Types of philosophy and main currents of thought

Philosophy is a difficult thing to define, so it is also very difficult to classify the different types of Philosophical currents that exist. However, it is not an impossible task

Then you can see the main types of philosophy and ways of thinking that have promoted the work of a good part of the most important thinking minds of humanity. Although they do not serve to fully describe the work of the philosophers, it helps to understand the ideas from which they started and the purposes they pursued.

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Types of philosophy according to their content

Philosophy can be classified according to its branches, that is, from the issues and problems that are addressed from it. In this sense, the classification looks like this:

1. Moral philosophy

Moral philosophy is charged with examining the problem of What is the good and the evil and what types of actions are considered good and bad, and also reflects on whether there is a single criterion to determine the latter. It is a type of philosophy concerned with the direction that our lives should have, either in a general sense (without take into account the personal characteristics of each) or more individual (differentiating according to different types of individuals).

For example, Aristotle was one of the foremost philosophers of morality, and he opposed the moral relativism of the sophists because he did believe that good and evil were absolute principles.

2. Ontology

Ontology is the branch of philosophy that is responsible for answering this question: What exists and in what way does it do it? For example, Plato believed that the material world of what we can see, touch, and hear exists only as a shadow of another world above this, the world of ideas.

It is not a branch of philosophy so concerned with morality as with what, beyond good and evil, exists and shapes reality.

3. Epistemology

Epistemology is the part of philosophy that is responsible for examining what is what we can get to know and in what way we can know it. It is a very important philosophical branch for the philosophy of science, which is responsible for controlling that the statements that are based on scientific inquiry are grounded, in addition to scientific inquiry methods in Yes.

However, the philosophy of science is not the same as epistemology. In fact, the first focuses on knowledge systems that appear through scientific methods, while epistemology deals with all knowledge extraction processes in general, be they scientific or not.

Types of philosophy according to their description of reality

Different kinds of philosophers think of reality differently: some are monistic and some are dualistic.

1. Dualistic philosophy

In dualistic philosophy it is considered that the ideas and consciousness of the human mind is part of an independent reality of the material world. That is, there is a spiritual plane that does not depend on the physical world. The philosopher René Descartes is an example of a dualistic philosopher, although he also recognized a third fundamental substance: that of the divine.

2. Monistic philosophy

Monistic philosophers believe that all reality is composed of a single substance. Thomas Hobbes, for example, embodied this idea through the claim that man is a machine, implying that even mental processes are the fruit of the interaction between components of what is material.

However, monism does not have to be materialistic and consider that everything that exists is matter. For example, George Berkeley was an idealistic monist, since he considered everything to be made up of the divided component of the Christian god.

In any case, in practice monism has been has historically been closely related to mechanism and materialism in general, since it is a way of cornering issues that many thinkers believed to be too abstract and not very significant for being pure metaphysics.

Types of philosophy according to their emphasis on ideas

Historically, certain philosophers have emphasized the importance of ideas above what the material context influences, while others have shown the opposite trend.

1. Idealistic philosophy

Idealistic philosophers believe that changes in what happens in reality appear in people's minds, and then spread by modifying the material environment. PlatoFor example, he was an idealistic philosopher, because he believed that intellectual endeavors appeared in the mind by "remembering" absolute truths found in the world of ideas.

2. Materialistic philosophy

The materialistic philosophy emphasizes the role of material context and objective when explaining the appearance of new ways of thinking. For example, Karl Marx stated that ideas are the fruit of the historical context in which they are born and the stage of technological progress associated with it, and B. F. Skinner accused idealists of being "creationists of the mind" by thinking that ideas are born spontaneously regardless of the context in which individuals live.

Types of philosophy according to their conception of knowledge

Historically, in this context, two blocks have stood out: rationalist philosophers and empiricist philosophers.

1. Rationalist philosophy

For rationalists, there are truths that the human mind accesses regardless of what it can learn about the environment, and these truths allow knowledge to be built from they. Again, René Descartes is an example in this case, because he believed that we gain knowledge "remembering" truths that are already incorporated in our mind and that are self-evident, like mathematical truths.

In a sense, researchers like Steven Pinker or Noam chomsky, who have defended the idea that human beings have innate ways of managing information that comes to us from outside, could be seen as defenders of some of these ideas.

2. Empiricist philosophy

The empiricists denied the existence of innate knowledge in humans, and they believed that everything we know about the world arises through interaction with our environment. David Hume was a radical empiricist, arguing that there are no absolute truths beyond the beliefs and assumptions that we have learned and that are useful to us without necessarily being certain.