Lesson № 3 (seminar – 6 hours)
Тhemes:
1. German classical nphilosophy.
2. Origin and ndevelopment of the non-classical philosophical doctrines in the XIX -XIX c.
Aim: – to explain the nworldview background of the philosophical system of German classical nphilosophers and disclose the logic of development of the problems field iGerman classical philosophy;
– to ndisclose peculiar features and problem field of the non-classical philosophical ndoctrines in the XIX c.
1. THE nGERMAN CLASSIC PHILOSOPHY.
Philosophers of the 19th century generally developed ntheir views with reference to the work of Kant. In
Kant, Immanuel
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical nmovement known as German idealism, which developed from the ntheoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Fichte is often perceived as a nfigure whose philosophy forms a bridge between the ideas of Kant and those of nthe German Idealist Georg Wilhelm nFriedrich Hegel. nRecently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as aimportant philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nnature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Like Descartes and Kant before him, he was motivated by the problem of subjectivity and consciousness. Fichte also wrote works of npolitical philosophy and is considered one of the fathers of Germaationalism.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte ntransformed Kant’s critical idealism into absolute idealism by eliminating nKant’s “things-in-themselves” (external reality) and making the self, or the nego, the ultimate reality. Fichte maintained that the world is created by aabsolute ego, which is conscious first of itself and only later of non-self, or nthe otherness of the world. The human will, a partial nmanifestation of self, gives human beings freedom to act. Friedrich Wilhelm nJoseph von Schelling moved still further toward absolute idealism by construing nobjects or things as the works of the imagination and Nature as aall-embracing being, spiritual in character. Schelling became the leading nphilosopher of the movement known as romanticism, which in contrast to the nEnlightenment placed its faith in feeling and the creative imagination rather nthan in reason. The romantic view of the divinity of nature influenced the nAmerican transcendentalist movement, led by poet and essayist Ralph Waldo nEmerson.
Kant, Immanuel
I. INTRODUCTION
Kant, nImmanuel (1724-1804), German philosopher, considered by many the nmost influential thinker of modern times.
II. LIFE
Born in Königsberg (now
Although Kant’s lectures nand works written during this period established his reputation as an original nphilosopher, he did not receive a chair at the university until 1770, when he nwas made professor of logic and metaphysics. For the next 27 years he continued nto teach and attracted large numbers of students to Königsberg. Kant’s unorthodox religious nteachings, which were based on rationalism rather than revelation, brought him ninto conflict with the government of
III. KANT’S PHILOSOPHY
The keystone of Kant’s nphilosophy, sometimes called critical philosophy, is contained in his Critique nof Pure Reason (1781), in which he examined the bases of human knowledge nand created an individual epistemology. Like earlier philosophers, Kant ndifferentiated modes of thinking into analytic and synthetic propositions. Aanalytic proposition is one in which the predicate is contained in the subject, nas in the statement “Black houses are houses.” The truth of this type of nproposition is evident, because to state the reverse would be to make the nproposition self-contradictory. Such propositions are called analytic because ntruth is discovered by the analysis of the concept itself. Synthetic npropositions, on the other hand, are those that cannot be arrived at by pure nanalysis, as in the statement “The house is black.” All the common propositions nthat result from experience of the world are synthetic.
Propositions, according nto Kant, can also be divided into two other types: empirical and a priori. nEmpirical propositions depend entirely on sense perception, but a priori npropositions have a fundamental validity and are not based on such perception. nThe difference between these two types of proposition may be illustrated by the nempirical “The house is black” and the a priori “Two plus two makes four.” nKant’s thesis in the Critique is that it is possible to make synthetic a npriori judgments. This philosophical position is usually known as ntranscendentalism. In describing how this type of judgment is possible Kant nregarded the objects of the material world as fundamentally unknowable; from nthe point of view of reason, they serve merely as the raw material from which nsensations are formed. Objects of themselves have no existence, and space and ntime exist only as part of the mind, as “intuitions” by which perceptions are nmeasured and judged.
In addition to these intuitions, nKant stated that a number of a priori concepts, which he called categories, nalso exist. He divided the categories into four groups: those concerning nquantity, which are unity, plurality, and totality; those concerning quality, nwhich are reality, negation, and limitation; those concerning relation, which nare substance-and-accident, cause-and-effect, and reciprocity; and those nconcerning modality, which are possibility, existence, and necessity. The intuitions nand the categories can be applied to make judgments about experiences and nperceptions, but cannot, according to Kant, be applied to abstract ideas such nas freedom and existence without leading to inconsistencies in the form of npairs of contradictory propositions, or “antinomies,” in which both members of neach pair can be proved true.
In the Metaphysics of nEthics (1797) Kant described his ethical system, which is based on a belief nthat the reason is the final authority for morality. Actions of any sort, he nbelieved, must be undertaken from a sense of duty dictated by reason, and no naction performed for expediency or solely in obedience to law or custom can be nregarded as moral. Kant described two types of commands given by reason: the nhypothetical imperative, which dictates a given course of action to reach a nspecific end; and the categorical imperative, which dictates a course of actiothat must be followed because of its rightness and necessity. The categorical nimperative is the basis of morality and was stated by Kant in these words: “Act nas if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a general nnatural law.”
Kant’s ethical ideas are na logical outcome of his belief in the fundamental freedom of the individual as nstated in his Critique of Practical Reason (1788). This freedom he did nnot regard as the lawless freedom of anarchy, but rather as the freedom of nself-government, the freedom to obey consciously the laws of the universe as nrevealed by reason. He believed that the welfare of each individual should nproperly be regarded as an end in itself and that the world was progressing ntoward an ideal society in which reason would “bind every law giver to make his nlaws in such a way that they could have sprung from the united will of an entire npeople, and to regard every subject, in so far as he wishes to be a citizen, othe basis of whether he has conformed to that will.” In his treatise Perpetual nPeace (1795) Kant advocated the establishment of a world federation of nrepublican states.
Kant had a greater influence nthan any other philosopher of modern times. Kantian philosophy, particularly as ndeveloped by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, was the nbasis on which the structure of Marxism was built; Hegel’s dialectical method, nwhich was used by Karl Marx, was an outgrowth of the method of reasoning by n“antinomies” that Kant used. The German philosopher Johann Fichte, Kant’s npupil, rejected his teacher’s division of the world into objective and nsubjective parts and developed an idealistic philosophy that also had great ninfluence on 19th-century socialists. One of Kant’s successors at the
IV. Empiricism
Empiricists, nsuch as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, argued that nhuman knowledge originates in our sensations. Locke, for instance, was a nrepresentative realist about the external world and placed great confidence ithe ability of the senses to inform us of the properties that empirical objects nreally have in themselves. nLocke had also argued that the mind is a blank slate, or a tabula rasa, nthat becomes populated with ideas by its interactions with the world. nExperience teaches us everything, including concepts of relationship, identity, ncausation, and so on. Kant argues that the blank slate model of the mind is ninsufficient to explain the beliefs about objects that we have; some components nof our beliefs must be brought by the mind to experience.
David nHume pursued
Kant nexpresses deep dissatisfaction with the idealistic and seemingly skeptical nresults of the empirical lines of inquiry. In each case, Kant gives a number of narguments to show that Locke’s, Berkeley’s, and Hume’s empiricist positions are nuntenable because they necessarily presupposes the very claims they set out to ndisprove. In fact, any coherent account of how we perform even the most nrudimentary mental acts of self-awareness and making judgments about objects nmust presuppose these claims, Kant argues. Hence, while Kant is sympathetic nwith many parts of empiricism, ultimately it cannot be a satisfactory account nof our experience of the world.
V. Rationalism
The Rationalists, nprincipally Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, approached the problems of human knowledge from another angle. They nhoped to escape the epistemological confines of the mind by constructing nknowledge of the external world, the self, the soul, God, ethics, and science nout of the simplest, indubitable ideas possessed innately by the mind. Leibniz nin particular, thought that the world was knowable a priori, through aanalysis of ideas and derivations done through logic. Supersensible knowledge, nthe Rationalists argued, can be achieved by means of reason. Descartes believed nthat certain truths, that “if I am thinking, I exist,” for example, are ninvulnerable to the most pernicious skepticism. Armed with the knowledge of his nown existence, Descartes hoped to build a foundation for all knowledge.
Kant’s nRefutation of Material Idealism works against Descartes’ project as nwell as
Kant nhad also come to doubt the claims of the Rationalists because of what he called nAntinomies, or contradictory, but validly proven pairs of claims that nreason is compelled toward. From the basic principles that the Rationalists nheld, it is possible, Kant argues, to prove conflicting claims like, “The world nhas a beginning in time and is limited as regards space,” and “The world has no nbeginning, and no limits ispace.” (A 426/B 454) Kant claims that antinomies like this one reveal nfundamental methodological and metaphysical mistakes in the rationalist nproject. The contradictory claims could both be proven because they both shared nthe mistaken metaphysical assumption that we can have knowledge of things as nthey are in themselves, independent of the conditions of our experience of nthem.
The nAntinomies can be resolved, Kant argues, if we understand the proper functioand domain of the various faculties that contribute to produce knowledge. We nmust recognize that we cannot know things as they are in themselves and that nour knowledge is subject to the conditions of our experience. The Rationalist nproject was doomed to failure because it did not take note of the contributiothat our faculty of reason makes to our experience of objects. Their a priori nanalysis of our ideas could inform us about the content of our ideas, but it ncould not give a coherent demonstration of metaphysical truths about the nexternal world, the self, the soul, God, and so on.
Kant’s Transcendental nIdealism
With nKant’s claim that the mind of the knower makes an active contribution to nexperience of objects before us, we are in a better position to understand ntranscendental idealism. Kant’s arguments are designed to show the nlimitations of our knowledge. The Rationalists believed that we could possess nmetaphysical knowledge about God, souls, substance, and so; they believed such nknowledge was transcendentally real. Kant argues, however, that we cannot have nknowledge of the realm beyond the empirical. That is, transcendental knowledge nis ideal, not real, for minds like ours. Kant identifies two a priori sources nof these constraints. The mind has a receptive capacity, or the sensibility, nand the mind possesses a conceptual capacity, or the understanding.
Ithe Transcendental Aesthetic section of the Critique, nKant argues that sensibility is the understanding’s means of accessing objects. nThe reason synthetic a priori judgments are possible in geometry, Kant argues, nis that space is an a priori form of sensibility. That is, we can know the nclaims of geometry with a priori certainty (which we do) only if experiencing nobjects in space is the necessary mode of our experience. Kant also argues that nwe cannot experience objects without being able to represent them spatially. It nis impossible to grasp an object as an object unless we delineate the region of nspace it occupies. Without a spatial representation, our sensations are undifferentiated nand we cannot ascribe properties to particular objects. Time, Kant argues, is nalso necessary as a form or condition of our intuitions of objects. The idea of ntime itself cannot be gathered from experience because succession and nsimultaneity of objects, the phenomena that would indicate the passage of time, nwould be impossible to represent if we did not already possess the capacity to nrepresent objects in time.
Another nway to understand Kant’s point here is that it is impossible for us to have any nexperience of objects that are not in time and space. Furthermore, space and ntime themselves cannot be perceived directly, so they must be the form by which nexperience of objects is had. A consciousness that apprehends objects directly, nas they are in themselves and not by means of space and time, is possible–God, nKant says, has a purely intuitive consciousness–but our apprehension of objects nis always mediated by the conditions of sensibility. Any discursive or concept nusing consciousness (A 230/B 283) like ours must apprehend objects as occupying na region of space and persisting for some duration of time.
Subjecting nsensations to the a priori conditions of space and time is not sufficient to nmake judging objects possible. Kant argues that the understanding must provide nthe concepts, which are rules for identifying what is common or universal idifferent representations.(A n106) He says, “without sensibility no object would be given to us; and without nunderstanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty; nintuitions without concepts are blind.” (B 75) Locke’s mistake was believing that our sensible napprehensions of objects are thinkable and reveal the properties of the objects nthemselves. In the Analytic of Concepts section of the Critique, nKant argues that in order to think about the input from sensibility, sensations nmust conform to the conceptual structure that the mind has available to it. By napplying concepts, the understanding takes the particulars that are given isensation and identifies what is common and general about them. A concept of n“shelter” for instance, allows me to identify what is common in particular nrepresentations of a house, a tent, and a cave.
