CONFUCIANISM

All this started becuase of Confucius, he tought the chinese people to do good, to be wise and the social relationships. There are certain patterns that have to be follow to have a good relationship with the people around you.

His principle ideas were emphasizing the family, tradition and respect above all.

For example, if we compare China to Mexico, they way that their people relate between them it's really different. In Mexico you can see that when an elder wants to cross the street any of their drivers would never let them pass unless the elder run. In the other hand, in China they respect if an elder wants to cross, the're not in a "hurry" like the mexicans. Also, for them, their elders are very wise persons that have past a lot of things.

Now, being wise is not being smart when you do or know something it's to make the right decision, there's a saying that says - "think twice before doing something".

PAN CHAO

She applied what Confucius said but she used it to help the women, in a sort of way. She still believed that all relationships are in a certain order, that the wives would submit to their husbands but they should also have education. What men applies to their political and social work outside the house, the women can apply it with study into making benefits to the home.

A good example it's what we all talk about, men and women being equal. There are certain roles between the men bringing the food and the women cleaning bout, if there could be another wa to have more income into the house then men should let the women study so they can get a good job. That's what is happening now at days.

So what Pan Chao wanted to show was that wisdom and knowledge are part also of the Confucianism. They are to do good and by knowing things they can help you to be wiser.

by Andrea Zapata

Aristotle

Aristotle

Sometimes staying in the middle is better. For example when a teenager is about to eat, it has a lot of choices for developing his nutrition; he has the choice of eating a lot and suffering of obesity or not eating at all and suffering an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia. But these aren’t all his choices, he can also chose to have an equilibrate diet, and to do exercise regularly so that he would avoid each of the past choices and stay in the middle between both, transforming into a good well being that care about his own health. Also he would develop the capacity of choosing the best between different choices without somebody help him (reasoning).

Aristotle (roots of wisdom) said that our goal should be to avoid extremes of behavior, and rationally choose a way of moderating (the middle between extremes) also called golden mean. He also believe that happiness is one of our most valuable positions, so if you stay away from extremes you’ll be choosing to be happy, so you will be reaching another virtue called reasoning.

He also said that our moral is based on the circumstances that surround us, like the things we live, the people around us (friends, family, teachers, etc), but most because of our experiences (practice); this is what transforms us in good or bad persons. (roots of wisdom).

Catherine Evangelista Ortiz

Bibliography: I did the picture by adding different ones but this are the links of the other ones.

Buss Mitchell, Helen. Roots of Wisdom. Thomson Wadsworth. USA:2005

http://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/green2.gif

http://www.bradfitzpatrick.com/weblog/wp-images/my_art/fullcolor/Cartoon-Baseball-Art-Icons.gif

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~slacey/images/Cartoon_Family.jpg

http://www.champixinfo.co.uk/img/smoking-cartoon.jpg

http://www.takver.com/history/myunion/images/tocsin_cartoon.jpg

http://www.awkwordsilence.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/pinocchio.PNG

*Socrates*

by MIA Andrea Ourgant Fernández

Socrates was a very doubtful person, he went around questioning the apparently obvious things and asking everyone he met to explain the most basic things.

Socrates thought that ideas already exist in our minds and that a skillful questioner brings to consciousness what we may not even realize we know.

He had a method of asking questions to pursuit the truth. This method is called The Socratic Dialectic. According to Socrates, to find out where you are ignorant is the first step in pursuing the knowledge or wisdom.

For example,
Imagine you have a super party this Friday, but you get punished and you are not allow to go out until the next week.
Is Friday night, party’s night! Your mother trusts you and tells you that she is going to go dinner with your father, and she is going to arrive late.

It is time when they go to dinner and you are very anxious. Finally you decide to go to the party so you get ready, realizing that your mother won’t notice it. You call a friend and he pick up you.
WOW! Is a mega party, everyone is having fun. It is 12 o clock, you think you must return home. So you ask for a ride. You arrive to your home, being quiet, put the stink cloth in the washing machine.

In the morning when you are taking your breakfast , your mother start asking you questions about what you did yesterday:

Mother: what did you do yesterday night? -I only watched TV
Mother: but the TV is broken, are you telling the truth? - Sorry , I get confuse, I got sleep all night.
Mother: I have a doubt, why is your formal clothes in the washing machine? -Because I mess them accidentally.
Mother: with what? -with soda
Mother: and why you were drinking soda? -A friend come to , I mean yes, but I heard him.
Mother: you went to the party right? -Ohm, yes, sorry.

