ASSIGNMENT No.

Philosophy (8609)
Name: Arisha Zahra
ROLL NO: 0000250870

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Q.1
What role is played by philosophy in the development of educational
curriculum?
Ans
Defining Educational Goals and Values: Philosophical inquiry in curriculum studies helps
in articulating the fundamental purposes of education. It asks questions about what
knowledge is most valuable, what skills are essential, and what societal goals education
should strive to achieve.

Ethical Considerations: Philosophy provides a framework for addressing ethical issues in

education. It guides decisions about what content to include, how to present it, and what
values to instill in learners. For example, discussions on moral education or controversial
topics often involve philosophical deliberation.

The term curriculum is from a Latin word for ‘race-course’ referring to the course of
deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature. Curriculum is all
the selected activities done in the society which are used in the learning process. It is a
race experience, planned learning and instruction which requires a learner to know
things taught in class producing and understanding language used, solving problems and
making their own decisions.

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A curriculum constitutes various deeds and experiences which are intentioned and
directed or otherwise that a child undergoes as he develops to an adult in a society. For
him, curriculum is a social engineering arena. He realized that curricular formation must
have two important notable features. First, the curriculum must be tailored in such away
that it constitutes deed- experiences that a student ought to have to become the adult
he or she ought to become. Second, those who design the curriculum must have
knowledge of the desirable qualities in an adult society. This knowledge of the good in
the society is rightly estimated by philosophy. This makes curriculum to have intimate
relation with philosophy. It is philosophy that discovers and unfolds the good that all
men should aspire and project in all their purposeful education.
On the same note, and in respect to philosophy, curriculum is prescriptive in that it gives
the general guidelines or specifies what kinds of courses or topics that must be covered
so as to achieve a given level of grade or standard. This is really to say that curriculum
is normative in the sense in which philosophy is. This is because its ultimate aim is to set
the required standards, principles, values, knowledge and skills to be attained in any
particular field of study. Ideally speaking, curriculum is not a concrete reality but an
ideal. It is not more on the actual deeds or experiences that form people. It is designed
to fit school set up. These are deeds and experiences which are purposeful and
intentional to help students master and gain a certain required standards for a given
grade (Bobbitt, 1918). Curriculum involves range of courses from which students choose
what subject matter to study. Further, it captures a specific learning program whereby it
collectively describes the teaching, learning and assessment material available for a
given course of study.
Curriculum in its entirety has a philosophical, historical, psychological and social
foundation. The field of curriculum has its set of principles and theories. For example,
the term curriculum itself is a concept describing very complex ideas. In learning, there
are principles such as educational philosophy, curriculum goals and learning objectives
which are applied in developing school programs, colleges, training centers and
universities. This field has its own body of knowledge and skills e.g. in the selection of

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content making it rely on the principles knowledge and skills from psychology,
philosophy and sociology.
Curriculum planning involves the decision about the philosophy of education. Having
decided on the philosophical beliefs then curriculum goals and objectives are derived
from there. These are later translated into the classroom as desired learning outcomes.
Philosophy probably has more influence on curriculum access and development in that it
provides educationists, teachers and curriculum makers with framework for planning
implementation and evaluating curriculum in school. It also helps in answering what
schools are for what subjects are important, how students should learn and what
materials and methods should be used. Philosophy provides the starting point and
heuristic dynamism in decision making about education in its totality.
The philosophy of education has guided the development, management, organization
and delivery of education. Philosophy has philosophical schools of thoughts such as
naturalism which is the basis of the curriculum, idealism which on the nature of the
learner and recommends the learning activity of the learner and the positive influence of
the teacher, realism which is important in forming curriculum that stresses the
acquisitions of information about culture and pragmatism which recommends the change
of knowledge because it is not permanent. This school of thought emphasizes on
continuous construction and reconstruction of curriculum.
Philosophy unifies pedagogy, curriculum, learning theories and the purpose of education
and this is grounded in a specific metaphysical epistemology and axiological assumptions
upon which educational policy is formulated. Philosopher by name Plato contributed a lot
on the structure of educational policy whereby he advocated for the children to be
separated from their mothers care and raising them in a separate place. He also
contributed on talent building which is included in educational policy. The educational
curriculum allows sports in institutions which require students to involve themselves in
promoting talents.
Philosophy projects that higher education helps the soul to search for truth. This will
make a person to think critically and respond to issues and such will lead to the
formulation of ideas such as policy in education. Through philosophy, elementally
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education is introduced and strengthened and it may become an important aspect in
education policy. Educational policy spells out the duration each curriculum takes which
is clearly borrowed from philosophy. This is well supported by setting curriculum that
suits all ages of people

