294 The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance Ge ee a Richard Wollheim “schools” to teach not just the conclusions they had come to, but the way they had come to them. They encouraged their students to disagree and criticize ideas asa means of refining them and coming up with new and different ones. A popular misconception is that of the solitary philosopher arriving at his conclusions in isolation, but this is actually seldom the case. New ideas emerge through discussion and the examination, analysis, and criticism of other people's ideas. But how can it be that these philosophical questions are still being discussed and debated? Why haven't thinkers come up with definitive answers? What are these “fundamental questions” tha philosophers through the ages have wrestled with? metaphysics such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” are not so simply answered. Zeno of Elea’s famous paradoxes reached absurd conclusions from apparently faultless arguments. What emerged from their thinking was logic, a technique of reasoning that was gradually refined over time. At first simply a useful tool for analyzing whether an argument held water, logic developed rules and conventions, and soon became a field of study in its own right, another branch of the expanding subject of philosophy. From considering ethical questions about our individual lives, itis a natural step to start thinking about the sort of society we would like to live in—how it should be governed, the rights and responsibilities of its citizens, and so on. Political philosophy, the last of the major branches of philosophy, deals with these ideas, and philosophers have come up with models of how they believe society should be organized, ranging from Plato’s Republic to Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. human construct—and this in turn has raised the whole debate as to what extent humanity has free will. it’s only when we see where Descartes took the idea—what the consequences of that conclusion are—that we see its importance. often come to radically different conclusions in their investigations into questions that science cannot —and religion does not—explain. scientific methods and practices. The development of logical thinking affected how math evolved and became the basis for the scientific method, which relies on systematic observation to explain the world. Ideas about the nature of the self and consciousness have developed into the science of psychology. Living in harmony with nature is one path the Daode jing prescribes for a well-balanced life. For this man that could mean respecting the ecological balance of the lake and not over-fishing. In order to understand the concept of dao, it is necessary to know how the ancient Chinese viewed the ever-changing world. For them, the changes are cyclical, continually moving from one state to another, such as from night to day, summer to winter, and so on. They saw the different states not as opposites, but as related, one arising from the other. These states also possess complementary properties that together make up a whole. The process of change is seen as an expression of dao, and leads to the 10,000 manifestations that make up the world. Laozi, in the Daode jing, says that humans are merely one of these 10,000 manifestations and have no special status. But because of our desire and free will, we can stray from the dao, and disturb the world’s harmonious balance. To live a virtuous life means acting in accordance with the dao. surprising that he should approach philosophical thinking ina scientific and mathematical way. See also: Thales of Miletus 22-23 = Siddhartha Gautama 30-33 = Heraclitus 40 = Plato 50-55 = René Descartes 116-23 Pythagoras was also, however, a deeply religious and superstitious man. He believed in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, and he established a religious cult, with himself cast as a virtual messiah, in Croton, southern Italy. His disciples lived in a collective commune, as self-evident, as if god-given, and worked out mathematical proofs that had the impact of divine revelation. that number (numerical ratios and mathematical axioms) can be used to explain the very structure of the cosmos. He does not totally dismiss the Milesian idea that the universe is made up of one fundamental substance, but he shifts the enquiry from substance to form. Because these mathematical discoveries were a product of pure reasoning, Pythagoras believes they are more valuable than mere observations. For example, the Egyptians had discovered that a triangle whose sides have ratios of 3:4:5 always has a right angle, and this was useful in practice, such as in architecture. But Pythagoras uncovered the underlying principle behind all right-angled triangles (that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides) and found it to be universally true. This discovery was so extraordinary, and held such potential, that the Pythagoreans took it to be divine revelation. This was such a profound change in the way of looking at the world, that we should probably forgive Pythagoras and his disciples for getting somewhat carried away, and giving numbers a mystical significance. Through exploring the relationship between numbers and geometry, they discoved the square numbers and cube numbers that we speak of today, but they also attributed characteristics to them, such as “good” to the even numbers and “evil” to the odd ones, and even specifics such as “justice” to the number four, and so on. The number tan in thea farm of tha tatractiyze (4 Gautama, although revered by Buddhists for his wisdom, was neither a messiah nor a prophet, and he did not act as a medium between God and Man. His ideas were arrived at through reasoning, not divine revelation, and it is this that marks Buddhism out as a philosophy as much as (perhaps even more than) a religion. His quest was philosophical—to discover truths—and he maintained that these truths are available to all of us through the power of reason. Like most Eastern philosophers, he was not interested in the unanswerable questions of metaphysics that preoccupied the Greeks. Dealing with entities The Buddha cut off his hair as part of his renunciation of the material world. According to Buddhist teaching, the temptations of the world are the source of all suffering, and must be resisted. Unlike many of the early Chinese philosophers, Confucius looked to the past for his inspiration. He was conservative by nature, and had a great respect for ritual and ancestor worship—both of which were maintained by the Zhou Dynasty, whose rulers received authority from the gods via the so-called Heavenly Mandate. 9th century cE Confucianism is reborn as Neo-Confucianism. To reconcile the fact that society was a rigid class system with his belief that all men can receive the Before the appearance of the Hundred Schools of Thought, the world had been explained by mythology and religion, and power and moral authority were generally accepted to be god-given. Confucius is pointedly silent about the gods, but he often refers to tian, or Ritual and tradition, for Confucius, are vital for binding an individual to his community. By knowing his place in society, the individual is free to become junzi, a man of virtue. c.500 sce Heraclitus says that everything is in a state of flux. From the premise that something exists (“It is”), Parmenides deduces that it cannot also not exist (“It is not”), as this would involve a logical contradiction. It follows therefore that a state of nothing existing is impossible—there can be no void. Something cannot then come from nothing, and so must always have existed in some form. This permanent form cannot change, because something that is permanent cannot change into something else without it ceasing to be permanent. Fundamental change is therefore impossible. Understanding the cosmos is one of the oldest philosophical quests. In the 20th century, evidence from quantum physics emerged to support ideas that Parmenides reached by reason alone. 1967-72 Jacques Derrida uses his technique of deconstruction to show that any text contains irreconcilable contradictions. According to Protagoras, any “truth” uncovered by these two philosophers, depicted on a bth-century scr Greek drinking vessel, will depend on their use of rhetoric and their debating skill. The main implication of “man is the measure of all things” is that belief is subjective and relative. This leads Protagoras to reject the existence of absolute definitions of truth, justice, or virtue. What is true for one person may be false for another, he claims. This relativism also applies to moral values, such as what is right and what is wrong. To Protagoras, nothing is inherently good in itself. Something is ethical, or right, only because a person or society judges it to be so. nee elle PIHUOsSOPIIlCal LTC datlOlls of what he taught. For Protagoras, every argument has two sides, and both may be equally valid. He claims that he can “make the worse case the better”, proving not the worth of the argument, but the persuasiveness of its proponent. In this way, he recognizes that belief is subjective, and it is the man holding the view or opinion that is the measure of its worth. This style of reasoning, common in law and Mozi believes that there is always reciprocity in our actions. By treating others as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we will receive similar treatment in return. This is the meaning behind “when one throws to me a peach, | return to him a plum.” When this principle of caring for everyone impartially is applied by rulers, Mozi states that it avoids conflict Mao Zedong regarded Mozi as the true philosopher of the people, because of his humble origins. Mozi's view that everyone should be treated equally has been encouraged in modern China. First atomic theory Socrates set about engaging the people of Athens in discussion on topics such as the nature of love, justice, and loyalty. His mission, misunderstood at the time as a dangerous form of Sophistry—or cleverness for the sake of it—was not to instruct the people, nor even simply to learn what they knew, but to explore the ideas that they had. It was the conversation itself, with Socrates guiding it, that provided him with insights. Through a series of questions, he revealed the ideas and assumptions his opponent held, To illustrate his theory, Plato presents what has become known as the “Allegory of the Cave.” He See also: Thales of Miletus 22-23 = Heraclitus 40 = Protagoras 42-43 = Socrates 46-49 = Aristotle 56-63 = Plotinus 331 St. Augustine of Hippo 72-73 theory of Forms. Plato's ideas later found their way into the philosophy of medieval Islamic and Christian thinkers, including St. Augustine of Hippo, who combined Plato's ideas with those of the Church. ATIStOULE S later atgUMENt against the theory of Forms was more straightforward, and more directly related to his studies of the natural world. He realized that it was simply unnecessary to assume that there is a hypothetical realm of Forms, when the reality of things can already be seen here on |! inherent in