🤔 PHILOSOPHY — DEEP TOPIC NOTES (Western · Indian · Socio-Political · Religion)

Use with ../07-Philosophy.md (syllabus + booklist).

⚠️ Condensed working notes. Read Thilly, Datta & Chatterjee, Masih for depth. Precision of terminology is everything in this optional.

═══ PAPER I(A) — WESTERN PHILOSOPHY ═══

PLATO & ARISTOTLE

Plato — Theory of Ideas/Forms: Forms are eternal, unchanging, non-material archetypes; particulars participate in them. The Divided Line (imagination → belief → thought → knowledge) and the Allegory of the Cave. Knowledge = recollection (anamnesis).
Aristotle's critique: the "third man" argument; Forms cannot be separate from particulars.
Aristotle — Substance: the union of form and matter (hylomorphism). Primary substance = the individual concrete thing.
Four causes: material (what it is made of), formal (its essence/pattern), efficient (what brought it about), final (its purpose/telos).
Actuality and potentiality: change is the actualisation of potential. The Unmoved Mover — pure actuality, the final cause of all motion.

RATIONALISM

DESCARTES: method of systematic doubt → "Cogito ergo sum" as the indubitable first truth. Criteria: clear and distinct ideas. Proofs of God (trademark/causal, ontological). Substance dualism — res cogitans (mind, thinking, unextended) vs res extensa (matter, extended, unthinking). Mind–body interaction problem (pineal gland — unsatisfactory).
SPINOZA: one substance — Deus sive Natura (God or Nature); pantheism/monism. Infinite attributes, of which we know thought and extension. Parallelism — mind and body are two attributes of the same substance, not interacting. Strict determinism; freedom = understanding necessity. Conatus.
LEIBNIZ: monads — simple, indivisible, windowless immaterial substances, each mirroring the universe. Pre-established harmony (God synchronises them). Principle of sufficient reason; identity of indiscernibles; "the best of all possible worlds"; truths of reason vs truths of fact.

EMPIRICISM

LOCKE: mind as tabula rasa; all knowledge from experience (sensation and reflection). Simple vs complex ideas. Primary qualities (solidity, extension, figure, motion, number — in the object) vs secondary (colour, taste, sound — in the perceiver). Substance as "something I know not what." Representative realism.
BERKELEY: rejects the primary/secondary distinction — all qualities are ideas. "Esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived). Subjective idealism; denies material substance; God's continuous perception guarantees the world's continuity.
HUME: impressions (vivid) and ideas (faint copies). Relations of ideas vs matters of fact (Hume's fork). Causation = constant conjunction + temporal priority + contiguity → the necessary connection is a habit of mind, not observed. Problem of induction. The self is only a "bundle of perceptions." Scepticism about substance, causality, self and God.

KANT

The critical synthesis of rationalism and empiricism: "Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind."
Synthetic a priori judgments — how are they possible? (mathematics, natural science). His Copernican revolution: objects conform to our knowledge, not knowledge to objects.
Space and time as a priori forms of sensibility; twelve categories of understanding (quantity, quality, relation, modality) applied to the manifold of intuition.
Phenomena (things as they appear — knowable) vs noumena (things-in-themselves — unknowable).
Ideas of Reason: soul, world, God — regulative, not constitutive. Antinomies (four contradictions when reason exceeds experience — e.g., the world has/has not a beginning). Critique of the proofs of God: ontological (existence is not a predicate), cosmological and physico-theological all reduce to the ontological.
Ethics: the good will; categorical imperative — (i) universalisability: "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law"; (ii) humanity as an end in itself; (iii) kingdom of ends. Duty over inclination; autonomy.

HEGEL

Dialectical method: thesis → antithesis → synthesis (Aufhebung — sublation). Truth is the whole; the rational is the real.
Absolute Idealism — reality is Spirit (Geist) unfolding itself in history towards self-consciousness and freedom.
Master–slave dialectic; the state as the actualisation of ethical life (Sittlichkeit).

MOORE, RUSSELL, EARLY WITTGENSTEIN

G.E. MOORE: defence of common sense ("here is one hand"); refutation of idealism (the act of awareness is distinct from its object); naturalistic fallacy in ethics.
RUSSELL: logical atomism — the world consists of atomic facts, mirrored by atomic propositions. Theory of descriptions — "the present King of France is bald" analysed to avoid non-existent entities; incomplete symbols. Logical constructions — "wherever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities."
EARLY WITTGENSTEIN (Tractatus): picture theory of meaning — a proposition is a logical picture of a possible state of affairs; shared logical form. Saying vs showing — logical form can be shown but not said. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

LOGICAL POSITIVISM

Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap, Ayer).
Verification principle: a statement is meaningful only if it is analytic (true by definition) or empirically verifiable. Strong vs weak verifiability.
Rejection of metaphysics, theology and normative ethics as literally meaningless (emotivism — ethical statements express attitudes).
Necessary propositions are analytic/tautological (the linguistic theory of the a priori).
Critiques: the verification principle is itself unverifiable; Popper's falsifiability as an alternative demarcation.