The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, is especially
when considered as an academic discipline. When an educator approaches curriculum
development with a philosophic underpinning, they able to clearly identify what is
important for students to know and construct their curricular plan to meet those goals.
Without a coherent philosophy, curricula could become a hodgepodge of bits of
knowledge that do not present students with a complete understanding of the subject.
Being able to articulate a personal philosophy of education is an essential element of
curriculum development.
“Philosophy” does not mean “good sense”. Schools have existed to teach slaves how to
be good slaves, and now the slave school system is called “public education”. The
philosophy is carefully tailored to turn students into technicians, soldiers, and servants.
We also have an academic system which produces generals, entrepreneurs, and
philosophers, but the system is not carefully tailored at all.

“Curriculum” only means any collection of classes.

The philosophy of a curriculum is: For a society to function well, people need to have a
set of shared knowledge and skills. Groups of people in power decide which skills are the
most important for people to learn so society can function. These decisions are not made
in a vacuum. Rather, they are made in conjunction with the current culture and how
many resources like money, space, and time, are available to the people in power. The
resulting curriculum always reflects the values held by the people in power, and ideally
what society needs.
Curriculum and philosophy are both concepts. In other words, they are jargon words
that have a multitude of meanings. Curriculum can mean everything that takes place in

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the school/college or university. Sometimes people refer to it as a course or programme
of study.

A curriculum will be underpinned by a philosophy or philosophies, usually directed

towards what subjects will be taught and which pedagogies will be used. Such a
philosophy will also encompass the purposes of the education system.

Philosophy in relation to the curriculum will address the meanings of other

interconnected terms such as education, indoctrination, training, mentoring, coaching,
teaching. Looking at the implications for the differing meanings.

Curriculum development is based on the philosophy of the society/ nation. It's th

philosophy on the basis of which all the curriculum is developed and the purpose of
curriculum is to highlight that philosophy of the nation or society. Objectives of
curriculum are taken from curriculum too. The destination is set according to the
philosophy.

Q.2
Discuss the aims of education provided by the philosophy of realism.
Ans
For the realist, the world is as it is, and the job of schools would be to teach students
about the world. Goodness, for the realist, would be found in the laws of nature and the
order of the physical world. Truth would be the simple correspondences of
observation. The Realist believes in a world of Things or Beings (metaphysics) and in
truth as an Observable Fact. Furthermore, ethics is the law of nature or Natural Law and
aesthetics is the reflection of Nature.

Realists do not believe in general and common aims of education. According to them
aims are specific to each individual and his perspectives. And each one has
different perspectives. The aim of education should be to teach truth rather than beauty,

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to understand the present practical life. The purpose of education, according to social
realists, is to prepare the practical man of the world.
The science realists expressed that the education should be conducted on universal
basis. Greater stress should be laid upon the observation of nature and the education of
science. Neo-realists aim at developing all round development of the objects with the
development of their organs.

The realist’s primary educational aim is to teach those things and values which will lead
to the good life. But for the realist, the good life is equated with one which is in tune
with the overarching order of natural law. Thus, the primary aim of education becomes
to teach the child the natural and moral law, or at least as much of it as we know, so
that his generation may lead the right kind life; one in tune with the laws to the
universe. There are, of course, more specific aims which will lead to the goals already
stated. For example, realists set the school aside as a special place for the accumulation
and preservation of knowledge.

