10/4/2009

Philosophy and Philosophers - A summary - Riquette Mory

Thales: Traditionally considered the first ever
western
philosopher. None of his writings survived.
Zeno : founder of Stoicism which denies the importance of all
bodily conditions. The only factor seen as essential to human
happiness was virtue. He believed that a divine lawgiver had a
fixed plan for the universe. Happiness resulted from accepting
whatever life brought; even misfortune. Also believed that all
people were alike and should be treated well.
Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 BCE): “One cannot step twice
in in the same river.”
His message was that reality is constantly changing , it’s an
ongoing process rather than a fixed and stable product. All reality
is fleeting and impermanent.
“The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one.”
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Question 1
He is famous for question and answer technique
of studying which was designed to make people
examine their beliefs.

He is also for arguing that one must know

himself, that the unexamined life is not worth
living.
A. Plato C. Aristotle
B. Socrates D. Kant
Question 1
He is famous for question and answer technique
of studying which was designed to make people
examine their beliefs.

He is also for arguing that one must know

himself, that the unexamined life is not worth
living.
A. Plato C. Aristotle
B. Socrates D. Kant
 Ancient Greek, student of
Socrates, most influential
philosopher of all time.
Plato based his philosophy on two principles “Truth and
simplicity”
Plato was a brilliant man, one of the greatest
philosophers of the past 2,500 years. Both Socrates and
Plato knew that a good society must be founded on
wisdom derived from truth and reality.
In The Republic-Plato outlines his ideas of the ideal
society. He believed no one should have wealth or
luxury, and all should do what they are best suited to.
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Plato also
had a good
understanding of human
nature.
He later began to develop his own philosophy - The
fundamental aspect of Plato's thought is the theory
of "ideas" or "forms."
Plato, like so many other Greek philosophers, was
stymied by the question of change in the physical
world.
Plato's philosophy developed largely from that of his
teacher Socrates. Under their influence Greek
philosophy shifted its focus from problems of the
physical world to ethics, politics,
knowledge and ideas.
In his great books, The Laws and The Republic, Plato
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ARISTOTLE (384 BC – 322 BC): Ancient Greek,
student of Plato,
second most influential philosopher of all time.

Tutor to the young prince of Macedon, Alexander the Great.

Works: The Nichomachean Ethics, Metaphysics and the Politics.
“The first philosophy (Metaphysics) is universal and is exclusively
concerned with primary substance ...”(Aristotle)

Aristotle was the first philosopher to formalize the subject of

Metaphysics. As he explains, Metaphysics is the study of the
One Substance (God/Nature) which exists and causes all
things, and is therefore the necessary foundation for all
human knowledge.

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Aristotle (and Leibniz) thought that One Substance must have
properties that cause matter's interconnected activity and Motion.
"Since nature is a principle of motion and change, and since our inquiry is about
Aristotle
nature, we believed that the
must not overlook theworld could
question be motion is. For without
of what
understanding motion, we could not understand nature.”
understood at a
fundamental level through the detailed observation and
cataloging of phenomenon.
Therefore his ideas are very important, for within them are the clues to the
solution of this most profound of all problems, 'what exists', and what it means
to be 'human'. That is, knowledge must be based on fundamental empirical
evidence.
As a result of this belief, Aristotle literally wrote about everything:
poetics, rhetoric, ethics, politics, meteorology, embryology, physics, mat
hematics, metaphysics, anatomy, physiology, logic, dreams, and so forth.

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William of Ockham (1285–1349?)
Scholastic : Science of simplicity
“Entities should not be
multiplied unnecessarily”
Commonly known for Ockham’s razor - the idea that in judging
among competing philosophical or scientific theories, all other
things being equal, we should prefer the simplest theory.
Scientists currently speak of four forces in the universe: gravity,
the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, and the weak
nuclear force. Ockham would certainly nod approvingly at the
ongoing attempt to formulate a grand unified theory, a single
force that encompasses allfour.
The ultimate irony of Ockham’s razor may be that some have used it
to prove God is unnecessary to the explanation of the universe, an
idea Ockham the Franciscan priest would reject.
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 Philosopher “The life of man [is] solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Referring to the original
state of nature, a hypothetical past before civilization,
Hobbes saw no reason to be nostalgic.

