Category: For the Love of Sofia

Sofia/Sophia is the ancient Greek word for wisdom. From the Greek etymological definition of philosophy the love of wisdom (philos=love + sophia=wisdom), philosophy is traditionally defined as “the Love of Wisdom.”

As a teacher of philosophy, I dedicate this section to share some of the materials I use to teach some courses in philosophy. Though it is still a long way to go for me to consider myself as a “philosopher,” I do regard myself as an eternal student of philosophy. Like Socrates’s famous dictum, “I know not but my own ignorance, ” I do not claim to be knowledgeable in all aspects of philosophy; rather, I accompany my students to find out about the questions worth asking and invite them to reflect, analyze and criticize about the ideas proposed by great thinks from the past and the present. Paraphrasing the Socratic words of wisdom, through this page, I invite you to examine some topics that we, ourselves, continually ask at some point in our lives in order to make life worth living.

Deontological Theories and Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Sharing something I lectured in one of my classes at the University of Makati.

Deontological theories look into the morality of an act itself, i.e. without looking into its consequences. This is what makes it different from other ethical theories.

On Fallacies

Here is another video I created for my students in Logic. It is about about the informal fallacies.

I decided to introduce the fallacies to my students this early on in our class because of the rich examples they can get all over. The internet, for instance, is filled with a plethora of examples where they can apply their critical thinking skills. In this case, they should be able to abolish fallacious arguments with ease.

Utilitarianism

Below is a video lecture I made for my students in Ethics at the University of Makati:

Reference:

Pojman, Louis and Fieser, James. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong. 7th ed. Massachusetts: Wadsworth, 2006.