Realism and the teacher:

The teacher, for the realist, is simply a guide. The real world exists, and the teacher is
responsible for introducing the student to it. To do this he uses lectures, demonstrations,
and sensory experiences, the teacher does not do this in a random or haphazard way;
he must not only introduce the student to nature, but show him the regularities, the
“rhythm” of nature so that he may come to understand natural law. Both the teacher
and the student are spectators, but while the student looks at the world through
innocent eyes, the teacher must explain it to him, as well as he is able, from his vantage
point of increased sophistication.
The whole concept to teaching machines is compatible with the picture or reality as a
mechanistic universe in which man is simply one of the cogs in the machine.
A teacher should be such that he himself be educated and well versed with the customs
of belief and rights and duties of people, and the trends of all ages and places. He must

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have full mastery of the knowledge of present life. He must guide the student towards
the hard realities of life. He is neither pessimist, nor optimist.

Realism and curriculum:

According to humanistic realism, classical literature should be studied but not for
studying its form and style but for its content and ideas it contained.

Sense-realism- attached more importance to the study of natural sciences and

contemporary social life. Study of languages is not so significant as the study of natural
sciences and contemporary life.

Neo-realism- gives stress on the subject physics and on humanistic feelings, physics
and psychology, sociology, economics, Ethics, Politics, history, Geography, agriculture
varied arts, languages and so on, are the main subjects to be studied according to the
Neo-realists

Subject matter is the matter of the physical universe- the Real World- taught in
such a way as to show the orderliness underlying the universe. The laws of nature, the
realist believes, are most readily understood through the subjects of nature, namely the
sciences in all their many branches. As we study nature and gather data, we can see the
underlying order of the universe. The highest form of this order is found in mathematics.
Mathematics is a precise, abstract, symbolic system for describing the laws of the
universe.

Realism and methods of teaching

The method of the realists involves teaching for the mastery of facts in order to develop
an understanding of natural law. This can be done by teaching both the materials and
their application. In fact, real knowledge comes only when the organism can organize
the data of experience. The realist prefers to use inductive logic, going from the
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particular facts of sensory experience to the more general laws deducible from these
data. These general laws are seen as universal natural law.

When only one response is repeated for one stimulus, it conditioned by that stimulus.
Now wherever that situation comes, response will be the same; this is the fact.

For Herbart, education was applied psychology. The five-step method he developed was
as follows:

Preparation: An attempt is made to have the student recall earlier materials to which
the new knowledge might be related. The purpose of the lesson is explained and an
attempt to interest the learner is made.
Presentation: The new facts and materials are set forth and explained.
Association: A definite attempt is made to show similarities and differences and to
draw comparisons between the new materials and those already learned and absorbed
into the apperceptive mass.
Generalization: The drawing of inferences from the materials and an attempt to find a
general rule, principal, or law.
Application: In general this meant the working of academic exercises and problems
based on both the new information and the relevant related information in the
appreciative mass.

In their method, the realist depends on motivation the student. But this is not difficult
since many realists view the interests of the learner as fundamental urges toward an
understanding of natural law rooted in our common sense. The understanding of natural
law comes through the organizing of data through insight. The realist in their method
approves anything which involves learning through sensory experience whether it be
direct or indirect. Not only are field trips considered valuable, but the realist advocates
the use of films, filmstrips, records, television, radio, and any other audiovisual aids
which might serve in the place of direct sensory experience when such experience is not
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readily available. This does not mean that the realist denies the validity of symbolic
knowledge.
A teacher should always keep in mind-
 Education should proceed from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract.
 Students to be taught to analyze rather than to construct.
 Vernacular to be the medium of instruction.
 Individual’s experience and spirit of inquiry is more important than authority.
 No unintelligent cramming. More emphasis on questioning and understanding.
 Re-capitulation is necessary to make the knowledge permanent.
 One subject should be taught at one time.
 No pressure or coercion be brought upon the child.

Thus, the realism has brought great effect in various fields of education. The aims, the
curriculum, the methods of teaching the outlook towards the child, the teachers, the
discipline and the system of education all were given new blood. Realism in education
dragged the education from the old traditions, idealism and the high and low tides to the
real surface.

From this very general philosophical position, the Realist would tend to view the Learner
as a sense mechanism, the Teacher as a demonstrator, the Curriculum as the subject
matter of the physical world (emphasizing mathematics, science, etc.), the Teaching
Method as mastering facts and information, and the Social Policy of the school as
transmitting the settled knowledge of Western civilization. The realist would favor a
school dominated by subjects of the here-and-now world, such as math and science.
Students would be taught factual information for mastery. The teacher would impart
knowledge of this reality to students or display such reality for observation and study.
Classrooms would be highly ordered and disciplined, like nature, and the students would
be passive participants in the study of things. Changes in school would be perceived as a
natural evolution toward a perfection of order.