Thomas Hobbes saw Society as a giant machine (perpetually in

motion), thus the title of his great work, The Leviathan, which is
founded on Mechanics (the Motion of Bodies / Matter). In
Leviathan, Hobbes argues that the natural state of man (without any
civil government) is war, ... “the life of man solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short. ... The condition of man ... is a condition of war of
everyone against everyone.” (Hobbes, Leviathan)
According t o Hobbes - Men, In pure self-interest and for self-
preservation, entered into a compact by which they agreed to
surrender part of their natural freedom to an absolute ruler in order
to preserve the rest.
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René Descartes (1596 – 1650): Father of
Modern Philosophy“
Work: A Discourse on Method Meditations and Principles
Descartes began his philosophy by doubting everything in order to figure out what
he could know with absolute certainty. Although he could be wrong about what he
was thinking, that he was thinking was undeniable.
1. “I think therefore I am” – “Cogito ergo sum”
2. “I think I exist as a material body and there are other
material things including other thinking things (human)”
3. “one common space”
Upon the recognition that “I think,” Descartes concluded that
“I am.”
On the heels of believing in him, Descartes asked, what am I? His answer: a
thinking thing (res cogitans), as opposed to a physical thing, extended in
three-dimensional space (res extensa). So, based on this line, Descartes
knew he existed, though he wasn’t sure if he had a body. It’s a philosophical
cliff-hanger.

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 Matter 'Deus sive Natura' (God or Nature)
“.... we are a part of nature
as a whole, whose order
we follow.” (Ethics, 1673)

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632 into a Jewish family.

He had a Jewish education, resisted orthodoxy and was later
excommunicated of heresy and changed his name to Benedictus de
Spinoza in 1656 . The Christians didn't think much of Spinoza either
(though his whole philosophy is based on God) and the orthodox
accused him of atheism.
Due to such ill treatment and unpopularity, his main
philosophical work 'Ethics' was published posthumously.
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 displaying an indifference to
money, fame and power. As
Spinoza writes;
“A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as
much as he can to refuse their benefits. .. He who lives
under the guidance of reason endeavors as much as
possible to repay his fellow’s hatred, rage, contempt, etc.,
with love and nobleness.” (Ethics).
“When a number of bodies of the same or different size are driven so
together that they remain united one with the other, …those bodies
are called reciprocally united bodies (corpora invicem unita), and we
say that they all form one body or individual, which is distinguished
from the rest by this union of the bodies.” (Ethics)

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Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm
(1646 – 1716): Rationalist
“We live in the best of all possible worlds.”
Famous for his justification of evil and his ideas on substance.
Works: Discourse on Metaphysics, Monadology,Theodicy.
Voltaire’s famous novel Candide satirizes this optimistic view.
And looking around you right now you may wonder how
anyone could actually believe it. But Leibniz believed that
before creation God contemplated every possible way the
universe could be and chose to create the one in which we live
because it’s the best.
According to Leibniz God could have created a universe in which no
one ever did wrong, in which there was no human evil, but that
would require humans to be deprived of the gift of free wills and
thus would not be the best possible world.
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Bishop George Berkeley
(1685 – 1753): Idealist
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there t o hear it, does
it make a sound?”
As an idealist, Berkeley believed that nothing is real but minds and
their ideas. Ideas do not exist independently of minds. Through a
complicated line of reasoning he concluded that “to be is to be
perceived.” Something exists only if someone has the idea of it.
Though he never put the question in the exact words of the famous
quotation, Berkeley would say that if a tree fell in the forest and there was
no one (not even a squirrel) there to hear it, not only would it not make a
sound, but there would be no tree.
The good news is, according to Berkeley, that the mind of God
always perceives everything. So the tree will always make a sound,
and there’s no need to worry about blipping out of existence if you
fall asleep in a room by yourself.
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David Hume (1711 -
76): Empiricist
The Philosopher David Hume is famous for making us realize that
until we know the Necessary Connection / cause of things then all
human knowledge is uncertain, merely a habit of thinking based
upon repeated observation (induction), and which depends upon
the future being like the past.
“I cannot find, I cannot imagine any such reasoning. But I keep my
mind still open to instruction, if any one will vouchsafe to bestow it
upon me.”
(Hume, 1737)
David Hume is one of the most elegant of the philosophers, so his
quotes are well worth reading from a purely literary sense.
He is also one of the most important philosophers to write on
metaphysics, as he makes it clear that until we know the causal
connection between things all knowledge is empirical / inductive
and thus uncertain (the current state of modern physics).
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 Famous
Philosopher
KANT : Considered to be the greatest of the modern philosophers, his
influence is all-pervasive in almost every area of philosophy.
Works: Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals .

Famous metaphysicist throughout the history of philosophy, and

there is no doubt that his 'Critique of Pure Reason' is the most
comprehensive analysis of Metaphysics since Aristotle's pioneering
work which founded this subject.
Unfortunately for humanity, Kant made one small, and yet
fundamental, mistake. Kant is correct that Space is a priori, or first
necessary for us to have senses (which are a posteriori). His error is to
assume that Time is also a priori or necessary for us to sense the motion of
matter in Space. He writes:

“There are two pure forms of sensible intuition, as principles of

knowledge a priori, namely space and time.”
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Kant :
The solution to this error is to realize that the exact opposite is
true, that Space considered in itself contains wave motions.

Consequently, the two pure forms of sensible intuition, as principles

of knowledge a priori, are namely Space and Motion :

Space is a Wave-Medium and so contains within it a second thing,

Wave Motion. Therefore we move from the Metaphysics of Space
and Time to the Metaphysics of Space and Motion and finally
unite these two things that give rise to all other things.

Fichte: Follower of Kant, one of the founders of

nationalism.
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G.W.F. Hegel (1770 – 1831): German Idealism
“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
meaning that philosophy comes to understand a historical condition just as it
passes away. Philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in
hindsight.
Hegel’s poetic insight says that philosophers are impotent.
That is only after the end of an age can philosophers realize what it was about; and
by then it’s too late to change things.
Only after the end of an age can philosophers realize what it was about; and by then
it’s too late to change things.
HEGEL: Argued that all history was progressing towards a perfect state of being. Works:
Phenomenology of Spirit, the Philosophy of Right.
It wasn’t until the time of Immanuel Kant that the true nature of the
Enlightenment was understood, and Kant did nothing to change the
Enlightenment; he just consciously perpetuated it.
According to Hegel, all reality is Reason. The reality of Reason has a universal
necessity. “Reason is the conscious certainty of being all reality.“(Hegel)
Marx (1818 – 1883) found Hegel’s apt description to be indicative of the problem with
philosophy and responded, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently,
what matters are to change it.”
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Søren Kierkegaard (1813 –
1855): Existentialism Works:
Either/or, Sickness unto Death, Fear and Trembling.
Kierkegaard: First major objector to Hegel considers being a
founder of existentialism.
“The Truth shall set ye free, but first it shall make ye miserable.”
In a memorable scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy
deduced that the final step across his treacherous path was a leap of
faith.
“Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith – when he
nevertheless makes the leap of faith – this [is] subjectivity …a t its height”
There is a leap of faith in Kierkegaard's theory of stages of life,
The final stage, the religious stage, requires passionate, subjective
belief rather than objective proof, in the paradoxical and the absurd.
So, what’s the absurd? That which Christianity asks us to accept as
true, that God became man born of a virgin, suffered, died and was
resurrected.
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PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHERS - A SUMMARY - RIQUETTE MORY
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 –
1900): Postmodern Pilosophy

“God is dead.”
Actually, Nietzsche never issued this famous proclamation in his
own voice but rather put the words in the mouth of a character he
called the madman and later in the mouth of another character,
Zarathustra.

NIETZSCHE: Mostly a moral philosopher, famously rejected

traditional Christian and Jewish morality as 'slave morality'. Works:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil.