The nempiricist might object at this point by insisting that such concepts do arise nfrom experience, raising questions about Kant’s claim that the mind brings an a npriori conceptual structure to the world. Indeed, concepts like “shelter” do narise partly from experience. But Kant raises a more fundamental issue. Aempirical derivation is not sufficient to explain all of our concepts. As we nhave seen, Hume argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot empirically derive our nconcepts of causation, substance, self, identity, and so forth. What Hume had nfailed to see, Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making judgments nabout objects, to which Hume would assent, presupposes the possession of these nfundamental concepts. Hume had argued for a sort of associationism to explain how we arrive at causal nbeliefs. My idea of a moving cue ball, nbecomes associated with my idea of the eight ball that is struck and falls into nthe pocket. Under the right circumstances, repeated impressions of the second nfollowing the first produces a belief in me that the first causes the nsecond.
The nproblem that Kant points out is that a Humean nassociation of ideas already presupposes that we can conceive of identical, npersistent objects that have regular, predictable, causal behavior. And being nable to conceive of objects in this rich sense presupposes that the mind makes nseveral a priori contributions. I must be able to separate the objects from neach other in my sensations, and from my sensations of myself. I must be able nto attribute properties to the objects. I must be able to conceive of aexternal world with its own course of events that is separate from the stream nof perceptions in my consciousness. These components of experience cannot be nfound in experience because they constitute it. The mind’s a priori conceptual ncontribution to experience can be enumerated by a special set of concepts that nmake all other empirical concepts and judgments possible. These concepts cannot nbe experienced directly; they are only manifest as the form which particular njudgments of objects take. Kant believes that formal logic has already revealed nwhat the fundamental categories of thought are. The special set of concepts is nKant’s Table of Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with na few revisions:
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Of Quantity |
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Unity |
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Plurality |
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Totality |
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Of Quality |
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Of Relation |
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Reality |
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Inherence and Subsistence |
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Negation |
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Causality and Dependence |
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Limitation |
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Community |
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Of Modality |
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Possibility-Impossibility |
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Existence-Nonexistence |
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Necessity-Contingency |
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While nKant does not give a formal derivation of it, he believes that this is the ncomplete and necessary list of the a priori contributions that the nunderstanding brings to its judgments of the world. Every judgment that the nunderstanding can make must fall under the table of categories. And subsuming nspatiotemporal sensations under the formal structure of the categories makes njudgments, and ultimately knowledge, of empirical objects possible.
Since nobjects can only be experienced spatiotemporally, the only application of nconcepts that yields knowledge is to the empirical, spatiotemporal world. nBeyond that realm, there can be no sensations of objects for the understanding nto judge, rightly or wrongly. Since intuitions of the physical world are nlacking when we speculate about what lies beyond, metaphysical knowledge, or nknowledge of the world outside the physical, is impossible. Claiming to have knowledge from the application of concepts beyond nthe bounds of sensation results in the empty and illusory transcendent nmetaphysics of Rationalism that Kant reacts against.
It nshould be pointed out, nhowever, that Kant is not endorsing an idealism about objects like
Iconjunction with his analysis of the possibility of knowing empirical objects, nKant gives an analysis of the knowing subject that has sometimes been called nhis transcendental psychology. Much of Kant’s argument can be seen as nsubjective, not because of variations from mind to mind, but because the source nof necessity and universality is in the mind of the knowing subject, not iobjects themselves. Kant draws several conclusions about what is necessarily ntrue of any consciousness that employs the faculties of sensibility and nunderstanding to produce empirical judgments. As we have seen, a mind that nemploys concepts must have a receptive faculty that provides the content of njudgments. Space and time are the nnecessary forms of apprehension for the receptive faculty. The mind that has nexperience must also have a faculty of combination or synthesis, the imagination nfor Kant, that apprehends the data of sense, reproduces it for the nunderstanding, and recognizes their features according to the conceptual nframework provided by the categories. The mind must also have a faculty of understanding nthat provides empirical concepts and the categories for judgment. The nvarious faculties that make judgment possible must be unified into one mind. nAnd it must be identical over time if it is going to apply its concepts to nobjects over time. Kant here addresses Hume’s famous assertion that introspectioreveals nothing more than a bundle of sensations that we group together and ncall the self. Judgments would not be possible, Kant maintains, if the mind nthat senses is not the same as the mind that possesses the forms of nsensibility. And that mind must be the same as the mind that employs the table nof categories, that contributes empirical concepts to judgment, and that nsynthesizes the whole into knowledge of a unified, empirical world. So the fact nthat we can empirically judge proves, contra Hume, that the mind cannot be a mere bundle of ndisparate introspected sensations. In his works on ethics Kant will also argue nthat this mind is the source of spontaneous, free, and moral action. Kant nbelieves that all the threads of his transcendental philosophy come together ithis “highest point” which he calls the transcendental unity of napperception.
Kant’s Analytic of nPrinciples
We nhave seen the progressive stages of Kant’s analysis of the faculties of the nmind which reveals the transcendental structuring of experience performed by nthese faculties. First, in his analysis of sensibility, he argues for nthe necessarily spatiotemporal character of sensation. Then Kant analyzes the understanding, nthe faculty that applies concepts to sensory experience. He concludes that the ncategories provide a necessary, foundational template for our concepts to map nonto our experience. In addition to providing these transcendental concepts, nthe understanding also is the source of ordinary empirical concepts that make njudgments about objects possible. The understanding provides concepts as the nrules for identifying the properties in our representations.
Kant’s nnext concern is with the faculty of judgment, “If understanding as such is nexplicated as our power of rules, then the power of judgment is the ability to nsubsume under rules, i.e., to distinguish whether something does or does not nfall under a given rule.” (A 132/B 172). nThe next stage in Kant’s project will be to analyze the formal or ntranscendental features of experience that enable judgment, if there are any nsuch features besides what the previous stages have identified. The cognitive npower of judgment does have a transcendental structure. Kant argues that there nare a number of principles that must necessarily be true of experience in order nfor judgment to be possible. Kant’s analysis of judgment and the arguments for nthese principles are contained in his Analytic of Principles.
Withithe Analytic, Kant first addresses the challenge of subsuming particular nsensations under general categories in the Schematism nsection. Transcendental schemata, Kant argues, allow us to identify nthe homogeneous features picked out by concepts from the heterogeneous content nof our sensations. Judgment is only possible if the mind can recognize the ncomponents in the diverse and disorganized data of sense that make those nsensations an instance of a concept or concepts. A schema makes it possible, nfor instance, to subsume the concrete and particular sensations of an Airedale, na
The nfull extent of Kant’s Copernican revolution becomes even more clear in the rest of the Analytic of Principles. nThat is, the role of the mind in making nature is not limited to space, time, nand the categories. In the Analytic of Principles, Kant argues that even the nnecessary conformity of objects to natural law arises from the mind. Thus far, nKant’s transcendental method has permitted him to reveal the a priori ncomponents of sensations, the a priori concepts. In the sections titled the nAxioms, Anticipations, Analogies, and Postulates, he argues that there are a npriori judgments that must necessarily govern all appearances of objects. These njudgments are a function of the table of categories’ role in determining all npossible judgments, so the four sections map onto the four headings of that ntable. I include all of the a priori judgments, or principles, here to nillustrate the earlier claims about Kant’s empirical realism, and to show the nintimate relationship Kant saw between his project and that of the natural nsciences:
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Axioms of Intuition |
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All intuitions are extensive magnitudes. |
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Anticipations of Perception |
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Analogies of Experience |
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In all appearances the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, i.e., a degree. |
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In all variations by appearances substance is permanent, and its quantum iature is neither increased nor decreased. |
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All changes occur according to the law of the connection of cause and effect. |
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All substances, insofar as they can be perceived in space as simultaneous, are in thoroughgoing interaction. |
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Postulates of Empirical Thought |
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What agrees (in terms of intuition and concepts) with the formal conditions of experience is possible. |
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What coheres with the material conditions of experience (with sensation) is actual. |
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That whose coherence with the actual is determined according to universal conditions of experience is necessary (exists necessarily) |
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Kant’s Dialectic
The ndiscussion of Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology so far (including the nAnalytic of Principles)has nbeen confined primarily to the section of the Critique of Pure Reason nthat Kant calls the Transcendental Analytic. nThe purpose of the Analytic, we are told, is “the rarely attempted dissectioof the power of the understanding itself.” (A n65/B 90). Kant’s project has been to develop the full argument nfor his theory about the mind’s contribution to knowledge of the world. Once nthat theory is in place, we are in a position to see the errors that are caused nby transgressions of the boundaries to knowledge established by Kant’s ntranscendental idealism and empirical realism. Kant calls judgments that npretend to have knowledge beyond these boundaries and that even require us to ntear down the limits that he has placed on knowledge, transcendent njudgments. The Transcendental Dialectic sectioof the book is devoted to uncovering the illusion of knowledge created by ntranscendent judgments and explaining why the temptation to believe them persists. nKant argues that the proper functioning of the faculties of sensibility and the nunderstanding combine to draw reason, or the cognitive power of inference, ninexorably into mistakes. The faculty of reasoaturally seeks the highest nground of unconditional unity. It seeks to unify and subsume all particular nexperiences under higher and higher principles of knowledge. But sensibility ncannot by its nature provide the intuitions that would make knowledge of the nhighest principles and of things as they are in themselves possible. nNevertheless, reason, in its function as the faculty of inference, inevitably ndraws conclusions about what lies beyond the boundaries of sensibility. The nunfolding of this conflict between the faculties reveals more about the mind’s nrelationship to the world it seeks to know and the possibility of a science of nmetaphysics.
Kant nbelieves that Aristotle’s logic of the syllogism captures the logic nemployed by reason. The resulting mistakes from the inevitable conflict betweesensibility and reason reflect the logic of Aristotle’s syllogism. nCorresponding to the three basic kinds of syllogism are three ndialectic mistakes or illusions of transcendent knowledge that cannot be real. nKant’s discussion of these three classes of nmistakes are contained in the Paralogisms, the Antinomies, nand the Ideals of Reason. The Dialectic nexplains the illusions of reason in these sections. But since the illusions narise from the structure of our faculties, they will not cease to have their ninfluence on our minds any more than we can prevent the moon from seeming nlarger when it is on the horizon than when it is overhead. (A 297/B 354).
Ithe Paralogisms, Kant argues that a failure nto recognize the difference between appearances and things in themselves, particularly nin the case of the introspected self, lead us into transcendent error. Kant nargues against several conclusions encouraged by Descartes and the rational npsychologists, who believed they could build human knowledge from the “I think” nof the cogito argument. From the “I think” of self-awareness we cainfer, they maintain, that the self or soul is 1) simple, 2) immaterial, 3) aidentical substance and 4) that we perceive it directly, in contrast to nexternal objects whose existence is merely possible. That is, the rational npsychologists claimed to have knowledge of the self as transcendentally real. nKant believes that it is impossible to demonstrate any of these four claims, nand that the mistaken claims to knowledge stem from a failure to see the real nnature of our apprehension of the “I.” Reason cannot fail to apply the ncategories to its judgments of the self, and that application gives rise to nthese four conclusions about the self that correspond roughly to the four nheadings in the table of categories. But to take the self as an object of nknowledge here is to pretend to have knowledge of the self as it is in itself, nnot as it appears to us. Our representation of the “I” itself is empty. It is nsubject to the condition of inner sense, time, but not the condition of outer nsense, space, so it cannot be a proper object of knowledge. It can be thought nthrough concepts, but without the commensurate spatial and temporal nintuitions, it cannot be known. Each of the four paralogisms explains the categorical structure of nreason that led the rational psychologists to mistake the self as it appears to nus for the self as it is in itself.
We nhave already mentioned the Antinomies, in which Kant analyzes the nmethodological problems of the Rationalist project. Kant sees the Antinomies as nthe unresolved dialogue between skepticism and dogmatism about knowledge of the nworld. There are four antinomies, again corresponding to the four headings of nthe table of categories, that nare generated by reason’s attempts to achieve complete knowledge of the realm nbeyond the empirical. Each antinomy has a thesis and an antithesis, both of nwhich can be validly proven, and since each makes a claim that is beyond the ngrasp of spatiotemporal sensation, neither ncan be confirmed or denied by experience. The First Antinomy nargues both that the world has a beginning in time and space, and no beginning nin time and space. The Second Antinomy’s arguments are that every composite nsubstance is made of simple parts and that nothing is composed of simple parts. nThe Third Antinomy’s thesis is that agents like ourselves have freedom and its antithesis is that nthey do not. The Fourth Antinomy contains arguments both for and against the nexistence of a necessary being in the world. The seemingly irreconcilable nclaims of the Antinomies can only be resolved by seeing them as the product of nthe conflict of the faculties and by recognizing the proper sphere of our nknowledge in each case. In each of them, nthe idea of “absolute totality, which holds only as a condition of things ithemselves, has been applied to appearances” (A 506/B534).