everyday things. Earth, now call the biological sciences, whereas Plato’s background had been firmly based in mathematics. This difference in background helps to explain the difference in approach between the two men. Mathematics, especially geometry, deals with abstract concepts that are far removed from the everyday world, whereas biology is very much about the world around us, and is based almost solely on observation. Plato sought confirmation of a realm of Forms from notions such as the perfect circle (which cannot exist in nature), but Aristotle found that certain constants can be discovered by examining the natural world. the first detailed examination of the natural world. It proceeds from general observations about the characteristics shared by all animals, and then subdivides into ever more precise categories. whether it be category. For characteristics common to all t they are cold-blooded; reptiles is tha so, if this par warm-blooded, then it cannot reptile. Likewise, a character example, one of ticular specimen common toa they suckle their young; so, if specimen is a mammal, it wil its young. Aristotle sees a pat lmammals is th ongs to a certain the is bea istic at this suckle tern in this way of thinking—that of three propositions consisting of two premises and a conclusion, for example in the form: if As are Xs, and B is an A, then B is an X. The “syllogism”, as this form of reasoning is known, is the first formal system of logic ever devised, and it remained the basic model for logic up until the 19th century. innate faculty, which is necessary for us to learn from experience. And as he applied this fact to his hierarchical system, he saw that the innate power of reason is what distinguishes us from all other living creatures, and placed us at the top of the hierarchy. “Socrates is mortal” is the undeniable conclusion to the most famous syllogism in history. Aristotle's syllogism—a simple deduction from two premises to a conclusion—was the first formal system of logic. The influence of Aristotle on the history of thought can be seen in the Great Chain of Being, a medieval Christian depiction of life as a hierarchy in which with God presides over all. in the 1/th century, tne aepate between empiricists and rationalists reached its zenith after René Descartes published his Discourse on the Method. Descartes, and Leibniz and Kant after him, chose the rationalist route; in response, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume lined up as the empiricist opposition. Terrifying images of the merciless god of death Thanatos were used to depict the pain and torment ancient Greeks might incur for their sins, both when they died and in the afterlife. are unable to feel anything, mentally or physically, when you die, it is foolish to let the fear of death cause you pain while you are still alive. 1882 Friedrich Nietzsche refers to Diogenes and his ideas in The Gay Science. hilosophy did not play a Pp large part in Roman culture, other than Stoicism, which was admired by the Romans for its emphasis on virtuous conduct and doing one’s duty. The broader philosophical tradition that had been established by the Classical Greeks was therefore effectively marginalized under the Roman Empire. Philosophy continued to be taught in Athens, but its influence dwindled, and no significant philosophers emerged until Plotinus in the 3rd century ce, who founded an important Neo-Platonist school. Lady Philosophy and Boethius discuss free will, determinism, and God's vision of the eternal present in his influential book, The Consolation of Philosophy. In the Flying Man experiment, Avicenna wants to examine what we can know if we are effectively robbed of our senses, and cannot depend on them for information. He asks us each to imagine this: suppose I have just come into existence, but I have all my normal intelligence. Suppose, too, that Iam blindfolded and that Iam floating in the air, and my limbs are separated Most contemporary philosophers reject mind-body dualism, largely because of the increasing scientific knowledge of the brain. Avicenna and Descartes were both very interested in physiology and they produced scientific accounts of activities such as movement and sensation. But the process of rational thinking was inexplicable with the scientific tools of their IWLADLY PLlluOSOPMels, CopeCldlly continental European thinkers, still accept the results of Avicenna’s thought experiment in one central way. It shows, they say, that we each have a self with a first-person view of the world (the “I’) that cannot be accommodated by the objective view of scientific theories. m Some Muslims did not view philosophy as a legitimate subject for study in the 12th century, but Averroes argued that it was essential to engage with religion critically and philosophically. Averroes is willing to sacrifice some widely-held Islamic doctrines in order to maintain the compatibility of philosophy and religion. For instance, almost all Muslims believe that the universe has a beginning, but Averroes agrees with Aristotle that it has always existed, and says that there is nothing in the Our’an Averroes’ advocacy of Aristotelian philosophy (if only for the elite) was shunned by his fellow Muslims. But his works, translated into Hebrew and Latin, had enormous influence in the 13th and 14th centuries. Scholars who supported the opinions God, Maimonides says, has no attributes. We cannot rightly say that God is “good” or “powerful.” Maimondes claims that we can say things about God, but they must be understood as telling us about God’s actions, rather than God’s being. Most discussions in the Torah should be understood in this way. So when The Mawlawi Order, or Whirling Dervishes, dance as part of the Sufi Sema ceremony. The dance represents the spiritual journey of man from ignorance to perfection through love. See also: Siddhartha Gautama 30-33 =» Avicenna 76-79 = Averroes 82-83 » Hajime Tanabe 244-45 =» Arne Naess 282-83 The mystical elements of Rumi’s ideas were inspirational within Sufism, and influenced mainstream Islam too. They were also pivotal in converting much of Turkey from Orthodox Christianity to Islam. But this aspect of his thinking did not hold much sway in Europe, where rationalism was the order of the day. In the 20th century, however, his ideas became very popular in the West, mainly because his message of love chimed with the New Age values of the 1960s. Perhaps his greatest admirer in the 20th century was the poet and politician Muhammed Iqbal, advisor to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who campaigned for an Islamic state of Pakistan in the 1930s. m Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rum, also known as Mawlana (Our Guide) or simply Rumi, was born in Balkh, in a province of Persia. When the Mongol invasions threatened the region, his family settled in Anatolia, Turkey, where Rumi met the Persian poets Attar and Shams al-Din Tabrizi. He decided to devote himself to Sufism, and went on to write thousands of verses of Persian and Arabic poetry. The central figure in Aquinas's thinking is Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher whose work was intensively studied by medieval thinkers. Aristotle was certain that the universe has always existed, and that it has always been home to different things, from inanimate objects like rocks, to living species, such as humans, dogs, and horses. He argued that the universe is changing and moving, and this 1781 Immanuel Kant claims he can show that the universe has always existed, and that it has not always existed. the types of living beings in the universe have always existed. If this were true, they say, it would mean that there were already an infinite number of human beings by the time Socrates was born—because if they have always existed, they existed then. But since Socrates’ time, many more humans have been born, and so the number of humans born up until now must be greater than infinity. But no number can be greater than infinity. See also: Aristotle 56-63 = Avicenna 76-79 = Averroes 82-83 = John Philoponus 332 = John Duns Scotus 333 = Pierre Abélard 333 = William of Ockham 334 = Immanuel Kant 164-71 soul—but of saying at the same time that according to reason, these positions could be shown to be wrong. no way of knowing that it had not. Aquinas believes that there are a number of other doctrines central to Christianity that the ancient philosophers did not know and could not have known—such as the belief that God is a Trinity made up of three persons, and that one person of the Trinity, the Son, became a human. But in Aquinas’s opinion, whenever humans reason correctly, they cannot come to any conclusion which contradicts Christian doctrine. This is because both human reason and Christian teaching come from the same source—God—and so they can never contradict each other. According to Aristotle, the intellect is the life-principle or “soul” of a human being. All living things have a soul, he believes, which explains their capacity for different levels of Aquinas follows Aristotle's teaching about living things and their souls, and he insists that a human being has just one form: his or her intellect. Although other 13th- and 14th-century thinkers also adopted the main lines of Aristotle's view, they cut the connection Aristotle had made can be proved by philosophical reasoning. But what some claim for philosophy is that it can demonstrate that although religious believers hold certain doctrines as a matter of faith, their overall views are no less rational or coherent than those of agnostics or atheists. This view is an extension and development of Aquinas's constant endeavor to develop a philosophically coherent system of thought, while holding on to his Christian beliefs. Reading Aquinas's works is a lesson in tolerance, for Christians and non-Christians alike. See also: St. Augustine of Hippo 72-73 = Thomas Aquinas 88-95 = René Descartes 116-23 = John Locke 130-33 and revived the connection between philosophy and science, especially mathematics, that dated back to pre-Socratic Greece. Machiavelli's views on power, it is necessary to understand the background to his political concerns. Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, during a time of almost constant upheaval. The Medici family had been in open but unofficial control of the city-state for some 35 years, and the year of Machiavelli's birth saw Lorenzo de’ Medici (Lorenzo the Magnificent) succeed his father as ruler, ushering in a period of great artistic activity in Florence. Lorenzo was succeeded in 1492 by his son Piero (known as [ n order fully to understand Piero the Unfortunate), whose reign was short-lived. The French under Charles VIII invaded Italy in considerable force in 1494, and Piero was forced to surrender and then flee the city, as the citizens rebelled against him. Florence was declared a republic that same year. man who impressed Machiavelli with both his military ability and his cunning. | France and Florence fighti th But tension be e papacy led to ng with the French against the pope and his alli LWeen es, the Spanish. The French lost, and Florence with th Spanish dissolved the c government , the Medici em. In 1 512 the ity-state’s s returned, and what was in effect a tyranny under Card from his pol to his farm inal de’ Med installed. Machiavelli was fired office and exiled in Florence. itica ici was career migh February 15 13 he was fa implicated i His political t have revived under the rule of the Medicis, but in Isely na plot against the family, and he was tortured, fined, and imprisoned. was weak in the face of their armies and Machiavelli spent 14 years travelling between various cities on diplomatic missions, trying to shore uv the struggling republic. See also: Plato 50-55 = Francis Bacon 110-11 = Jean-Jacques Rousseau 154-59 = Karl Marx 196-203 The Prince, however, contains much that Machiavelli is thought to have genuinely believed, such as the need for a citizens’ militia rather than reliance on mercenaries. It has also been suggested that Machiavelli was attempting satire, and his real intended audience was the republicans, not the ruling elite. This idea is supported by the fact that Machiavelli did not write it in The problem lies in discerning which parts are his actual beliefs and which are not. It is tempting to divide them according to how well they fit with the intended reader's own beliefs, but that is unlikely to give an accurate result. Science, not religion, was regarded increasingly as the key to knowledge from the 16th century onward. This 159€ print depicts the observatory of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). See also: Aristotle 56-63 = Robert Grosseteste 333 = David Hume 148-53 = John Stuart Mill 190-93 = Karl Popper 262-65 Scientific method Born in London, Francis Bacon was educated privately, before being sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 12. After graduation, he started training as a lawyer, but abandoned his studies to take up a diplomatic post in France. His father’s death in 1579 left him impoverished, forcing him to return to the legal profession. Bacon goes on to argue that the advancement of science depends on formulating laws of ever-increasing generality. He proposes a scientific method that includes a variation of this approach. Instead of making a series of observations, such as instances of metals that expand when heated, and then concluding that heat must cause all metals to expand, he stresses the need to test a new theory by going on to look for negative instances—such as metals not expanding when they are heated. See also: Aristotle 56-63 = Francis Bacon 110-11 = René Descartes 116-23 = Julien Offray de la Mettrie 335 = Gilbert Ryle 337 was growing rapidly, bringing clearer explanations of phenomena that had long been obscure or misunderstood. Hobbes had met the Italian astronomer Galileo, frequently regarded as the “father of modern science”, and had been closely associated with Francis Bacon, whose thinking had helped to revolutionize scientific practice. Orphaned in infancy, Thomas Hobbes was fortunately taken in by a wealthy uncle, who offered him a good education. A degree from the University of Oxford earned him the post of tutor to the sons of the Earl of Devonshire. This job gave Hobbes the opportunity to travel widely throughout Europe, where he met noted scientists and thinkers, such as the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei as well as the French philosophers Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, and René Descartes. labelled “animal spirits” (in line with a common view at the time) are responsible for most animal, and especially human, activity. These animal spirits move around the body, carrying with them and passing on information, in much the same way as we now think of the nervous system doing. beyond our comprehension. All it is possible for human beings to know about God is that he exists, and that he is the first cause, or creator, of everything in the universe. What is consciousness? because Hobbes consiaers that human beings are purely physical, and are therefore no more than biological machines, he is then faced with the problem of how to account for our mental nature. He makes no attempt to give an account of how the mind can be explained. He simply offers a general and rather sketchy account of what he thought science would eventually reveal to be the case. Even then, he only covers the mental activities such as voluntary motion, appetite, and aversion—all phenomena that can be studied and explained from a mechanistic point of view. Hobbes has nothing to say about what the modern-day Australian philosopher David (Wha lm Aelle “+haA hava Hrekhlam AT Sometimes, Hobbes seems to apply his concept of physical spirits to God and other entities found in religion, such as angels. However, he does state that God himself, but not other physical spirits, should be described as “incorporeal.” For Hobbes, the divine nature of God’s attributes is not something that the human mind is capable of fully understanding, therefore the term “incorporeal” is the only one that recognizes and also honors the unknowable substance of God. Hobbes does make clear, however, that he believes the existence and nature of all religious entities are matters for faith, not science, and that God, in particular, will remain In the absence of any truly clear notion of what his key term means, Hobbes’ insistence that everything in the world can be explained in physical terms begins to look less and less like a statement of scientific principle. Instead, it starts to appear to be merely an unscientific—and Descartes’ book De Homine Figuris takes a biological look at the causes of knowledge. In it, he suggests that the pineal gland is the link between vision and conscious action. During the Renaissance—the preceding historical era—people had become more skeptical about science and the possibility of genuine knowledge in general, and this view continued to exert an influence in Descartes’ time. Soa major motivation of his “project of pure enquiry”, as his work has become known, was the desire to rid the sciences of the annoyance of skepticism once and for all. An optical illusion of parallel lines that are made to look bent can fool our senses. Descartes thinks we must accept nothing as true or given, but must instead strip away all preconceptions before we can proceed to a position of knowledge. he can ask: “Could the demon be making me believe this even though it was false?” and if the answer is “yes” he must set aside the belief as open to doubt. An evil demon capable of deceiving humankind about everything cannot make me doubt my existence; if he tries, and Iam forced to question my own existence, this only confirms it. Despite the fact that the First Certainty’s main function is to provide a firm footing for knowledg ergo sum, meaning “I think therefore Iam.” St. Augustine of Hippo had used a very similar argument in The City of God, when he said: “For if lam mistaken, I exist”; meaning that if he did not exist, he could not be mistaken. Augustine, however, made little use of this in his thinking, and certainly did not reach it in the way that Descartes did. Descartes makes Clear, thougn, that from this the certainly is on ya is as far as he can reason First Certainty. He is not entitled to say that he thinking thing—a mind— as he has no way of knowing what More he might be. He might be a physical thing that also has the ability to somethin think, or he might be has n g else, something that he ot even conceived yet. The point is that at this stage of his meditations he knows onlv that » The separation of mind and body theorized by Descartes leaves open the following question: since all we can see of ourselves is our bodies, how could we prove that a robot is not conscious? However, it 1s the rigor of Descartes’ thought and his rejection of any reliance on authority that are perhaps his most important legacy. The centuries after his death were dominated by philosophers who either developed his ideas or those who took as their main task the refutation of his thoughts, such as Thomas Hobbes, Benedictus Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. m= We might say that in so far as Hamlet thought, he thought in the fictional world of a play, but he also existed in that fictional world; in so far as he did not exist, he did not exist in the rea world. His “reality” and thinking are linked to the same world. But Descartes’ critics might respond that th point: knowing at is precisely the that someone called Hamlet was thi than this—doe someone—like thinking, is not nking—and no more s not assure us that this person exists in the real world; for that, we should have to know that he was thinking in the real world. Knowing that something or Descartes—is enough to prove their reality in this world. According to Pascal, we are constantly tricked by the imagination into making the wrong judgments— including judgements about people based on how they are dressed. See also: Aristotle 56-63 = Michel de Montaigne 108-09 = René Descartes 116-23 = David Hume 148-53 = Immanuel Kant 164-71 definition of substance. Furthermore, he argues, since there is only one such substance, there can, in fact, be nothing but that substance, and everything else is in some sense a part of it. Spinoza’s position is known as “substance monism”, which claims that all things are ultimately aspects of a single thing, as opposed to “substance dualism”, which claims that there are ultimately two kinds of things in the universe, most commonly defined as “mind” and “matter.” generally, substance is anything that has properties—or that which underlies the world of appearance. All changes, from a change of mood to a change in a candle’s shape, are, for Spinoza, alterations that occur to a single substance that has both mental and physical attributes. Spinoza’s theory, which he explains fully in Ethics, is often referred to as a form of pantheism—the belief At the level of individual things, including human beings, Spinoza’s attribute dualism is intended in part to deal with the question of how minds and bodies interact. The things that we experience as individual bodies or minds are in fact modifications of the single substance as conceived under one of the attributes. Each modification is both a physical thing (in so far as it is conceived under the attribute of extension) being the cause of all things, he means that all things find their explanation in God. an efficient cause, or that which brings a thing into being (the sculpting process); and a final cause, or the purpose for which a thing exists (the creation of a work of art, the desire for money, and so on). In fact, the division between these two groups is not as clear-cut as is often assumed. The rationalists all accept that in practice our knowledge of the world ultimately stems from our experience, and most notably from scientific enquiry. Locke reaches his distinctive views concerning the nature of the world by applying a process of reasoning later known as abduction (inference to the best explanation from the available evidence) to the facts of sensory experience. For example, Locke sets out to demonstrate that the best explanation