Five Branches of Philosophy to Help You in Your Daily Life
Philosophy is a broad and diverse discipline. Indeed, it’s not called the mother of all sciences for nothing. In fact, it encompasses a wide range of issues and concerns. In this article, we’ll investigate five branches of philosophy and their benefits.
There are five specialties in the philosophical field that reflect on issues such as morality, reasoning, society, and its forms of organization, science, and art. All of them involve the kinds of situations that you might experience on a daily basis. So, we’re going to explore some of the benefits that philosophy can bring to your life.
Branches of philosophy
There are many different branches of philosophy. In this article, we’re going to focus on five that can be beneficial in thinking about your reality and the relationships you have with others.
1. Ethics
In your everyday life, you sometimes find yourself with ethical dilemmas that require making decisions and adopting certain positions. For example, the kind of problem you might face when you want to respect someone’s autonomy for making their own decisions in life but also feel you have a duty to protect their well-being, especially when it’s clear that their choices will be detrimental to themselves or others. In other words, the issue of protecting individual freedom versus the need to guarantee collective security.
Faced with this kind of ethical dilemma, your actions may lean toward one decision or another. Ethics can help you to reflect and analyze and guide you toward what’s best and most convenient for you and those around you. The word ethics comes from the Greek ethos which means character or behavior. Therefore, this branch of philosophy is responsible for reflecting on the formation of the character of people, institutions, and society.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies human behavior and its actions. It suggests what’s good or bad in established norms or rules. Indeed, one of its fundamental questions consists of differentiating between good and evil.
What lies behind this differentiation is society and, with it, our social institutions. Because we live in a community, we must have common rules that allow us to enjoy good relationships with others and have lives that are as successful as possible. In this sense, ethics seeks the formation of good citizens.
2. Logic
This branch of the philosophical discipline is in charge of the study of reasoning and argumentation. As such, it studies the methods and principles that help to discern a good and correct argument from a bad or incorrect one.
Logic allows you to effectively evaluate and communicate your ideas and opinions. After all, knowing how to argue or give reasons that support your judgments is extremely important if you want to transmit them convincingly. In effect, logic increases your ability to argue.
An argument is made up of one or more sentences comprised of premises and conclusions. This branch of philosophy determines if reasoning is valid or not. To determine the validity of an argument, it’s enough that its premises are all true. Therefore, the conclusion must also be true.
Logic is a branch of philosophy that gives you tools to analyze arguments, determine their validity, develop logical thinking, and argue effectively.
3. Politics
Political philosophy involves the study and analysis of the forms of government of a society, its organization, and its origins. Indeed, for centuries, philosophical reflection has dealt with issues that concern us as members of a community organized under various political forms.
Concepts such as equality, freedom, social justice, authority, legitimization, and laws are the objects of thought for this branch of philosophy.
The study and analysis of political phenomena can benefit you because it allows you to reflect on the different forms of government in existence. Therefore, you’re not only able to criticize them but also look for their weaknesses and think of other alternatives that could help you aspire to a better life.
As a matter of fact, political and social organizations have a significant impact on your daily life, so reviewing them from a philosophical point of view can be useful.
4. Epistemology
Science and philosophy are closely linked. So much so that, in recent years, a new branch of philosophy related to artificial intelligence has been created. This is because scientific discoveries are extremely important for improving our quality of life as a species. Ranging from cures for diseases to methods for replacing non-renewable resources that are in danger of extinction, they’ve all been achieved by science.
However, this accelerated progress gives cause for reflection. And this is precisely where epistemology comes in since it deals with the problem of scientific knowledge. It’s a critical activity that questions the claims, conditions of production, and the validation of science.
This branch of philosophy is really important because it warns us of the b side of scientific progress, the side that not everyone notices. Because, while science has given us and continues to give us a great deal, it’s also guilty of encroaching on nature with serious consequences. Therefore, if we want to rethink science and its contributions to our lives, we need to reflect on its methods, conditions, and practices.
5. Aesthetics
Aesthetics is the philosophical reflection on art, its works, and beauty itself. It deals with issues such as artistic perception, human creativity, and aesthetic enjoyment. The latter is important if you want to think about the way you perceive objects and how they make you feel.
But, how can you benefit from this branch of philosophy? In everyday life, you consume artistic products in their various manifestations. For instance, music, dance, cinema, literature, photography, and architecture.
By philosophically reflecting on the various art forms, you can analyze and debate what you consume. Aesthetics doesn’t only involve the emotions that they provoke in you but also means considering the intellectual dimension of art. In other words, it means thinking about its social sense or what the artistic work is trying to tell you.
Furthermore, you can transfer these thoughts from aesthetics to your everyday life. For example, you can ask yourself why you consider a specific object or person to be beautiful. And, what dictates your individual tastes? Or, why do you like certain series or movies or works of art that others don’t?
Finally, philosophy seeks to understand the world and ourselves through reasoning and critical analysis. As you can see, its influence extends to many areas of human knowledge. In effect, it helps you to reflect and rethink what you tend to normalize and don’t usually question.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Leyva-Vázquez, M. (2018). Inteligencia Artificial: retos, perspectivas y papel de la Neutrosofía. Dilemas contemporáneos, educación, política y valores. Inteligencia Artificial: retos, perspectivas y papel de la Neutrosofía (Conferencia Magistral). | Dilemas contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores (dilemascontemporaneoseducacionpoliticayvalores.com)