Logic is concerned with the proper relationship between our reasons and the opinions they are supposed to support. Rational thinking is fundamental in business, law, medicine, science, and virtually every other area of human endeavor. Ethics is a subdiscipline of philosophy that studies right and wrong. Many observers of contemporary American culture feel that we are facing an ethical crisis in business, education, medicine, government, and other realms of social activity. Basic ethical issues facing all of us include abortion, euthanasia, obligations to the disadvantaged, fulfilling contracts, rights of criminals and victims in the judicial process, civil disobedience as a method for changing the law, and our impact on the environment that future generations will inherit.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge and belief.
The epistemologist asks how we can explain error and how we can guard against it. Metaphysics is the study of what exists. Metaphysics focuses on first principles and seeks to explain the fundamental nature of reality. The history of philosophy is inseparably the history of ideas that have shaped history itself. Every form of modern government, including our own republic, was partly born in the minds of the great philosophers we still read today.