of the world as we experience it is corpuscular theory. This is the theory that everything in the world is made As the mind is a blank canvas, or tabula rasa, at birth, Locke believes that anybody can be transformed by a good education, one that encourages rational thought and individual talents. See also: Nicolaus of Autrecourt 334 = René Descartes 116-23 = David Hume 148-53 = Immanuel Kant 164-71 = Alfred North Whitehead 336 faculties, human beings must also rely on experience as a means of acquiring knowledge To see how Leibniz arrives at this conclusion, we need to understand a little of his metaphysics—his view of how the universe is constructed. He holds that every part of the world, every individual thing, has a distinct concept or “notion” associated with it, and that every such notion contains within it everything that is true about itself, including its relations to other things. Because everything in the universe is connected, he argues, it follows that every notion is connected to every other notion, and so it is possible—at least in principle—to follow these connections and to discover truths about the entire universe through So how is it possible to progress from knowing that it is snowing, for example, to knowing what will happen tomorrow somewhere on the other side of the world? For Leibniz, the answer lies in the fact that the universe is composed of individual, simple substances called “monads.” Each monad is isolated from other monads, and each contains a complete representation of the whole universe in its past, present, and future states. This representation is synchronized between all the monads, so that each one has the same content. Optical illusions are impossible, for Berkeley, since an object is always as it appears to be. A straw submerged in water, for example, really is bent, and a magnified object really is larger. For Berkeley, God’s involvement in the world runs deeper than this. As we have seen, he claims that there are no physical causes, but possibility that the only thing I can be certain of existing—or that may in fact exist—is myself Niece: scymwewern ee enc, wate chew the oar cannot be both bent at the same time, in fact be two oars—on straight and there must e that I see and one that I feel. Even more problematic for Berkeley, however, is the fact that two different people seeing the same oar must in fact be seeing two different oars, for there is no single, “real” oar “out there” that their perceptions converge on. than Hume and Rousseau, Kant belonged to the next generation: his major philosophical works were written after their deaths, and his new explanation of the universe and our knowledge of it managed to integrate the approaches of rationalism and empiricism in a way more suited both to Romanticism and to Germanic culture. In the Romantic period, European literature, painting, and music became preoccupied with an idealized view of nature, in marked contrast to the sophisticated urban elegance of the Enlightenment. Perhaps the key difference was the way in which the Romantics valued feeling and intuition above reason. The movement took hold throughout Europe, continuing until the end of the 19th century. only logical standpoint. Given that endless disagreement is therefore inevitable, Voltaire says that it is important to develop a system, such as science, to establish agreement. See also: Aristotle 56-63 = John Locke 130-33 = David Hume 148-53 = John Stuart Mill 190-93 = Hans-Georg Gadamer 260-61 = Karl Popper 262-65 Voltaire does not assert that there are no absolute truths, but he sees no means of reaching them. For this reason he thinks doubt is the In claiming that certainty is more pleasant than doubt, Voltaire hints at how much easier it is simply to accept authoritative statements—such as those issued by the monarchy or Church—than it is to challenge them and think See also: Plato 50-55 = Aristotle 56-63 = René Descartes 116-23 = John Locke 130-33 = George Berkeley 138-41 = Immanuel Kant 164-71 = Ludwig Wittgenstein 246—51 = Karl Popper 262-65 Mathematics and logic yield what Hume calls “demonstrative” truths, which cannot be denied without contradiction. These are the only certainties in Hume’s philosophy. AA aemonstrative statement 1S one whose truth or falsity is self- evident. Take, for example, the statement 2 + 2 = 4. Denying this statement involves a logical contradiction—in other words, to claim that 2 + 2 does not equal 4 is to fail to grasp the meanings of the terms “2” or “4” (or “+” or “="). Demonstrative statements in logic, mathematics, and deductive reasoning are known to be true or false a priori, meaning “prior to experience.” The truth of a » In light of this, we can ask of any statement whether it is probable or demonstrative. If it is neither of these, then we cannot know it to be true or false, and so, for Hume, it is a meaningless statement. This division of all statements into two There are no surprises in Hume's reasoning so far, but things take a strange turn when he applies this line of argument to inductive inference—our ability to infer things from past evidence. We observe an unchanging pattern, and infer that it will continue in the future, tacitly assuming that nature will continue to behave in a uniform way. For example, we see the sun rise every morning, and infer that it will rise again tomorrow. But is our claim that nature follows this uniform The idea that society might be a harmful influence first occurred to Rousseau when he wrote an essay for a competition organized by the Academy of Dijon, answering the question: “Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to refining moral practices?” The expected answer from thinkers of the time, and especially from a musician such as Rousseau, was an enthusiastic affirmative, but in fact Rousseau argued the opposite case. His Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, which won him first prize, Adam and Eve represent the kind of perfect “natural” humans that Rousseau thought predated society. He said that we, like them, are corrupted by knowledge, becoming ever more selfish and unhappy. The state of nature that Rousseau describes is a pastoral idyll, where people in their natural state are fundamen: wrongly in ut this wi f the Fren nd, more f compas ommnonod tally good. (The English terpreted Rousseau’s idea f natural man as a “noble savage”, as due to a mistranslation ch sauvage, which means mply “natural”, not brutish.) People re endowed with innate virtue importantly, the attributes sion and empathy. But Smith illustrates the importance of specialization at the beginning of his masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations, by showing how the making of a humble metal pin is radically improved by adopting the factory system. Where one man working alone would find it hard to produce 20 perfect pins in a day, a group of 10 men, charged with different tasks—from drawing out the wire, straightening it, cutting The production line is an incredible money-creating machine, but Smith warns against the dehumanizing effects it can have on workers if it is used without regulation. According to Kant, we can only experience time through things in the world that move or change, such as the hands of a clock. So time is only ever experienced by us indirectly. See also: René Descartes 116-23 = John Locke 130-33 = George Berkeley 138-41 = David Hume 148-53 = Johann Gottlieb Fichte 176 = Georg Hegel 178-85 = Friedrich Schelling 335 = Arthur Schopenhauer 186-88 Our understanding that entities such as trees undergo change presupposes an a priori grasp of the concept “substance”, according to Kant. Such concepts are the preconditions of our experience. (using our skin, nerves, eyes, ears, and so on). This provides us with one way of understanding the distinction between bodies and the external world: the body as the medium of my sensations is different from other external and material things. Immanuel Kant was born into a family of financially struggling artisans in 1724, and he lived and worked his whole life in the cosmopolitan Baltic port city of Konigsberg, then part of Prussia. Though he never left his native province, he became an internationally famous philosopher within his own lifetime. Transcendental Idealism Kant’s theory of transcendental idealism stated that both reason and experience were necessary to understand the world. 5th century St. Augustine of Hippo argues that government is a form of punishment for “original sin.” Burke condemned the French Revolution for its wholesale rejection of the past. He believed that change should occur gradually—an idea that became central to modern conservatisr VenVile lilo oveyblleiolll AVUUL modern commercial society, Burke was a great defender of private property, and was optimistic about the free market. For this reason, he is often hailed as the “father of modern conservatism’—a philosophy that values both economic freedom and tradition. Today, even socialis US would agree with Burke that private property is a fundamental soci institution, but would disagre al e with him about its value. Likewise, ecologically-minded philosophers share his belief in the duties of one generation to the next, but wi the new agenda of creating a “sustainable society.” m th The Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke was born and educated in Dublin. From his youth onward, he was convinced that philosophy was useful training for politics, and in the 1750s he wrote notable essays on aesthetics and the origins of society. He served as an English MP from 1766 until 1794, and he was a prominent member of the Whig party— the more liberal of the two aristocratic parties of the day. 4th century ce Hypatia, a noted female mathematician and philosopher, teaches in Alexandria, Egypt. Equal education 1950s Isaiah Berlin holds Fichte’s idea of true freedom of the self as responsible for modern authoritarianism. Philosophy is the art of thinking, and Schlegel points out that its methods affect the kind of answers it can find. Western and Eastern philosophies use very different approaches. Schlegel’s holistic view—seeing philosophy as a whole—fits within the broader context of his Romantic Certain changes, such those brought about by the American Revolution, are explained by Hegel as the progress of Spirit from a lesser stage of its development to a higher stage. This resolution of a thesis (being) with its antithesis (not-being) ina synthesis (becoming) is just the Logic, where he introduces the most general and all-inclusive notion of “pure being’”—meaning anything that in any sense could be said to be. He then shows that this concept contains a contradiction— namely, that it requires the opposite concept of “nothingness” or “not- being” for it to be fully understood. Hegel then shows that this contradiction is simply a conflict senses (phenomena), and “things in themselves” (noumena), but he wanted to explain the nature of the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. The Israelites of the Bible, in their need for certainty and reassurance, created a false god—the golden calf— to worship. Feuerbach argues that all