LATER WITTGENSTEIN (Philosophical Investigations)

Meaning is use — "don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use."
Language games and forms of life; family resemblance (no single essence shared by all games).
Private language argument — a language intelligible only to one person is impossible, because rule-following requires public criteria of correctness. Undermines Cartesian privacy.

PHENOMENOLOGY & EXISTENTIALISM

HUSSERL: "to the things themselves." Epoché/bracketing — suspend the natural attitude and existence-claims. Eidetic reduction — grasp essences. Intentionality — consciousness is always consciousness of something. Avoidance of psychologism (logic is not reducible to psychology).
KIERKEGAARD: "subjectivity is truth"; three stages of life — aesthetic, ethical, religious; the leap of faith; anxiety and despair.
SARTRE: "existence precedes essence" — man first exists, then defines himself. Being-in-itself (en-soi) vs being-for-itself (pour-soi). Radical freedom — "man is condemned to be free"; bad faith (mauvaise foi) — fleeing freedom; anguish; responsibility for all mankind.
HEIDEGGER: Dasein (being-there); being-in-the-world; thrownness (Geworfenheit), fallenness, care (Sorge); authentic existence through being-towards-death; temporality as the horizon of Being.

QUINE & STRAWSON

QUINE — "Two Dogmas of Empiricism": rejects (i) the analytic/synthetic distinction and (ii) reductionism. Holism — statements face the tribunal of experience as a corporate body ("web of belief"). Indeterminacy of translation; ontological relativity.
STRAWSON — Individuals: descriptive metaphysics. Basic particulars are material bodies and persons. The concept of a person is logically primitive — both M-predicates (material) and P-predicates (mental) apply to the same entity, which dissolves the Cartesian dualism problem.

═══ PAPER I(B) — INDIAN PHILOSOPHY ═══

Orthodox (āstika — accept Vedic authority) vs Heterodox (nāstika)

CARVAKA / LOKAYATA (materialist)

Pramana: only perception (pratyaksa) is valid. Rejects inference (cannot establish vyapti/universal concomitance) and testimony.
Four elements (earth, water, fire, air — no ether); consciousness emerges from matter (like intoxicating power from fermented ingredients).
No soul, no God, no afterlife, no karma, no moksha. Hedonism — pleasure is the only end. "As long as you live, live joyfully."
Significance: rigorous critique that forced other schools to sharpen their epistemology.

JAINISM

Reality: jiva (soul, conscious) and ajiva (matter, dharma, adharma, akasha, kala). Souls are infinite in number, each potentially omniscient.
Anekantavada — reality is many-sided; syadvada — the seven-fold conditional predication (saptabhangi): syad asti, syad nasti, syad asti-nasti, syad avaktavya, and three combinations. Illustrated by the blind men and the elephant.
Nayavada — standpoints of judgment.
Bondage: karmic matter adheres to the soul through passions. Liberation: samvara (stopping influx) + nirjara (shedding) → kevala jnana.
Triratna: right faith, right knowledge, right conduct. Five vows; extreme ahimsa.

BUDDHISM

Four Noble Truths; Eightfold Path; the Middle Path.
Pratityasamutpada (dependent origination) — "this being, that becomes"; the twelve-linked chain (dvadasa nidana). The central doctrine from which the rest follow.
Ksanikavada (momentariness) — whatever is real is momentary; sattva = arthakriyakaritva (capacity for causal efficiency).
Nairatmyavada (no-soul) — the self is a bundle of five skandhas (rupa, vedana, samjna, samskara, vijnana); the chariot analogy.
Four schools: Vaibhasika (direct realism), Sautrantika (representative realism/inference of external world), Yogacara/Vijnanavada (subjective idealism — only consciousness is real), Madhyamika/Sunyavada (Nagarjuna — sunyata, emptiness of svabhava; two truths — samvrti and paramartha).

NYAYA-VAISESIKA

Nyaya — four pramanas: perception (pratyaksa), inference (anumana), comparison (upamana), testimony (sabda).
Inference: five-membered syllogism — pratijna (thesis), hetu (reason), udaharana (example with vyapti), upanaya (application), nigamana (conclusion). Vyapti (invariable concomitance) is the heart of inference; hetvabhasa (fallacies).
Theory of error: anyathakhyati — misapprehension of one thing as another (both real, wrongly related).
Vaisesika — seven categories (padartha): dravya (substance, 9), guna (quality, 24), karma (action), samanya (universality), visesa (particularity), samavaya (inherence), abhava (non-existence).
Atomism — the world is built from eternal atoms (paramanu) of earth, water, fire, air; dyads (dvyanuka) and triads (tryanuka). Creation and dissolution under God's will guided by adrsta.
Proofs for God: causal, from adrsta, from the authority of scripture. God is the efficient (not material) cause.
Self and liberation: the self is a substance; liberation (apavarga) is the absolute cessation of pain — not bliss.
Causation: asatkaryavada/arambhavada — the effect is a new beginning, not pre-existent in the cause.

