Monday, February 25, 2008

The Positive Philosophy


This term “Positive Philosophy” is firstly used by August Comte. Course of Positive Philosophy was his first great work, and in it he propounds his theory that all institutions are based upon the ideas of men which are formed in three successive stages--theology, metaphysics and finally from the Positive. In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects. In short, it is absolute knowledge -- supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings. In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena.

In the final, the positive state, “The mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws -- that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.” Comte’s rejection of traditional religion and metaphysics, his faith in science and progress has all had a strong and persistent influence on subsequent thought. But I am not here concentrating on the positivist revolution in the world of philosophy, but only that how philosophy becomes beneficial for non-academic persons. Here we are using this word as a useful philosophy for everyone and trying to leave those questions that are merely religious and metaphysical in nature.
Last Updated:
07-07-2009

What is the Need ?

The present status of philosophy as a useful discipline is in doubt. Here are some reasons for this. First, mainly in India philosophy is on the dominancy of religion so one can not make distinction between philosophy and religion. Mostly problems of philosophy are treated like religious problems and there is a lack of basic understanding between the nature of problems regarding philosophy and religion. We come to know from religious literature that its doctrines are supported either by reasoning or by revelation. Doctrines supported by reasoning unaided by revelation constitute metaphysics and fall in the domain of Philosophy, but doctrines based on revelation are to be excluded from philosophy, because revelation is supported to be a type of experience entirely different from the experiences that we as a matter of fact have. All metaphysical thinking is necessarily God-oriented. Here we need the criteria how far is it useful in dealing with matters in daily life. The teaching methods of philosophy used in institutions are not valuable as to understand the real nature of philosophy. So, here is a basic need of such healthy and positive attitude for philosophical inquiry, which is only concerned with the problems of human life and related to ordinary discourse of living. I have used the term Positive Philosophy for this. My object is to achieve an intellectual detachment from all philosophical systems, and not to solve specific philosophical problems, but to become sensitively aware of what it is we do when we philosophize.
Prof. Daya Krishan said :
"दर्शन के नाम पर भारत में एक ऐसी अबोद्दिकता का प्रचार किया जाता है जिसे अध्यातम का नाम देकर बुद्धि के अनंत आक्षेपों से बचाया जाता है। बात शब्द की नही है यदि दर्शन का अर्थ वही है जो ये लोग देते हैं; तो हमे उसके लिए कोई नया नाम खोजना पड़ेगा जिसका बुद्धि ही शेत्र है और तर्क जिसका प्राण है। शायद 'फिल्स्फा' उसके लिए अधिक उपुक्त शब्द हो। यह पुस्तक या पुस्तिका ......... इसी विश्वास पर आधारित है की जहाँ बुद्धि की बात नही है वहां दर्शन की बात करना फिजूल है। ध्यान लगाइए , घड्ताल बजाइए , प्राणायाम कीजिये ,योग साधिये, यह सब खुशी से कीजिये ,पर कम से कम इनको दर्शन की संज्ञा मत दीजिये। अलग- अलग चीजो को एक नाम से पुकारने से कोई लाभ नही है ।" - "ज्ञान मीमांसा" नामक किताब से ॥
Last Updated:07-07-2009

Related Disciplines

Positive philosophy is Related to many streams of Philosophy :

Philosophy is characterized as much by its methods as by its subject matter. Although philosophers deal with speculative issues that generally are not subject to investigation through experimental test, and philosophy therefore is more fully conceptual than science, philosophy properly done is not mere speculation. Philosophers, just like scientists, formulate hypotheses which ultimately must answer to reason and evidence. This is one of the things that differentiate philosophy from poetry and mysticism, despite its not being a science. Positive philosophy is an interdisciplinary study approach of man’s life in their ordinary discourse that is related to Educational, Social, Environmental and Health issues. It will combined the problems of such disciplines like :