gods are created in the same way. Imagining God Mill; supports Bentham’s happiness principle, but he thinks it lacks practicality. Bentham had seen the idea as depending upon an abstract “felicific calculus” (an algorithm for calculating happiness), but Mill Mill thinks that the solution is for education and public opinion to work together to establish an “indissoluble association” between an individual's happiness and the good of society. As a result, people would always be motivated to act not only for their own good or happiness, but toward that of evervone. He concludes that societv Legislating for liberty Hamlet is caught on the edge of a terrible choice: whether to kill his uncle or leave his father’s death unavenged. Shakespeare’s play demonstrates the anxiety of true freedom of choice. See also: Immanuel Kant 164-71 = Georg Hegel 178-85 = Friedrich Nietzsche 214-21 = Martin Heidegger 252-55 | Jean-Paul Sartre 268-71 = Simone De Beauvoir 276-77 = Albert Camus 284-85 in Kierkegaard explains this feelinc his book, The Concept of Anxiety As an example, he asks us to consider a man standing on a cliff or tall building. If this man looks over the edge, he experiences two di fa fferent kinds of fear: the fear of ling, and fear brought on by the impulse to throw himself off the edge. This second type of fear, or an th ch xiety, arises from the realization at he has absolute freedom to oose whether to jump or not, and this fear is as dizzying as his vertigo. Kierkegaard suggests that Kierkegaard’s ideas were largely rejected by his contemporaries, but proved highly influential to later generations. His insistence on the importance and freedom of our choices, and our continual search for meaning and purpos to provide the framewor existentialism. This phi e, was k for osophy, developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, was later fully defined by Jean-Pa ul Sartre. It explores the ways in which we can live meaningfully in a godless universe, where every act is a Intellectual debate was widespread in Germany at the time Marx was writing, though he himself believed that it was the task of philosophy not to discuss ideas, but to bring about real change. See also: Niccolo Machiavelli 102-07 = Jean-Jacques Rousseau 154-59 =» Adam Smith 160-63 = Georg Hegel 178-85 Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach 189 = Friedrich Nietzsche 214-21 According to Marx, there have been four major stages in human history, which he sees as based on four different forms of property ownership: the original tribal system of common property; the In earlier ages, humans had been entirely responsible for producing everything they needed—such as The formation of classes Hegel believed that we can never experience things in the world as they are, but only as they appear to us. For him, existence primarily consists of mind or spirit, so the journey of history, through countless cycles of the dialectic, is essentially the progress of spirit, or Geist, toward a state of absolute harmony. But it is here that Hegel and Marx part company. Marx insists that the process is not a journey of spiritual development, but of real historical change. Marx claims that the final, conflict-free state that lies at the end of the process is not the spiritual bliss that Hegel predicted, but the perfect society, where everyone works harmoniously toward the aqood of 4 areater whole clothing, food, and habitation— for themselves, but as the early societies began to form, people came to rely more on one another. This led to the form of “bargain making” described by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, as people exchanged goods or labor. Marx agrees with Smith that this system of exchange led people to specialize in their labor, but he points out that this new specialization (or “job”) had also come to define them. Whatever a person's specialization or job, be it agricultural laborer or hereditary landowner, it had come to dictate where he or she lived, what they ate, and what they wore; it also dictated with whom in society they shared interests, and with whom their interests lay in conflict. Over time, this led to the formation of distinct socio-economic classes, locked into conflict. These developments are seen as underpinned by the increasingly complex nature of the process of production. Marx predicted that as technology improved, it would lead to increasing unemployment, alienating more and more people from the means of production. This would split society in two, between the large numbers of impoverished people and the few who owned and controlled the means of production. Following the rules of the dialectic, this conflict would result in a violent revolution to establish a new, classless society. This would » and the wage-earning working class would become evident only when the great mass of people had become property-less and were obliged to sell their labor for wages. The juxtaposition of poverty with the great wealth of the few would become increasingly obvious, he thought, and communism would become increasingly attractive. be the utoplan, Coniict-1ree society that marked the end of the dialectic. Marx thought this perfect society would not require government, but only administration, and this would be carried out by the leaders of the revolution: the communist “party” (by which he means those who adhered to the cause, rather than any specific organization). Within this new kind of state (which Marx called the “dictatorship of the proletariat”) people would enjoy genuine democracy and social ownership of wealth. Shortly after this final change in the mode of production to a perfect society, Marx predicted, political power as it had previously been understood would come to an end, because there would be no good reason for political dissent or criminality. Marxist states of the 20th century promoted themselves as utopias. They produced a proliferation of paintings and statues glorifying the achievements of their happy, newly liberated citizens. Although Marx did not foresee communism being implemented in such a barbaric manner in these primarily agricultural societies, his Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign of civil disobedience against British rule in India included the Salt March of 1930, undertaken in protest against unjust laws controlling salt production. William James—godson to Ralpk Emerson—to champion Peirce’s ideas and develop them further. ideas about the world have changed constantly, from thinking that Earth is flat to knowing it to be round; from assuming that Earth is the center of the universe, to realizing that it is just one planet in a vast cosmos. The older assumptions worked perfectly adequately as explanations in their time, yet they are not true, and the universe itself has not changed. This demonstrates how knowledge as an explanatory tool is different from facts. Peirce examined the nature of knowledge in this way, but James was to apply this reasoning to the notion of truth. » See also: John Stuart Mill 190-93 = Charles Sanders Peirce 205 = Henri Bergson 226-27 = John Dewey 228-31 = Bertrand Russell 236-39 = Ludwig Wittgenstein 246-51 = Richard Rorty 314-19 irrespective of the facts. This interpretation of truth not only distinguishes it from fact, but also leads James to propose that “the truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process.’ Any idea, if acted upon, is found to be true by the action we take; putting the idea into practice is the For James, the truth of an idea depends on how useful it is; that is to say, whether or not it does what is required of it. If an idea does not contradict the known facts—such as laws of science—and it does provide a means of predicting things accurately enough for our purposes, he says there can be no reason not to consider it true, in the same way that Peirce considered knowledge as a useful tool Religious belief can bring about extraordinary changes in people’s lives, such as the healing of the sick at places of pilgrimage. This occurs regardless of whether or not a god actually exists. We must, however, approach this idea with caution: a shallow also made key contributions in areas as diverse as perception, ethics, and aesthetics, becoming one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. Another, slightly younger Viennese philosopher, Karl Popper, took his cue from Einstein, and strengthened the link between scientific thinking and philosophy. The prophet Zoroaster (c.628—551 scx), also known as Zarathustra, founded a religion based on the struggle between good and evil. Nietzsche's Zarathustra places himself “beyond good and evil.” See also: Plato 50-55 =» Immanuel Kant 164—71 = Soren Kierkegaard 194-95 = Albert Camus 284-85 = Michel Foucault 302-03 = Jacques Derrida 308-13 Then the hermit asks Zarathustra a question: why are you going to the trouble of sharing your wisdom? He advises Zarathustra to stay in the mountains, warning him that nobody will understand his message. Zarathustra then asks a question: what does the hermit do in the mountains? The hermit replies that he sings, weeps, laughs, mumbles, and praises God. On hearing this, Zarathustra himself laughs. Then he wishes the hermit well and continues on his way down the mountain. As he goes, When he reaches the town, Zarathustra sees that there is a crowd gathered around a tightrope walker who is about to perform, and he joins them. Before the acrobat has a chance to walk across his rope, Zarathustra stands up. It is at this point that he says, “Behold! I teach you the Superman!” He continues by telling the crowd the real point he wishes to convey: “Man is something to surpassed...”