The nresult of Kant’ analysis of the Antinomies is that we can reject both claims of nthe first two and accept both claims of the last two, if we understand their nproper domains. In the first Antinomy, the world as it appears to us is neither nfinite since we can always inquire about its beginning or end, nor is it ninfinite because finite beings like ourselves cannot cognize an infinite whole. nAs an empirical object, Kant argues, it is indefinitely constructible for our nminds. As it is in itself, independent of the conditions of our thought, should nnot be identified as finite or infinite since both are categorial conditions of our thought. Kant’s nresolution of the third Antinomy (A 445/B 473) clarifies his position ofreedom. He considers the two competing hypotheses of speculative metaphysics nthat there are different types of causality in the world: 1) there are natural ncauses which are themselves governed by the laws of nature as well as uncaused ncauses like ourselves that ncan act freely, or 2) the causal laws of nature entirely govern the world nincluding our actions. The conflict between these contrary claims can be nresolved, Kant argues, by taking his critical turn and recognizing that it is nimpossible for any cause to be thought of as uncaused itself in the realm of nspace and time. But reason, in trying to understand the ground of all things, nstrives to unify its knowledge beyond the empirical realm. The empirical world, nconsidered by itself, cannot nprovide us with ultimate reasons. So if we do not assume a first or free cause nwe cannot completely explain causal series in the world. So for the Third nAntinomy, as for all of the Antinomies, the domain of the Thesis is the nintellectual, rational, noumenal nworld. The domain of the Antithesis is the spatiotemporal world.
The Ideas of Reason
The nfaculty of reason has two employments. For the most part, we have engaged in aanalysis of theoretical reason which has determined the limits and requirements nof the employment of the faculty of reason to obtain knowledge. Theoretical nreason, Kant says, makes it possible to cognize what is. But reason has its practical employment in determining what nought to be as well. (A 633/B 661) This distinction roughly ncorresponds to the two philosophical enterprises of metaphysics and ethics. nReason’s practical use is manifest in the regulative function of certaiconcepts that we must think with regard to the world, even though we can have nno knowledge of them.
Kant nbelieves that, “Human reason is by its nature architectonic.” (A 474/B 502). That is, reasothinks of all cognitions as belonging to a unified and organized system. Reasois our faculty of making inferences and of identifying the grounds behind every ntruth. It allows us to move from the particular and contingent to the global nand universal. I infer that “Caius is mortal” from the fact that “Caius is a nman” and the universal claim, “All men are mortal.” In this fashion, reasoseeks higher and higher levels of generality in order to explain the way things nare. In a different kind of example, the biologist’s classification of every nliving thing into a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species, nillustrates reason’s ambition to subsume the world into an ordered, unified nsystem. The entire empirical world, Kant argues, must be conceived of by reasoas causally necessitated (as we saw in the Analogies). We must connect, “one nstate with a previous state upon which the state follows according to a rule.” nEach cause, and each cause’s cause, and each additional ascending cause must nitself have a cause. Reason generates this hierarchy that combines to provide nthe mind with a conception of a whole system of nature. Kant believes that it nis part of the function of reason to strive for a complete, determinate nunderstanding of the natural world. But our analysis of theoretical reason has nmade it clear that we caever have knowledge of the totality of things nbecause we cannot have the requisite sensations of the totality, hence one of nthe necessary conditions of knowledge is not met. Nevertheless, reason seeks a nstate of rest from the regression of conditioned, empirical judgments in some nunconditioned ground that can complete the series (A 584/B 612). Reason’s nstructure pushes us to accept certain ideas of reason that allow ncompletion of its striving for unity. We must assume the ideas of God, nfreedom, and immortality, Kant says, not as nobjects of knowledge, but as practical necessities for the employment of reasoin the realm where we can have knowledge. By denying the possibility of nknowledge of these ideas, yet arguing for their role in the system of reason, nKant had to, “annul knowledge in order to make room for faith.” (B xxx).
Kant’s Ethics
It nis rare for a philosopher in any era to make a significant impact on any single ntopic in philosophy. For a philosopher to impact as many different areas as nKant did is extraordinary. His ethical theory nhas been as, if not more, influential than his work in epistemology and nmetaphysics. Most of Kant’s work on ethics is presented in two works. The nFoundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) is Kant’s “search for and nestablishment of the supreme principle of morality.” In The Critique of nPractical Reason (1787) Kant attempts to unify his account of practical nreason with his work in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant is the nprimary proponent in history of what is called deontological ethics. Deontology nis the study of duty. On Kant’s view, the sole feature that gives an actiomoral worth is not the outcome that is achieved by the action, but the motive nthat is behind the action. The categorical imperative is Kant’s famous nstatement of this duty: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at nthe same time will that it should become a universal law.”
a. Reason and Freedom
For nKant, as we have seen, the drive for total, systematic knowledge in reason caonly be fulfilled with assumptions that empirical observation cannot support. nThe metaphysical facts about the ultimate nature of things in themselves must nremain a mystery to us because of the spatiotemporal constraints osensibility. When we think about the nature of things in themselves or the nultimate ground of the empirical world, Kant has argued that we are still nconstrained to think through the categories, we cannot think otherwise, but we ncan have no knowledge because sensation provides our concepts with no content. nSo, reason is put at odds with itself because it is constrained by the limits nof its transcendental structure, but it seeks to have complete knowledge that nwould take it beyond those limits.
Freedom nplays a central role in Kant’s ethics because the possibility of moral njudgments presupposes it. Freedom is an idea of reason that serves aindispensable practical function. Without the assumption of freedom, reasocannot act. If we think of ourselves as completely causally determined, and not nas uncaused causes ourselves, then any attempt to conceive of a rule that nprescribes the means by which some end can be achieved is pointless. I cannot nboth think of myself as entirely subject to causal law and as being able to act naccording to the conception of a principle that gives guidance to my will. We ncannot help but think of our actions as the result of an uncaused cause if we nare to act at all and employ reason to accomplish ends and understand the nworld.
So reason has an unavoidable interest nin thinking of itself as free. That is, ntheoretical reason cannot demonstrate freedom, but practical reason must assume nfor the purpose of action. Having the ability to make judgments and apply nreason puts us outside that system of causally necessitated events. “Reasocreates for itself the idea of a spontaneity that can, on its own, start to nact–without, i.e., needing to be preceded by another cause by means of which it nis determined to action in turn, according to the law of causal connection,” nKant says. (A 533/B 561) In its intellectual domain, reason must think of nitself as free.
It nis dissatisfying that he cannot demonstrate freedom, nevertheless, it comes as no surprise that nwe must think of ourselves as free. In a sense, Kant is agreeing with the ncommon sense view that how I choose to act makes a difference in how I actually nact. Even if it were possible to give a predictive empirical account of why I nact as I do, say on the grounds of a functionalist psychological theory, those nconsiderations would meaothing to me in my deliberations. When I make a decisioabout what to do, about which car to buy, for instance, the mechanism at work nin my nervous system makes no difference to me. I still have to peruse nConsumer Reports, consider my options, reflect on my needs, and decide non the basis of the application of general principles. My first persoperspective is unavoidable, nhence the deliberative, intellectual process of choice is unavoidable.
The Duality of the HumaSituation
The nquestion of moral action is not an issue for two classes of beings, according nto Kant. The animal consciousness, the purely sensuous being, is entirely nsubject to causal determination. It is part of the causal chains of the nempirical world, but not an originator of causes the way humans are. Hence, nrightness or wrongness, as concepts that apply to situations one has control nover, do not apply. We do not morally fault the lion for killing the gazelle, nor even for killing its own young. The actions of a purely rational being, by ncontrast, are in perfect accord with moral principles, Kant says. There is nnothing in such a being’s nature to make it falter. Its will always conforms with the dictates of reason. Humans nare between the two worlds. We are both sensible and intellectual, as was npointed out in the discussion of the first Critique. We are neither nwholly determined to act by natural impulse, nor are we free of non-rational nimpulse. Hence we need rules of conduct. We need, and reason is compelled to nprovide, a principle that declares how we ought to act when it is in our power nto choose
Since nwe find ourselves in the situation of possessing reason, being able to act naccording to our own conception of rules, there is a special burden on us. nOther creatures are acted upon by the world. But having the ability to nchoose the principle to guide our actions makes us actors. We must nexercise our will and our reason to act. Will is the capacity to act according nto the principles provided by reason. Reason assumes freedom and conceives of nprinciples of action in order to function.
Two nproblems face us however. First, we are not wholly rational beings, so we are nliable to succumb to our non-rational impulses. Second, even when we exercise nour reason fully, we often cannot know which action is the best. The fact that nwe can choose between alternate courses of actions (we are not determined to nact by instinct or reason) introduces the possibility that there can be better nor worse ways of achieving our ends and better or worse ends, depending upothe criteria we adopt. The presence of two different kinds of object in the nworld adds another dimension, a moral dimension, to our deliberations. Roughly nspeaking, we can divide the world into beings with reason and will like nourselves and things that lack those faculties. We can think of these classes nof things as ends-in-themselves and mere means-to-ends, respectively. nEnds-in-themselves are autonomous beings with their own agendas; failing to nrecognize their capacity to determine their own actions would be to thwart ntheir freedom and undermine reason itself. When we reflect on alternative ncourses of action, means-to-ends, things like buildings, rocks, and trees, ndeserve no special status in our deliberations about what goals we should have nand what means we use to achieve them. The class nof ends-in-themselves, reasoning agents like ourselves, however, do nhave a special status in our considerations about what goals we should have and nthe means we employ to accomplish them. Moral actions, for Kant, are actions nwhere reason leads, rather than follows, nand actions where we must take other beings that act according to their owconception of the law, into account.
The Good Will
The nwill, Kant says, is the faculty of acting according to a conception of law. nWhen we act, whether or not we achieve what we intend with our actions is oftebeyond our control, so the morality of our actions does not depend upon their noutcome. What we can control, however, is the will behind the action. That is, nwe can will to act according to one law rather than another. The morality of aaction, therefore, must be assessed in terms of the motivation behind it. If ntwo people, Smith and Jones, perform the same act, from the same conception of nthe law, but events beyond Smith’s control prevent her from achieving her goal, nSmith is not less praiseworthy for not succeeding. We must consider them oequal moral ground in terms of the will behind their actions.
The nonly thing that is good without qualification is the good will, Kant says. All nother candidates for an intrinsic good have problems, Kant argues. Courage, nhealth, and wealth can all be used for ill purposes, Kant argues, and therefore ncannot be intrinsically good. Happiness is not intrinsically good because evebeing worthy of happiness, Kant says, requires that one possess a good will. nThe good will is the only unconditional good despite all encroachments. nMisfortune may render someone incapable of achieving her goals, for instance, nbut the goodness of her will remains.
Goodness ncannot arise from acting on impulse or natural inclination, even if impulse ncoincides with duty. It can only arise from conceiving of one’s actions in a ncertain way. A shopkeeper, Kant says, might do what is in accord with duty and nnot overcharge a child. Kant argues, “it nis not sufficient to do that which should be morally good that it conform to nthe law; it must be done for the sake of the law.” (Foundations of the nMetaphysics of Morals, Akademie npagination 390) There is a clear moral difference between the shopkeeper nthat does it for his own advantage to keep from offending other customers and nthe shopkeeper who does it from duty and the principle of honesty.(Ibid., 398) Likewise, ianother of Kant’s carefully studied examples, the kind act of the person who novercomes a natural lack of sympathy for other people out of respect for duty nhas moral worth, whereas the same kind act of the person who naturally takes npleasure in spreading joy does not. A person’s moral worth cannot be dependent nupon what nature endowed them with accidentally. The selfishly motivated nshopkeeper and the naturally kind person both act on equally subjective and naccidental grounds. What matters to morality is that the actor think about their actions in the right manner.
