The Philosophy Book - Vignesh Prasad

TERMS - The area of metaphysics concerned with questions of existence, ontology, is a huge one and forms the basis for much of Western philosophy. - The study of the nature and limits of knowledge forms a second main branch of philosophy, epistemology. - The examination of what it means to lead a “good” life, what concepts such as justice and happiness actually mean and how we can achieve them, and how we should behave, forms the basis for the branch of philosophy known as ethics (or moral philosophy); and the related branch stemming from the question of what constitutes beauty and art is known as aesthetics. - 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. - Solipsism—the possibility that the only thing I can be certain of existing—or that may in fact exist—is myself. - Pragmatism starts from the position that the purpose of philosophy, or “thinking”, is not to provide us with a true picture of the world, but to help us to act more effectively within it. If we are taking a pragmatic perspective, we should not be asking “is this the way things are?” but rather, “what are the practical implications of adopting this perspective?” - “postmodernism”, which rejected all possibility of a single, objective truth, viewpoint, or narrative. - Deconstruction is a way of reading texts to bring these hidden paradoxes and contradictions out into the open. - In considering a statement, most philosophical traditions ask “is this true?”, in the sense of: “does this correctly represent the way things are?.” But pragmatists consider statements in quite a different way, asking instead: “what are the practical implications of accepting this as true?” PHILOSOPHERS - Thales of Miletus - His true importance lies in the fact that he was the first known thinker to seek naturalistic, rational answers to fundamental questions, rather than to ascribe objects and events to the whims of capricious gods. - Pythagorus - The two sides of Pythagoras’s beliefs—the mystical and the scientific—seem to be irreconcilable, but Pythagoras himself does not see them as contradictory. For him, the goal of life is freedom from the cycle of reincarnation, which can be gained by adhering to a strict set of behavioral rules, and by contemplation, or what we would call objective scientific thinking. - Classical architecture follows Pythagorean mathematical ratios. Harmonious shapes and ratios are used throughout, scaled down in the smaller parts, and up for the overall structure. - Kong Qiu - This notion of zhong as a regard for others is also tied to the last of the Confucian values of de: shu, reciprocity, or “self-reflection”, which should govern our actions toward others. The so-called Golden Rule, “do as you would be done by”, appears in Confucianism as a negative: “what you do not desire for yourself, do not do to others.” The difference is subtle but crucial: Confucius does not prescribe what to do, only what not to do, emphasizing restraint rather than action. This implies modesty and humility—values traditionally held in high regard in Chinese society, and which for Confucius express our true nature. - Heraclitus - Heraclitus’s belief that every object in the universe is in a state of constant flux runs counter to the thinking of the philosophers of the Milesian school, such as Thales and Anaximenes, who define all things by their quintessentially unchanging essence. - Protagoras - 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. - Mozi - By jian ai, Mozi means that we should care for all people equally, regardless of their status or their relationship to us. He regards this philosophy, which became known as Mohism and which “nourishes and sustains all life”, as being fundamentally benevolent and in accordance with the way of heaven. - Socrates - - Socrates’ central concern, then, was the examination of life, and it was his ruthless questioning of people’s most cherished beliefs (largely about themselves) that earned him his enemies—but he remained committed to his task until the very end. - “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.” But what exactly is involved in this examination of life? For Socrates it was a process of questioning the meaning of essential concepts that we use every day but have never really thought about, thereby revealing their real meaning and our own knowledge or ignorance. - Plato - - This belief is the basis of his theory of Forms, which is that for every earthly thing that we have the power to perceive with our senses, there is a corresponding “Form” (or “Idea”)—an eternal and perfect reality of that thing—in the world of Ideas. Because what we perceive via our senses is based on an experience of imperfect or incomplete “shadows” of reality, we can have no real knowledge of those things. At best, we may have opinions, but genuine knowledge can only come from study of the Ideas, and that can only ever be achieved through reason, rather than through our deceptive senses. This separation of two distinct worlds, one of appearance, the other of what Plato considers to be reality, also solves the problem of finding constants in an apparently changing world. - Aristotle - how we can recognize the thing that we call virtue—and for Aristotle, again, the answer is by observation. We understand the nature of the “good life” by seeing it in the people around us. - Like Plato, then, Aristotle is concerned with finding some kind of immutable and eternal bedrock in a world characterized by change, but he concludes that there is no need to look for this anchor in a world of Forms that are only perceptible to the soul. The evidence is here in the world around