In devising ways of communicating with the right hemisphere ,RW Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize for medicine , by showing the right hemisphere is " indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering & reasoning, " —Roger Wolcott Sperry CALTEC
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PHILOSOPHERS
Des CartesDescartes, Rene (1596-1650), was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is often called the father of modern philosophy. Descartes invented analytic geometry and was the first philosopher to describe the physical universe in terms of matter and motion. He was a pioneer in the attempt to formulate simple, universal laws of motion that govern all physical change. Descartes wrote three major works. The first was Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences (1637), commonly known as the Discourse on Method. The other two books were Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), perhaps his most important work, and Principles of Philosophy (1644). His philosophy became known as Cartesianism. His life. Descartes was born at La Haye, near Chatellerault, and was educated at a Jesuit college. He served in the armies of two countries and travelled widely. Money from an inheritance and from patrons enabled him to devote most of his life to study. From 1628 to 1649, Descartes led a quiet, scholarly life in the Netherlands and produced most of his philosophical writings. Late in 1649, he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina to visit Sweden. He became seriously ill there and died in February 1650. His philosophy. Descartes is called a dualist because he claimed that the world consists of two sorts of basic substances--matter and spirit. Matter is the physical universe, of which our bodies are a part. Spirit is the human mind, which interacts with the body but can, in principle, exist without it. Descartes believed that matter could be understood through certain simple concepts he borrowed from geometry, together with his laws of motion. In Descartes's view, the whole world--including its laws and even the truths of mathematics--was created by God, on whose power everything depends. Descartes thought of God as resembling the mind in that both God and the mind think but have no physical being. But he believed God is unlike the mind in that God is infinite and does not depend for His existence on some other creator. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes first considered the strongest reasons that might be used to show that he could never be certain of anything. These so-called "sceptical" arguments included the idea that perhaps he might be dreaming, so that nothing he seemed to perceive would be real. In another argument, Descartes reflected that perhaps God or some evil spirit was constantly tricking his mind, causing him to believe what was false. Descartes then responded to these arguments. He began with the observation that even if he were dreaming, or constantly deceived, he could at least be certain that he had thoughts, and therefore existed as a thinking being. This, he wrote, was a "clear and distinct" perception of the mind. Nothing could make him doubt it. In another work, Descartes created the famous Latin phrase cogito, ergo sum, which means I think, therefore I am. Descartes then argued that he could also clearly and distinctly perceive that an infinitely powerful and good God exists. This God would not allow Descartes to be deceived in his clearest perceptions. Through this conception of God, Descartes sought to establish that the physical world exists with the properties the philosopher assumed in his theories of physics.
HeidiggerHeidegger, Martin (1889-1976), was a German philosopher who exercised a tremendous influence on the philosophers of continental Europe, South America, and Japan. His work is an attempt to understand the nature of Being (Sein in German). To study Being, Heidegger analysed human existence (Dasein), because it is the form of Being that can be known best. In his attempt to understand Being, he often sought philosophical enlightenment in the etymologies (origins) of words. Heidegger also sought enlightenment in the insights of poets, especially his favourite poet, Friedrich Holderlin. Heidegger's extensive discussion of human existence, which emphasizes anxiety, alienation, and death, has led many people to call him an existentialist (see EXISTENTIALISM). However, he denied being an existentialist, claiming that he was interested in human existence only to better understand Being. He held that the most important philosophical question is: "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?" Heidegger was born in Baden-Wurttemberg. He studied philosophy at the University of Freiburg under Edmund Husserl. Heidegger succeeded Husserl in 1928, and became rector of the university in 1933. His bestknown book is Being and Time (1927). He also wrote What Is Metaphysics? (1929), Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), and What Is Thinking? (1954).
NietzscheNietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), was a German philosopher, poet, and classical scholar. Many philosophers, writers, and psychologists of the 1900's have been deeply influenced by him. Nietzsche greatly admired classical Greek civilization. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), he presented a revolutionary theory about the nature of Greek tragedy and civilization. He said they could best be understood as the results of a conflict between two basic human tendencies. The Apollonian tendency was a desire for clarity and order, represented by the Greek sun god, Apollo. The other, Dionysian, tendency was a wild, irrational drive toward disorder, represented by the god of wine, Dionysus. Nietzsche criticized religion. In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885), he proclaimed, "God is dead." He meant that religion, in his time, had lost its meaningfulness and power over people and could no longer serve as the foundation for moral values. He believed the time had come for people to critically examine their traditional values and the origins of these values. Nietzsche tried to begin this "re-evaluation of all values" in such works as Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Genealogy of Morals (1887). He said that the warriors who originally dominated society had defined their own strength and nobility as "good," and the weakness of the common people as "bad." Later, when the priests and common people came to dominate society, they redefined their own weakness and humility as "good" and the strength and cruelty of the warriors whom they feared as "evil." Nietzsche criticized this second set of values because it was based on fear and resentment, and he associated these values with the Judeo-Christian tradition. He repeatedly criticized Christianity, particularly in The Antichrist (1895). Nietzsche boasted that he was one of the few philosophers who was also a psychologist. Nietzsche's major psychological theory is that all human behaviour is basically motivated by the "will to power." He did not mean that people wanted only to overpower each other physically. He thought that people also wanted to gain power and control over their own unruly passions. He thought that the self-control exhibited by ascetics and artists was a higher form of power than the physical bullying of the weak by the strong. Nietzsche's ideal person, the overman or superman, is the passionate individual who learns to control passions and use them in a creative manner. Nietzsche said that people should accept and love their own life so completely that they would choose to relive it, with its joys and sufferings, an infinite number of times. Nietzsche was born in Saxony, the son and grandson of Protestant ministers. He studied at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. When he was only 24, he became professor of classics at the University of Basel in Switzerland. There he became the close friend of the composer Richard Wagner, but the friendship ended in hostility. In 1870, Nietzsche became a Swiss citizen. After teaching at the university for only 10 years, he retired because of poor health. He then devoted all his time and energy to his writing. In 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. Nietzsche has unjustly suffered notoriety as a racist, anti-Semite, and forerunner of Nazism. This is largely due to the editing of his writings and misrepresentation of his ideas by Nazi propagandists and by his racist sister Elizabeth.
MarxMarx, Karl (1818-1883), was a German philosopher, social scientist, and professional revolutionary. Few writers have had such a great and lasting influence on the world. Marx was the chief founder of two of the most powerful mass movements in history--democratic socialism and revolutionary communism. See COMMUNISM; SOCIALISM. Marx was sometimes ignored or misunderstood, even by his followers. Yet many of the social sciences--especially sociology--have been influenced by his theories. Many important social scientists of the late 1800's and the 1900's can be fully understood only by realizing how much they were reacting to Marx's beliefs. The life of Marx Karl Heinrich Marx was born and raised in Trier, in what was then Prussia. His father was a lawyer. Marx showed intellectual promise in school and went to the University of Bonn in 1835 to study law. The next year, he transferred to the University of Berlin. There he became much more interested in philosophy, a highly political subject in Prussia. Marx joined a group of radical leftist students and professors whose philosophic views implied strong criticism of the severe way in which Prussia was governed. In 1841, Marx obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the university in Jena. He tried to get a teaching position but failed because of his opposition to the Prussian government. He became a freelance journalist and helped create and manage several radical journals. After his marriage in 1843, Marx and his wife moved to Paris. There they met Friedrich Engels, a young German radical, who became Marx's best friend and worked with him on several