France Terminale Philosophy

1. Notions

Art · Happiness · Consciousness · Duty · The State · The unconscious · Justice · Language · Freedom · Nature · Reason · Religion · Science · Technology · Time · Work · Truth

• Philosophy of Art: What Is Art, and Why Does It Matter? – The philosophy of art (part of aesthetics) asks: what is art, what is beauty, is taste only personal, what makes a creator, and can art show truth? Answers have changed from "art copies nature" to "art expresses feeling" to "the idea is the art".
• Ethics: How to Decide What Is Right – Ethics (moral philosophy) asks what we ought to do and why. Values such as honesty, kindness, fairness and respect guide choices. Three main theories help: consequences (utilitarianism, Bentham and Mill: most good for most people), duty (Kant: act on rules you could want everyone to follow; treat people as ends, never only as means) and virtue (Aristotle: build good character; virtue is the mean between extremes). Conscience is our inner sense of right and wrong. Freedom brings responsibility. Meta-ethics asks what "good" means and whether values are universal or relative. Applied ethics deals with the environment, animals, work, friendship and peace.
• Philosophy of Mind: How Are Mind and Body Linked? – Philosophy of mind asks what the mind is and how it links to the body. Dualism (Descartes) says mind and body are two different things, which raises the problem of how they interact. Physicalism says the mind is what the brain does. Consciousness is our inner experience, like a torch that lights what we attend to. The unconscious (Freud) holds wishes, memories and habits we are not aware of. Related questions: what makes me the same self over time, how emotions join body and mind, and whether machines could ever think.
• Political Philosophy: The State, Power and Justice – Political philosophy asks big questions about living together: Why do we need a state? What makes power rightful (legitimate)? What is justice? How much freedom and equality should people have? Social contract thinkers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) explain the state as an agreement. Plato and Aristotle described the ideal state and the forms of government; Cicero saw the republic as the people's shared property under law. Rawls, Mill and thinkers from many traditions (Confucius, Kautilya, Ubuntu) help us weigh liberty, equality, property and community.
• Free Will, Determinism and Freedom – Free will is the power to choose our actions ourselves. Determinism says every event, including every choice, is fixed by earlier causes. Hard determinists say free will is an illusion; libertarians say some choices are not fixed; compatibilists say a choice is free when it comes from your own reasons and no one forces you. Aristotle separated voluntary from forced acts, and noticed weakness of will. Kant linked freedom to autonomy: obeying a rational law you give yourself. In society, freedom needs laws so that each person's freedom fits with everyone else's.
• Philosophy of Nature: Nature, Culture and Human Nature – Philosophers use the word "nature" in three ways: everything that grows by itself, the basic character of a thing (human nature), and a model to copy. Culture is what people add: language, tools, rules. Thinkers also ask how humans differ from animals, and what we owe to nature.
• Epistemology: What Is Knowledge? – Epistemology is the part of philosophy that asks what knowledge is, how we get it and how sure we can be. A classic answer: knowledge is a belief that is true and well justified (justified true belief), although lucky cases (Gettier cases) show this may not be enough. Knowledge comes from reason (rationalism) and from experience through the senses (empiricism); Kant argued we need both. Theories of truth include correspondence (matches the facts), coherence (fits with other beliefs) and pragmatic (works in practice). Scepticism reminds us that senses and reasoning can mislead, so we test, check sources and stay open to correction.
• Nature of Science: How Scientific Knowledge Is Built and Changed – Science is a way of knowing that rests on evidence anyone can check. Scientists observe, infer, test ideas that could be proved wrong, and let other experts check their work. Laws describe what happens; theories explain why. Scientific knowledge is reliable but always open to change, and sometimes a whole way of seeing (a paradigm) is replaced.
• Philosophy of Technology: What Tools Do to Us – Technology is how humans make tools to change the world. Philosophers ask: do tools only extend our power, or do they also change how we see nature and ourselves? Is technical progress always real progress? Do we control our machines, or do they shape us? And where is the line between human and machine?
• Metaphysics: What Is Really Real? – Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that asks what reality is like at the deepest level. Ontology asks what exists: concrete things, abstract things like numbers, or both. Metaphysics studies substance and properties, change and identity (the Ship of Theseus), mind and body (dualism, materialism, idealism), time and causation, and free will versus determinism. It also asks big questions about the cosmos, nature and life. Thinkers from Parmenides and Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Hume and Kant, to Indian schools like Nyaya and Advaita Vedanta, gave different answers.
• Philosophy of Work: Necessity, Freedom, Alienation and Self-Realisation – Work is the effort we put in to change the world around us. We work first because we must (food, shelter), but work can also free us, because it lets us shape nature and ourselves. Work can also make us feel like strangers to what we do (alienation), or let us become who we can be (self-realisation).

2. Perspectives, distinctions, exercises

Three perspectives · Conceptual distinctions · Essay and text commentary

Coming soon