us, perceptible through the senses. Aristotle believes that things in the material world are not imperfect copies of some ideal Form of themselves, but that the essential form of a thing is actually inherent in each instance of that thing. - Epicurus - Epicurianism is often mistakenly interpreted as simply being about the pursuit of sensual pleasures. For Epicurus, the greatest pleasure is only attainable through knowledge and friendship, and a temperate life, with freedom from fear and pain. - Diogenes - The happiest person, who in Diogenes’ phrase, “has the most”, is therefore someone who lives in accordance with the rhythms of the natural world, free from the conventions and values of civilized society, and “content with the least.” - Zeno - No one is forced to pursue a “good” life. It is up to the individual to choose whether to put aside the things over which he has little or no control, and be indifferent to pain and pleasure, poverty and riches. But if a person does so, Zeno is convinced that he will achieve a life that is in harmony with nature in all its aspects, good or bad, and live in accordance with the rulings of the supreme lawgiver. - Augustine - But Augustine still needs to explain why God should have created the world in such a way as to allow there to be these natural and moral evils, or deficiencies. His answer revolves around the idea that humans are rational beings. He argues that in order for God to create rational creatures, such as human beings, he had to give them freedom of will. Having freedom of will means being able to choose, including choosing between good and evil. For this reason God had to leave open the possibility that the first man, Adam, would choose evil rather than good. - Boethius - My dog, for instance, knows the sun only as something with qualities he can sense—by sight and touch. A person, however, can also reason about the category of thing the sun is, and may know which elements it is made of, its distance from Earth, and so on. Boethius considers time in a similar kind of way. As we live in the flow of time, we can only know events as past (if they have occurred), present (if they are happening now), or future (if they will come to pass). We cannot know the outcome of uncertain future events. God, by contrast, is not in the flow of time. He lives in an eternal present, and knows what to us are past, present, and future in the same way that we know the present. - Averroes - Averroes reconciles religion and philosophy through a hierarchical theory of society. He thinks that only the educated elite are capable of thinking philosophically, and everyone else should be obliged to accept the teaching of the Qur’an literally. Averroes does not think that the Qur’an provides a completely accurate account of the universe if read in this literal way, but says that it is a poetic approximation of the truth, and this is the most that the uneducated can grasp. However, Averroes believes that educated people have a religious obligation to use philosophical reasoning. - Maimonides - God, Maimonides says, has no attributes. We cannot rightly say that God is “good” or “powerful.” This is because an attribute is either accidental (capable of change) or essential. One of my accidental attributes, for example, is that I am sitting; others are that I have gray hair and a long nose. But I would still be what I essentially am even if I were standing, red-haired, and had a snub-nose. Being human—that is, being a rational, mortal animal—is my essential attribute: it defines me. God, it is generally agreed, has no accidental attributes, because God is unchanging. In addition, says Maimonides, God cannot have any essential attributes either, because they would be defining, and God cannot be defined. - Rumi - - In contrast to general Islamic practice, he placed much emphasis on dhikr—ritual prayer or litany—rather than rational analysis of the Qur’an for divine guidance, and became known for his ecstatic revelations. - Man, he believes, is a link between the past and future in a continual process of life, death, and rebirth—not as a cycle, but in a progression from one form to another stretching into eternity. Death and decay are inevitable and part of this endless flow of life, but as something ceases to exist in one form, it is reborn in another. Because of this, we should have no fear of death, and nor should we grieve a loss. In order to ensure our growth from one form to another, however, we should strive for spiritual growth and an understanding of the divine–human relationship. Rumi believes that this understanding comes from emotion rather than from reason—emotion enhanced by music, song, and dance. - Aquinas - - Despite his defence of Aristotle’s reasoning, Aquinas does not accept Aristotle’s assertion that the universe is eternal, because the Christian faith says otherwise; but he doesn’t think that Aristotle’s position is illogical. Like Philoponus and his followers, Aquinas wants to show that the universe had a beginning—but he also wants to show that there is no flaw in Aristotle’s reasoning. He claims that his Christian contemporaries have confused two different points: the first is that God created the universe, and the second is that the universe had a beginning. Aquinas set out to prove that in fact Aristotle’s position—that the universe has always existed—could be true, even if it is also true that God created the universe. - 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. - Erasumus - folly—by which Erasmus meant naive ignorance—is an essential part of being human, and is what ultimately brings us the most happiness and contentment. He goes on to claim