SAMKHYA

Dualism of Purusa (pure consciousness, plural, inactive, witness) and Prakrti (unconscious, one, active, the material principle).
Three gunas: sattva (light, illumination), rajas (activity), tamas (inertia). Prakrti is their equilibrium; evolution begins when it is disturbed by Purusa's proximity.
Evolution (23 tattvas): Prakrti → mahat/buddhi → ahamkara → manas + 5 jnanendriyas + 5 karmendriyas + 5 tanmatras → 5 mahabhutas.
Satkaryavada — the effect pre-exists in the cause (parinamavada — real transformation).
Bondage = non-discrimination between Purusa and Prakrti; liberation (kaivalya) = discriminative knowledge (viveka-jnana). Samkhya is atheistic (nirisvara).

YOGA (Patanjali)

Adds Isvara (a special Purusa, untouched by afflictions) to Samkhya metaphysics.
Citta and its vrttis; "yogah cittavrttinirodhah" — yoga is the restraint of mental modifications.
Five klesas: avidya, asmita, raga, dvesa, abhinivesa.
Astanga yoga: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi (samprajnata and asamprajnata).
Kaivalya — isolation of Purusa.

MIMAMSA

Focus on dharma and the authority of the Vedas; the Veda is eternal and authorless (apauruseya).
Theory of knowledge: svatah pramanya — knowledge is intrinsically valid; invalidity is extrinsic.
Six pramanas (Bhatta school): perception, inference, comparison, testimony, postulation (arthapatti) and non-apprehension (anupalabdhi).
Theories of error: Kumarila Bhatta — viparitakhyati; Prabhakara — akhyati (non-discrimination between two cognitions).

VEDANTA

Advaita (Shankara): Brahman alone is real; the world is mithya (neither real nor unreal); jiva is identical with Brahman ("tat tvam asi", "aham brahmasmi"). Maya/avidya — the power of concealment and projection. Adhyasa (superimposition) — the snake-rope analogy. Vivartavada — apparent (not real) transformation. Two Brahmans — nirguna (without attributes, the higher truth) and saguna/Isvara (with attributes, empirical level). Moksha = realisation of identity, attainable in life (jivanmukti).
Visistadvaita (Ramanuja): qualified non-dualism. Brahman (Isvara) is real and qualified by cit (souls) and acit (matter) as His body. Rejects maya as illusion — the world is real. Aprthaksiddhi — inseparable existence of attributes from substance. Bhakti and prapatti (surrender) lead to moksha; the soul retains individuality.
Dvaita (Madhva): unqualified dualism; pancavidhabheda — five real distinctions: God–soul, God–matter, soul–soul, soul–matter, matter–matter. God (Vishnu) is independent (svatantra); all else dependent (paratantra). Moksha through bhakti and God's grace; gradation among liberated souls.

SRI AUROBINDO

Involution — the Absolute (Sachchidananda) descends and conceals itself in matter; evolution — matter ascends back through life, mind, supermind to the Divine.
Integral Yoga — synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works; transformation of the whole being, not escape from the world.
The gnostic being and the divine life on earth; human unity.

═══ PAPER II(A) — SOCIO-POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ═══

Social & political ideals — Equality (formal/substantive; equality of opportunity vs outcome; affirmative action), Justice (Plato, Aristotle, utilitarian, Rawls — veil of ignorance, difference principle; Nozick — entitlement; Sen — capabilities), Liberty (Berlin's negative and positive liberty; Mill's harm principle).
Sovereignty: Austin (determinate superior, indivisible, absolute — monistic), Bodin (first systematic theory), Laski (pluralist critique — the state is one association among many), Kautilya (saptanga).
Individual and State: rights, duties, accountability; the individualist vs collectivist debate.
Forms of government: monarchy, theocracy, democracy (procedural vs substantive; representative vs participatory).
Ideologies: Anarchism (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon — the state is inherently coercive), Marxism, Socialism (revolutionary vs Fabian).
Humanism, Secularism (Western wall-of-separation vs Indian principled distance — Bhargava), Multiculturalism (Kymlicka — group-differentiated rights; Taylor — politics of recognition).
Crime and punishment: theories — retributive, deterrent, preventive, reformative; corruption; mass violence and genocide; capital punishment debate (deterrence evidence, irreversibility, "rarest of rare").
Development and social progress — GDP vs human development; sustainability.
Gender discrimination: female foeticide, land and property rights, empowerment; feminist philosophies.
Caste discrimination — Gandhi vs Ambedkar: Gandhi accepted varna as an ideal division of labour while condemning untouchability, favoured change of heart and trusteeship; Ambedkar held caste inseparable from Hindu scripture, demanded its annihilation, prioritised legal-constitutional remedies and separate political safeguards. Their clash over the Communal Award/Poona Pact is the standard question.

