overview of how philosophcal (social) thought lays the foundation for Applied Sociology

1. Sociologogical Perspectives
of Health Care at a glance
What is a healthy Society?
What steps are required to be taken to think Sociologically
How do we achieve a health society?

2. Inductive Truth Exercise: What is a healthy Society

3. Acquiring a curious mind
Philosophical thinking

4. Ancient Philosophers of Education
• Socrates (470 – 399 B.C.) Greek
• Plato (428 – 348 B.C.) Greek
• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek

5. What is Philosophy?
• We do not only do things, we think about them
• Questions – What values are most important to us? How, in short, do we
achieve the good life?
• Questions leading to further questions
• Philosophy – quest for Knowledge
• Greek roots: Philo (Love) Sophia (knowledge/wisdom)

6. • Philosophical thought – practical consequences
• John Locke (1632 – 1704) influenced the
development of American democracy
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)
• Our situation with a fly
(ignorance/problems/questions) in a bottle trying to
get out
• The function and aim of philosophy is to show the fly
how to get out

7. Socrates (470 – 399 B.C.)
• Brilliant teacher in Athens
• His pupil was Plato (428 – 348 B.C.)
• “the unexamined life is not worth living”
• Moral life
• Socrates was convinced that there could be a solid basis for truth and that
there could be a solid basis for truth and that there are some moral
principles to guide human beings

8. • The good person is the rational person
• The surest way of going after knowledge is
through orderly conversation or dialogue
• The dialectic method – idea must be constantly
subjected to argument and counterargument

9. Plato (428 – 348 B.C.)
• Born in a distinguished Athenian family
• Influenced by Socrates
• Plato wrote dialogues (the dialectic method)
• Political theory is closely connected with moral philosophy
The State
• “a state comes into existence because no individual is self-sufficing; we all have many needs”

10. • By nature some would be rulers and others craftsmen and that this
would provide the basis for a perfectly stratified society
The Philosopher-King
• Competence should be the qualification for authority
• In both the individual and the state, the uncontrolled drives of the
appetites and spirited action lead to internal anarchy
• The ruler should be the one who has been fully educated
• The philosopher-king is one whose education, in short, has led
him up step by step through ever higher degrees of knowledge
until at last he has knowledge of the Good (elitist
education/chosen individuals)
• Justice is the harmony of the virtues of temperance, courage,
and wisdom.
• These virtues must be attained by all the individuals

12. The Myth of the Cave
• Asks to imagine some men living in a large cave where from childhood they have
been chained by the leg and by the neck so that they cannot move
• They cannot turn their heads, they can only see in front of them
• Behind them there is an elevation and there are people walking carrying different
objects
• Behind these walking people is a fire, and further back the entrance of the cave

13. • All that the prisoners can ever see are the shadows on the wall in front of the fire,
which are projected as persons walking in front of the fire
• They never see the objects or the men carrying them, nor are they aware that the
shadows are shadows of other things. When they see a shadow and hear a person’s
voice echo from the wall, they assume that the sound is coming from the shadow,
since they are not aware of the existence of anything else. They recognise as reality
only the shadows formed on the wall
• What would happen if one was released form the chains?
• Find it difficult to be accustomed to the new reality. It would take some time before
his eyes become accustomed first to the light of the fire and then to the outside
sunlight
• The outside reality so different from the world of shadows

14. • More detailed things of line and colour
• Finally by looking directly at the sun would gradually lead this liberated prisoner to
conclude that the sun is what makes things visible.
• Now he can understand what he and his fellow prisoners saw on the wall, how
shadows and reflections differ from things as they really are
• Liberated person - pity and sorrow for the other prisoners in the cave
• Convincing the prisoners to go out from the cave could lead them to kill him
(comfortable in their own disillusioned reality)
• In reality most people dwell in the darkness of the cave. They have oriented their
thoughts around the blurred world of shadows.

