Traditional Branches of Philosophy

Aesthetics is concerned with the nature of art (whether visual, literary, dramatic, or in some other medium) and the way in which art is experienced. Two principal related issues, therefore,…

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, including its nature and its extent, and of justification (that is, whether a belief is formed in a valid way to justify its being…

Ethics is the study of morality and can be divided into three main areas of inquiry. Descriptive ethics concerns the actual moral beliefs held by specific individuals or societies and…

The philosophy of law is concerned with all aspects of theoretical reflection on laws and legal systems and therefore encompasses historical and sociological studies in addition to the philosophical questions…

Logic is concerned with studying the inferences we make, and the formal languages developed to systematize those inferences. This includes both the proof-theories and semantics for these languages, as well…

Metaphysics is the philosophical investigation of reality, including the nature of the world and the entities it contains. While such an investigation inevitably overlaps with natural philosophy—the sciences, especially physics…

An important historical branch designation rather than a current one, natural philosophy was the study of nature and the physical universe by philosophical (that is, largely empirical reason-based) methods.

Political philosophy is at least as old as Plato (428/227 or 424/423-348/347 BC) and is concerned with the nature of the state and, more broadly, with coercive institutions, and their…

Many religions distinguish between truths accessible through reason (natural theology), and truths accessible through faith (revealed theology). Both natural and revealed theology raise interesting philosophical questions about these two sources…