This is a very useful method that you can apply whenever you want to know the truth and when you don’t trust in someone.

Bibliography
http://antisyphus.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/detective.jpg
Mitchell, Helen Buss. Roots of Wisdom. Socrates. Belmont, CA. Thomson, 2008.pgs 28-30.

Parmenides

After I read and analyzed Parmenides’ work. I concluded that he could be right in his theory. For me he is right when he proved that there is no space for the change can be done. He said that there is no void (the not-being). So the change can not happen.
In my opinion he is right. There isn’t the void. Void is also a space that we consider in our universe. For example in the universe, we know there are black holes, and we considered them as void. But are not these holes considered as something in the universe, like planets or stars. We know they are there. How can we define void?
The absent of matter, but for me this absent of matter, this empty space is a part of this big puzzle we call reality and universe. For me, universe is a big puzzle and void is part of we puzzle and if we make this puzzle there is no empty space in reality.

Bibliography: Buss Mithcell, Helen. Roots of wisdom. Fifth edition. 01/sep/2009

By Alberto García Vega

Buddhism

Budhhism is a different form of living from the one I am used to. The buddhism theories which I found most interesting were that everything is interrelated and the idea of Karma. These two ideas are very connected because if everything is related then anything you do to others will be something your doing to yourself. Buddhism affirms that everything is mutually dependent on everything else and undergoing conitnuous change. According to Buddhism, Karma means that all actions operate according to casual laws and what I do to another comes back around to me. Another theory that is also related to Karma and connection between everything is the Samasara. The Samasara is the cycle of birth-death-rebirth. We are reborn according to karma. Example: If we were very lazy and boring in our first life, then we might be reborn into a bear.

I have a story to share with all the readers of this blog on how Instant Karma has had an effect on me. One time, my mother called me to tell me that she was at the school parking lot, but i wasn't at school! :S I was at "Kiosko", so I ran to school and went in through the side of the school. I guess my mom figured it out, because i was sweating and she saw me running. She asked me, "Where where you?" I made up a huge story, that I had a forgoten my lap top and i ran back, and she didn't buy it. As I was getting out the car, I fell down on my knees and elbows. I immediatly thought, thats what happens for lying. This has happened to me many times. When I scream at my sister and start saying bad words to her i usally hit myself on a table edge or on my toe.

I believe karma does exist because I dont think all the bad things that happen to us are pure coincidence. We should live by the rule: Don't do to others what you wouldn't like them to do to you. When we do something bad to other people we should be ready to accept the consequences.

What goes areound comes around, so BE NICE!

-Kenya

Works Cited:

www.salagram.net/karma-animalnature.jpg

Buss Mitchel, Helen. Roots of Wisdom, fifth edition. 2008

Anaximander

Anaximander

When you come to school, you always sit on the same place. There is not a teacher behind you carrying you to your place. You do it, because there is already an order. You already know where you have to sit, you know you can’t be over someone else. As you enter the classroom you move directly to one place, right? Like once in a while you change, but without disturbing the other ones.

This is the same with the universe according to Anaximander. He thought that the world didn’t need to be supported by anything to be. He thought that the universe had its own balanced positions.

Anaximander also thought that we all came from a substance, he believed that we came from something so complex and so simple at the same time. He thought that we came from something infinite and/or boundless. The infinite for him it’s something endless like a cycle.

An example would be life. First you are born, you live your life. You get older, you become wiser. After all that you have kids, then grandsons. As your age rises your body gets weaker and weaker. At the end you die. It’s a cycle, because another kid has been born, when you are dying someone else is giving birth. It is boundless, no limits.

Bibliography:
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/anaximan.htm#Intro

by,

Isis Gonzalez Gonzalez

Plato

Plato like Socrates, believed most of us live in ignorance most of the time, but the worst of all is that we don´t even know we are just seeing a shadow of the real world.


In his dialogue Republic he show us the allegory of the cave, where the main point is that the visible world is the least knowable and the invisible world is the most intelligible. He says we must rely on our reason rather than in our senses, opinions or feelings.

An example for the cave allegory could be when you are about to do an exam, the teacher told you that he is going to put a math problem that you had already solved before. The day of the exam arrives, you see the problem but you don´t remember how to do it, so what Plato says is that you have to try to solve it (trusting on your reason) instead of putting what you barely remember, what you can see from your exam´s classmate or how others told you the math problem could be solved (trusting on your senses, opinions, etc.)

Bibliography:Mitchell, Helen Buss. Roots of Wisdom. Belmont, CA: Thomson, 2008.