We nmight be tempted to think that the motivation that makes an action good is nhaving a positive goal–to make people happy, or to provide some benefit. But nthat is not the right sort of motive, Kant says. No outcome, should we achieve nit, can be unconditionally good. Fortune can be misused, what we thought would ninduce benefit might actually bring harm, and happiness might be undeserved. nHoping to achieve some particular end, no matter how beneficial it may seem, is nnot purely and unconditionally good. It is not the effect or even the intended neffect that bestows moral character on an action. All intended effects “could nbe brought about through other causes and would not require the will of a nrational being, while the highest and unconditional good can be found only isuch a will.” (Ibid., 401) It is the npossession of a rationally guided will that adds a moral dimension to one’s nacts. So it is the recognition and appreciation of duty itself that must drive nour actions.
Duty
What nis the duty that is to motivate our actions and to give them moral value? Kant ndistinguishes two kinds of law produced by reason. Given some end we wish to nachieve, reason can provide a hypothetical imperative, or rule of naction for achieving that end. A hypothetical imperative says that if nyou wish to buy a new car, then you must determine what sort of cars are available for npurchase. Conceiving of a means to achieve some desired end is by far the most ncommon employment of reason. But Kant has shown that the acceptable conceptioof the moral law cannot be merely hypothetical. Our actions cannot be moral othe ground of some conditional purpose or goal. Morality requires aunconditional statement of one’s duty.
And nin fact, reason produces an absolute statement of moral action. The moral nimperative is unconditional; that is, its imperative force is not tempered by nthe conditional “if I want to achieve some end, then do X.” nIt simply states, do X. Kant believes that reason dictates a categorical nimperative for moral action. He gives at least three formulations of the nCategorical Imperative.
1. “Act only according to nthat maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a nuniversal law.” (Ibid., 422)
2. “Act as though the maxim nof your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature.” (Ibid)
3. Act so that you treat nhumanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end nand never as a means only.” (Ibid., 429)
What nare Kant’s arguments for the Categorical Imperative? First, consider aexample. Consider the person who needs to borrow money and is considering nmaking a false promise to pay it back. The maxim that could be invoked is, n“when I need of money, borrow it, promising to repay it, even though I do not nintend to.” But when we apply the universality test to this maxim it becomes nclear that if everyone were to act in this fashion, the institution of npromising itself would be undermined. The borrower makes a promise, willing nthat there be no such thing as promises. Thus such an action fails the nuniversality test.
The nargument for the first formulation of the categorical imperative can be thought nof this way. We have seen that in order to be good, we must remove inclinatioand the consideration of any particular goal from our motivation to act. The nact cannot be good if it arises from subjective impulse. Nor can it be good nbecause it seeks after some particular goal which might not attain the good we nseek or could come about through happenstance. We must abstract away from all nhoped for effects. If we remove all subjectivity and particularity from nmotivation we are only left with will to universality. The question “what rule ndetermines what I ought to do in this situation?” becomes “what rule ought to nuniversally guide action?” What we must do in any situation of moral choice is nact according to a maxim that we would will everyone to act according to.
The nsecond version of the Categorical Imperative invokes Kant’s conception of nnature and draws on the first Critique. In the earlier discussion of nnature, we saw that the mind necessarily structures nature. And reason, in its nseeking of ever higher grounds of explanation, strives to achieve unified nknowledge of nature. A guide for us in moral matters is to think of what would nnot be possible to will universally. Maxims that fail the test of the categorical nimperative generate a contradiction. Laws of nature cannot be contradictory. So nif a maxim cannot be willed to be a law of nature, it is not moral.
The nthird version of the categorical imperative ties Kant’s whole moral theory ntogether. Insofar as they possess a rational will, people are set off in the nnatural order of things. They are not merely subject to the forces that act nupon them; they are not merely means to ends. They are ends in themselves. All nmeans to an end have a merely conditional worth because they are valuable only nfor achieving something else. The possessor of a rational will, however, is the nonly thing with unconditional worth. The possession of rationality puts all nbeings on the same footing, “every other rational being thinks of his existence nby means of the same rational ground which holds also for myself; thus it is at nthe same time an objective principle from which, as a supreme practical ground, nit must be possible to derive all laws of the will.” (Ibid., n429)
Kant’s Criticisms of nUtilitarianism
Kant’s ncriticisms of utilitarianism have become famous enough to warrant some separate ndiscussion. Utilitarian moral theories evaluate the moral worth of action othe basis of happiness that is produced by an action. Whatever produces the nmost happiness in the most people is the moral course of action. Kant has ainsightful objection to moral evaluations of this sort. The essence of the nobjection is that utilitarian theories actually devalue the individuals it is nsupposed to benefit. If we allow utilitarian calculations to motivate our nactions, we are allowing the valuation of one person’s welfare and interests iterms of what good they can be used for. It would be possible, for instance, to njustify sacrificing one individual for the benefits of others if the nutilitarian calculations promise more benefit. Doing so would be the worst nexample of treating someone utterly as a means and not as an end in themselves.
Another nway to consider his objection is to note that utilitarian theories are driveby the merely contingent inclination in humans for pleasure and happiness, not nby the universal moral law dictated by reason. To act in pursuit of happiness nis arbitrary and subjective, and is no more moral than acting on the basis of ngreed, or selfishness. All three emanate from subjective, non-rational grounds. nThe danger of utilitarianism lies in its embracing of baser instincts, while nrejecting the indispensable role of reason and freedom in our actions.
OTHER WORKS
In addition to works ophilosophy, Kant wrote a number of treatises on various scientific subjects, nmany in the field of physical geography. His most important scientific work was nGeneral Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), in which he nadvanced the hypothesis of the formation of the universe from a spinning nnebula, a hypothesis that later was developed independently by Pierre de nLaplace.
The most powerful philosophical nmind of the 19th century was the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich nHegel, whose system of absolute idealism, although influenced greatly by Kant nand Schelling, was based on a new conception of logic and philosophical method. nHegel believed that absolute truth, or reality, exists and that the human mind ncan know it. This is so because “whatever is real is rational,” according to nHegel. He conceived the subject matter of philosophy to be reality as a whole, na reality that he referred to as Absolute Spirit, or cosmic reason. The world nof human experience, whether subjective or objective, he viewed as the nmanifestation of Absolute Spirit.
Georg nWilhelm Friedrich Hegel
I. INTRODUCTION
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm nFriedrich (1770-1831), German idealist philosopher, who became none of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century.
Hegel was born in
In 1801 Hegel went to nthe
During the Nürnberg years Hegel nmet and married Marie von Tucher. nThree children were born to the Hegels, na daughter, who died soon after birth, and two sons, Karl and Immanuel. Before nhis marriage, Hegel had fathered an illegitimate son, Ludwig, who eventually ncame to live with the Hegels. nWhile at Nürnberg, nHegel published over a period of several years The Science of Logic n(1812, 1813, 1816; trans. 1929). In 1816 Hegel accepted a professorship iphilosophy at the
The last full-length work npublished by Hegel was The Philosophy of Right (1821; trans. 1896), nalthough several sets of his lecture notes, supplemented by students’ notes, nwere published after his death. Published lectures include The Philosophy of nFine Art (1835-38; trans. 1920), Lectures on the History of Philosophy n(1833-36; trans. 1892-96), Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1832; ntrans. 1895), and Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837; trans. n1858).
Strongly influenced by nGreek ideas, Hegel also read the works of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, nthe French writer Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the German philosophers Immanuel nKant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Schelling. Although he often disagreed with nthese philosophers, their influence is evident in his writings.
II. PHILOSOPHICAL AIMS
Hegel’s aim was to set nforth a philosophical system so comprehensive that it would encompass the ideas nof his predecessors and create a conceptual framework in terms of which both nthe past and future could be philosophically understood. Such an aim would nrequire nothing short of a full account of reality itself. Thus, Hegel nconceived the subject matter of philosophy to be reality as a whole. This nreality, or the total developmental process of everything that is, he referred nto as the Absolute, or Absolute Spirit. According to Hegel, the task of nphilosophy is to chart the development of Absolute Spirit. This involves (1) nmaking clear the internal rational structure of the Absolute; (2) demonstrating nthe manner in which the Absolute manifests itself iature and human history; nand (3) explicating the teleological nature of the Absolute, that is, showing nthe end or purpose toward which the Absolute is directed.
III. DIALECTIC
Concerning the rational nstructure of the Absolute, Hegel, following the ancient Greek philosopher nParmenides, argued that “what is rational is real and what is real is nrational.” This must be understood in terms of Hegel’s further claim that the nAbsolute must ultimately be regarded as pure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, ithe process of self-development (see Idealism). The logic that governs nthis developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the nnotion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of nopposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel’s thought has been analyzed nin terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel ntended to avoid these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of nthe dialectic. The thesis, then, might be an idea or a historical movement. nSuch an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise nto opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of nthe conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the nconflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the nthesis and antithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates nanother antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the nprocess of intellectual or historical development is continually generated. nHegel thought that Absolute Spirit itself (which is to say, the sum total of nreality) develops in this dialectical fashion toward an ultimate end or goal.
For Hegel, therefore, nreality is understood as the Absolute unfolding ndialectically in a process of self-development. As the Absolute undergoes this ndevelopment, it manifests itself both iature and in human history. Nature is nAbsolute Thought or Being objectifying itself in material form. Finite minds nand human history are the process of the Absolute manifesting itself in that nwhich is most kin to itself, namely, spirit or nconsciousness. In The Phenomenology of Mind Hegel traced the stages of nthis manifestation from the simplest level of consciousness, through nself-consciousness, to the advent of reason.
IV. SELF-KNOWLEDGE OF THE ABSOLUTE
The goal of the dialectical ncosmic process can be most clearly understood at the level of reason. As finite nreason progresses in understanding, the Absolute progresses toward full nself-knowledge. Indeed, the Absolute comes to know itself through the humamind’s increased understanding of reality, or the Absolute. Hegel analyzed this nhuman progression in understanding in terms of three levels: art, religion, and nphilosophy. Art grasps the Absolute in material forms, interpreting the nrational through the sensible forms of beauty. Art is conceptually superseded nby religion, which grasps the Absolute by means of images and symbols. The nhighest religion for Hegel is Christianity, for in Christianity the truth that nthe Absolute manifests itself in the finite is symbolically reflected in the nincarnation. Philosophy, however, is conceptually supreme, because it grasps nthe Absolute rationally. Once this has been achieved, the Absolute has arrived nat full self-consciousness, and the cosmic drama reaches its end and goal. Only nat this point did Hegel identify the Absolute with God. “God is God,” Hegel nargued, “only in so far as he knows himself.”
V. PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
In the process of analyzing nthe nature of Absolute Spirit, Hegel made significant contributions in a nvariety of philosophical fields, including the philosophy of history and social nethics. With respect to history, his two key explanatory categories are reasoand freedom. “The only Thought,” maintained Hegel, “which Philosophy brings … nto the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of Reason; nthat Reason is the Sovereign of the world, that the history of the world, ntherefore, presents us with a rational process.” As a rational process, history nis a record of the development of human freedom, for human history is a nprogression from less freedom to greater freedom.
VI. ETHICS AND POLITICS
Hegel’s social and political nviews emerge most clearly in his discussion of morality (Moralität) and social ethics (Sittlichkeit). At the nlevel of morality, right and wrong is a matter of individual conscience. One nmust, however, move beyond this to the level of social ethics, for duty, naccording to Hegel, is not essentially the product of individual judgment. nIndividuals are complete only in the midst of social relationships; thus, the nonly context in which duty can truly exist is a social one. Hegel considered nmembership in the state one of the individual’s highest duties. Ideally, the nstate is the manifestation of the general will, which is the highest expressioof the ethical spirit. Obedience to this general will is the act of a free and nrational individual. Hegel emerges as a conservative, but he should not be ninterpreted as sanctioning totalitarianism, for he also argued that the nabridgment of freedom by any actual state is morally unacceptable.
VII. INFLUENCE
At the time of Hegel’s ndeath, he was the most prominent philosopher in
Hegel’s metaphysical idealism nhad a strong impact on 19th-century and early 20th-century British philosophy, nnotably that of Francis Herbert Bradley, and on such American philosophers as nJosiah Royce, and on Italian philosophy through Benedetto Croce. Hegel also influenced nexistentialism through the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Phenomenology has beeinfluenced by Hegel’s ideas on consciousness. The extensive and diverse impact nof Hegel’s ideas on subsequent philosophy is evidence of the remarkable range nand the extraordinary depth of his thought.