Applied Philosophy
The term "applied" simply means "to put into practice" or "to be used practically." From this use of the term "applied," we can formulate a general definition of applied philosophy: it is the application of those principles and concepts derived from and based on philosophy to a study of our practical affairs and activities. Notice that these principles and concepts are used to "study" our practical affairs. The reason why this is important is because applied knowledge is third-order philosophical knowledge and does not necessarily lead to a completed "truth" applicable to all times and places.
Cited from:http://www.radicalacademy.com/philapplied1.htm
February 27, 2008 1:11 AM

Applied Ethics
Applied ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to apply 'theoretical' ethics, such as utilitarianism, social contract theory, and deontology, to real world dilemmas. Topics falling within the discipline include medical ethics, legal ethics, environmental ethics, computer ethics, corporate social responsibility, or business ethics.
Many considerations of applied ethics also come into play in human rights discussions.
Applied ethics seeks to engage formal ethics in attempts to solve actual dilemmas. In doing so, it illuminates the potential for disagreement over the way theories and principles should be applied. Strict, principle-based ethical approaches often result in solutions to specific problems that are not universally acceptable. Drawing on medical ethics for an example, a strict deontological approach would never permit the deception of a patient about their condition, whereas a utilitarian approach would involve consideration of the consequences of so doing, and might permit lying to a patient if the result of the deception was 'good'. The example demonstrates that a deontologist can derive a different solution to a dilemma than a utilitarian.
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_ethics
February 27, 2008 1:35 AM

Social Philosophy
Social philosophy is the philosophical study of questions about social behavior (typically, of humans) Social philosophy addresses a wide 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 ness.
Subdisciplines:
Social Philosophy: the application of moral principles to the problems of freedom, equality, justice and the state.
Relevant issues in social philosophy:
Some of the topics dealt with by social philosophy are:
Agency and free will ,The will to power Accountability ,Speech acts, Situationism, Modernism and Postmodernism, individualism ,crowds, property rights, authority, free will, ideologies cultural criticism।
Social philosophers include:
Socrates, Plato, Chanakya, Confucius, Thiruvalluvar, Thomas, Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Wilhelm-Friedrich Hegel ,Karl Marx ,Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Émile Durkheim ,Max Weber ,Sigmund Freud ,Carl Jung, Theodor Adorno ,Georg Lukács ,Antonie Pannekoek ,Simone de Beauvoir ,Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky, Cornelius Castoriadis ,Guy Debord ,Terry Eagleton and Susan Sontag .
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_philosophy
February 27, 2008 2:07 am
Political Philosophy
Political Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what 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 eve. In a vernacular sense, the term "political philosophy" often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, belief or attitude, about politics that does not necessarily belong to the technical discipline of philosophy.
Three central concerns of political philosophy have been the political economy by which property rights are defined and access to capital is regulated, the demands of justice in distribution and punishment, and the rules of truth and evidence that determine judgments in the law.
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_philosophy
February 27, 2008 1:51 AM

Philosophy of Literature
Strictly speaking, the philosophy of literature is a branch of aesthetics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the question, "what is art"? Much of aesthetic philosophy has traditionally focused on the plastic arts or music, however, at the expense of the verbal arts. In fact, much traditional discussion of aesthetic philosophy seeks to establish criteria of artistic quality that are indifferent to the subject matter being depicted. Since all literary works, almost by definition, contain notional content, aesthetic theories that rely on purely formal qualities tend to overlook literature.
The very existence of narrative raises philosophical issues. In narrative, a creator can embody, and readers be led to imagine, fictional characters, and even fantastic creatures or technologies. The ability of the human mind to imagine, and even to experience empathy with, these fictional characters is itself revealing about the nature of the human mind. Some fiction can be thought of as a sort of a thought experiment in ethics: they describe fictional characters, their motives, their actions, and the consequences of their actions. It is in this light that some philosophers have chosen various narrative forms to teach their philosophy.
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_and_literature
February 27, 2008 1:55 AM

