Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

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 Immanuel Kant Part 3              Kant attempted to synthesize the rationalist and empiricist tradition since he said that Hume had awakened him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Rationalists like Descartes and Ibn Sina believed that there is knowledge that is a priori or independent from experience while empiricists like Hume and Locke believed the opposite. Hume was critical of the traditional notion of causation, arguing that the belief in cause and effect is not grounded in reason but rather in custom and habit. He argued that there is nothing in the cause that necessitates the occurrence of the effect. In other words, one may observe one event regularly following another, but there is no inherent connection or power in the cause that compels the effect to happen. A rationalist, on the other hand, would contend that knowledge of cause and effect is, at least in part, a priori—that is, independent of experience. Kant argued that...

Notes on Hegel “The truth is the whole”. Dialectics takes on several different meanings in philosophy. To look at a proposition, a thesis, and to find its opposite, the antithesis, and to combine them to create a brand-new idea, the synthesis, therefore the truth is the whole, a dynamic thinking. Truth is not found in isolated concepts or ideas, but in their relation to the broader context of reality or history. This idea is central to his dialectical method. Hegel's philosophy, dialectics is a method for resolving contradictions or oppositions within concepts or ideas. It involves a process of negation, sublation, and synthesis that is more complex than just finding an opposite and combining it. Hegel believed that history is the story of the geist , or absolute spirit, moving through human affairs and what mankind has become made aware of. The spirit is not a passive observer of history, but an active force that drives its development for self-expression or freedom. Hegel being...