Philosophy’s task, according nto Hegel, is to chart the development of Absolute Spirit from abstract, nundifferentiated being into more and more concrete reality. Hegel believed this ndevelopment occurs by a dialectical process—that is, a process through which nconflicting ideas become resolved—which consists of a series of stages that noccur in triads (sets of three). Each triad involves (1) an initial nstate (or thesis), which might be an idea or a movement; (2) its opposite state n(or antithesis); and (3) a higher state, or synthesis, that combines elements nfrom the two opposites into a new and superior arrangement. The synthesis thebecomes the thesis of the next triad in an unending progress toward the ideal.
Hegel argued that this ndialectical logic applies to all knowledge, including science and history. His ndiscussion of history was particularly influential, especially because it nsupported the political and social philosophy later developed by Karl Marx. nAccording to Hegel human history demonstrates the dialectical development of nAbsolute Spirit, which can be observed by studying conflicts and wars and the nrise and fall of civilizations. He maintained that political states are real nentities, the manifestation of Spirit in the world, and participants of nhistory. In every epoch a particular state is the bearer or agent of spiritual advance, and it thereby gathers to itself power. Because the ndialectic means opposition and conflict, war must be expected, and it has value nas evidence of the health of a state.
Hegel’s philosophy stimulated ninterest in history by representing it as a deeper penetration into reality nthan the natural sciences provide. His conception of the national state as the nhighest social embodiment of the Absolute Spirit was for some time believed to nbe a main source of 20th-century totalitarianism, although Hegel himself nadvocated a large measure of individual freedom.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel quotations, sayings:
Karl nMarx and Marxism
Karl Heinrich Marx n was a German nphilosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary nsocialist. nHis ideas played a significant role in the establishment of the social sciences and the development of the socialist movement. He is also considered one of the ngreatest economists in history. He published numerous books during his nlifetime, the most notable being The Communist nManifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894). He often worked closely nwith his friend and fellow revolutionary socialist, Friedrich Engels.
The most influential achievement nin political philosophy during the 19th century was the development of Marxism. nGerman political philosopher Karl Marx, who created the system known as nMarxism, and his collaborator Friedrich Engels accepted the basic form of nHegel’s dialectic of history, but they made crucial modifications. For them nhistory was a matter of the development not of Absolute Spirit but of the nmaterial conditions governing humanity’s economic existence. In their view, nlater known as historical materialism, the history of society is a history of nclass struggle in which the ruling class uses religion and other traditions and ninstitutions, as well as its economic power, to reinforce its domination over nthe working classes. Human culture, according to Marx, is dependent on economic n(material) conditions and serves economic ends. Religion, he concluded, is “the nopiate of the masses” that serves the political end of suppressing mass nrevolution. Marxism is a theory of revolution, of history, of economics, and of npolitics, and it served as the ideology for Communism. Although he was a nphilosopher Marx had disdain for merely theoretical intellectual work, stating, n“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the npoint is to change it.”
Marx’s view of human history nis both profoundly pessimistic and profoundly optimistic. Its pessimism lies ihis belief that history reflects the oppression of the many by a small nminority, who thereby secure economic and political power. It is optimistic otwo counts. First, Marx believed that technical innovations bring about new nways of meeting humaeeds and make it increasingly possible for people to nsatisfy their deepest wants and to develop and perfect their individual ncapacities. Second, Marx claimed to have proved that the long history of noppression would soon end when the masses rise up and usher in a revolutiothat will create a classless utopian society. The first idea enabled Marx to nbring attention in the modern era to Aristotle’s idealistic conception of humaflourishing, which called upon people to develop and manifest many different nabilities, including intellectual, artistic, and physical skills. The second nidea motivated much radical activity during the 20th century, including the nRussian Revolutions of 1917, the Communist victory in
Friedrich Engels was a German nsocial scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and nresearch. In 1848 he co-authored The Communist nManifesto nwith Karl Marx, and later he supported Marx financially to do research and nwrite Das Kapital. After Marx’s death Engels edited nthe second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organized Marx’s notes othe “Theories of Surplus Value” and this was later published as the n”fourth volume” of Capital. He has also made important ncontributions to family economics.
German philosophers of nthe 19th century who came after Hegel rejected Hegel’s faith in reason and nprogress. Arthur Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea (1819) nargued that existence is fundamentally irrational and an expression of a blind, nmeaningless force—the human will, which encompasses the will to live, the will nto reproduce, and so forth. Will, however, entails continuous striving and nresults in disappointment and suffering. Schopenhauer offered two avenues of nescape from irrational will: through the contemplation of art, which enables none to endure the tragedy of life, and through the renunciation of will and of nthe striving for happiness.
Schopenhauer, nArthur
Schopenhauer, Arthur n(1788-1860), German philosopher, who is known for his philosophy of pessimism.
Born in Danzig (now
Schopenhauer disagreed nwith the school of idealism and was strongly opposed to the ideas of the Germaphilosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who believed in the spiritual nature nof all reality. Instead, Schopenhauer accepted, with some qualification idetails, the view of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant that phenomena exist nonly insofar as the mind perceives them, as ideas. He did not, however, agree nwith Kant that the “thing-in-itself” (Ding an sich), or the nultimate reality, lies hopelessly beyond experience. He identified it with nexperienced will instead. According to Schopenhauer, however, will is not nlimited to voluntary action with foresight; all the experienced activity of the nself is will, including unconscious physiological functionings. nThis will is the inner nature of each experiencing being and assumes in time nand space the appearance of the body, which is an idea. Starting from the nprinciple that the will is the inner nature of his own body as an appearance itime and space, Schopenhauer concluded that the inner reality of all material nappearances is will; the ultimate reality is one universal will.
For Schopenhauer the ntragedy of life arises from the nature of the will, which constantly urges the nindividual toward the satisfaction of successive goals, none of which caprovide permanent satisfaction for the infinite activity of the life force, or nwill. Thus, the will inevitably leads a person to pain, suffering, and death nand into an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and the activity of the nwill can only be brought to an end through an attitude of resignation, in which nthe reason governs the will to the extent that striving ceases.
This conception of the nsource of life in will came to Schopenhauer through insights into the nature of nconsciousness as essentially impulsive. He revealed a strong Buddhist influence nin his metaphysics and a successful confluence of Buddhist and Christian ideas nin his ethical doctrines. From the epistemological point of view, nSchopenhauer’s ideas belonged to the school of phenomenology.
Renowned for his hostile nattitude toward women, Schopenhauer subsequently applied his insights to a nconsideration of the principles underlying human sexual activity, arguing that nindividuals are driven together not by feelings of sentimental love but by the nirrational impulses of the will. The influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy may nbe seen in the early works of the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Wilhelm nNietzsche, in the music dramas of the German composer Richard Wagner, and imuch of the philosophical and artistic work of the 20th century. Schopenhauer ndied September 21, 1860.
Schopenhauer was one of nthe first Western philosophers to be influenced by Indian philosophy, which was nthen appearing in
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
German philosopher Friedrich nNietzsche continued the revolt against reason initiated by the romantic movement, but he scornfully nrepudiated Schopenhauer’s negative, resigned attitude. Instead, Nietzsche naffirmed the value of vitality, strength, and the supremacy of an existence nthat is purely egoistic. He also scorned the Christian and democratic ideas of nthe equal worth of human beings, maintaining that it is up to a few aristocrats nto refuse to subordinate themselves to a state or cause, and thereby achieve nself-realization and greatness. For Nietzsche the power to be strong was the ngreatest value in life. Although Nietzsche valued geniuses over dictators, his nbeliefs helped bolster the ideas of the National Socialists (Nazis) who gained ncontrol of
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
І. INTRODUCTION
Nietzsche, Friedrich nWilhelm (1844-1900), German philosopher, poet, and classical nphilologist, who was one of the most provocative and influential thinkers of nthe 19th century.
ІІ. LIFE nAND WORKS
Nietzsche was born i
In addition to the influence nof Greek culture, particularly the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, nNietzsche was influenced by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, by the ntheory of evolution, and by his friendship with German composer Richard Wagner.
Nietzsche’s first major nwork, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste de Musik n(The Birth of Tragedy), appeared in 1872. His most prolific period as aauthor was the 1880s. During the decade he wrote Also sprach nZarathustra (Parts I-III, 1883-1884; Part IV, 1885; translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra); Jenseits nvon Gut und Böse (1886; Beyond Good and nEvil); Zur Genealogie nde Moral (1887; On the Genealogy of Morals); Der nAntichrist (1888; The Antichrist); and Ecce Homo n(completed 1888, published 1908). Nietzsche’s last major work, The Will to nPower (Der Wille nzur Macht), was npublished in 1901.
One of Nietzsche’s fundamental ncontentions was that traditional values (represented primarily by Christianity) nhad lost their power in the lives of individuals. He expressed this in his nproclamation “God is dead.” He was convinced that traditional values nrepresented a “slave morality,” a morality created by weak and resentful nindividuals who encouraged such behavior as ngentleness and kindness because the behavior served ntheir interests. Nietzsche claimed that new values could be created to replace nthe traditional ones, and his discussion of the possibility led to his concept nof the overman or superman.
According to Nietzsche, nthe masses (whom he termed the herd or mob) conform to tradition, whereas his nideal overman is secure, independent, and highly nindividualistic. The overman feels deeply, but his npassions are rationally controlled. Concentrating on the real world, rather nthan on the rewards of the next world promised by religion, the overman affirms life, including the suffering and pain that naccompany human existence. Nietzsche’s overman is a ncreator of values, a creator of a “master morality” that reflects the strength nand independence of one who is liberated from all values, except those that he ndeems valid.
Nietzsche maintained that nall human behavior is motivated by the will to power. nIn its positive sense, the will to power is not simply power over others, but nthe power over oneself that is necessary for creativity. Such power is nmanifested in the overman’s independence, creativity, nand originality. Although Nietzsche explicitly denied that any overmen had yet arisen, he mentions several individuals who ncould serve as models. Among these models he lists Jesus, Greek philosopher nSocrates, Florentine thinker Leonardo da Vinci, nItalian artist Michelangelo, English playwright William Shakespeare, Germaauthor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Roman ruler Julius Caesar, and French emperor nNapoleon I.
The concept of the overman has often been interpreted as one that postulates a nmaster-slave society and has been identified with totalitarian philosophies. nMany scholars deny the connection and attribute it to misinterpretation of nNietzsche’s work.
ІІІ. INFLUENCE
An acclaimed poet, Nietzsche nexerted much influence on German literature, as well as on French literature nand theology. His concepts have been discussed and elaborated upon by such nindividuals as German philosophers Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, and nGerman Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, German American theologian Paul nTillich, and French writers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. After World War nII (1939-1945), American theologians Thomas J. J. Altizer nand Paul Van Buren seized upon Nietzsche’s proclamation “God is dead” in their nattempt to make Christianity relevant to its believers in the 1960s and 1970s. See also nExistentialism.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish nphilosopher, theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology and philosophy of religion, displaying a nfondness for metaphor, irony and parables. He is widely considered to be the nfirst existentialist philosopher.
Much of his philosophical work deals nwith the issues of how one lives as a “single individual”, giving npriority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking, and highlighting the nimportance of personal choice and commitment. He was a fierce critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm nFriedrich Hegel, JohanWolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich nWilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm nFriedrich Schlegel nas well as Danish pastors Jacob Peter Mynster and Hans Lassen Martensen.
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard developed another distinctive nphilosophy of life. Kierkegaard’s ideas, which were not appreciated until a ncentury after their appearance, were literary, religious, and self-revealing nrather than systematic in character. They stressed the importance of nexperiences that the intellectual mind judges as absurd, including the nexperiences of angst (“anxiety”) and “fear and trembling.” (The latter nphrase is the title of one of his books.) Such nexperiences, in his view, lead first to despair and eventually to religious nfaith. Kierkegaard discussed this process in terms of the nreligious person who is commanded by God to sacrifice his own most cherished ntreasures, as in the example of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac in the Old nTestament. Although Abraham cannot understand this absurd request from God, he ndecides to obey his commitment to God. Through such terrible experiences, nKierkegaard claimed, we learn that humanity’s relationship to God is absolute and nall else relative. What is most significant in a person’s life, Kierkegaard nconcluded, are the decisions made in such ethical crises.