Philosophy of Art
Philosophy is the Art of determining the Truth (which requires many years of study of the great minds of human history) such that we may apply this Truth to life. Likewise, the greatest Art is founded on profound Truths that express the wonder and beauty of our relationship to the universe. As Ayn Rand and Henri Matisse write.
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments। An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature. (Ayn Rand, 'Art and Cognition').
When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature। We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe. (Henri Matisse).
Our modern worldview, with its obsessive focus on Market Economics, Agriculture, and the Ego has allowed us to become isolated from our true connection with Nature, the Cosmos and our place in the Universe. With many people now living in cities it seems that we have lost our connection to Nature, and thus we have lost our true foundations for how we evolved to live (which is a disturbing thought for the future survival of life on Earth).
Though there have been many great artists and inspiring works of art throughout human history, no art has ever been founded on what truly exists, as this knowledge had not been known. The Postmodern belief in no Absolute Truth has detrimentally affected modern Art, resulting in artistic confusion, lack of meaning and decay.
'Art historians speak of modern art as concerned primarily with essential qualities of colour and flatness and as exhibiting over time a reduction of interest in subject matter.' (Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Roots of Modernism)
Cited from:http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Art-Truth.htm
February 27, 2008 1:46 AM

Philosophy of Technology
The philosophy of technology is a philosophical field dedicated to studying the nature of technology and its social effect.
History:
Considered under the rubric of the Greek term techne (art, or craft knowledge), the philosophy of technology goes to the very roots of Western philosophy. In his Republic, Plato sees techne as the basis for the philosophers' proper rule in the city. In the Nicomachean Ethics (Book 6), Aristotle describes techne as one of the four ways that we can know about the world. The Stoics argued that virtue is a kind of techne based upon a proper understanding of the universe.
20th century development:
Whereas 19th Century philosophers such as Karl Marx were philosophically interested in tools and techniques, the most prominent 20th century philosophers to directly address modern technology were John Dewey and Martin Heidegger .Both saw technology as central to modern life, although (to speak roughly) Dewey was optimistic about the role of technology, Heidegger pessimistic. Dewey's work on technology was dispersed throughout his corpus, while Heidegger.'s major work on technology may be found in The Question Concerning Technology.
In the 1960's, Marshall McLuhan became a major radical voice in the field, with such works as the bestseller The Medium is the Message, as well as The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Contemporary philosophy:
Contemporary philosophers with an interest in technology include Jean Baudrillard, Albert Borgmann, Andrew Feenberg, Langdon Winner, Donna Haraway, Larry Hickman, Don Ihde, Paul Levinson, Carl Mitcham, Leo Marx, Gilbert Simondon, Jacques Ellul and Bernard Stiegler.
While a number of important individual works were published in the second half of the twentieth century, Paul Durbin has identified two books published at the turn of the century as marking the development of the philosophy of technology as an academic subdiscipline with canonical texts; these were Technology and the Good Life (2000), edited by Eric Higgs and American Philosophy of Technology (2001) by Hans Achterhuis.
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_technology
February 27, 2008 1:57 AM

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the philosophical study of religion, including arguments over the nature and existence of God, religious language, miracles, prayer, the problem of evil, and the relationship between religion and other value-systems such as science and ethics, amongst others.
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_religion
February 27, 2008 1:50 AM

Folk Psychology
Folk psychology (sometimes called naïve psychology, common sense psychology or vernacular psychology) is the set of background assumptions, socially-conditioned prejudices and convictions that are implicit in our everyday descriptions of others' behavior and in our ascriptions of their mental states. It includes concepts such as belief ("he thinks that Peter is wise"), desire ("she wants that piece of cake"), fear ("Alex is afraid of spiders") and hope ("she hopes that he is on time today"). Such ascriptions are collectively known as propositional attitude ascriptions.
Cited from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_psychology
February 26, 2008 1:33 AM
Last Updated:07-07-2009

Topic Index

Here is a shortlist of some topics related to positive philosophy for worth consideration. These are as follows:
-Domestic Violence: Causes and Solution
-Peace and Social Justice-Media’s Impact on Society
-Children in a Problematic Society
-Group Consciousness and its Effect on Society
-Value Education and Teacher-Parents Role
-The Discussion on Right and Duty-The Problem of Communication
-Problems regarding Technology Developments
-Meditation at working Places-Pollution and Health Problems
-Literature and Its Role in Healthy Society
-Spirituality and Science: A Healthy Approach
-Importance of a National Character Building
-Why We Do Philosophy and How?
-Role Models for the Children and Society