. Zarathustra follows this with a long speech, but when he gets to the end, the crowd only laughs, imagining that the prophet is » everything of value in the world is somehow “beyond” the reach of this world leads to a way of thinking that is fundamentally life-denying. As a result of this Platonic and Christian heritage, we have come to see the world we live in asa world that we should resent and disdain, a world from which we should turn away, transcend, and certainly not enjoy. But in doing so, we have turned away from life itself in favor of a myth or an invention, an imagined “real world” that is situated elsewhere. Nietzsche calls priests of all religions “preachers of death”, because their teachings encourage us to turn from this world, and from life to death. But why does Nietzsche insist that God is dead? To answer this, we must look to the work of the 18th-centur German philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose ideas are critical to understanding the philosophy behind Nietzsche’s work. A world beyond reach Kant was interested in the limits of knowledge. In his book Critique of Pure Reason, he argued that we cannot know the world as it is “in itself.” We cannot attain it with the intellect, as Plato believed; nor is it promised to us after death as in the Christian view. It exists (we assume), but it is forever out of reach. The reasons that Kant uses to come up with this conclusion are complex, but what is important from Nietzsche's point of view is that, if the real world is said to be Nietzsche's open-ended idea of human possibility was important to many philosophers in the period following World War II. His ideas about religion and the importance of self-evaluation can be traced especially in the work of succeeding existentialists such as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Like Nietzsche's Superman, Sartre says that we must each define the meaning of our own existence. Nietzsche’s writings were edited and censored by his anti-semitic sister Elizabeth, who controlled his archive after he became insane. This allowed the Nazis to wilfully misinterpret them Nietzsche’s writings did not reach a large audience in his lifetime, so much so that he had to pay for the publication of the final part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra himself. But around 30 years after his death in 1900, the idea of the Superman fed into the rhetoric of Nazism through Hitler’s readings of Nietzsche’s work. Nietzsche's ideas about the Superman, and particularly his call for an eradication of the Jewish- Christian morality that held sway throughout Europe would have been attractive to Hitler as validation for his own aims. But where Nietzsche seemed to be searching for a return to the more rustic, life-affirming values of pagan Eurove. Hitler 1632 Portuguese philosopher John Poinsot writes his Treatise on Signs. Mathematics does not rely on empirical evidence, which is full of assumptions, to reach its conclusions. Husserl wanted to put all science (and all knowledge) on a similar foundation. Capturing the essence of a city, person, or object may only be possible through direct knowledge gained from intuition, not analysis. Bergson says we underestimate the value of our intuition. See also: John Duns Scotus 333 = Immanuel Kant 164-71 = William James 206-09 = Alfred North Whitehead 336 = Gilles Deleuze 338 Bergson, h with Kant. owever, does not agree He says that there are two different kinds of knowledge: relative kn owledge, which involves knowing something from our own unique particular perspective; and absolute knowledge, which is knowing things as they actually See also: Heraclitus 40 = Charles Sanders Peirce 205 = William James 206-09 = Jurgen Habermas 306-07 = Richard Rorty 314-19 We no longer employ sacrifice as a way to ask for help from the gods, but many people find themselves offering up a silent promise to be good in return for help from some higher being. from studying the sciences. In this context philosophy can be seen as the art of finding both theoretical and practical responses to these problems and contradictions. on the one hand, ethics and religion; and on the other hand, arts and technologies. Or, more simply, tradition and science. Philosophy, in Dewey’s view, is the process by means of which we try to work through the contradictions between these two different kinds of response to the problems in our lives. These contradictions are not just theoretical; they are also practical. For example, I may have inherited innumerable traditional beliefs about ethics, meaning, and what constitutes a “good life”, but I may find that these beliefs are in tension with the knowledge and understanding that I have gained See also: Georg Hegel 178-85 = Karl Marx 196-203 = William James 206-09 = Bertrand Russell 236-39 1807-22 Georg Hegel writes of history as the continual progress of mind or spirit. He rejects scientific racism—the idea that black people are inferior genetically to white people—that was prevalent throughout most of his life. As racial inequality has no basis in biological science, he regards it as a purely social problem, one that can be addressed only by committed political and social activism. BV 2CAS BESS SAU amass See www LU Bois’ writings as a key influence in his decision to become actively involved in the battle to demolish racial divisions and establish social equality in the US. ‘caw Kreae—eSeores Ye EN Russell's essay In Praise of Idleness was first published in 1932, in the middle of the Great The Great Depression was the worst economic depression of the 20th century. For Russell, it highlighted the need for a critique of capitalism and a re-evaluation of the ethics of work. See also: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 154-59 =» Adam Smith 160-163 = Edmund Burke 172-73 = Jeremy Bentham 174 = John Stuart Mill 190-93 = Karl Marx 196-203 = Henry David Thoreau 204 = Isaiah Berlin 280-81 = John Rawls 294-95 According to Russell, history is littered with examples of people working hard all their lives and being allowed to keep just enough for themselves and their families to survive, while any surplus they produce is appropriated by warriors, priests, and the leisured ruling classes. And it is always these beneficiaries of the system, says » Barly 20th century Lamun Husserl develops his new phenomenological method for studying the experience of the human mind. Every act of hope, such as celebrating Christmas on the front line in World War I, is a testament to our ability to overcome our circumstances. For Ortega, this is “vital reason” in action. The Buddha Amitabha, here shown between Kannon (Compassion) and Seishi (Wisdom), is the principal buddha of the Pure Land school of Buddhism, to which Shinran belonged. See also: Siddharta Gautama 30-33 = Socrates 46-49 = St. Augustine of Hippo 72—73 = Edmund Husserl 224-25 | Martin Heidegger 252-55 = Jacques Derrida 308-13 necessary limits of our knowledge, we can then either resolve, or even perhaps dissolve, nearly all of the philosophical problems of the past. From this point, it begins to become clear how the structure of language and that of the world » Logic is concerned with what are known in philosophy as propositions. We can think of propositions as assertions that it is possible for us to consider as being either true or false. For example, the statement “the elephant is very angry” isa proposition, but the word “elephant” is not. According to Wittgenstein’s might be related. Wittgenstein says that language “pictures” the world. He formulated this idea during World War I, when he read ina newspaper about a court case in Paris. The case concerned a car accident, and the events were re-enacted for those present in court using model cars and model pedestrians to represent the cars and pedestrians in the real world. The model cars and the model pedestrians were able to depict their counterparts, because they were related to each other in exactly the same way as the real cars and real pedestrians involved in the accident. Similarly, all the elements depicted on a map are related to each other in exactly the same way as they are in the landscape that the map represents. What a picture shares with that which it is depicting, Wittgenstein says, is a logical form. Change of direction See also: Plato 50-55 = Diogenes of Sinope 66 =» Edmund Husserl 224-25 =» Hans-Georg Gadamer 260-61 = Ernst Cassirer 337 = Jean-Paul Sartre 268-71 =» Hannah Arendt 272 = Richard Rorty 314-19 This curious story from the history of early philosophy shows the kinds of difficulties philosophers have sometimes been faced with when attempting to give abstract, general definitions of what it is to be human. Even without the interventi of Diogenes, it seems clear describing ourselves as fea bipeds does not really capt on that therless ure much of what it means to be human. We try to make sense of the world by engaging with projects and tasks that lend life a unity. Being human, Heidegger says, means to be immersec in the day-to-day world. All being is a “being-towards-death’, but only humans recognize this. Our lives are temporal, and it is only once we realize this that we can livea meaningful and authentic life. For example, when a good friend dies, we may look at our own lives and realize that the various projects which absorb us from day to day feel meaningless, and that there is a deeper dimension to life that is Logical language Fast cars are the kind of consumables that Marcuse accuses us of using to recognize ourselves; he says we find ‘our soul” in these items, becoming mere extensions of the things we create Subversive reason Marcuse is not discounting reason, but trying to point out that reason is subversive, and that we can use it to call into question the society in which we live. The aim of philosophy, for Marcuse, is a “rationalist theory of society.” m 1890s Wilhelm Dilthey, a German philosopher, describes interpretation as taking place in the “hermeneutic circle.” When viewing historical objects we should not view time as a gulf to be bridged, says Gadamer. Its distance is filled with the continuity of tradition, which sheds light on our understanding See also: Immanuel Kant 164-71 = Georg Hegel 178-85 = Martin Heidegger 252-55 = Jurgen Habermas 306-07 Jacques Derrida 308-13 = Richard Rorty 314-19 See also: Socrates 46—49 = Aristotle 56-63 = Francis Bacon 110-11 = David Hume 148-53 = Rudolf Carnap 257 » Thomas Kuhn 293 = Paul Feyerabend 297 fall to the ground?” But how do we know that this is what will happen when we drop the tennis ball? What kind of knowledge is this? the “regularities” of nature—the fact that events unfold in the world in particular patterns and sequences that can be systematically explored. Science, in other words, is empirical, or based on experience, and to understand how it works we need to understand how experience in general leads to knowledge. Black swans were first encountered by Europeans in the 17th century. This falsified the idea that all swans are white, which at the time was held to be universally true. Philosophers like to simplify deductive arguments by writing them out in notation. So the general form of the argument above would be “If P then O; since P, therefore Q.” In our example, “P” stands for “It is an apple”, and “OQ” stands for Experiments can show that certain phenomena reliably follow others in nature. But Popper claims that no experiment can ever verify a theory, or even show that it is probable. Deductive arguments could be said to be like computer programs—the conclusions they reach are only as good as the data that is fed into them. Deductive reasoning has an important role to play in the sciences, but on its own, it cannot say anything about the world. It can only say “If this is the case, then that is the case.” And if we want to use such arguments in the ifle 10€d Of ldislild Dilly GOs LOv mean we are unjustified in having a belief in theories that cannot be falsified. Beliefs that stand up to repeated testing, and that resist our attempts at falsification, can be taken to be reliable. But even the best theories are always open to the possibility that a new result will show them to be false. 