Kierkegaard’s ideas came nto have importance in the 20th century. The concepts of existence, dread, the nabsurd, and decision were influential in
2. Origin and development of the non-classical philosophical doctrines nin the XIX -XIX c.
Modern philosophy is a ncategory of philosophy that noriginated in Western Europe in the 17th ncentury, and is now common worldwide. It is not a specific doctrine or school n(and thus should not be confused with Modernism), nalthough there are certain assumptions common to much nof it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.
The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end nof modern philosophy. How much if any of the Renaissance nshould be included is a matter for dispute; likewise modernity may or may not nhave ended in the twentieth century and been replaced by postmodernity. nHow one decides these questions will determine the scope of one’s use of n”modern philosophy.” The convention, however, is to refer to nphilosophy of the Renaissance prior to René nDescartes as “Early Modern Philosophy” (leaving nopen whether that puts it just inside or just outside the boundary) and to nrefer to 20th-century nphilosophy, or sometimes just the philosophy nsince Wittgenstein, nas “contemporary nphilosophy” (again, leaving open whether nor not it is still modern). This article will focus on the history of philosophy nbeginning from Descartes through the early twentieth century ending in Ludwig nWittgenstein.
History of nmodern philosophy
The major figures in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics during the n17th and 18th centuries are roughly divided into 2 main groups. The “Rationalists,” nmostly in
In the late eighteenth century Immanuel Kant set forth a ngroundbreaking philosophical system which claimed to bring unity to rationalism nand empiricism. Whether or not he was right, he did not entirely succeed iending philosophical dispute. Kant sparked a storm of philosophical work in
Hegel’s work was carried in many directions by his nfollowers and critics. Karl Marx appropriated nboth Hegel’s philosophy of nhistory and the empirical ethics dominant in
19th-century British philosophy came increasingly to nbe dominated by strands of neo-Hegelian thought, and as a reaction against nthis, figures such as Bertrand Russell and George Edward nMoore began moving in the direction of analytic nphilosophy, which was essentially an updating nof traditional empiricism to accommodate the new developments in logic of the German mathematician Gottlob Frege.
Rationalism
Modern philosophy traditionally begins with René Descartes nand his dictum “I think, therefore I am“. nIn the early seventeenth century the bulk of philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism, written by ntheologians and drawing upon Plato, Aristotle, and early nChurch writings. Descartes argued that many predominant Scholastic metaphysical ndoctrines were meaningless or false. In short, he proposed to begin philosophy nfrom scratch. In his most important work, Meditations non First Philosophy, he attempts just this, over nsix brief essays. He tries to set aside as much as he possibly can of all his nbeliefs, to determine what if anything he knows for certain. He finds nthat he can doubt nearly everything: the reality of physical objects, God, his memories, history, nscience, even mathematics, but he cannot doubt that he is, in fact, doubting. nHe knows what he is thinking about, even if it is not true, and he knows that nhe is there thinking about it. From this basis he builds his knowledge back up nagain. He finds that some of the ideas he has could not have originated from nhim alone, but only from God; he proves that God exists. He then demonstrates nthat God would not allow him to be systematically deceived about everything; iessence, he vindicates ordinary methods of science and reasoning, as fallible nbut not false.
Rationalists
Diagram Illustrating Spinoza’s Metaphysical System
Gottfried nWilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was one of the ngreat thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is known as the nlast “universal genius”. He made deep and important contributions to the fields nof metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as nmathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history. Even the neighteenth-century French atheist and materialist Denis Diderot, nwhose views were very often at odds with those of Leibniz, could not help being nawed by his achievement, writing in his entry on Leibniz in the Encyclopedia, n“Perhaps never has a man read as much, studied as much, meditated more, and nwritten more than Leibniz… What he has composed on the world, God, nature, and nthe soul is of the most sublime eloquence. If his ideas had been expressed with nthe flair of Plato, the philosopher of Leipzig nwould cede nothing to the philosopher of Athens
Benedict nDe Spinoza (1632-1677)
Benedict de Spinoza was namong the most important of the post-Cartesian nphilosophers who flourished in the second half of the 17th century. He made nsignificant contributions in virtually every area of philosophy, and his nwritings reveal the influence of such divergent sources as Stoicism, Jewish nRationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious nthinkers of his day. For this reason he is difficult to categorize, though he nis usually counted, along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three major nRationalists. Given Spinoza’s devaluation of sense perception as a means of nacquiring knowledge, his description of a purely intellectual form of ncognition, and his idealization of geometry as a model for philosophy, this ncategorization is fair. But it should not blind us to the eclecticism of his npursuits, nor to the striking originality of his nthought.
Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for nhis Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical visiounfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which God and Nature are identified. nGod is no longer the transcendent creator of the universe who rules it via nprovidence, but Nature itself, understood as an infinite, necessary, and fully ndeterministic system of which humans are a part. Humans find happiness only nthrough a rational understanding of this system and their place within it. Oaccount of this and the many other provocative positions he advocates, Spinoza nhas remained an enormously controversial figure. For many, he is the harbinger nof enlightened modernity who calls us to live by the guidance of reason. For nothers, he is the enemy of the traditions that sustain us and the denier of nwhat is noble within us. After a review of Spinoza’s life and works, this narticle examines the main themes of his philosophy, primarily as they are set nforth in the Ethics.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was na creative mathematician of the first order, an important scientific thinker, nand an original metaphysician. During the course of his life, he was a nmathematician first, a natural scientist or “natural philosopher” second, and a nmetaphysician third. In mathematics, he developed the techniques that made npossible algebraic (or “analytic”) geometry. Iatural philosophy, he can be ncredited with several specific achievements: co-framer of the sine law of nrefraction, developer of an important empirical account of the rainbow, and proposer of a naturalistic account of the formation of the nearth and planets (a precursor to the nebular hypothesis). More importantly, he noffered a new vision of the natural world that continues to shape our thought ntoday: a world of matter possessing a few fundamental properties and ninteracting according to a few universal laws. This natural world included aimmaterial mind that, in human beings, was directly related to the brain; ithis way, Descartes formulated the modern version of the mind–body problem. Imetaphysics, he provided arguments for the existence of God, to show that the nessence of matter is extension, and that the essence of mind is thought. nDescartes claimed early on to possess a special method, which was variously nexhibited in mathematics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, and which, ithe latter part of his life, included, or was supplemented by, a method of ndoubt.
Descartes presented his results in major works npublished during his lifetime: the Discourse on the Method (in French, n1637), with its essays, the Dioptrics, Meteorology, nand Geometry; the Meditations on First Philosophy (i.e., on metaphysics), nwith its Objections and Replies (in Latin, 1641); the Principles nof Philosophy, covering his metaphysics and much of his natural philosophy n(in Latin, 1644); and the Passions of the Soul, on the emotions (iFrench, 1649). Important works published posthumously included his Letters n(in Latin and French, 1657–67); World, or Treatise on Light, ncontaining the core of his natural philosophy (in French, 1664); Treatise non Man (in French, 1664), containing his physiology and mechanistic npsychology; and the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (in Latin, n1704), an early, unfinished work attempting to set out his method.
Descartes was known among the learned in his day as nthe best of the French mathematicians, as the developer of a new physics, and nas the proposer of a new metaphysics. In the years nfollowing his death, his natural philosophy was widely taught and discussed. Ithe eighteenth century aspects of his science remained influential, especially nhis physiology, and he was remembered for his failed metaphysics and his method nof doubt. In the nineteenth century he was revered for his mechanistic nphysiology and theory that animal bodies are machines (that is, are constituted nby material mechanisms, governed by the laws of matter nalone). The twentieth century variously celebrated his famous “cogito” starting npoint, reviled the sense data that some alleged to be the legacy of his nskeptical starting point, and looked to him as a model of the culturally nengaged philosopher. He has been seen, at various times, as a hero and as a nvillain; as a brilliant theorist who set new directions in thought, and as the nharbinger of a cold, rationalistic, and calculative conception of human beings.
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of nknowledge which opposes other theories of knowledge, such nas rationalism, idealism and historicism. Empiricism nasserts that knowledge comes (only or primarily) via sensory experience as opposed nto rationalism, which asserts that knowledge comes (also) from pure thinking. nBoth empiricism and rationalism are individualist theories of knowledge, nwhereas historicism is a social nepistemology. While historicism also acknowledges nthe role of experience, it differs from empiricism by assuming that sensory ndata cannot be understood without considering the historical and cultural ncircumstances in which observations are made. Empiricism should not be mixed up nwith empirical research because different epistemologies should be considered ncompeting views on how best to do studies, and there is near consensus among nresearchers that studies should be empirical. Today empiricism should therefore nbe understood as one among competing ideals of getting knowledge or how to do nstudies. As such empiricism is first and foremost characterized by the ideal to nlet observational data “speak for themselves”, while the competing nviews are opposed to this ideal. The term empiricism should thus not just be nunderstood in relation to how this term has been used in the history of nphilosophy. It should also be constructed in a way which makes it possible to ndistinguish empiricism among other epistemological positions in contemporary nscience and scholarship. In other words: Empiricism as a concept has to be nconstructed along with other concepts, which together make it possible to make nimportant discriminations between different ideals underlying contemporary nscience.
Empiricism is one of several competing views that npredominate in the study of human knowledge, known as epistemology. Empiricism nemphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, nin the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or tradition in contrast nto, for example, rationalism which relies upon reason and can incorporate ninnate knowledge.
Empiricists
· nDavid Hume
· nJohn Locke
George nBerkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was one nof the great philosophers of the early modern period. He was a brilliant critic nof his predecessors, particularly Descartes, Malebranche, nand Locke. He was a talented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that nis, the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas.
The nmost important philosopher ever to write in English, David Hume (1711-1776) n— the last of the great triumvirate of “British empiricists” — was also nwell-known in his own time as an historian and essayist. A master stylist iany genre, Hume’s major philosophical works — A Treatise of Human Nature n(1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning nthe Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues nconcerning Natural Religion (1779) — remain nwidely and deeply influential. Although many of Hume’s contemporaries denounced nhis writings as works of scepticism and atheism, his ninfluence is evident in the moral philosophy and economic writings of his close nfriend Adam Smith. Hume also awakened Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic nslumbers” and “caused the scales to fall” from Jeremy Bentham’s neyes. Charles Darwin counted Hume as a central influence, as did “
JohLocke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher,
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they nare, why (or even if) they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government nlegitimate, what rights and freedoms it should nprotect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what nduties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be nlegitimately overthrown—if ever. In a vernacular nsense, the term “political philosophy” often refers to a general nview, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, about politics that does nnot necessarily belong to the technical discipline of philosophy.
Political Philosophers
· nJohn Locke
· nKarl Marx
· nJames Mill
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), whose current reputation rests largely on his political nphilosophy, was a thinker with wide-ranging interests. In philosophy, he ndefended a range of materialist, nominalist, and nempiricist views against Cartesian and Aristotelian alternatives. In physics, nhis work was influential on Leibniz, and led him into disputes with Boyle and nthe experimentalists of the early Royal Society. In history, he translated Thucydides’ nHistory of the Peloponnesian War into English, and later wrote his owhistory of the Long Parliament. In mathematics he was less successful, and is nbest remembered for his repeated unsuccessful attempts to square the circle. nBut despite that, Hobbes was a serious and prominent participant in the nintellectual life of his time.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, n1712-1778
Jean-Jacques Rousseau remains an important figure in the history of philosophy, both because nof his contributions to political philosophy and moral psychology and because nof his influence on later thinkers. Rousseau’s own view of philosophy and nphilosophers was firmly negative, seeing philosophers as the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, as apologists for various nforms of tyranny, and as playing a role in the alienation of the moderindividual from humanity’s natural impulse to compassion. The concern that ndominates Rousseau’s work is to find a way of preserving human freedom in a nworld where human beings are increasingly dependent on one another for the nsatisfaction of their needs. This concern has two dimensions: material and npsychological, of which the latter has greater importance. In the modern world, nhuman beings come to derive their very sense of self from the opinion of nothers, a fact which Rousseau sees as corrosive of freedom and destructive of nindividual authenticity. In his mature work, he principally explores two routes nto achieving and protecting freedom: the first is a political one aimed at nconstructing political institutions that allow for the co-existence of free and nequal citizens in a community where they themselves are sovereign; the second nis a project for child development and education that fosters autonomy and navoids the development of the most destructive forms of self-interest. However, nthough Rousseau believes the co-existence of human beings in relations of nequality and freedom is possible, he is consistently and overwhelmingly npessimistic that humanity will escape from a dystopia of alienation, noppression, and unfreedom. In addition to his ncontributions to philosophy, Rousseau was active as a composer and a music ntheorist, as the pioneer of modern autobiography, as a novelist, and as a nbotanist. Rousseau’s appreciation of the wonders of nature and his stress othe importance of feeling and emotion made him an important influence on and nanticipator of the romantic movement. To a very large nextent, the interests and concerns that mark his philosophical work also inform nthese other activities, and Rousseau’s contributions in ostensibly nnon-philosophical fields often serve to illuminate his philosophical ncommitments and arguments.