Posted by: Daniela Orona Calleros.

Democritus: atoms and void

Democritus was the last pluralist of the 5th century B.C.E

Pluralist believed that it was impossible to think that only one arché could be able to construct everything. Democritus archés were atoms and void. (Buss Mitchell)

For him atoms were little particles that were indivisible, and couldn’t be destroyed or created, and they were able to move on the void(empty space). These atoms were able to change themselves so they could continue existing. (Stanford)

Atoms were:

*infinite

*solid

*in constant motion, so objects have the property of not been static. (Stanford)

He said that the creation of the world was a natural consequence of the movement of the atoms on space.

For example, I imagine that the Universe is the void; the space where everything is in constant movement. The human beings, the plants, animals, rocks, planets and everything are little atoms that are always changing, in motion and that never disappear.

Humans, plants and animals reproduce and the new atoms are not creations, they are just atoms that already existed. Then the atoms keep transforming themselves and when they die, they don't disappear, they just come part of a new arrangement forming part of a cycle that never ends.

Bibliography:

Buss Mitchell, Helen. Roots of Wisdom. Thomson Wadsworth. USA:2005

Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Obtained from

Image:

http://humanismoyconectividad.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/internet-map2003.gif

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ViVOORiUxQ4/R_L4l5BloI/AAAAAAAAAE4/gDEUdWDRuIc/s320/atomo.jpg

Abril Castillo

Sophists

Sophists: teachers of the practical application for philosophy, they showed their students how to use the science of rhetoric in order to be successful.

Have you ever been to a political meeting? Politicians just talk and talk and talk about what they are going to do. But are they really going to do something? The truth is that politicians are great orators, and they have an extraordinary capacity to convince people trough speech; however the convincement is rarely for the content of their ideas, but for their enthusiasm and rhetoric.

When politicians (some of them) give a speech they start talking about a subject and they can go on and on for hours because they know how to create coherent sentences and make it look like they know what they are saying. But if you asked them 5 minutes after they finished what where they talking about, and what did they promise, they would not remember half of the things they said.

In the last political campaigns we all watched politicians promising, they were everywhere, on tv, on the streets and even knocking on your door. What the actual politicians do is what sophists thought Greek politicians to do more than 1500 years ago. Sophists believed that since there is no one universally appropriate way of doing anything then there can be no absolutes of any kind, everything is relative. For them appearances are reality and “man is the measure of all things”. Sophists promised success to those that had the required tuition ($$) and were disposed to work hard on the science of rhetoric. So I infer that Political Sciences teach rhetoric, therefore politicians use the same techniques they did 1500 years ago.

Some famous sophists were Gorgias and Protagoras, the last one was the one that said that “man is the measure of all things”. Nowadays to be called a sophist means that you are all flash and no substance (hmm hmm politicians).

Bibliography:Mitchell, Helen Buss. Roots of Wisdom. Belmont, CA: Thomson, 2008.

Gabriela Maldonado

Anaximenes

Imagine from: http://deloespeculativoaloaplicable.blogspot.com/2008/11/otro-que-nos-dice-quien-fue-primero-yo.html, edited by Rocío Cruz.

Anaximenes continued with Anaximander and Thales’s position about the first principle, but he proposed a new one.

Anaximenes followed Anaximander’s teaching that said that the first principle must be one of the basic elements and so he chose AIR AS THE ARCHÊ. (Helen Buss Mitchell)

According to Helen Buss Mitchell, Anaximenes thought that everything comes from air and therefore everything is air. When I say everything, it means that even divine things derive from it. He supported his theory saying that since AIR IS INFINITE it can produce all things without being produced by anything.

I was trying to find out why Anaximenes chose air and not water or another element as the first principle. Suddenly, I realized that maybe he concluded that it was the most important element because of what he observed in the environment.

For example, I imagined Anaximenes watching what a horse does in a normal day. He may have seen the horse drinking water and he may have concluded that water was something basic in our lives, but that it wasn’t necessary to drink it the whole day, just at some hours.
He may have noticed that unlike water, air is something that we need all the time. Every single second we need to get air from our environment to stay alive, even though we don’t think about it.

This is the way that Anaximenes may have thought that air is the origin of everything and that we are all air. I would like to say that this wasn’t the way Anaximenes concluded his theory. I’m just imagining how it could have been.

Bibliography:
Mitchell, Helen Buss. Roots of Wisdom. Belmont, CA: Thomson, 2008.

Posted by Rocío del Mar Cruz López.