that knowledge, on the other hand, can be a burden and can lead to complications that may make for a troublesome life. - Religion is a form of folly too, Erasmus states, in that true belief can only ever be based on faith, never on reason. He dismisses the mixing of ancient Greek rationalism with Christian theology by medieval philosophers, such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, as theological intellectualizing, claiming that it is the root cause of the corruption of religious faith. Instead, Erasmus advocates a return to simple heartfelt beliefs, with individuals forming a personal relationship with God, and not one prescribed by Catholic doctrine. - Machiavelli - Machiavelli sets out his argument that the goals of a ruler justify the means used to obtain them. The Prince differed markedly from other books of its type in its resolute setting aside of Christian morality. Machiavelli wanted to give ruthlessly practical advice to a prince and, as his experience with extremely successful popes and cardinals had shown him, Christian values should be cast aside if they got in the way. - Machiavelli’s point is that a ruler cannot be bound by morality, but must do what it takes to secure his own glory and the success of the state over which he rules—an approach that became known as realism. - Montaigne - Montaigne takes up a theme that has been popular since ancient times: the intellectual and moral dangers of living among others, and the value of solitude. Montaigne is not stressing the importance of physical solitude, but rather of developing the ability to resist the temptation to mindlessly fall in with the opinion and actions of the mob. He compares our desire for the approval of our fellow humans to being overly attached to material wealth and possessions. - Francis Bacon - 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. - Thomas Hobbes - In Leviathan, his major political work, Hobbes proclaims: “The universe—that is, the whole mass of things that are—is corporeal, that is to say, body.” He goes on to say that each of these bodies has “length, breadth, and depth”, and “that which is not body is no part of the universe.” Although Hobbes is stating that the nature of everything is purely physical, he is not claiming that because of this physicality everything can be perceived by us. - Rene Descartes - He is often described as the father of modern philosophy. He sought to give philosophy the certainty of mathematics without recourse to any kind of dogma or authority, and to establish a firm, rational foundation for knowledge. He is also well known for proposing that the mind and the body are two distinct substances—one material (the body) and the other immaterial (the mind)—which are nonetheless capable of interaction. This famous distinction, which he explains in the Sixth Meditation, became known as Cartesian dualism. However, it is the rigor of Descartes’ thought and his rejection of any reliance on authority that are perhaps his most important legacy. - Blaise Pascal - Pascal argues that betting that God does not exist risks losing a great deal (infinite happiness in Heaven), while only gaining a little (a finite sense of independence in this world)—but betting that God exists risks little while gaining a great deal. It is more rational, on this basis, to believe in God. - Spinoza - Spinoza’s theory, which he explains fully in Ethics, is often referred to as a form of pantheism—the belief that God is the world, and that the world is God. Pantheism is often criticized by theists (people who believe in God), who argue that it is little more than atheism by another name. However, Spinoza’s theory is in fact much closer to panentheism—the view that the world is God, but that God is more than the world. - John Locke - Locke was against the idea that human beings possess any kind of innate knowledge. He takes the view that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa—a blank tablet or a new sheet of paper upon which experience writes, in the same way that light can create images on photographic film. - Leibniz - Leibniz was a rationalist, and his distinction between truths of reasoning and truths of fact marks an interesting twist in the debate between rationalism and empiricism. His claim, which he makes in most famous work, the Monadology, is that in principle all knowledge can be accessed by rational reflection. However, due to shortcomings in our rational faculties, human beings must also rely on experience as a means of acquiring knowledge. - Berkeley - - Berkeley’s empiricism, on the other hand, was far more extreme, and led him to a position known as “immaterialist idealism.” This means that he was a monist, believing that there is only one kind of substance in the universe, and an idealist, believing that this single substance is mind, or thought, rather than matter. Berkeley’s position is often summarized by the Latin phrase esseest percipi (“to be is to be perceived”), but it is perhaps better represented by esse est aut perciperi aut percipi (“to be is to perceive or to be perceived”). For according to Berkeley, the world consists only of perceiving minds and their ideas. This is not to say that he denies the existence of the external world, or claims that it is in any way different from what we perceive. His claim is rather that all knowledge must come from experience, and that all we ever have access to are our perceptions. - If things that are not perceivers only exist in so far as they are perceived, however, this seems to mean that when I leave the room, my desk, computer, books, and so on all cease to exist, for they are no longer being perceived. Berkeley’s response to this is that nothing is ever unperceived, for when I am not in my room, it is still perceived by God. His theory, therefore, not only depends on the existence of God, but of a particular type of God—one who is constantly involved in the world. - Voltaire - 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 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. 