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Q.3
Compare the role of teacher supported by the philosophies of realism and
naturalism?
Ans
Dr. Pram Nath “ Naturalism is an attitude rather than a specific system of philosophy”
Thomas and Lamg “ Naturalism is opposed to idealism. It subordinates mind to matter
and holds that ultimate reality in material not spiritual”

 Teacher plays the role of the observer in a naturalistic education scheme.

 Teacher facilitates the learning of the child.
 Teachers should be able to understand the child and help in the growth and
development of the child.
 Teacher’s role should be that of a stage setter. He should be able to provide
material and environment to facilitate the development and learning of the child.
Realism
Realism is the theory that holds that the existence of objects is real. For this reason, it
is also sometimes called objectivism. Both realism and objectivism are metaphysical
theories concerned with the existence of things. In epistemology realism holds that in
the process of knowledge things are independent of the existence and influence of the
knower. Hence the main tenet of this theory in the epistemological field is that object
and its qualities are independent of and uninfluenced by the knower and the process of
knowledge.
Realist thinkers emphasise objectivity, knowledge of scientific facts and the knowledge
of the real. Students should be helped to know objectively. This requires knowledge
through sense organs. Words are symbols to convey experience. They help in
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communication of knowledge. Practical verification is the test of all knowledge.
Propositions which cannot be verified are nonsense. Facts are related to the present. The
teacher should enable the student to know the world. He should not give personal
opinions but clarify the facts. In fact, the facts should themselves be revealed without
any distortion. Thus, the realists support fact-centred method of teaching
According to the realist the knowledge of the real involves two laws: Law of aggregation
and the law of conversion of simplicity. There is continuity in nature. In concept
formation the feelings should not be allowed to interfere. In the law of conversions of
simplicity, it has been pointed out that space and time are divided for the sake of
convenience. The whole is the aggregate of parts. The parts do not lose their existence
in the whole. Therefore, the proper method of teaching is to begin with the part and
reach the whole. Knowledge should be analyzed into principles, and principles into
hypothesis. Facts should be analyzed into propositions. Thus, the method of teaching
should involve analysis and rational classification.
Realist approach to education is child-centered. The method of teaching should change
according to the requirement of the child. The intellect of the child should be developed
to enable him to know the facts. Experimentation should be the basis of facts.
Knowledge is uniform in nature. The teacher should have firm faith in science. He should
have a scientific attitude and develop the same in the educand. He should himself
investigate and encourage the educands to do so. He should know the experimental
method and train the educands in it. He should understand the needs of the student and
fulfill them. He should render a clear, lucid and systematic understanding of scientific
facts to the student. He should keep his personal opinion apart from objective teaching.
He should keep an eye upon child psychology and adolescence psychology and mould his
methods of teaching accordingly. He should make a selection of subject matter
according to the interests of the student.
Naturalism
Naturalism opposes the traditional concepts of education in which the educator inflicted
any and all kinds of punishment on the child in order to make it progress in the desired
direction. Naturalists believe that the period of infancy is important in itself, not merely
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as a stepping stone to adult life. That explains their extreme emphasis upon the playway
technique of education. They opine that the child should be encouraged to enjoy his
infancy and childhood as much as he can, with the least possible interference from the
teacher. Consequently, the teacher does not occupy as high and respected a position as
he does under the idealistic tradition. One example of this is Neil's Summerhill School in
which the educator mixed with the educands, played and practically lived with them.
Even the matter of discipline was in the hands of the educands who selected a cabinet of
five educands for this purpose. This cabinet was even empowered to expel an educand
from the school, if it felt the necessity for such an extreme step. Neil's only function was
to remove the various difficulties of the educands, after discussing everything with
them. Hence, in this school, the educator was no more than just one of the members of
the school.