articles and books. Marx lived in Brussels, Belgium, from 1845 to 1848, when he returned to Germany. He edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was published in Cologne during the German revolution of 1848. Marx became known throughout Germany as a spokesman for radical democratic reform. See GERMANY (History [The Revolution of 1848]). After the collapse of the 1848 revolution, Marx fled from Prussia. He spent the rest of his life as a political exile in London. Marx led a hand-to-mouth existence because he was too proud--or too much a professional revolutionary--to work for a living. He did write occasional articles for newspapers. His most regular job of this kind was that of political reporter for the New York Tribune. But generally, Marx, his wife, and their six children survived only because Engels sent them money regularly. In 1864, Marx founded The International Workingmen's Association, an organization dedicated to improving the life of the working classes and preparing for a socialist revolution (see INTERNATIONAL, THE). Marx suffered from frequent illnesses, many of which may have been psychological. Even when physically healthy, he suffered from long periods of apathy and depression and could not work. Marx was learned and sophisticated, but he was often opinionated and arrogant. He had many admirers but few friends. Except for Engels, he lost most of his friends--and many of them became his enemies. He broke all contact with his mother and was cool to his sisters. But with his wife and children, Marx was relaxed, witty, and playful. Marx's writings Most of Marx's writings have been preserved. They include not only his books, but also most of his correspondence and the notes of his speeches. Philosophic essays. Some of Marx's philosophic essays were published during his lifetime, but others were not discovered until the 1900's. Marx wrote some of them alone and some with Engels. The essays range from one of about 15 sentences to a 700-page book, The German Ideology (1845-1846), written with Engels. Marx wrote his essays between 1842 and 1847. They spell out the philosophic foundations of his radicalism. The chief themes in the essays include Marx's bitter view that economic forces were increasingly oppressing human beings and his belief that political action is a necessary part of philosophy. The essays also show the influence of the philosophy of history developed by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see HEGEL, G. W. F.). The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written jointly with Engels on the eve of the German revolution of 1848. Its full title is the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The manifesto is a brief but forceful presentation of the authors' political and historical theories. It is the only work they produced that can be considered a systematic statement of the theories that became known as Marxism. The Communist Manifesto considers history to be a series of conflicts between classes. It predicts that the ruling middle class will be overthrown by the working class. The result of this revolution, according to Marx and Engels, will be a classless society in which the chief means of production are publicly owned. Das Kapital (Capital) was Marx's major work. He spent about 30 years writing it. The first volume appeared in 1867. Engels edited the second and third volumes from Marx's manuscripts. Both of these volumes were published after Marx's death. The fourth volume exists only as a mass of scattered notes. In Das Kapital, Marx described the free enterprise system as he saw it. He considered it the most efficient, dynamic economic system ever devised. But he also regarded it as afflicted with flaws that would destroy it through increasingly severe periods of inflation and depression. The most serious flaw in the free enterprise system, according to Marx, is that it accumulates more and more wealth but becomes less and less capable of using this wealth wisely. As a result, Marx saw the accumulation of riches being accompanied by the rapid spread of human misery. See CAPITALISM. Other writings. Marx and Engels also wrote about all sorts of events in and influences on national and international affairs--personalities, overthrowing of governments, cabinet changes, parliamentary debates, wars, and workers' uprisings. Marx also wrote about the practical problems of leading an international revolutionary movement. The major source of these comments is his correspondence with Engels and other friends. Marx's theories Marx's doctrine is sometimes called dialectical materialism, and part of it is referred to as historical materialism. These terms were taken from Hegel's philosophy of history. Marx never used them, but Engels did and so have most later Marxists. The concepts of dialectical and historical materialism are difficult and obscure and may be unnecessary for an understanding of Marx's theories. See MATERIALISM. Marx's writings cover more than 40 years. His interests shifted and he often changed his mind. But his philosophy remained surprisingly consistent--and very complex. Apart from the brief Communist