Though Nietzsche himself was an atheist. “Dead” is

metaphorical in this context, meaning belief in the God of
Christianity is worn out, past its prime, and on the decline.
God is lost as the center of life and the source of values.
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John Dewey (1859 – 1952):
Pragmatism
American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have
been very influential .
Dewey, along with Charles senders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one
of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He
was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist
philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.
Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, but also wrote
about many other topics, including experience and nature, art and
experience, logic and inquiry, democracy, and ethics.
In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements—
schools and civil society—as being major topics needing attention and
reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality.
Epistemology - Main article: knowing and the known
The terminology problem in epistemology and logic is partially due, to
inefficient and imprecise use of words and concepts that reflect three
historic levels of organization and presentation: self action, interaction
and transaction.
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Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905-1980): Famous Frenchexistentialist.
Works: Being and Nothingness.

Quotes:
Being and Nothingness (1943) - Its primary question is: “What is
it like t o be a human being?”
Sartre's answer is that human reality consists of two modes of existence: of
being and of nothingness. The human being exists both as an in-itself (en-
soi), an object or thing, and as a for-itself (pour-soi), a consciousness.
“The existence of an in-itself is 'opaque to itself …because it is filled
with itself.' In contrast, the for-itself, or consciousness, has no such
fullness of existence, because it is no-thing.”
Sartre sometimes describes consciousness of things as a kind of
nausea produced by recognition of the contingency of their
existence and the realization that this constitutes Absurdity.

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Albert Camus (1913 – 1960): Existentialism - Philosopher of the Absurd -
Works: The Plague, The Rebel , The Myth of Sisyphus, etc.
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Camus solution to the philosophical problem was to recognize and embrace life’s
absurdity. Suicide, though, remains an option if the absurdity becomes too much.
Indeed Camus’ own death in a car crash was ambiguous. Was it an accident or
suicide?
For Camus, the absurd hero is Sisyphus, a man from Greek mythology who
is condemned by the gods for eternity to roll up a stone up a hill only to
have it fall back again as it reaches the top. For Camus, Sisyphus typified all
human beings: we must find a meaning in a world that is unresponsive or
even hostile to us.
Sisyphus, Camus believed, affirms life, choosing to go back down the hill
and push the rock again each time. Camus wrote: “The struggle itself
toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine
Sisyphus happy.”
There are more recent important philosophers, like
Rawls, Nozick, Searle, Singer, and so on, but it's too early to tell if they belong on
this list yet.
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In conclusion, here are some philosophy terms:
Epistemology : The philosophy of knowledge.
Ethics: Branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to
human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of
certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and
ends of such
Metaphysics : Meta means above; this is the study of the nature of
things above physics.
Aesthetics : The philosophy of art. Concerned with questions like
why do we find certain things beautiful …
Philosophy of Education: experience that has a formative effect on the
mind, character, or physical ability of an individual.
Philosophy of History: Fairly minor branch although highly important
to Hegel and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the
philosophical study ofhistory.
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Philosophy of Language: Ancient branch of philosophy. Basically concerned
with how our languages affect our thought.
Philosophy of Law, also called Jurisprudence: Collection of rules imposed by
authority.
Logic: The study of the proper methods of thinking and reasoning.
Philosophy of Mathematics: Study of mathematics concerned with issues such as, is
mathematics real or created by us.
Philosophy of Mind: attempting to ascertain exactly what the mind is, how it
interacts with our body, do other minds exist, how does it work, and so on.
Philosophy of History : Fairly minor branch although highly important to Hegel
and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the philosophical study of history.
Philosophy of Politics: Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and
nations, particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what
obligations citizens have towards their government, and so on.
Philosophy of Religion: Theology is concerned with the study of God.
Philosophy of religion is concerned with best religious practices and how religion
shape our life, but where Theology uses religious works, like the Bible, as its
authority, philosophy likes to use reason as the ultimate authority.
Philosophy of Science: Study of science concerned with whether scientific knowledge can
be said to be certain, how we obtain it.
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 Plato Aristotle

The thoughts of these two great philosophers were the base of laterphilosophies
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