Naturalists suggest that the educator should be a guide and a friend, and that in his
behavior with the child, the educator should try to recollect his own childhood and
infancy. The child is naturally inclined to laughter and happiness. Hence the educator
should be jolly and not grave, for undue seriousness of manner and behavior depresses
the child. The educator's role is primarily negative inasmuch as he is required to protect
the child's inherent goodness from bad influences originating in the environment. He is
responsible for creating an environment in which the child can experience the greatest
amount of freedom. He must study the child's psychology and intervene in his activity
only when some obstacle bars the way to the child's progress.
Hence, the aim of education is, thus, to provide the child with opportunities for
completely unrestricted self-expression. The role of educator, therefore, is only to
protect the child from repressions, mental conflicts and mental disorders of all kind.
Naturalism warns the educator against unnecessary seriousness, the desire to assert his
authority, physical punishment, etc., since all these measures have a detrimental
influence upon the child's development. The educator must think in terms of what he
must avoid doing rather than think of things he must do. He can do even better and
become literally a child in dealing with children. But his guidance is apparent when he
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can give a positive and confident opinion on controversial matters, and for this he must
be possessed of unbounded self-confidence., He can also guide the children in their
search for new things and can train them in new techniques of doing things so that in
later life they should become capable of doing things on their own. The role of the
teacher is most clearly defined by Ross in the following words, "His (educator's) place, if
any, is behind the scenes; he is an observer of the child's development rather than a
giver of information, ideas, ideals and will power, or a molder of character. These the
child will forge for himself, he knows better than any educator what he should learn,
when and how he should learn it. His education is the free development of his interests
and motives rather than an artificial effort made on him by an educator.

"It is evident, therefore, that the educator should never have recourse to any kind of
pressure or force, even to the use of his own authority. His task is simply to provide the
theatre for the child's acting, to collect the materials required, to provide the child with
an opportunity to do as he likes, to create an ideal environment. As a result of the
impact of naturalism, many of the latest techniques of education, such as the Montessori
system, Dalton plan, Project method, etc., all grant to the teacher a similar status.

Compared to naturalistic philosophy, the idealistic school grants a more responsible

position to the teacher. Adams expressed the opinion that the educator himself has been
through the same situations as the educand is experiencing at present. He is no less a
part of the intellectual world than anyone else. Both the educator and the educand are
two elements of the organic structure of the universe, and both have their own status
and role in God's plan. The educator teaches and guides him along the path of
perfection.

The educator's role in the naturalist organization of education is clarified by the example
of Rebel’s kindergarten system. In this system, the school is conceived to be a garden,
the educand to be a delicate plant and the educator the careful, responsible and cautious
gardener. The plant grows by itself, it seeks its own nourishment, and its development is
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governed by natural laws. It is impossible to turn one plant into a plant of another kind.
This is beyond the abilities of even the greatest gardener. His only function is to make
sure that the plant and the weed grows according to its own nature, and that this
development is not hindered Up to this point, the idealistic conception does not differ
very much from the naturalistic conception. But, as Ross has commented, the naturalist
may be satisfied with wild flowers, but the idealist can be satisfied only by the finest of
roses.

Q.4
How does existentialism criticize the philosophies of idealism and naturalism?
Ans
Existentialism has been criticized from a number of different angles. One line of criticism
holds that the emphasis on individual freedom and the rejection of absolutes in
existentialism tends to undermine ethics; by suggesting that everyday life is ‘absurd’
and by denying the existence of fixed, binding principles for evaluating our actions,
existentialists promote an ‘anything-goes’ view of freedom that exacerbates the nihilism
already present in contemporary life. Camus’ novel The Stranger (1942b), for example,
has come under attack for glorifying immoral ‘gratuitous acts’ as a way of affirming
one’s own absolute freedom. In reply, supporters of existentialism have noted that the
stance portrayed in the work is not at all typical of existentialist views, and that
existentialism’s ideal of freedom and its sense of the need for human solidarity after the
‘death of God’, far from undermining ethics, might provide a very good basis for a moral
point of view in the modern world .
Other critics have tried to show that the basic picture of reality presupposed by
existentialism necessarily leads to nihilism. Hans Jonas (1966) argues that
existentialism, despite its avowed goal of overcoming Cartesianism, tends to introduce a
new kind of dualism with its sharp distinction between humans (who are thought of as
absolutely free centers of choice and action), and an inert, meaningless ‘being’ that is on
hand for humans to interpret and transform as they please. Not only does this extreme
opposition exclude animals from the realm of beings with intrinsic worth, its view of
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humans as thrown into an indifferent universe seems to give us freedom only at the cost
of making nothing really worthy of choice.