Manifesto, he never presented his ideas systematically. Production and society. The basis of Marxism is the conviction that socialism is inevitable. Marx believed that the free enterprise system, or capitalism, was doomed and that socialism was the only alternative. Marx discussed capitalism within a broad historical perspective that covered the history of the human race. He believed that the individual, not God, is the highest being. People have made themselves what they are by their own labour. They use their intelligence and creative talent to dominate the world by a process called production. Through production, people make the goods they need to live. The means of production include natural resources, factories, machinery, and labour. The process of production, according to Marx, is a collective effort, not an individual one. Organized societies are the chief creative agents in human history, and historical progress requires increasingly developed societies for production. Such societies are achieved by continual refinement of production methods and of the division of labour. By the division of labour, Marx meant that each person specializes in one job, resulting in the development of two classes of people--the rulers and the workers. The ruling class owns the means of production. The working class consists of the nonowners, who are exploited (treated unfairly) by the owners. The class struggle. Marx believed there was a strain in all societies because the social organization never kept pace with the development of the means of production. An even greater strain developed from the division of people into two classes. According to Marx, all history is a struggle between the ruling and working classes, and all societies have been torn by this conflict. Past societies tried to keep the exploited class under control by using elaborate political organizations, laws, customs, traditions, ideologies, religions, and rituals. Marx argued that personality, beliefs, and activities are shaped by these institutions. By recognizing these forces, he reasoned, people will be able to overcome them through revolutionary action. Marx believed that private ownership of the chief means of production was the heart of the class system. For people to be truly free, he declared, the means of production must be publicly owned--by the community as a whole. With the resulting general economic and social equality, all people would have an opportunity to follow their own desires and to use their leisure time creatively. Unfair institutions and customs would disappear. All these events, said Marx, will take place when the proletariat (working class) revolts against the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production). Political strategy. It is not clear what strategy Marx might have proposed to achieve the revolution he favoured. An idea of this strategy can come only from his speeches, articles, letters, and political activities. As a guideline for practical politics, Marxism is vague. Marx's followers have quarrelled bitterly among themselves over different interpretations and policies. Marx today Today, Marx is studied as both a revolutionary and an economist. His importance as a pioneer in the social sciences is being recognized increasingly. Marx has often been attacked because he rebelled against all established societies, because he was an arrogant writer who scorned his critics, and because of his radical views. As the founding father of the Communist movement, Marx is regarded in most Communist countries as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In those countries, many people believe that Marx's writings are the source of all important truths in social science as well as philosophy. They believe that a person cannot be an intelligent student of society, history, economics, philosophy, and numerous other fields without first studying Marx or his principal disciples. Scholars in the Western world were slow to recognize the importance of Marx. For many years, few people bothered to study his writings. But today, in a variety of fields, it has become essential to have some knowledge of Marx. One of these fields is economics. Although his methods of analysing capitalism are considered old-fashioned, many scholars recognize the brilliance of this analysis. Many people consider his criticism of capitalism and his view of what humanity has made of the world as timely today as they were 100 years ago. Even the analysis that Marx made of the business cycle is studied as one of the many explanations of inflation and depression. In sociology, Marx's work is also regarded with increasing respect. Without his contributions, sociology would not have developed into what it is today. Marx wrote on social classes, on the relationship between the economy and the state, and on the principles that underlie a political or economic system. Many people still turn to Marx for an explanation of current social, economic, and political evils. But most of them are unlikely to agree with his view of the ease and speed with which the working class will overthrow the class system and set up a Communist classless society.