Prof. Daya Krishan said, “The philosophers, however, have not merely thought in a certain way but also thought that they thought in a certain way.”Philosophy is the New World-Cognitive progress, practical ethics, globalization, human rights. It is a critical reflection of the status of knowledge, values and communication. It tries to bring out the discrepancies and gaps, the ruptures and mutations etc. and tries to modify and transform that process.So, this is necessary to follow this type of positive attitude to solve these problems rather than a negative attitude which makes the problem more complex ,rather to solve it.

Last Updated:07-07-2009

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Journal of Positive Philosophy

Our critical reflections may serve to amend the positive view with which we find relatively satisfactory. I feel that Philosophy is an open-ended, pioneering discipline, forever opening up new areas of study and new methods of inquiry. Philosophy effects Social Sciences and Humanities since many hundred years. We should think about the implication of philosophical methods on Social Sciences and Humanities. Cultivating of ethical, moral, cultural and spiritual ideas by studying philosophy at various levels of education can change the mindset of the people. Recent research in ethics and moral science has proved that studying ethics has a tremendous influence on people all over the world. So, we should ready to give new dimensions and do best innovations in this area which have more relevance and implications in this millenium forever.

I need your help to find the articles related to this cours. You can send it by email .Comments are always invitable. I wiil publish it to with your Reference .The Email Addresses are:
niyamak.drs@gmail.com
dr.sirswal@gmail.com
Thanks

After Life


There are so many philosophers and religious gurus(teachers) who are teaching about life or after death. Karl Marx called religion as 'opium'. This is right at many times. In Indian culture we found that people generally think about fate or luck and discussed about it. Some people are trust in luck except doings. When they feel some misery then they murmuring about fate or luck, they have no clear conception about fate and life. They are negative persons who are generally talking about luck except to do right thing or do their duty. So it is necessary for a human being to do their duty first and say about fate after that.

If...........


There are so many person who are used the word "if". If I have this, If I had did this, If I got it. These words are negative words for a happy life. Because in daily life we found so many things, we desire to get it, but it is impossible to get every things. For a happy life man must have clear conception of what he wants and what is the basic need of that person. If we all forget our innate qualities and needs, and follow the uncertain things like luxury goods and so on. It is very harmful for our daily life. Man must do his duty first, after desire to get things ,according to his capacity. We all desire to get happiness of life, for this we must follow above rules.Then we enjoy the gifts of nature and happiness of life. Have a nice happy life.

Monday, February 11, 2008

शिक्षा का हाल


आजकल हर छात्र के सामने एक ही प्रॉब्लम है कि वह कैसे अपने काम को कम से कम समय मे और अच्छे से पूरा करे। चाहे वो छात्र किसी भी विषय से हों , सबसे बड़ी समस्या यही है की उनको सही मार्गदर्शन नही मिल पाता है। उनको सही तरीके से विषय से रूबरू नही करवाया जाता है और न ही उनको सही राह मिल पाती है। यही सबसे बड़ी समस्या है की वे अपने काम को अच्छे तरीके से नही कर पाते जिससे की उनकी उस विषय पर पकड़ नही हो पाती जो वह पढ़ रहे हैं , कैसे हम फ़िर ईमानदारी की उनसे चाह कर सकते हैं। इसलिए आज की सबसे बड़ी यही जरुरत है हम इसके लिए भी सोचे । तभी हम बेहतर समाज की बातें कर सकते हैं ॥

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

हर आदमी दार्शनिक है ।


यह कोई नयी बात नही है जो मैं कह रह हूँ कि हर कोई आदमी एक दार्शनिक है। हममे से हर कोई अपनी जिन्दगी के बारे सोचता है, दूसरो को सुझाव भी देता है। मेरे लिए अपने जीवन के प्रति कोई विचार रखना है फिलोसोफी है, जो कि हर आदमी के लिए अलग अलग होती है। -Desh Raj Sirswal