═══ PAPER II(B) — PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ═══

Notions of God: attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, eternity); theism, deism, pantheism, panentheism; Indian conceptions (nirguna/saguna Brahman, Isvara).
Proofs and critiques:

 ONTOLOGICAL (Anselm, Descartes) — from the concept of God
    Critique: Kant — "existence is not a predicate"
 COSMOLOGICAL (Aquinas' first three ways) — from cause/contingency
    Critique: Hume, Kant — why must the series have a first term?
 TELEOLOGICAL / DESIGN (Paley's watchmaker) — from order
    Critique: Hume (Dialogues), Darwin (natural selection)
 MORAL (Kant) — God as a postulate of practical reason
 Indian: Nyaya causal argument; Advaita rejects proofs as
    Brahman is self-evident (svayamprakasa)

Problem of evil: the logical and evidential versions; theodicies — free will defence (Plantinga, Augustine), soul-making (Irenaeus, John Hick), karma-samsara solution in Indian thought.
Soul: immortality, rebirth and liberation (moksha/nirvana/kaivalya) — compare Indian and Western views.
Reason, revelation and faith — Aquinas' harmony, Kierkegaard's leap, fideism, natural theology.
Religious experience: nature and object; William James (Varieties) — ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, passivity; Otto's numinous (mysterium tremendum et fascinans); Indian anubhava and sakshatkara. Is it self-authenticating?
Religion without God — Buddhism, Jainism, Mimamsa; humanistic and naturalistic religion.
Religion and morality — the Euthyphro dilemma (is the good commanded because it is good, or good because commanded?); autonomy of ethics.
Religious pluralism — exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism (John Hick — the Real experienced differently); the problem of conflicting truth-claims; Jain anekantavada as a resource.
Religious language: analogy (Aquinas), symbol (Tillich), verification/falsification challenge (Flew's gardener; Hick's eschatological verification), Wittgensteinian language-games (D.Z. Phillips), cognitivist vs non-cognitivist accounts.

═══ ANSWER-WRITING FRAMEWORKS ═══

Framework A — Doctrine/theory question

 1. State the doctrine in the philosopher's OWN technical terms
 2. Explain the argument step by step (numbered)
 3. Illustration/analogy (rope-snake, chariot, cave, watchmaker)
 4. Critiques from rival schools — NAMED
 5. Evaluation — your reasoned position

Framework B — Comparison question (very common)

 Point of comparison → position A → position B → convergence
 → divergence → assessment
 Classics: Shankara vs Ramanuja · Samkhya vs Vedanta on causation
 · Nyaya vs Buddhist on the self · Rationalism vs Empiricism
 · Kant vs Hume on causality · Gandhi vs Ambedkar on caste
 · Early vs Later Wittgenstein

Framework C — Philosophy of religion question

 Formulate the problem → historical positions → arguments for
 → arguments against → Indian parallel (if any) → conclusion

Framework D — Socio-political question

 Concept → major theoretical positions → Indian constitutional/social
 context → contemporary application → reasoned view

═══ TERMINOLOGY PRECISION LIST (get these exactly right) ═══

 satkaryavada / asatkaryavada · parinamavada / vivartavada
 pratityasamutpada · ksanikavada · nairatmyavada · sunyata
 anekantavada · syadvada · saptabhangi · nayavada
 pramana · pratyaksa · anumana · vyapti · hetvabhasa
 anyathakhyati · akhyati · viparitakhyati · atmakhyati · asatkhyati
 adhyasa · maya · avidya · nirguna / saguna · jivanmukti
 aprthaksiddhi · pancavidhabheda · svatantra / paratantra
 purusa · prakrti · gunas · kaivalya · cittavrttinirodhah · klesa
 synthetic a priori · phenomena / noumena · categorical imperative
 cogito · esse est percipi · tabula rasa · monad · conatus
 intentionality · epoché · Dasein · bad faith · language game

The scoring rule in Philosophy: an answer that paraphrases a doctrine in ordinary language scores low; an answer that deploys the exact technical vocabulary, reconstructs the argument in steps, and names the rival critiques scores high. Precision beats eloquence in this optional.