Philosophy (Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophía) is the science that, through intellectual insight (intellectus), knows necessary truths of essence and the first principles of beings. Its fundamental method is insight into a priori, necessary states of affairs.
Demarcation from natural science
In contrast to natural science, philosophy grasps the essence of things — not merely their empirically measurable properties. Natural science presupposes conditions that it cannot itself ground: that there is a real external world, that it is knowable, that causality holds. To ground these presuppositions is the task of philosophy, in particular of philosophia prima (metaphysics).
Philosophy and personhood
The question of what a person is, is not a question for natural science but a philosophical one. It concerns the essence of the human being, not their empirically measurable properties. Scientism — the thesis that only knowledge from the natural sciences is valid knowledge — contradicts philosophy as a science and cannot adequately pose the question of the concept of person.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Aristotle: Metaphysics. Trans. H. Bonitz, rev. H. Seidl. Hamburg: Meiner (Philosophische Bibliothek, vol. 307/308), 3rd ed. 1991.
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa theologiae, I, q. 1 (De sacra doctrina). — German: Die deutsche Thomas-Ausgabe (DThA), vol. 1. Salzburg: Pustet.