20th century The global rise of differing forms of mass-media communication raises new ethical questions. In his book Minima Moralia, the German philosopher Theodor Adorne calls into question this long tradition. He is suspicious of attempts to (as he puts it) “absolve and beatify the Lighthearted television is inherently dangerous, says Adorno, because it distorts the world and imbues us with stereotypes and biases that we begin to take on as our own. See also: René Descartes 116-23 = Georg Hegel 178-85 = Karl Marx 196-203 Slavoj Zizek 326 1920s Martin Heidegger says that what is important is our relationship with our own existence. See also: Aristotle 56-63 = Soren Kierkegaard 194-95 = Martin Heidegger 252-55 = Simone de Beauvoir 276-77 = Albert Camus 284-85 a This is where we begin to see the connection between Sartre’s claim that “existence precedes essence” and his atheism. Sartre points out that religious approaches to the question of human nature often work by means of an analogy with human craftsmanship—that human nature in the mind of God is analogous to the nature of the paper-knife in the mind of the craftsman who makes it. Even many non-religious theories of human nature, Sartre claims, still have their roots in religious ways of thinking, because they continue to insist that essence comes before existence, or that we are made for a specific purpose. In claiming that existence comes before essence, Sartre is setting out a position that he believes is more consistent with to become a philosopher, then Iam not just deciding for myself. Iam implicitly saying that being a philosopher is a worthwhile activity. This means that freedom is the greatest responsibility of all. We are not just responsible for the impact that our choices have upon ourselves, but also for their impact on the whole of mankind. And, with no external principles or rules to justify our actions, we have no excuses to hide behind for the choices that we make. For this reason, Sartre declares that we are “condemned to be free.” After witnessing the trial, Arendt came to the conclusion that evil does not come from malevolence or a delight in doing wrong. Instead, she suggests, the reasons people act in such ways is that they fall victim to failures of thinking and judgement. Oppressive political systems are able to take advantage of our tendencies toward such failures, and can make acts that we might usually consider to be “unthinkable” seem normal. lan ll an wlll an a ee | (ma mMmNnnnay Eichmann committed atrocities not through a hatred of the Jewish community, Arendt suggests, but because he unthinkingly followed orders, disengaging from their effects Nothing else in our lives so disrupts our consciousness as an encounter with another person, who, simply by being there, calls to us and asks us to account for ourselves. Inevitable communication of our experience. After all, what could be more reliable than the facts of direct perception? Early 1900s Edmund Husser founds phenomenology as a philosophical school. 1927 Martin Heidegger writes Being and Time, a major influence on Merleau-Ponty. De Beauvoir is also concerned with the way that women are judged to be equal only insofar as they are like men. Even those who The many myths of woman as mother, wife, virgin, symbol of nature, and so on trap women, claimed de Beauvoir, into impossible ideals, while denying their individual selves and situations. De Beauvoir says that women must free themselves both from the idea that they must be like men, and from the passivity that society has induced in them. Living a truly authentic existence carries more risk than accepting a role handed down by society, but it is the only path to equality and freedom. m be sure that the other words we found ourselves using to explain the meaning of “gavagai” were themselves accurate translations. See also: Plato 50—55 = Soren Kierkegaard 194-95 = Ferdinand de Saussure 223 = Ludwig Wittgenstein 246-51 Roland Barthes 290-91 = Daniel Dennett 339 Quine refers to this problem as the “indeterminacy of translation”, and it has unsettling implications. It suggests that ultimately words do not have meanings. The sense For Berlin, “negative” freedom is what he calls our “fundamental sense” of freedom. This kind of Soviet propaganda often depicted workers liberated from capitalism. From a capitalist view, however, such images showed a triumph of negative freedom over positive freedom. Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909. He spent the first part of his life in Russia, firstly under the Russian empire, and then under the rule of the new Communist state. Due to rising anti- Semitism, however, and problems with the Soviet régime, his family emigrated to Britain in 1921. Berlin was an outstanding student at Oxford University, where he remained as a lecturer. He was a philosopher with broad interests, ranging from art and literature to politics. His essay Two Concepts of Liberty was delivered in 1958 at Oxford University, and it is often considered one of the classics of 20th-century political theory. He is celebrated for being one of the foremost enhinlares wat hha own: The natural world, for Naess, is not something that we should strive to control and manipulate for our own gain. Living well involves living as an equal with all the elements of our environment. Recognizing the absurd Sisyphus was condemned eternally to push a rock up a hill, but Camus thought he might find freedom even in this grim situation if he accepted the meaninglessness of his eternal task The absurd, for Camus, is the feeling that we have when we recognize that the meanings we give to life do not exist beyond our own consciousness. It is the result of a contradiction between our own sense of life’s meaning, and our knowledge that nevertheless the universe as a whole is meaningless. Fy ee: en Renee Oe See also: Soren Kierkegaard 194-95 = Friedrich Nietzsche 214-21 = Martin Heidegger 252-55 = Jean-Paul Sartre 268-71 eternity. Camus was fascinated by this myth, because it seemed to him to encapsulate something of the meaninglessness and absurdity of our lives. He sees life as an endless struggle to perform tasks that are essentially meaningless. Camus explores what it might mean to live in the light of this contradiction. He claims that it is he closing decades of the T 20th century were notable for accelerating advances in technology and the subsequent improvement in communications of all kinds. The increasing power of the mass media, especially television, since the end of World War II had fuelled a rise in popular culture with its associated antiestablishment ideals, and this in turn was prompting political and social change. From the 1960s onward, the old order was being questioned in Europe and the US, and dissent gathered momentum in Eastern Europe. Elitist philosophies By the 1980s, relations between the East and West were thawing, and the Cold War was coming toa close; the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 offered hope for the new decade. But the 1990s was a period Structuralism’s contribution to philosophy was not enthusiastically received by philosophers in the English-speaking world, who viewed the work at best with public, as well as businesses and governments, wanted more down- to-earth guidance from philosophy The lover's language is like a skin, says Barthes, which inhabits the lover. Its words are able to move the beloved—and only the beloved—in an almost physical or tactile way. Barthes was born in Cherbourg, France, in 1915. He attended the University of Sorbonne in Paris from 1935, graduating in 1939, but by this time he had already contracted the tuberculosis that would afflict him for the remainder of his life. His illness made it difficult to acquire teaching qualifications, but it exempted him from military service during World War II. Aftez the war, having finally qualified as a teacher, he taught in France, Romania, and Egypt. He returned to live in France full time in 1952, and there started to write the Barthes gives an example of this secret address (although not, it should be said, in the context of a particularly detached philosophical discussion) from Plato's dialogue, The Symposium. This is an account of a discussion on the subject of love that takes place in the house of the poet Agathon. A statesman called Alcibiades turns up to the discussion both late and drunk, and sits down on a couch with Agathon and the philosopher Socrates. The drunken speech he gives is full at nraiaa far GQnrratac Whit itjiea The language of love Nicolaus Copernicus §S Clalm that Earth orbits the Sun was a revolution in scientific thinking. It led to scientists abandoning the belief that our planet is at the center of the universe. Paradigm shifts Science, in Kuhn's view, alternates between periods of “normal science” and periods of “crisis.” Normal science is the routine process by which scientists working within a theoretical framework—or “paradigm’—accumulate results that do not call the theoretical underpinnings of their framework into question. Sometimes, of course, anomalous, or unfamiliar, results are encountered, but these are usually considered to be errors on the part of the scientists concerned—proof, according to Kuhn, that normal science does not aim at novelties. Over time, however, anomalous results can 1934 In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper defines “falsifiability” as a criterion for science. It is important to note that for Rawls this is not a story about how justice has actually arisen in the world. Instead, he gives us a way of testing our theories of justice against an impartial benchmark. If they fail to measure up, his point is that it is our reason, and not simply our charity, that has failed. m In such a position, says Rawls, what we need to do is cast a “veil of ignorance” over all the facts of our lives, such as who we are, and where we were born, and then ask what kind of rules it would be best for us to live by. Rawls’ point is that the only rules that could rationally be agreed on by all What we consider art may depend on the context in which we view it. Andy Warhol’s 32 Campbell's Soup Cans creates fine art from images usually associated with commerce. Feyerabend develops his idea in discussion with his friend and fellow philosopher of science, Imre Lakatos. Anarchy in science ihe term postmoaermism™ - has since been used in so many different ways that it is now hard to know exactly what it means, technologies we use to deal with it. Computers have fundamentally transformed our attitudes, as knowledge has become information that can be stored in databases, moved to and fro, and bought and sold. This is what Lyotard calls the “mercantilization” of knowledge. See also: Immanuel Kant 164-71 = Georg Hegel 178-85 = Friedrich Nietzsche 214-21 = Ludwig Wittgenstein 246-51 «= Martin Heidegger 252-55 «= Gilles Deleuze 338 This has several implications. The first, Lyotard points out, is that knowledge is becoming externalized. It is no longer something that helps toward the development of minds; something that might beable to transform us. Knowledge is also Our incredulity toward these meta- narratives implies a new scepticism. Lyotard suggests that this is due to a shift in the way we have related to knowledge since World War II, and to the huge change in the In one sense, Fanon believes that the solution can only come when we move beyond racial thinking; that if we remain trapped within the idea of race we cannot ever The inferiority associated with being black led many colonized people to adopt