This line of criticism is closely connected to the claim, formulated by various postmodern
theorists, that existentialism is still trapped within the assumptions of Humanism, a view
now supposed to have been discredited. Humanism in this context means the view,
central to modern philosophers from Descartes to Kant, that the human subject is
immediately present to itself as a centre of thought and action, and that the rest of the
universe should be thought of as a collection of things on hand to be represented and
manipulated by the subject. Postmodern theorists claim that a number of intellectual
developments in the last two centuries have made it impossible to accept this picture of
the centrality of the subject. The semiotic theories of Saussure, for example, have
shown how language tends to work behind our backs, controlling our capacities for
thought and speech, and Freudian theory has shown how unconscious drives and desires
lie behind many of our conscious thoughts and actions. Given these developments, it is
claimed, we can no longer accept the idea that humans are capable of the sorts of self-
transparency and self-determination that seem to be presupposed by existentialists like
Sartre.
In reply to this objection, one might point out that most existentialists have been very
critical of the Cartesian belief in the transparency of consciousness to itself. Such
themes as being-in-a-situation, ‘thrownness’, embodiment and mystery show the extent
to which many existentialists think of humans as embedded in a wider context they can
never totally master or comprehend. Moreover, the existentialist description of humans
as temporal beings whose ‘present’ is always mediated by what is projected into the
future and retained from the past undermines any Cartesian conception of the
immediate presence of self to self in self-awareness.

“Existentialism is the work of certain late nineteenth and twentieth century European
Philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal preferences, shared the belief of
philosophical thinking begins with the human which not merely thinking subject, but the
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acting, feeling, living individual. While the predominant value of existentialist thought is
commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity”.
“In the view of the existentialist, the individual 's starting point is characterized by what
has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread
in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.
As a result, individuals dictate his truth, his reality or what they believe is good or bad.
This is against the other philosophies that relate what is good on laws and rules, norms
and mores of the society. For the existentialists there is no God or the Supreme Being
who has influence on the individuals. So, this philosophy emphasizes the uniqueness of
each individual. In order to further understand existentialism it is wise to look at some of
its themes.

According to existentialists existence precedes essence. This means that we do not have
the purpose to live for that has been predetermined by anyone. The purpose of our living
is not decided by God or the ancestors. What we do and who we are is determined by
ourselves. Each individual is responsible of making his life, his future and his essence. We
are free to determine how we live. We should not be tied to the views and dictates of the
society in which we live. We make who we are by the choices we make on a day to day
basis. We are responsible for coming up with our own values. There is no a predetermined
value system, a value system created by the society or religion. What we do is what we
value.

As a whole, existentialism has had relatively little direct influence within philosophy. In
Germany, existentialism (and especially Heidegger) was criticised for being obscure,
abstract or even mystical in nature. This criticism was made especially by Adorno in The
Jargon of Authenticity, and in Dog Years, novelist Gunter Grass gives a Voltaire-like,
savage satire of Heidegger. The criticism was echoed by many in the analytic tradition.
Heidegger and the existentialist were also taken to task for paying insufficient attention
to social and political structures or values, with dangerous results. In France,
philosophers like Sartre were criticised by those newly under the influence of
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structuralism for paying insufficient attention to the nature of language and to
impersonal structures of meaning. In short, philosophy moved on, and in different
directions. Individual philosophers remain influential, however: Nietzsche and Heidegger
in particular are very much ‘live’ topics in philosophy, even in the 21 st century.

The world of Continental philosophy has been shaped by two irreconcilable schools:
German idealism on the one hand and phenomenology /existentialism on the other. If
they can be called a tradition at all, it is not one of shared inheritance, but of continued
revolt.