AristotleAristotleAristotle (384-322 B.C.), a Greek philosopher, educator, and scientist, was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers in Western culture. Aristotle was probably the most scholarly and learned of the classical or ancient Greek philosophers. He familiarized himself with the entire development of Greek thought preceding him. In his own writings, Aristotle considered, summarized, criticized, and further developed all the rich intellectual tradition that he had inherited. Aristotle and his teacher Plato are usually considered to be the two most important of all the ancient Greek philosophers. Metaphysics. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle tried to develop a science of things that never change and investigate the most general and basic principles of reality and knowledge. Since the most important of these unchanging things is God, Aristotle sometimes called this science theology, the study of God. He also called this branch of his philosophy first philosophy, because of its fundamental importance. Aristotle himself never used the name metaphysics, which literally means after the physics. This name was given to the work centuries later simply because it followed the Physics in the written edition of Aristotle's works. But the word metaphysics has now come to mean any philosophic study of the basic principles of reality and knowledge. Ethics and politics. For Aristotle, ethics and politics both study practical knowledge, that is, knowledge that enables people to act properly and live happily. Aristotle's works on this subject include the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics. Aristotle argued that the goal of human beings is happiness, and that we achieve happiness when we fulfil our function. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what our function is. The function of a thing is what it alone can do, or what it can do best. For example, the function of the eye is to see, and the function of a knife is to cut. Aristotle declared that a human being is "the rational animal" whose function is to reason. Thus, according to Aristotle, a happy life for human beings is a life governed by reason. Aristotle believed that a person who has difficulty behaving ethically is morally imperfect. His ideal person practises behaving reasonably and properly until he or she can do so naturally and without effort. Aristotle believed that moral virtue is a matter of avoiding extremes in behaviour and finding instead the mean that lies between the extremes. For example, the virtue of courage is the mean between the vices of cowardice at one extreme and foolhardiness at the other. Similarly, the virtue of generosity is the mean between stinginess and wastefulness. Literary criticism. Aristotle's Poetics has probably been the single most influential work in all literary criticism. The Poetics examines the nature of tragedy, and takes as its prime example Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex. Aristotle believed that tragedy affects the spectator by arousing the emotions of pity and fear, and then purifying and cleansing the spectator of these emotions. Aristotle called this process catharsis. Logic. Aristotle's works on logic are collectively called the Organon, which means instrument, because they investigate thought, which is the instrument of knowledge. The Organon includes The Categories, The Prior and Posterior Analytics, The Topics, and On Interpretation. Aristotle was the first philosopher to analyse the process whereby certain propositions can be logically inferred to be true from the fact that certain other propositions are true. He believed that this process of logical inference was based on a form of argument he called the syllogism. In a syllogism, a proposition is argued or logically inferred to be true from the fact that two other propositions are true. For example, from the facts that (1) all people are mortal and (2) Socrates is a person, it can be logically argued that (3) Socrates is mortal. The syllogism continued to play an important role in later philosophy. See LOGIC. Philosophy of nature. For Aristotle, the most striking aspect of nature was change. He even defined the philosophy of nature in his Physics as the study of things that change. Aristotle argued that to understand change, a distinction must be made between the form and matter of a thing. For example, a sculpture might have the form of a human being, and bronze as its matter. Aristotle believed that change essentially consists of the same matter acquiring new form. In our example, change occurs if the bronze sculpture is moulded into a new form. To understand change better, Aristotle studied its causes. He distinguished four kinds of causes: (1) material, (2) efficient, (3) formal, and (4) final. The material cause of the sculpture is the material of which it is made. Its efficient cause is the activity of the sculptor who made it. Its formal cause is the form in which the bronze is moulded. Its final cause is the plan or design in the sculptor's mind. Aristotle studied movement as a kind of change and wrote about the movement of the heavenly bodies in On the Heavens. In On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, he investigated the changes that occur when something seems to be created or destroyed. Aristotle's philosophy of nature includes psychology and biology. In On the Soul, he investigated the various functions of the soul and the relationship between the soul and the body. Aristotle was the world's first great biologist. He gathered vast amounts of information about the variety, structure, and behaviour of animals and plants. Aristotle analysed the parts of living organisms teleologically, that is, in terms of the purposes they serve.