JohStuart Mill (1806-1873), British nphilosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator, was nthe most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. nHis views are of continuing significance, and are generally recognized to be namong the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and nof a liberal political view of society and culture. The overall aim of his nphilosophy is to develop a positive view of the universe and the place of nhumans in it, one which contributes to the progress of human knowledge, nindividual freedom and human well-being. His views are not entirely original, nhaving their roots in the British empiricism of John Locke, George Berkeley and nDavid Hume, and in the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. nBut he gave them a new depth, and his formulations were sufficiently articulate nto gain for them a continuing influence among a broad public.
Jeremy Bentham n(1748—1832)
Jeremy Bentham was aEnglish philosopher and political radical. He is primarily known today for his moral nphilosophy, especially his principle of nutilitarianism, which evaluates actions based upon their consequences. The nrelevant consequences, in particular, are the overall happiness created for neveryone affected by the action. Influenced by many enlightenment thinkers, nespecially empiricists such as JohLocke and David Hume, Bentham developed an ethical theory grounded in a largely nempiricist account of humaature. He famously held a hedonistic account of nboth motivation and value according to which what is fundamentally valuable and nwhat ultimately motivates us is pleasure and pain. Happiness, according to Bentham, is thus a matter of experiencing pleasure and lack nof pain.
Although he never practiced law, Bentham ndid write a great deal of philosophy of law, spending nmost of his life critiquing the existing law and strongly advocating legal nreform. Throughout his work, he critiques various natural naccounts of law which claim, for example, that nliberty, rights, and so on exist independent of government. In this way, Bentham arguably developed an early form of what is now noften called “legal npositivism.” Beyond such critiques, he nultimately maintained that putting his moral theory into consistent practice would nyield results in legal theory by providing justification for social, political, nand legal institutions.
Bentham’s ninfluence was minor during his life. But his impact was greater in later years nas his ideas were carried on by followers such as John Stuart nMill, John Austin, and other consequentialists.
James Mill (1773–1836) was a nScots-born political philosopher, historian, psychologist, educational ntheorist, economist, and legal, political and penal reformer. Well-known and nhighly regarded in his day, he is now all but forgotten. Mill’s reputatioow nrests mainly on two biographical facts. The first is that his first-born sowas John Stuart Mill, who became even more eminent than his father. The second nis that the elder Mill was the collaborator and ally of Jeremy Bentham, whose subsequent reputation also eclipsed the nelder Mill’s. My aim here is to try, insofar as possible, to remove Mill from nthese two large shadows and to reconsider him as a formidable thinker in his nown right.
Mill’s range of interests was remarkably wide, nextending from education and psychology in his two-volume Analysis of the nPhenomena of the Human Mind (1829b), to political economy (he persuaded nhis friend David Ricardo to write on that subject, as Mill himself did in his Elements nof Political Economy, 1821), to penology and prison reform, to the law and nhistory, and, not least, to political philosophy. On these and other subjects nhe wrote five books and more than a thousand essays and reviews. It is with nMill the political philosopher that the present article is principally concerned.
Idealism
Idealism refers to the group of philosophies which nassert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally a construct nof the mind or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, nidealism manifests as a skepticism
about the npossibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, nidealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape nsociety. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that nall entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the nmind. An extreme version of this idealism can exist in the philosophical notioof solipsism.
Idealist Philosophers
· nFriedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
· nGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Friedrich nWilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) nis, along with J.G. Fichte and G.W.F. Hegel, one of nthe three most influential thinkers in the tradition of ‘German Idealism’. nAlthough he is often regarded as a philosophical Proteus who changed his nconception so radically and so often that it is hard to attribute one clear nphilosophical conception to him, Schelling was ifact often an impressively rigorous logical thinker. In the era during which Schelling was writing, so much was changing in philosophy nthat a stable, fixed point of view was as likely to lead to a failure to grasp nimportant new developments as it was to lead to a defensible philosophical nsystem. Schelling’s continuing importance today nrelates mainly to three aspects of his work. The first is his Naturphilosophie, which, although its empirical nclaims are largely indefensible, opens up the possibility of a moderhermeneutic view of nature that does not restrict nature’s significance to what ncan be established about it in scientific terms. The second is his nanti-Cartesian account of subjectivity, which prefigures some of the best ideas nof thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Jacques Lacan, nin showing how the thinking subject cannot be fully transparent to itself. The nthird is his later critique of Hegelian Idealism, which influenced Kierkegaard, nMarx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others, and aspects of which are still echoed nin contemporary thought by thinkers like Jacques Derrida.
nArthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Arthur Schopenhauer has been dubbed the artist’s nphilosopher on account of the inspiration his aesthetics has provided to nartists of all stripes. He is also known as the philosopher of pessimism, as he narticulated a worldview that challenges the value of existence. His elegant and nmuscular prose earn him a reputation as one the greatest German stylists. nAlthough he never achieved the fame of such post-Kantian philosophers as Johann Gottlieb Fichte nand G.W.F. Hegel nin his lifetime, his thought informed the work of such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein nand, most famously, Friedrich Nietzsche. He is also nknown as the first German philosopher to incorporate Eastern thought into his nwritings.
Schopenhauer’s thought is iconoclastic for a number of nreasons. Although he considered himself Kant’s nonly true philosophical heir, he argued that the world was essentially nirrational. Writing in the era of German Romanticism, he developed aaesthetics that was classicist in its emphasis on the eternal. When Germaphilosophers were entrenched in the universities and immersed in the ntheological concerns of the time, Schopenhauer was an atheist who stayed noutside the academic profession.
Schopenhauer’s lack of recognition during most of his nlifetime may have been due to the iconoclasm of his thought, but it was nprobably also partly due to his irascible and stubborn temperament. The ndiatribes against Hegel and Fichte peppered nthroughout his works provide evidence of his state of mind. Regardless of the nreason Schopenhauer’s philosophy was overlooked for so long, he fully deserves nthe prestige he enjoyed altogether too late in his life.
F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) was the most nfamous, original and philosophically influential of the British Idealists. nThese philosophers came to prominence in the closing decades of the nineteenth ncentury, but their effect on British philosophy and society at large — and, nthrough the positions of power attained by some of their pupils in the ninstitutions of the British Empire, on much of the world — persisted well into nthe first half of the twentieth. They stood out amongst their peers iconsciously rejecting some main aspects of the tradition of their earlier ncompatriots, such as Hume and Mill, and responding, albeit in an original and ncritical fashion, rather to the work of Kant and Hegel.
But it would involve a significant degree of ndistortion to depict the British Idealists as simply choosing Hegel over Hume, nas the denomination ‘Neo-Hegelians’ all too easily suggests. On the contrary, nthey were open to a variety of influences, including the philosophy of aanti-idealist thinker such as J.F. Herbart and of the nsubsequently forgotten but then prominent Hermann Lotze, nan independent mind whose speculations are difficult to classify in terms of nthe idealist/realist opposition. Upon the whole, the Idealists revitalized nBritish philosophy by making it permeable to a rich variety of continental nideas. In this way, they helped prepare the ground on which analytic philosophy nwould eventually flourish, as most Idealists were very well acquainted with the nworks of Frege’s contemporaries (e.g. Sigwart) and discussed their ideas in their logical ntreatises. Bradley was a leading figure in this movement of original reappropriation of alien ideas, which he explicitly npromoted as the sole antidote to dogmatism and intellectual sclerosis in the n‘Preface’ to Appearance and Reality. ‘The present generation’, he nsaid, ‘is learning that to gain education a man must study in more than one nschool’ (p. viii).
It is for his metaphysics that Bradley has become best nknown. He argued that our everyday conceptions of the world (as well as those nmore refined ones common among his philosophical predecessors) contain hiddecontradictions which appear, fatally, when we try to think out their nconsequences. In particular, Bradley rejected on these grounds the view that nreality can be understood as consisting of many objects existing independently nof each other (pluralism) and of our experience of them (realism). nConsistently, his own view combined substance monism — the claim that reality nis one, that there are no real separate things — with metaphysical idealism — nthe claim that reality consists solely of idea or experience. This vision of nthe world had a profound effect on the verse of T.S. Eliot, who studied nphilosophy at Harvard and wrote a Ph.D. thesis on Bradley.
On later generations of philosophers, however, nBradley’s contributions to moral philosophy and the philosophy of logic were nfar more influential than his metaphysics. His critical examination of hedonism n— the view that the goal of morality is the maximization of general pleasure — nwas seminal and stands as a permanent contribution to the subject which can still be read with profit today. Some of the ndoctrines of his logic have become standard and unnoticed assumptions through ntheir acceptance by Bertrand Russell, an acceptance which survived Russell’s nsubsequent repudiation of idealist logic and metaphysics.
Existentialism
Existentialism is generally nconsidered to be the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the nstarting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the nexperiences of the individual. Building on that, existentialist hold that moral thinking and scientific thinking together do nnot suffice to understand human existence, and, therefore, a further set of ncategories, governed by the norm of authenticity, nis necessary to understand human existence.
Existential Philosophers
· nKarl Jaspers
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre (1905–1980) is arguably the best knowphilosopher of the twentieth century. His indefatigable pursuit of nphilosophical reflection, literary creativity and, in the second half of his nlife, active political commitment gained him worldwide renown, if not nadmiration. He is commonly considered the father of Existentialist philosophy, nwhose writings set the tone for intellectual life in the decade immediately nfollowing the Second World War. Among the many ironies that permeate his life, nnot the least is the immense popularity of his scandalous public lecture n“Existentialism is a Humanism,” delivered to an enthusiastic Parisian crowd nOctober 28, 1945. Though taken as a quasi manifesto for the Existentialist nmovement, the transcript of this lecture was the only publication that Sartre nopenly regretted seeing in print. And yet it continues to be the major nintroduction to his philosophy for the general public. One of the reasons both nfor its popularity and for his discomfort is the clarity with which it exhibits nthe major tenets of existentialist thought while revealing Sartre’s attempt to nbroaden its social application in response to his Communist and Catholic ncritics. In other words, it offers us a glimpse of Sartre’s thought “on the wing.”
After surveying the evolution of Sartre’s nphilosophical thinking, I shall address his thought under five categories, nnamely, ontology, psychology, ethics, political commitment, and the relatiobetween philosophy and the fine arts, especially literature, in his work. I nshall conclude with several observations about the continued relevance of his nthought in contemporary philosophy both Anglo-American and “Continental.”
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) began his nacademic career working as a psychiatrist and, after a period of transition, he nconverted to philosophy in the early 1920s. Throughout the middle decades of nthe twentieth century he exercised considerable influence on a number of areas nof philosophical inquiry: especially on epistemology, the philosophy of nreligion, and political theory. His philosophy has its foundation in a nsubjective-experiential transformation of Kantian philosophy, which nreconstructs Kantian transcendentalism as a doctrine of particular experience nand spontaneous freedom, and emphasizes the constitutive importance of lived nexistence for authentic knowledge. Jaspers obtained his widest influence, not through nhis philosophy, but through his writings on governmental conditions in
Despite his importance in the evolution of both nphilosophy and political theory in twentieth-century
Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) was a philosopher, drama ncritic, playwright and musician. He converted to Catholicism in 1929 and his nphilosophy was later described as “Christian Existentialism” (most famously iJean-Paul Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism”) a term he initially endorsed nbut later repudiated. In addition to his numerous philosophical publications, nhe was the author of some thirty dramatic works. Marcel gave the Gifford nLectures in
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a Germaphilosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology nand existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such nphilosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas nhave exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary Europeaphilosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example iarchitectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary ncriticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see ne.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger n1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see ne.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein nand Wheeler forthcoming).