15. • It is the function of education to lead men out of the cave into the world of light.
• Education is not simply a matter of putting knowledge into the soul of a person
who does not possess it
• Education is a matter of conversion, a complete turning around from the world of
appearance to the world of reality
• Two world - Dark world of the cave/Bright world of light
• Ex: disagreement on the meaning of justice is the result of looking at a different
aspect of the reality of justice (relative to different experiences)
• Convinced that the human mind is able to discover that “real” object behind all
the multitude of shadows to attain true knowledge

16. The Platonic Doctrine of Forms and Ideas
• The forms or Ideas are those changeless, eternal, and nonmaterial essences or
patterns of which the actual visible objects we see are only poor copies
• The true reality – ideas or forms
• Compared with things, ideas such as Good and Beautiful seem timeless
• The intelligible world is most real because it consists of the eternal Forms

17. • IDEALISM ( Plato) GENERIC NOTIONS:
• Reality is an unchanging world of perfect ideas and universal truths
(metaphysics)
• Reality is made up of absolute truths. (religious education
programs)
• To Plato, truth is perfect and eternal and not found in the world
matter.
• Meaning is in the ideals of life itself.
• We can’t rely on our senses as they deceive us.
• (Criticism) a “truth” sometimes is only in the eye of the beholder

18. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
• Aristotle was an academic throughout his career. At the age of 18 he entered one of the
most renowned centres of learning of his day, Plato’s Academy, where he became noted
for the passion with which he devoted himself to his studies
• For Aristotle the goal of education is identical with the goal of man
• Education is essential for the complete self-realization of man
• The happy man is neither a noble savage, nor man in his natural state, but the educated
man
• The happy man, the good man, is a virtuous man, but virtue is acquired precisely through
education. Ethics and education merge one into the other

19. Relevance of Education and Philosophy for
Sociology
• Social Philosophy. Its role in the social sciences involves the study of
social life concepts in the following two aspects:
• Epistemological (concepts of happiness, justice, society, individuality,
etc)
• Axiological (the interpretation and estimation of the social
phenomena)
• Social philosophy’s object is the achievement of social good.

20. Social Philosophy – a closer look
• Social philosophy deals with questions about
• the foundations of social institutions,
• social behavior, and
• interpretations of society in terms of ethical values
• Plato (how society is ordered - ) –
• Kant (categorical imperative) –
• what's good for the goose is good the gander)
• to respect everyone’s autonomy
• Nietzsche – the meaning of values and their relevance to human existence (values are
not absolute)
• They sought to resolve the problem of self serving politicians and staes

21. What Social Philosophy is not
• Social philosophy is not ethics, because it is not concerned with
identifying a norm of good conduct; nor is it politics, because it is not
concerned with describing how power is expressed in institutions.
Instead, it evaluates institutional power in terms of moral principles
• Issues: how are individuals related to society?
• how is State authority justified?
• what is the role of government and law?
• what are justice, civil rights, freedom?

22. What is social Philosophy
• Social Philosophy is the philosophy of human relations in Society
• ‘Social Philosophy seeks to explain the nature of society in the light of the
principle of social solidarity’.
• Social Philosophy aims at interpretation of society with reference to the norm of
‘social unity’.
• Its effort is to study the meaning and worth of the present, past and future
modes of existence.
• Social Philosophy looks beyond the actual existence and seeks to discover the
ideals that bring Highest Good for all.
• It shows that individual Good is deeply involved in the realization of common
Good.
• Social Philosophy is concerned with what ought to be done to realize the ideal
involved in our social existence

23. How society forms (an example)
• Fear of others in the state of nature (apart from society) prompts
people to form governments through a social contract • State
power/authority (the sovereign) is based on the choice of subjects
that there be one will. Since the sovereign determines what is right,
rebellion against the sovereign is unjustified • As brutal as a State
may be, it is always better than having no State or government
(Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679)

24. How Social Philosophy aims to respond to
Societal formation
• Customs, traditions and various social
institutions are means to achieve
order, stability and harmony in the
society.
• These customs, traditions and
institutions with their set of rules and
laws impose several restrictions on
the conduct and behavior of its
members.
• Social Philosophy aims at the criticism
of social interactions and the social
relations in the community.
• It is mainly concerned with the study
of the values of various social
phenomena
Ideas and
forms
Individual
autonomy
Values are
not absolute

25. Relevance Philosophy to Sociology in class
• Educators are interested in the search for truth through ideas rather
than through the examination of the false shadowy world of matter.
• They encourage students to search for truth as individuals.
• Education is transformation: ideas can change lives.

26. Sociological Imagination

27. Research – Social sciences

28. Sociological
Theory

29. Socialization Processes

30. Culture

31. Social
Stratification

32. Health

33. Some common terminology

37. Think of this subject as containing its four
dimensions (Length, breadth, height, time in space
– aka timespace) Sociology
Social
Philosophy

38. Inductive Truth Exercise: So is it the whole that is
greater than the sum of its parts or the parts that
make up the whole of society?