LockeLocke, John (1632-1704), was an English philosopher. His writings have influenced political science and philosophy. Locke's book Two Treatises of Government (1690) strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson in the writing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. His life. Locke was born in Wrington in the county of Somerset, England. He attended Oxford University. In 1666, he met Anthony Ashley Cooper, who later became the first Earl of Shaftesbury. The two men became close friends. In 1679, the earl became involved in plots against the king, and suspicion also fell on Locke. The philosopher decided to leave England. In 1683, he moved to the Netherlands, where he met Prince William and Princess Mary of Orange. William and Mary became the rulers of England in 1689, and Locke returned to England as a court favourite. Until his death, he wrote widely on such subjects as educational reform, freedom of the press, and religious tolerance. His philosophy. Locke's major work was An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). It describes his theory of how the mind functions in learning about the world. Locke argued against the doctrine of innate ideas, which stated that ideas were part of the mind at birth and not learned or acquired later from outside sources. Locke claimed that all ideas were placed in the mind by experience. He declared that there were two kinds of experience, outer and inner. Outer experience was acquired through the senses of sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch, which provide information about the external world. Inner experience was acquired by thinking about the mental processes involved in sifting these data, which furnished information about the mind. Locke believed that the universe contained three kinds of things--minds, various types of bodies, and God. Bodies had two kinds of properties. One kind was mathematically measurable, such as length and weight, and existed in the bodies themselves. The second kind was qualitative, such as sound and colour. These properties were not in the bodies themselves but were simply powers that bodies had to produce ideas of colours and sounds in the mind. According to Locke, a good life was a life of pleasure. Pleasure and pain were simple ideas that accompanied nearly all human experiences. Ethical action involved determining which act in a given situation would produce the greatest pleasure--and then performing that act. Locke also believed that God had established divine law. This law could be discovered by reason, and to disobey it was morally wrong. Locke thought that divine law and the pleasure principle were compatible. Locke believed that people by nature had certain rights and duties.
SchopenhauerSchopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860), was a German philosopher who became widely known for his pessimistic views and his fine prose style. Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Following Kant's argument, Schopenhauer insisted that the world we experience through our senses is mere representation. By this he meant that we experience the world not as it really is, but only as we represent it to ourselves. In representing the world to ourselves, we change it. Both Kant and Schopenhauer argued that we represent objects as existing in space and time, and we represent all events as having a cause. But according to these philosophers, space, time, and causality are not really properties of the world. Instead they argue, we add them to our experience of the world. They are the structures we always necessarily use to organize our experience. But the price we pay for this ordering is never knowing the world as it really is--that is, as it exists apart from the structures we add to the world as we experience it. Schopenhauer believed that we can at least know ourselves without introducing this distortion. In addition to knowing ourselves as we know other things, we also experience ourselves from the inside as individuals making choices and willing certain desired ends. As Schopenhauer expressed it, we experience ourselves as will as well as representation. In knowing ourselves as will, we know ourselves apart from the structures of space, time, and causality. Thus, we know ourselves as we really are. For Schopenhauer, the real inner nature of the world is will. Schopenhauer's pessimism was based on his belief that the will can never really be satisfied. According to Schopenhauer, the will is either striving for something that it unhappily does not yet possess, or it quickly experiences the boredom that invariably follows the attainment of any goal. Given the impossibility of ever satisfying the strivings of the will, Schopenhauer advised us to dissociate ourselves as much as possible from these strivings. He suggested that one important way of achieving this withdrawal is through the quiet contemplation of natural and artistic beauty. Schopenhauer was born in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). At his father's urging, he began training for a career in business. But he turned to philosophy after his father's death. Schopenhauer's first book is On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813). His most important work is The World as Will and Representation (1819, second edition 1844). A collection of essays titled Parerga and Paralipomena (1851) brought Schopenhauer international fame toward the end of his life.