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 for yourself. But Voltaire believes it is vitally important to doubt every “fact” and to challenge all authority. - Hume - The fact that, in our limited experience, B invariably follows A is no rational ground for believing that A will always be followed by B, or that A causes B. If there is never any rational basis for inferring cause and effect, then what justification do we have for making that connection? Hume explains this simply as “human nature”—a mental habit that reads uniformity into regular repetition, and a causal connection into what he calls the “constant conjunction” of events. Indeed, it is this kind of inductive reasoning that is the basis of science, and tempts us to interpret our inferences as “laws” of nature—but despite what we may think, this practice cannot be justified by rational argument. In saying this, Hume makes his strongest case against rationalism, for he is saying that it is belief (which he defines as “a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression”), guided by custom, that lies at the heart of our claims to knowledge rather than reason. - Jean Jacques Rousseau - He argues that far from improving minds and lives, the arts and sciences decrease human virtue and happiness. - Rousseau contradicted conventional thinking with his analysis. The selfish, savage, and unjust state of nature depicted by Hobbes is, for Rousseau, a description not of “natural man”, but of “civilized man.” In fact he claims that it is civil society that induces this savage state. Humanity’s natural state, he argues, is innocent, happy, and independent: man is born free. - Rousseau claims that every society loses touch with humanity’s natural virtues, including empathy, and so imposes laws that are not just, but selfish. They are designed to protect property, and they are inflicted on the poor by the rich. The move from a natural to a civilized state therefore brought about a move not only from virtue to vice, Rousseau points out, but also from innocence and freedom to injustice and enslavement. Although humanity is naturally virtuous, it is corrupted by society; and although man is born free, the laws imposed by society condemn him to a life “in chains.” - In contrast with the social contract envisaged by Locke, which was designed to protect the rights and property of individuals, Rousseau advocates giving legislative power to the people as a whole, for the benefit of all, administered by the general will. - John Dewey - the center of all his works lay the idea that reason threatens human innocence and, in turn, freedom and happiness. Instead of the education of the intellect, he proposes an education of the senses, and he suggests that our religious faith should be guided by the heart, not the head. - Adam Smith - Smith argues that it can lead to universal wealth in a well-ordered society. Indeed, he says that in conditions of perfect liberty, the market can lead to a state of perfect equality—one in which everyone is free to pursue his own interests in his own way, so long as it accords with the laws of justice. And by equality Smith is not referring to equality of opportunity, but to equality of condition. - Smith argues that it can lead to universal wealth in a well-ordered society. Indeed, he says that in conditions of perfect liberty, the market can lead to a state of perfect equality—one in which everyone is free to pursue his own interests in his own way, so long as it accords with the laws of justice. And by equality Smith is not referring to equality of opportunity, but to equality of condition. In other words, his goal is the creation of a society not divided by competitiveness, but drawn together by bargaining based on mutual self-interest. - the pursuit of self-interest, far from being incompatible with an equitable society, is, in Smith’s view, the only way of guaranteeing it. - Immanuel Kant - A philosophical position that asserts that some state or activity of the mind is prior to and more fundamental than things we experience is called idealism, and Kant calls his own position “transcendental idealism.” - Burke - - For Burke, the fallibility of individual judgment is why we need tradition, to give us the moral bearings we need—an argument that echoes David Hume, who claimed that “custom is the great guide to human life.” - 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 conservatism. - Jeremy Bentham - In The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), he argues that all social and political decisions should be made with the aim of achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Bentham believes that the moral worth of such decisions relates directly to their utility, or efficiency, in generating happiness or pleasure. - Mary WollstoneCraft - Wollstonecraft argues that if men and women are given the same education they will acquire the same good character and rational approach to life, because they have fundamentally similar brains and minds. - Fichte - How can people be considered to have free will, he asks, if everything is determined by something else that exists outside of ourselves? Fichte argues instead for a version of idealism similar to Kant’s, in which our own minds create all that we think