Phenomenology/existentialism disdains German idealism's goal of seeking systematic

totality insofar as it loses sight of the lived-experience of the individual human being.
True, the idealist would argue that such lived-experience has not been lost, but
preserved, albeit in a higher form and according to its immanent rational structure. For
phenomenology/existentialism, however, such rational preservation renders inert and
lifeless the very dynamism and spontaneity that characterized lived-experience in the
first place. The distinction between the two can be simplified to various sets of
irreconcilable dichotomies: systematicity vs. individuality, rational necessity vs. freedom,
and so on.

This is the misconceived caricature that Jon Stewart's Idealism and Existentialism seeks
to shatter. In this work, Stewart challenges this purported truism of irreconcilable
antagonists by displaying the wealth of factors the two schools share, even if not always
with the same intentions or toward the same results. The text is divided into three parts:
The first covers Hegel and German idealism, exploring myths surrounding Hegel as an
"arch-rationalist" in addition to more technical studies on the Phenomenology of
Spirit. The second part takes up the relation between Hegelian idealism and the forms of
proto-existentialism found in Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, targeting
points of contact between supposed antagonists. The third part turns to a study of
existentialism proper, with particular emphasis

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If we ask where the earliest instance of a confrontation between idealism and naturalism
is to be found, an obvious candidate is Ludwig Feuerbach, who provides an important
bridging element in the transition from Hegel’s idealism to Marx’s materialism. In his
first book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality of 1830, Feuerbach attacked the
Christian doctrine of personal immortality, insisting on the bodily existence of the self,
and naturalistic elements became increasingly prominent in the course of his critical
appropriation of Hegel’s thought for emancipatory humanist purposes, in particular in his
introduction of the foundational concept of man’s ‘species-being’, Gattungswesen.

Feuerbach’s writings gave powerful encouragement to the German materialists, with

whom Feuerbach later associated himself. It should be emphasised, however, that the
naturalism of Feuerbach and that of the Young Hegelians more generally was of a
tempered sort. It involved of course repudiation of the supernatural entities of Christian
theology, but, once those had been expelled, there was little more to be gained for the
purposes of radical social theory by emphasising man’s embeddedness in the natural
order; on the contrary, if human self-realisation constitutes the ideal for our endeavors,
then man needs to be well distinguished from the rest of nature. Thus Feuerbach
declared, in terms that a thorough-going naturalist would scarcely be able to accept,
that: ‘Man is not a particular being, like the animals, but a universal being an unlimited
and free being this freedom and universality extend themselves over man’s total being’.

Q.5
What is deductive reasoning? How does it correspond to rationalism?
Ans
Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference
is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. it is
impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.

For example, the inference from the premises "all men are mortal" and "Socrates is a
man" to the conclusion "Socrates is mortal" is deductively valid. An argument is sound if
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it is valid and all its premises are true. Some theorists define deduction in terms of the
intentions of the author: they have to intend for the premises to offer deductive support
to the conclusion. With the help of this modification, it is possible to distinguish valid
from invalid deductive reasoning: it is invalid if the author's belief about the deductive
support is false, but even invalid deductive reasoning is a form of deductive reasoning.

Psychology is interested in deductive reasoning as a psychological process, i.e. how

people actually draw inferences. Logic, on the other hand, focuses on the deductive
relation of logical consequence between the premises and the conclusion or how
people should draw inferences. There are different ways of conceptualizing this relation.
According to the semantic approach, an argument is deductively valid if and only if there
is no possible interpretation of this argument where its premises are true and its
conclusion is false. The syntactic approach, on the other hand, holds that an argument is
deductively valid if and only if its conclusion can be deduced from its premises using a
valid rule of inference. A rule of inference is a schema of drawing a conclusion from a set
of premises based only on their logical form.

There are various rules of inference, like the modus ponens and the modus tollens.
Invalid deductive arguments, which do not follow a rule of inference, are called formal
fallacies. Rules of inference are definitory rules and contrast to strategic rules, which
specify what inferences one needs to draw in order to arrive at an intended conclusion.
Deductive reasoning contrasts with non-deductive or implicative reasoning. For
applicative arguments, like inductive or adductive arguments, the premises offer weaker
support to their conclusion: they make it more likely but they do not guarantee its truth.
They make up for this drawback by being able to provide genuinely new information not
already found in the premises, unlike deductive arguments.