KantKant, Immanuel (1724-1804), was a German philosopher. The central problem of his chief work, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), is the nature and limits of human knowledge. This problem seemed important to him because of David Hume's findings. Until Hume's time, almost everyone had taken for granted that we are justified in making generalizations based on a few cases. "All bodies gravitate" is an example of this kind of generalization. Hume asked how we can possibly know that all bodies gravitate since we have seen and measured only a few of them. Hume had challenged other philosophers and scientists to produce evidence that would allow us to make assertions about things we have not actually experienced (see HUME, DAVID). Kant's ideas. Kant believed that it is not possible to find such evidence as long as we continue to think of the mind and its objects as separate things. He held instead that the mind is actively involved in the objects it experiences. That is, it organizes experience into definite patterns. Therefore, we can be sure that all things capable of being experienced are arranged in these patterns even though we may not yet have experienced them. We can have knowledge of things that have not been experienced as well as those we have already experienced. This answered Hume's challenge, but it meant having to abandon any claim to know things as they are in themselves, things in which the mind is not involved. Some philosophers regarded this refusal to claim absolute knowledge as too serious a limitation on a system of philosophy. Other philosophers argued that we have an intuitive, nonrational knowledge of things. Other works. In addition to his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant also wrote on aesthetics and ethics. In ethics, he tried to show: (1) that doing one's duty is more important than being happy or making other people happy, and (2) that even assuming that scientists can predict what we are going to do, the predictions do not conflict with our use of free will. Therefore, the predictions of scientists have no bearing on our duty to live morally. Kant's chief work on ethics is the Critique of Practical Reason (1788). Further comments on his two main works were published as Critique of Judgment (1790). Kant never travelled. He was born and lived in Konigsberg, in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, in Russia). He taught near Konigsberg from 1746 to 1755, and then taught at Konigsberg University until his death nearly 50 years later. His work was epoch-making because he established the main lines for philosophical developments since his day. included liberty, life, and ownership of property. By liberty, Locke meant political equality. The task of any state was to protect people's rights. States inconvenience people in various ways. Therefore, the justification for a state's existence had to be found in its ability to protect human rights better than individuals could on their own. Locke declared that if a government did not adequately protect the rights of its citizens, they had the right to find other rulers. He believed that the people should decide who governs them.
VoltaireIf god did not exist it would be neccassary to invent him ! Voltaire (1694-1778) was the pen name of Francois Marie Arouet, a French author and philosopher. Voltaire's clear style, sparkling wit, keen intelligence, and strong sense of justice made him famous. Candide (1759), Voltaire's best-known work, is a brilliant philosophical tale that has been translated into more than 100 languages. On the surface, it describes the adventures of an inexperienced young man as he wanders around the world. Philosophically, Candide is a complex inquiry into the nature of good and evil. Voltaire, the son of a lawyer, was born in Paris. He received an excellent education at a Jesuit school, where many of the students belonged to the nobility. He showed little inclination to study law, and his schooling ended at the age of 16. He soon joined a group of sophisticated aristocrats who had little reverence for anything except wit, pleasure, and literary talent. Paris society sought Voltaire's company because of his cleverness, his remarkable ability to write verses, and his gift for making people laugh. There are several theories about the origin of Voltaire's pen name, which he adopted in 1718. The most widely accepted one is that Voltaire comes from an imperfect arrangement of the letters making up the French equivalent of Arouet the Younger.
BenthamBentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), an English philosopher, founded the philosophy known as utilitarianism. He thought that ideas, institutions, and actions should be judged on the basis of their utility (usefulness). Bentham defined utility as the ability to produce happiness. He advocated the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness in and for society. Bentham thought of happiness and good in terms of pleasure. He believed that (1) pleasure can be exactly measured, (2) individuals care only about increasing their own pleasure and decreasing their pain, and (3) a person should always do what will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Bentham set up a number of principles for measuring pleasure. He also sought an opportunity to organize a country's laws and institutions in such a way that they would place the general good above each person's individual pleasure. His criticisms brought about many needed reforms. For example, in Great Britain the law courts were reformed because they had not promoted the good of all. Bentham's writings include Fragment on Government (1776) and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). He was born in London. Bentham graduated from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1763. |
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