of as reality. In this idealist world, the self is an active entity or essence that exists outside of causal influences, and is able to think and choose freely, independently, and spontaneously. - Schlegel - Describing his own approach, Schlegel says philosophy must always “start in the middle… it is a whole, and the path to recognizing it is no straight line but a circle.” - Hegel - - For Kant, the basic ways in which thought works, and the basic structures of consciousness, are a priori—that is, they exist prior to (and so are not are not derived from) experience. This means that they are independent not only of what we are thinking about, or are conscious of, but are independent of any historical influence or development In saying that the structures of thought are dialectical, therefore, Hegel means that they are not distinct and irreducible, as Kant maintained, but that they emerge from the broadest, emptiest notions by means of this movement of self-contradiction and resolution. - This extraordinary idea—that the nature of consciousness has changed through time, and changed in accordance with a pattern that is visible in history—means that there is nothing about human beings that is not historical in character. Moreover, this historical development of consciousness cannot simply have happened at random. Since it is a dialectical process, it must in some sense contain both a particular sense of direction and an end point. Hegel calls this end point “Absolute Spirit”—and by this he means a future stage of consciousness which no longer even belongs to individuals, but which instead belongs to reality as a whole. - Schopenhauer - - for Schopenhauer, the phenomenal and noumenal are not two different realities or worlds, but the same world, experienced differently. It is one world, with two aspects: Will and Representation. This is most easily evidenced by our bodies, which we experience in two ways: we perceive them as objects (Representations), and experience them from within (as Will). - For Schopenhauer, the world is neither good nor bad, but meaningless, and humans who struggle to find happiness achieve at best gratification and at worst pain and suffering. The only escape from this miserable condition, according to Schopenhauer, is nonexistence or at least a loss of will for gratification. He proposes that relief can be found through aesthetic contemplation, especially in music, which is the one art that does not attempt to represent the phenomenal world. - Feuerbach - Feuerbach suggests that in our yearning for all that is best in humankind—love, compassion, kindness, and so on—we have imagined a being that incorporates all of these qualities in the highest possible degree, and then called it “God.” Theology (the study of God) is therefore nothing more than anthropology (the study of humanity). Not only have we deceived ourselves into thinking that a divine being exists, we have also forgotten or forsaken what we are ourselves. We have lost sight of the fact that these virtues actually exist in humans, not gods. For this reason we should focus less on heavenly righteousness and more on human justice—it is people in this life, on this Earth, that deserve our attention. - John Stuart 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 everyone. He concludes that society should therefore allow all individuals the freedom to pursue happiness. Furthermore, he says that this right should be protected by the government, and that legislation should be drawn up to protect the individual’s freedom to pursue personal goals. There is, however, one situation in which this freedom should be curtailed, Mill says, and that is where one person’s action impinges on the happiness of others. This is known as the “harm principle.” - Soren Kierkegaard - Kierkegaard believes that moral choices are absolutely free, and above all subjective. It is our will alone that determines our judgement, he says. However, far from being a reason for happiness, this complete freedom of choice provokes in us a feeling of anxiety or dread. Kierkegaard explains this feeling in 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 different kinds of fear: the fear of falling, and fear brought on by the impulse to throw himself off the edge. This second type of fear, or anxiety, arises from the realization that he has absolute freedom to choose whether to jump or not, and this fear is as dizzying as his vertigo. - Karl Marx - 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. - Although Marx did not foresee communism being implemented in such a barbaric manner in these primarily agricultural societies, his ideas are nevertheless still open to a variety of criticisms. First, Marx always argued for the inevitability of revolution. This was the essential part of the dialectic, but it is clearly too simplistic, as human creativity is always able to produce a variety of choices, and the dialectic fails to allow for the possibility of improvement by gradual reform. Second, Marx tended to invest the proletariat with wholly good attributes, and to suggest that a communist society would give rise somehow to a new type of human being. He never explained how the dictatorship of this perfect proletariat would be different from earlier, brutal forms of dictatorship, nor how it would avoid the corrupting effects of power. Third, Marx rarely discussed the possibility that new threats to liberty might emerge after a successful revolution; he assumed that poverty was the only real cause of criminality. - Thoreau - Thoreau proposes a citizen’s right to conscientious objection through non-cooperation and non-violent resistance—which he put