve spiritual enlightenment and salvation and this gnosis was taught by Jesus Christ. In their cosmology, Aeon...

Ibn Taymiyya on Ethics Utilitarianism as propagated by Jeremy Bentham states that an act is good when it produces the maximum happiness and benefit for the greatest number. Then religious utilitarianism would be maximizing happiness and benefit for this world and for the hereafter. For Ibn Taymiyya, worship of God alone is the ultimate purpose of humanity and leads to the ultimate happiness and benefit of humans. Therefore, Ibn Taymiyya thought in terms of religious utilitarianism. He applied this framework to understand God’s actions as well. Furthermore, in his ethics, “The Book and justice are inseparable. The Book explicates the law. The law is justice, and justice is the law. Anyone who judges with justice judges with the law… The entire revealed law is justice’ (MF 35:366). Law and human benefit are equivalent such that there is no benefit outside of the law as benefit is the law and law is benefit. “The principle overall is that the law never neglects a benefit. Indeed, God – Ex...

Omnipotence and Omniscience Paradoxes Refuted     Paradoxes are apparent and not actual contradictory realities such that there is an argument to sustain it without contradicting the laws of logic. Therefore, the conclusion of a paradox seems illogical on the surface but the argument to back it is logical. One of the most famous paradoxes presented in the theological realm is the Paradox of the Stone also known as the Omnipotence Paradox. Paradoxes in theology attempt to create tension in their conception of God through an apparent contradiction such that it could be possible to accept absurd conclusions about the divine nature. This may be with positing there is a contradiction within God’s omnipotence or it could be with multiple attributes or an attribute with our human experience of the world such as the Problem of Evil existing with God being infinitely merciful (this is refuted in a different blog post). In this case, the Paradox of the Stone is an example of the first t...

Ramadan: A Brief Overview     Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic lunar calendar and Muslims around the world are commanded and obligated by God in the Quran and by the Prophet Muhammad in his Sunnah (his normative ethos and actions) to fast i.e. abstaining from food and drink during it as it is one of the five pillars of Islam alongside the declaration of faith, praying, charity, and performing pilgrimage to Mecca if one is able to.   “Islam is built upon five: to worship Allah and to disbelieve in what is worshiped besides him, to establish prayer, to give charity, to perform Hajj pilgrimage to the house, and to fast the month of Ramadan.” (Bukhari 8)   “Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was revealed as a guide for humanity with clear proofs of guidance and the decisive authority. So whoever is present this month, let them fast. But whoever is ill or on a journey, then ˹let them fast˺ an equal number of days ˹after Ramadan˺. Allah intends ease for you, ...