BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY

Aesthetics

- Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with
the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study
of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.
- Aesthetics (also spelled sthetics and esthetics) is a branch of philosophy dealing with
the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more
scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes
called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics
as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature.
- More specific aesthetic theory, often with practical implications, relating to a particular branch
of the arts is divided into areas of aesthetics such as art theory, literary theory, film
theory and music theory. An example from art theory is aesthetic theory as a set of principles
underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement: such as the Cubist aesthetic.

Epistemology

- Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the
nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.

- is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge and is also
referred to as "theory of knowledge". It questions what knowledge is and how it can be
acquired, and the extent to which knowledge pertinent to any given subject or entity can be
acquired. Much of the debate in this field has focused on the philosophical analysis of the
nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief,
and justification. The term "epistemology" was introduced by the Scottish philosopher James
Frederick Ferrier (18081864).

- Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of
knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary
and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what
are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as:
How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified?
Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly,
epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge
in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems
that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure
and the limits of knowledge and justification.

Ethics

- Ethics, sometimes known as philosophical ethics, ethical theory, moral theory, and
moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and
recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct, often addressing disputes of moral
diversity. The term comes from the Greek word ethikos from ethos, which
means "custom, habit". The superfield within philosophy known as axiology includes both
ethics and aesthetics and is unified by each sub-branch's concern with value. Philosophical
ethics investigates what is the best way for humans to live, and what kinds of actions are
right or wrong in particular circumstances. Ethics may be divided into three major areas of
study:
Meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how
their truth values (if any) may be determined
Normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action
Applied ethics draws upon ethical theory in order to ask what a person is obligated to do in some
very specific situation, or within some particular domain of action (such as business)
Related fields are moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Ethics seeks to resolve
questions dealing with human moralityconcepts such as good and evil, right and
wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime.

Logic
- is the use and study of validreasoning. The study of logic features most prominently in the
subjects of philosophy,mathematics, and computer science.
- Logic was studied in several ancient civilizations, including India, China, Persia andGreece.
In the West, logic was established as a formal discipline by Aristotle, who gave it a
fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic was part of the classical trivium, which
also included grammar and rhetoric. Logic was further extended by Al-Farabi who
categorized it into two separate groups (idea and proof). Later, Avicenna revived the study of
logic and developed relationship between temporalis and the implication. In the East, logic
was developed by Buddhists and Jains.
- Logic is often divided into three parts: inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, and
deductive reasoning.

Metaphysics

- is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality,
being, and the world.
is a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and
the world that encompasses it, although the term is not easily defined Traditionally, metaphysics
attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:
1. What is ultimately there?
2. What is it like?
A person who studies metaphysics is called a metaphysicist or a metaphysician. The metaphysician
attempts to clarify the fundamental notions by which people understand the world,
e.g., existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. A
central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and
how they relate to each other. Another central branch of metaphysics is cosmology, the study of the
origin, fundamental structure, nature, and dynamics of the universe. Some include Epistemology as
another central focus of metaphysics but this can be questioned.
Prior to the modern history of science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics
known as natural philosophy. Originally, the term "science" (Latin scientia) simply meant
"knowledge". The scientific method, however, transformed natural philosophy into
an empirical activity deriving from experiment unlike the rest of philosophy. By the end of the 18th
century, it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter,
metaphysics denoted philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.
Some philosophers of science, such as the neo-positivists, say that natural science rejects the study
of metaphysics, while other philosophers of science strongly disagree.

Political Philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of topics such as politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and
the enforcement of a legal codeby authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what, if
anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what
form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate
government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever. In a vernacular sense, the
term "political philosophy" often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude,
about politics that does not necessarily belong to the technical discipline of philosophy. In short,
political philosophy is the activity, as with all philosophy, whereby the conceptual apparatus behind
such concepts as aforementioned are analyzed, in their history, intent, evolution and the like.
[1]

Political philosophy is considered by some to be a sub-discipline of political science; however, the
name generally attributed to this form of political enquiry is political theory, a discipline which has a
closer methodology to the theoretical fields in the social sciences - like economic theory - than to
philosophical argumentation - like that of moral philosophy or aesthetics.

Social Philosophy

- is the study of questions about social behavior and interpretations of society and social
institutions in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations.
[1]
Social philosophers
place new emphasis on understanding the social contexts for political, legal, moral, and
cultural questions, and to the development of novel theoretical frameworks, from social
ontology to care ethics to cosmopolitan theories of democracy, human rights, gender equity
and global justice.
[2]

- is the philosophical study of questions about social behavior (typically, of humans). Social
philosophy addresses a range of subjects, from individual meanings to legitimacy of laws,
from the social contract to criteria for revolution, from the functions of everyday actions to the
effects of science on culture, from changes in human demographics to the collective order of
a wasp's nest. The field has a number of sub-disciplines.