into practice by refusing to pay taxes that supported the war in Mexico and perpetuated slavery. - Pierce - This idea, that the meaning of a concept is the sensory effect of its object, is known as the pragmatic maxim, and it became the founding principle of pragmatism—the belief that the “truth” is the account of reality that works best for us. One of the key things Peirce was trying to accomplish was to show that many debates in science, philosophy, and theology are meaningless. He claimed that they are often debates about words, rather than reality, because they are debates in which no effect on the senses can be specified. - James - This is why James asserts “act as if what you do makes a difference”—to which he adds the typically concise and good-humored rider, “it does.” We must, however, approach this idea with caution: a shallow interpretation of what James is saying could give the impression that any belief, no matter how outlandish, could become true by acting upon it—which of course is not what he meant. There are certain conditions that an idea must fulfil before it can be considered a justifiable belief. The available evidence must weigh in its favor, and the idea must be sufficient to withstand criticism. In the process of acting upon the belief, it must continually justify itself by its usefulness in increasing our understanding or predicting results. And even then, it is only in retrospect that we can safely say that the belief has become true through our acting upon it. - Nietzsche - - One of the central purposes of Nietzsche’s philosophy is what he calls the “revaluation of all values”, an attempt to call into question all of the ways that we are accustomed to thinking about ethics and the meanings and purposes of life. - The Superman is Nietzsche’s vision of a fundamentally life-affirming way of being. It is one that can become the bearer of meaning not in the world beyond, but here; Superman is “the meaning of the Earth.” - Saussure - Saussure claims that any message—for example “my dog is called Fred”—is a system of signs. This means that it is a system of relationships between sound-images and concepts. However, Saussure states that the relationship between the signified and the signifier is arbitrary—so there is nothing particularly “doggy” about the sound “dog”, which is why the word can be chien in French, or gou in Chinese. - Unamuno - Unlike the Buddha, Unamuno does not see suffering as a problem to be overcome through practicing detachment. Instead he argues that suffering is an essential part of what it means to exist as a human being, and a vital experience. If all consciousness amounts to consciousness of human mortality and suffering, as Unamuno claims, and if consciousness is what makes us distinctively human, then the only way we can lend our lives a kind of weight and substance is to embrace this suffering. If we turn away from it, we are not only turning away from what makes us human, we are also turning away from consciousness itself. - Du Bois - In his final message to the world, Du Bois reminds us that the task of bringing about a more just society is still incomplete. He states that it is up to future generations to believe in life, so that we can continue to contribute to the fulfilment of “human flourishing.” - Bertrand Russell - 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 Russell, who are heard extolling the virtues of “honest toil”, giving a moral gloss to a system that is manifestly unjust. And this fact alone, according to Russell, should prompt us to re-evaluate the ethics of work, for by embracing “honest toil” we comply with and even promote our own oppression. - Scheler - It is love, Scheler believes, that makes things apparent to our experience and that makes knowledge possible. Scheler writes that love is “a kind of spiritual midwife” that is capable of drawing us toward knowledge, both knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of the world. It is the “primary determinant” of a person’s ethics, possibilities, and fate. At root, in Scheler’s view, to be human is not to be a “thinking thing” as the French philosopher Descartes said in the 17th century, but a being who loves. - Ortega - In order to transform the world and to engage creatively with our own existence, Ortega says that we must look at our lives with fresh eyes. This means not only looking anew at our external circumstances, but also looking inside ourselves to reconsider our beliefs and prejudices. Only when we have done this will we be able to commit ourselves to creating new possibilities. - Tanabe - It is only through confessing, Tanabe believes, that we can rediscover our true being—a process he describes in directly religious terms as a form of death and resurrection. This death and resurrection is the rebirth of the mind through “other power”, and its passing from the limited view of the “self” to the perspective of enlightenment. - Wittgenstein - Discussion about religious and ethical values is, for Wittgenstein, strictly meaningless. Because the things that we are attempting to talk about when we discuss such topics are beyond the limits of the world, they also lie beyond the limits of our language. Wittgenstein writes, “It is clear that ethics cannot be put into language.” - Heidegger - It is to Heidegger that we owe the philosophical distinction between authentic and inauthentic existence. Most of the time we are wrapped up in various ongoing projects, and forget about death. But in seeing our life purely in terms of the projects in which we are engaged, we miss a more fundamental dimension of our existence, and to that extent, Heidegger says, we are