Phenomenology
Phenomenology is the study of the structure of nexperience. It is a broad philosophical nmovement founded in the early years of the 20th century nby Edmund Husserl, nexpanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany. The nphilosophy then spread to France, the United States, and nelsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl’s nearly work.
Phenomenological Philosophers
Edmund Husserl n(1859-1938)
Edmund nHusserl was the principal founder of nphenomenology—and thus one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th ncentury. He has made important contributions to almost all areas of philosophy nand anticipated central ideas of its neighbouring ndisciplines such as linguistics, sociology and cognitive psychology.
Although not the first to coin the term, it is uncontroversial to nsuggest that the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl n(1859-1938), is the “father” of the philosophical movement known as nphenomenology. Phenomenology can be roughly described as the sustained nattempt to describe experiences (and the “things themselves”) without nmetaphysical and theoretical speculations. Husserl nsuggested that only by suspending or bracketing away the “natural attitude” ncould philosophy becomes its own distinctive and rigorous science, and he ninsisted that phenomenology is a science of consciousness rather than of nempirical things. Indeed, in Husserl’s hands nphenomenology began as a critique of both psychologism and naturalism. Naturalism is the thesis nthat everything belongs to the world of nature and can be studied by the nmethods appropriate to studying that world (that is, the methods of the hard nsciences). Husserl argued that the study of nconsciousness must actually be very different from the study of nature. For nhim, phenomenology does not proceed from the collection of large amounts of ndata and to a general theory beyond the data itself, as in the scientific nmethod of induction. Rather, it aims to look at particular examples without ntheoretical presuppositions (such as the phenomena of intentionality, of love, nof two hands touching each other, and so forth), before then discerning what is nessential and necessary to these experiences. Although all of the key, nsubsequent phenomenologists (Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, nGadamer, Levinas, Derrida) nhave contested aspects of Husserl’s characterizatioof phenomenology, they have nonetheless been heavily indebted to him. As such, nhe is arguably one of the most important and influential philosophers of the ntwentieth century. The key features of his work, and his understanding of the nphenomenological method, are considered in what follows.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Born in 1908, Merleau-Ponty died in 1961 at nthe age of 53. This essay will follow the basic contours of his thought, nbeginning with the first published work, The Structure of Behavior n(SB), followed by the Phenomenology of Perception (PP), and concluding nwith the posthumously published The Visible and the Invisible (VI). It nwill include only brief excursions into his writings on politics and art. nAlthough I have no interest in dividing his oeuvre into three distinct nperiods, nonetheless, each of these works marks a stage in the philosophical nitinerary of his thought, culminating with an ontology nof the flesh elaborated in his later thought.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a nphilosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It ndescribes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back nto practice to form what is called intelligent practice. Important npositions characteristic of pragmatism include instrumentalism, radical empiricism, verificationism, conceptual relativity, nand fallibilism. nThere is general consensus among pragmatists that philosophy should take the nmethods and insights of modern science into account. Charles nSanders Peirce (and his pragmatic maxim) deserves nmost of the credit for pragmatism, along with later twentieth century ncontributors William James and John Dewey.
Pragmatic Philosophers
· nJohn Dewey
Charles nSanders Peirce (1839–1914) nwas the founder of American pragmatism (later called by Peirce n“pragmaticism” in order to differentiate his views nfrom others being labelled “pragmatism”), a theorist nof logic, language, communication, and the general theory of signs (which was noften called by Peirce “semeiotic”), aextraordinarily prolific mathematical logician and general mathematician, and a ndeveloper of an evolutionary, psycho-physically monistic metaphysical system. A npracticing chemist and geodesist by profession, he nevertheless considered nscientific philosophy, and especially logic, to be his vocation. In the course nof his polymathic researches, he wrote voluminously non an exceedingly wide range of topics, ranging from mathematics, mathematical nlogic, physics, geodesy, spectroscopy, and astronomy, on the one hand, to npsychology, anthropology, history, and economics, on the other.
William James (1842-1910)
The art of being wise is the art of nknowing what to overlook.
–William James
William James was an original thinker in and betweethe disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy. His twelve-hundred npage masterwork, The Principles of Psychology (1890), is a rich blend nof physiology, psychology, philosophy, and personal reflection that has giveus such ideas as “the stream of thought” and the baby’s impression of the world n“as one great blooming, buzzing confusion” (PP 462). It contains seeds of npragmatism and phenomenology, and influenced generations of thinkers in Europe nand
James hints at his religious concerns in his earliest nessays and in The Principles, but they become more explicit in The nWill to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), HumaImmortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (1898), The nVarieties of Religious Experience (1902) and A Pluralistic Universe n(1909). James oscillated between thinking that a “study in humaature” such nas Varieties could contribute to a “Science of Religion” and the nbelief that religious experience involves an altogether supernatural domain, nsomehow inaccessible to science but accessible to the individual human subject. n
James made some of his most important philosophical ncontributions in the last decade of his life. In a burst of writing in 1904–5 n(collected in Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)) he set out the nmetaphysical view most commonly known as “neutral monism,” according to which nthere is one fundamental “stuff” that is neither material nor mental. I“A Pluralistic Universe” he defends the mystical and anti-pragmatic view that nconcepts distort rather than reveal reality, and in his influential Pragmatism n(1907), he presents systematically a set of views about truth, knowledge, nreality, religion, and philosophy that permeate his writings from the late n1870s onwards.
John Dewey (1859–1952) lived from nthe Civil War to the Cold War, a period of extraordinary social, economic, ndemographic, political and technological change. During his lifetime the
Dewey’s ethics replaces the goal of identifying aultimate end or supreme principle that can serve as a criterion of ethical nevaluation with the goal of identifying a method for improving our value njudgments. Dewey argued that ethical inquiry is of a piece with empirical ninquiry more generally. It is the use of reflective intelligence to revise none’s judgments in light of the consequences of acting on them. Value judgments nare tools for enabling the satisfactory redirection of conduct when habit no nlonger suffices to direct it. As tools, they can be evaluated instrumentally, nin terms of their success in guiding conduct. We test our value judgments by nputting them into practice and seeing whether the results are satisfactory — nwhether they solve the problems they were designed to solve, whether we find ntheir consequences acceptable, whether they enable successful responses to nnovel problems, whether living in accordance with alternative value judgments nyields more satisfactory results. We achieve moral progress and maturity to the nextent that we adopt habits of reflectively revising our value judgments iresponse to the widest consequences for everyone of living them out. This npragmatic approach requires that we locate the conditions of warrant for our nvalue judgments in human conduct itself, not in any a priori fixed nreference point outside of conduct, such as in God’s commands, Platonic Forms, npure reason, or “nature,” considered as giving humans a fixed telos. To do so requires that we understand ndifferent types of value judgments in functional terms, as forms of conduct nthat play distinctive roles in the life of reflective, social beings. Dewey nthereby offers a naturalistic metaethic of value njudgments, grounded in developmental and social psychology.
Richard Rorty (1931–2007) ndeveloped a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed nitself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. nThe other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look nlike, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge nin which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, nin Rorty’s view, the self-conception of moderphilosophy) are rooted. The centerpiece of Rorty’s ncritique is the provocative account offered in Philosophy and the Mirror of nNature (1979, hereafter PMN). In this book, and in the closely related nessays collected in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982, hereafter CP), Rorty’s principal target is the philosophical idea of nknowledge as representation, as a mental mirroring of a mind-external world. nProviding a contrasting image of philosophy, Rorty has nsought to integrate and apply the milestone achievements of Dewey, Hegel and nDarwin in a pragmatist synthesis of historicism and naturalism. nCharacterizations and illustrations of a post-epistemological intellectual nculture, present in both PMN (part III) and CP (xxxvii-xliv), are more richly ndeveloped in later works, such as Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity n(1989, hereafter CIS), in the popular essays and articles collected in Philosophy nand Social Hope (1999), and in the four volumes of philosophical papers, Objectivity, nRelativism, and Truth (1991, hereafter ORT); Essays on Heidegger and nOthers (1991, hereafter EHO); Truth and Progress (1998, hereafter nTP); and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007, hereafter PCP). Ithese writings, ranging over an unusually wide intellectual territory, Rorty offers a highly integrated, multifaceted view of nthought, culture, and politics, a view that has made him one of the most widely ndiscussed philosophers in our time.
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy came to dominate English-speaking ncountries in the 20th century. In the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, the noverwhelming majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves nas “analytic” departments. The term generally refers to a broad nphilosophical tradition characterized by an emphasis on clarity and argument n(often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis nof language) and a nrespect for the natural sciences.
Analytic Philosophers
Rudolf Carnap n(1891—1970)
Rudolf Carnap, a German-born philosopher and naturalized n
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege n(b. 1848, d. 1925) was a German mathematician, nlogician, and philosopher who worked at the
G.E. Moore (1873-1958) (who hated his first names, ‘George Edward’ and nnever used them — his wife called him ‘Bill’) was an important British nphilosopher of the first half of the twentieth century. He was one of the ntrinity of philosophers at Trinity College Cambridge (the others were Bertrand nRussell and Ludwig Wittgenstein) who made
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872 – 1970) nwas a British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for nhis work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. His most influential ncontributions include his championing of logicism n(the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic), his nrefining of Gottlob Frege‘s predicate calculus (which nstill forms the basis of most contemporary systems of logic), his defense of neutral monism (the view nthat the world consists of just one type of substance which is neither nexclusively mental nor exclusively physical), and his theories of definite descriptions and logical atomism.
Together with G.E. Moore, Russell is ngenerally recognized as one of the main founders of modern analytic philosophy. nTogether with Kurt Gödel, he is regularly ncredited with being one of the most important logicians of the twentieth ncentury.
Over the course of a long career, Russell also made nsignificant contributions to a broad range of other subjects, including the nhistory of ideas, ethics, political theory, neducational theory and religious studies. In addition, generations of general nreaders have benefited from his many popular writings on a wide variety of ntopics in both the humanities and the natural sciences. Like Voltaire, to whom he nhas sometimes been compared, he wrote with style and wit and had enormous ninfluence.
After a life marked by controversy—including ndismissals from both
Interested readers may listen to two sound clips of Russell speaking nor consult the Bertrand Russell Society’s video archive nfor video clips of and about Russell. (Members of the Society nhave access to a significantly larger video library than is available to the ngeneral public.)
Although Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) nmade a lasting mark in the philosophical memory by his role as the nominal nleader of the
nof Logical Positivists, his most lasting contribution includes a broad range of nphilosophical achievements. Indeed, Schlick’s nreputation was established well before the Circle went public. In 1917, he npublished Space and Time in Contemporary Physics, a philosophical nintroduction to the new physics of Relativity which was highly acclaimed by nEinstein himself as well as many others. The following year, the first editioof his influential General Theory of Knowledge appeared and, in 1922, nhe was appointed to the prestigious chair of Naturphilosophie nat the
Ludwig Wittgenstei(1889—1951)
Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, nLudwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in 20th-century nanalytic philosophy. He continues to influence current philosophical thought itopics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and nreligion, aesthetics and culture. There are two commonly recognized stages of nWittgenstein’s thought—the early and the later—both of which are taken to be npivotal in their respective periods. The early Wittgenstein is epitomized ihis Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. nBy showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he nprovided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language nand thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly nrecognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more nrevolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its nclimax in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as nanti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine nphilosophical understanding of traditional problems.
References
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5. n·Lowith, Karl. From Hegel to Nietzsche, 1991, p. n370-375.
6. n·Pinkard, Terry P. German philosophy, 1760-1860: the legacy nof idealism, 2002, ch. 13.
7. n·Stewart, Jon B. Kierkegaard and his Germacontemporaries, 2007
8. n·Kenny, Anthony. Oxford Illustrated History of nWestern Philosophy, 2001, p.220-224.
9. n·Rutherford (1998) is a detailed scholarly study of nLeibniz’s theodicy.
10. n·Searle, John. (2002). The Blackwell Companion to nPhilosophy, “Introduction”. Wiley-Blackwell.
11. n· http://www.friesian.com/hermenut.htm
12. n· http://www.stonybrook.edu/philosophy/research/ihde_6.html n
13. n· http://www.mac.edu/faculty/richardpalmer/relevance.html
14. n· http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/#Turn
15. n· Habermas, Jürgen. (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action. nThird Edition, Vols. 1 & 2, Beacon Press.
16. n· Habermas, Jürgen. (1990). Moral Consciousness and nCommunicative Action, MIT Press.
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