the “mother country’s cultural standards”, says Fanon, and even to aspire to a “white existence.” need is a “history of ideas” to trace their genealogy. For Foucault, it is simply wrong to assume that our current ideas can be usefully applied to any previous point in history. The ways in which we use the words “man”, “mankind”, and “human nature”, Foucault believes, are examples of this. See also: Immanuel Kant 164-71 = Friedrich Nietzsche 214-21 = Martin Heidegger 252-55 Maurice Merleau-Ponty 274-75 = Daniel Dennett 339 If we are to cut through the rhetoric and examine political morality in a rigorous fashion, it seems that universality is a necessary starting point. Some of Chomsky’s specific claims about the nature of global power have caused considerable controversy, but this does not invalidate his central insight. For if we wish to call his specific claims into question, then we should do so in the light of universality and of all the available evidence. If his claims turn out to be false, then they should be rejected or modified; but if they turn out to be true, then they should be acted upon. m Uncle Sam, the personification of the United States, is one of countless props used by governments to foster public support. Chomsky warns that such images can distract us from the truth. This is both amoral and an intellectual imperative. For Chomsky, these are closely related. He points Ethics and universality Chomsky was born in 1928 in Pennsylvania, USA, and was raised in a multilingual Jewish household. He studied mathematics, philosophy, and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote a groundbreaking thesis on philosophical linguistics. In 1957, his book Syntactic Structures secured his reputation as one of the leading figures in linguistics, and revolutionized the field. Coffee houses became a focus of social and political life in the major cities of 18th-century Europe. Noted as places where “the dissaffected met”, attempts were frequently made to close them. Creating a public sphere 1842 Karl Marx writes his essay On Freedom of the Press. Jurgen Habermas grew up in Germany under the Nazi regime. His realization that “we had been living in a criminal system”, following the Nuremburg trials (1945-46), was to have a lasting effect on his philosophy. 1993. More recently, Habermas has himself taken an active role in the public sphere, entering into debates on Holocaust denial and global terrorism. sph The expansion of the public ere, from the 18th century onward, has led to a growth of democratically elected political ins titutions, independent courts, and bills of rights. But Habermas bel ieves that many of these brakes on. the arbitrary use of power are now under threat. Newspapers, for example, can offer opportunities for reasoned dialogue between private individuals, but if the press isc ontrolled by large corporations, such opportunities may diminish. Informed debate on issues of substance is replaced with celebrity gossip, and we are transformed from critical, rational aqente into mindleee conalmerc w A typesetter can check plates of type closely before they are printed, but the ideas they express are full of “aporias”, or contradictions, says Derrida, which no amount of analysis can eliminate. To “Différance” (with an “a”) isa play both on the French “différence” (with an “e”), meaning “to differ”, and the French “deférrer” meaning “to defer.” To understand how this The meaning of what we write is, for Derrida, changed by what we write next. Even the deceptively simple act of writing a letter can lead to a deferral of meaning in the text itself. See also: Plato 50-55 = Charles Sanders Peirce 205 = Ferdinand de Saussure 223 = Emmanuel Levinas 273 = Louis Althusser 338 = René Girard 338 =» Michel Foucault 302-03 Derrida registered his opposition latter's response to this, pernaps, might be to say that the idea of having a thesis is itself based on the idea of “presence” that he is attempting to call into question. This may seem like dodging the issue; but if we take Derrida’s idea seriously, then we have to admit that the idea that there is nothing outside of the text is itself not outside of the text. To take this idea seriously, then, is to treat it sceptically, to deconstruct it, and to explore the puzzles, impasses, and contradictions that—according to Derrida himself—turk within it. = CL LIME LOY tN bese 11id VP PY NLlives to the Vietnam War in a lecture given in the US in 1968. His involvement in numerous political issues and debates informed much of his later work. See also: Socrates 46—49 = Aristotle 56-63 = Charles Sanders Peirce 205 = William James 206-09 = John Dewey 228-31 = Jurgen Habermas 306-07 Using children as soldiers may seer intrinsically wrong, but Rorty says ther are no ethical absolutes. matter of doing our best, Ethics isa in solidarity with others, to realize a better world. ‘This is, in fact, precisely what the philosopher Socrates did in ancient Athens. Socrates wanted to find out what concepts such as “goodness” and “justice” really were, so he questioned people who used these concepts, to find out whether they really knew what these things were. As the dialogues of Plato show, most of the people Socrates talked to were surprisingly unclear about what it was they were actually talking about, despite their earlier conviction that they fully grasped the relevant concepts. In the same way, after an hour or two of being interrogated by a modern-day Socrates about how to treat hamsters, you might blurt out in frustration the following sentence: “But I just know, in my heart of hearte thatitiawronal” subject it to all manner of cruel tortures, simply for the fun of hearing it squeak. We might all agree that doing such a thing to the poor hamster (or, for that matter, doing such a thing to my neighbor) is a morally blameable act. We might claim that there is something absolutely and fundamentally wrong about doing such a thing to another living being; and we might all agree that we ought not let other people get away with such things. Perhaps, Rorty is saying, these things are enough: the humility that comes from recognizing that there is no absolute standard of truth; the solidarity we have with others; and our hopes that we may be able to contribute to, and to bequeath to those who come after us, a world that is worth living in. = ON NN NE SEN OSES NE IE IRL AS NDS absolute moral law in order to live as ethical beings. Conversation, social hope and solidarity with others allow us to form a working definition of “the good.” Richard Rorty was born in New York, USA in 1931. His parents were political activists, and Rorty describes his early years as being spent reading about Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. He said that he knew by the age of 12 that “the point of being human was to spend one’s life fighting social injustice.” He began attending the University of Chicago early, at the age of 15, going on to take a PhD at Yale in 1956. He was then drafted into the army for two years, before becoming a professor. He wrote his most important book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, while professor of philosophy at Princeton. He wrote widely on philosophy, literature, and politics and, unusually for a 20th-century philosopher, drew on both the so-called analytic and the continental traditions. Rorty died of cancer aged 75. 1940s In the aftermath of World War II, the European colonial empires begin to fragment and collapse. See also: Frantz Fanon 300-01 = Michel Foucault 302-03 =» Noam Chomsky 304-05 In his later work, Said remained critical of all forms of imperialism, past and present. He points out that although we may be critical of empires of the past, these empires saw themselves as bringing 1952 Frantz Fanon writes Black Skin, White Masks, an early study of the damage caused by colonialism. Margaret Thatcher, like many women who have achieved positions of great power, modified her public image to incorporate classic male concepts of strength and authority. If the feminist movement is to realize its goals fully, Kristeva believes that it is essential for it to be more self-critical. She warns that by seeking to fight what she calls the “power principle” of a male-dominated world, feminism is at risk of adopting yet another form of this principle. Kristeva is convinced that for any movement Oruka claims that philosophy has decreed the thoughts of certain races to be more important than others, but it must encompass the sayings of African sages just as it does Greek sages. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 led to the end of the short-lived “Prague Spring” period of liberalization. All moves toward democracy were suppressed until 1989. 41ZEK S ClalM 1S that the crushing of the reforms became the very thing that later sustained a myth held by the political left— namely that, had the reforms gone ahead, some kind of social and political paradise would have followed. According to Zizek, those on the political left are prone to dwelling on their failures, because doing so allows myths to be generated about what would have happened if they had succeeded. Zizek says that these failures allow those on the left to maintain a “safe moralistic position”, because their Low 2 dee ee ee ee th et the eee eee ee ee ee Oe Numbers in bold refer to main entries, those in italics refer to the captions to illustrations.
Using accession records as data, the author describes and analyzes philosophy available in five small town American public libraries roughly between 1880 and 1970. With this information, the author describes these philosophical universes by comparing the data to information in the Library of Congress National union catalog and the H. W. Wilson
This course provides a general overview of the main philosophical topics discussed from Socrates to Sartre. The course develops historically the most important subfields of philosophy: philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ethics, epistemology (theory of knowledge), aesthetics and philosophy of history. We successively discuss Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Sartre. Because the course is intended for students of fields other than philosophy (as well as for its short duration), the discussion focuses on only one of the most relevant ideas of each mentioned European philosophers, instead of exploring their entire system of thought. Students are required to follow the class and take notes, to answer comprehension questions, to write a short essay and to participate in class debates.
the physical sciences, history of society and ethics, and philosophy which for them would be standard for producing a well rounded and educated citizen.
Meta-philosophy investigation of the DEATH of philosophy as subject-matter and the doing of philosophy. Meta-metaphysics, meta-ontology, meta-epistemology, art, religion and other subjects
Meta-philosophical investigations of - what is metaphilosophy, philosophy, philosophizing, the discourse of philosophy, its aim, methods and transcendentals, as well as exploration of syllabus of top philosophical schools
Ricky Sialagan
