The Big Questions
The branches of philosophy
The Four Big Questions
Philosophy sprawls, but it sorts into a few great questions. Metaphysics asks what is real: mind, matter, time, God. Epistemology asks how we know anything, and when belief becomes knowledge. Ethics asks how we should live and act. Logic studies the rules of valid reasoning that hold the others together. Learn the branches, and the whole map comes into focus.
“All men by nature desire to know.”
Where this sits in the course
“The Big Questions” is lesson 3 of 3 in The Examined Life, a course about begin with Socrates: what philosophy is and why questioning matters.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
The Examined Life is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
More from Aristotle
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
In the app this lesson is followed by 4 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.