Key Philosophical Terms & Concepts

Materialism

• A doctrine which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions.

Idealism

• The theory that all reality is mental (spiritual, psychological). Matter, the physical, does not exist.

Rationalism

• The philosophic approach that emphasizes reason as the primary source of knowledge and of spiritual truth.

Empiricism

• The view that experience, through the senses, is the only source of knowledge. The scientific method is based on this view.

Fatalism

• The belief that a person cannot in any way direct his or her behavior or destiny, or that of history. “What will be will be.”

Skepticism• The view that, although answers to philosophical

questions may exist, man cannot know the truth about the riddles of nature and of the universe.

• “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing” (68).

Dualism

• A view that insists on the existence of two independent, separable, irreducible, unique realms: supernatural/natural, spirit/matter, mind/body, good/evil.

Romanticism• A movement in art, literature and philosophy

associated, in part, with the following: a tendency to personify nature; an emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual; a distaste for the orderly, rational, intellectual and moderate.