The problem of deductive reasoning is relevant to various fields and

issues. Epistemology tries to understand how justification is transferred from
the belief in the premises to the belief in the conclusion in the process of deductive
reasoning. Probability logic studies how the probability of the premises of an inference

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affects the probability of its conclusion. The controversial thesis of deductivism denies
that there are other correct forms of inference besides deduction. Natural deduction is a
type of proof system based on simple and self-evident rules of inference. In philosophy,
the geometrical method is a way of philosophizing that starts from a small set of self-
evident axioms and tries to build a comprehensive logical system using deductive
reasoning.
Deductive arguments differ from non-deductive arguments in that the truth of their
premises ensures the truth of their conclusion. [14][15][6] There are two important
conceptions of what this exactly means. They are referred to as the syntactic and
the semantic approach. According to the syntactic approach, whether an argument is
deductively valid depends only on its form, syntax, or structure.

Two arguments have the same form if they use the same logical vocabulary in the same
arrangement, even if their contents differ. For example, the arguments "if it rains then
the street will be wet; it rains; therefore, the street will be wet" and "if the meat is not
cooled then it will spoil; the meat is not cooled; therefore, it will spoil" have the same
logical form: they follow the modus ponens. Their form can be expressed more
abstractly as "if A then B; A; therefore B" in order to make the common syntax
explicit. There are various other valid logical forms or rules of inference, like modus
tollens or the disjunction elimination.

The syntactic approach then holds that an argument is deductively valid if and only if its
conclusion can be deduced from its premises using a valid rule of inference. One
difficulty for the syntactic approach is that it is usually necessary to express the
argument in a formal language in order to assess whether it is valid. But since the
problem of deduction is also relevant for natural languages, this often brings with it the
difficulty of translating the natural language argument into a formal language, a process
that comes with various problems of its own. Another difficulty is due to the fact that the
syntactic approach depends on the distinction between formal and non-formal features.

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While there is a wide agreement concerning the paradigmatic cases, there are also
various controversial cases where it is not clear how this distinction is to be drawn.
Deduction is the sort of rationality that is the central concern of traditional logic. It
involves deductively valid arguments, or arguments in which, if the premises are true,
then the conclusion must also be true. In a deductively valid argument, it is impossible
for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Some standard examples are:

(1) All human beings are mortal; all women are human beings; therefore, all women are
mortal.

(2) Some angels are archangels; all archangels are divine; therefore, some angels are
divine.

These simple arguments (deductive arguments can be infinitely more complex) illustrate
two important features of deductive reasoning: it need not be about real things, and it
can be applied to any subject matter whatsoever i.e., it is universal.

One of the significant achievements of philosophy in the 20th century was the
development of rigorous ways of characterizing such arguments in terms of the logical
form of the sentences they comprise. Techniques of formal logic (also called symbolic
logic) were developed for a very large class of arguments involving words such
as and, or, not, some, all, and, in modal logic, possibly (or possible)
and necessarily (or necessary). (See below The computational account of rationality.)

Although deduction marks a kind of ideal of reason, in which the truth of the conclusion
is absolutely guaranteed by the truth of the premises, people’s lives depend upon
making do with much less. There are two forms of such nondeductive
reasoning: induction and abduction.

Rationality is the quality or state of being reasonable, based on facts or reason.

Rationality implies the conformity of one 's beliefs with one 's reasons to believe, or of one
's actions with one 's reasons for action. Rational psychology offers a number of practical
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benefits. The first of these is that of formal, precise statements of artificial intelligence
problems, theories, and techniques.
Deductive reasoning is a concept focused on logical arguments. It uses arguments that
conclusions’ typically follow from a premise. To draw a correct conclusion, the individual
must assume the premises to be true without the use of previously learned knowledge to
reason on the premises at hand. The individual will then declare a valid conclusion, which
has to be logically correct, based on the truth of the premises.

Syllogisms are deductive reasoning problems that involve two premises and a conclusion,
for example: “Some burglars are bankers; No bankers are policemen; so I can conclude
that some burglars are not policemen.” An individual can logically arrive at a valid
conclusion that explains the relationship between a premises end term in a way that
would theoretically be correct. Conversely, statements that are simply consistent with the
premises, but not dictated by them, are invalid. In human reasoning, it is imperative that
the individual produce’s a logical conclusion from the provided.

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