existing inauthentically. When we become aware of death as the ultimate limit of our possibilities, we start to reach a deeper understanding of what it means to exist. - Watsuji - Watsuji’s studies of Western approaches to ethics convinced him that thinkers in the West tend to take an individualistic approach to human nature, and so also to ethics. But for Watsuji, individuals can only be understood as expressions of their particular times, relationships, and social contexts, which together constitute a “climate.” He explores the idea of human nature in terms of our relationships with the wider community, which form a network within which we exist; Watsuji calls this “betweenness.” For Watsuji ethics is a matter not of individual action, but of the forgetting or sacrifice of one’s self, so that the individual can work for the benefit of the wider community. - Carnap - Carnap’s reminder that language can fool us into seeing problems that are not really there is an important one. - Marcuse - Marcuse’s idea is partly an attempt to overturn the claim made by the German philosopher Hegel that what is rational is actual, and also that what is actual is rational. Marcuse believes this is a dangerous idea because it leads us to think that what is actually the case—such as our existing political system—is necessarily rational. He reminds us that those things we take as reasonable may be far more unreasonable than we like to admit. He also wants to shake us up into realizing the irrational nature of many of the things that we -take for granted. - Gadamer - Gadamer goes on to point out that our understanding is always from the point of view of a particular point in history. Our prejudices and beliefs, the kinds of questions that we think are worth asking, and the kinds of answers with which we are satisfied are all the product of our history. We cannot stand outside of history and culture, so we can never reach an absolutely objective perspective. - Karl Popper - Theories that are untestable (for example, that we each have an invisible spirit guide, or that God created the universe) are not part of the natural sciences. This does not mean that they are worthless, only that they are not the kinds of theories that the sciences deal with. - Adorno - The problem with the idea of the holy fool, Adorno says, is that it divides us into different parts, and in doing so makes us incapable of acting judiciously at all. In reality, judgement is measured by the extent to which we manage to make feeling and understanding cohere. Adorno’s view implies that evil acts are not just failures of feeling, but also failures of intelligence and understanding. - Sartre - - For Sartre, there is no preordained plan that makes us the kind of beings that we are. We are not made for any particular purpose. We exist, but not because of our purpose or essence like a paper-knife does; our existence precedes our essence. - Sartre wants us to break free of habitual ways of thinking, telling us to face up to the implications of living in a world in which nothing is preordained. To avoid falling into unconscious patterns of behavior, he believes we must continually face up to choices about how to act. - Arendt - 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. - Levinas - Levinas’ ideas are most easily understood through looking at an example. Imagine that you are walking down a street on a cold winter evening, and you see a beggar huddled in a doorway. She may not even be asking for change, but somehow you can’t help feeling some obligation to respond to this stranger’s need. You may choose to ignore her, but even if you do, something has already been communicated to you: the fact that this is a person who needs your help. Inevitable communication - Merleau-Ponty - Merleau-Ponty takes up Husserl’s approach, but with one important difference. He is concerned that Husserl ignores what is most important about our experience—the fact that it consists not just of mental experience, but also of bodily experience. In his most important book, The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty explores this idea and comes to the conclusion that the mind and body are not separate entities—a thought that contradicts a long philosophical tradition championed by Descartes. For Merleau-Ponty, we have to see that thought and perception are embodied, and that the world, consciousness, and the body are all part of a single system. - De Beauvoir - - 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 have written on behalf of the equality of women, she says, have done so by arguing that equality means that women can be and do the same as men. She claims that this idea is mistaken, because it ignores the fact that women and men are different. - Simone De Beauvoir was also an existentialist, believing that we are born without purpose and must carve out an authentic existence for ourselves, choosing what to become. In applying this idea to the notion of “woman”, she asks us to separate the biological entity (the bodily form which females are born into) from femininity, which is a social construct. Since any construct is open to change and interpretation, this means that there are many ways of “being a woman”; there is room for existential choice. - Quine - - Some philosophers assert that language is about the relationship between words and things. Quine, however, disagrees. Language is not about the relationship between objects and verbal signifiers, but about knowing what to say and when to say it. It is, he says in his 1968 essay Ontological Relativity, a social art. - 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 of somebody uttering “gavagai” (or, for that matter, “rabbit”), and of this utterance being meaningful comes not from some mysterious link between words and things, but from the patterns of our behavior, and the fact that we have learned to participate in language as a social art. - Berlin - Berlin’s response to this is twofold. First, it is important to recognize that the various freedoms we may desire will always be in conflict, for there is no such thing as “the goal of life”—only the goals of particular individuals. This fact, he claims, is obscured by philosophers who look for a universal basis for morality, but confuse “right action” with the purpose of life itself. Second, we need to keep alive the fundamental sense of freedom as an absence of “bullying and domination”, so that we do not find our ideals turning into chains for ourselves and for others. - Naess - Naess urges us to move toward seeing ourselves as part of the whole biosphere. Instead of viewing the world with a kind of detachment, we must find our place in nature, by acknowledging the intrinsic value of all elements of the world we inhabit. Naess introduces the “ecological self”, a sense of self that is rooted in an awareness of our relationship to a “larger community of all living beings.” - Albert Camus - - the French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus thought that philosophy should recognize instead that life is inherently meaningless. While at first this seems a depressing view, Camus believes that only by embracing this idea are we capable of living as fully as possible. - Camus recognizes that much of what we do certainly seems meaningful, but what he is suggesting is quite subtle. On the one hand, we are conscious beings who cannot help living our lives as if they are meaningful. On the other hand, these meanings do not reside out there in the universe; they reside only in our minds. - Barthes - Language, at least the language of the lover, is not something that simply talks about the world in a neutral fashion, but it is something that, as Barthes says, “trembles with desire.” Barthes writes of how “I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.” - Midgley - Her concern is to address the fact that many people see nature and culture as somehow opposed, as if culture is something non-natural that is added onto our animal natures. Midgley disagrees with the idea that culture is something of a wholly different order to nature. Instead, she wants to argue that culture is a natural phenomenon. In other words, we have evolved to be the kinds of creatures who have cultures. It could be said that we spin culture as naturally as spiders spin webs. - Kuhn - 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 accumulate until a crisis point is reached. Following the crisis, if a new theory has been formulated, there is a shift in the paradigm, and the new theoretical framework replaces the old. Eventually this framework is taken for granted, and normal science resumes—until further anomalies arise. - John Rawls - - John Rawls argues for a re-evaluation of justice in terms of what he calls “justice as fairness.” His approach falls into the tradition known as social contract theory, which sees the rule of law as a form of contract that individuals enter into because it yields benefits that exceed what they can attain individually. Rawls’ version of this theory involves a thought experiment in which people are made ignorant of their place in society, or placed in what he calls the “original position” in which the social contract is made. From this Rawls establishes principles of justice on which, he claims, all rational beings should agree. - Rawls’ point is that the only rules that could rationally be agreed on by all parties are ones that genuinely honor impartiality, and don’t, for example, take race, class, creed, natural talent, or disability into account. In other words, if I don’t know what my place in society will be, rational self-interest compels me to vote for a world in which everyone is treated fairly. - Richard Wollheim - The British philosopher of art, Richard Wollheim, believes that we should resist the tendency to see art as an abstract idea that needs to be analyzed and explained. If we are to fully understand art, he believes, we must always define it in relation to its social context. - Feyerabend - Feyerabend’s “anarchism” is rooted in the idea that all of the methodologies used in the sciences are limited in scope. As a result, there is no such thing as “scientific method.” If we look at how science has developed and progressed in practice, the only “method” that we can discern is that “anything goes.” Science, Feyerabend maintains, has never progressed according to strict rules, and if the philosophy of science demands such rules, it will limit scientific progress. - Lyotard - 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. 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 be able to transform us. Knowledge is also becoming disconnected from questions of truth. It is being judged not in terms of how true it is, but in terms of how well it serves certain ends. When we cease to ask questions about knowledge such as “is it true?” and start asking questions such as “how can this be sold?”, - Fanon - In saying that “for the black man, there is only one destiny”, and this destiny is white, Fanon is saying at least two things. First, he says that “the black man wants to be like the white man”; that is, the aspirations of many colonized peoples have been formed by the dominant colonial culture. - Foucault - We cannot take concepts that we use in our present context (for example, the concept of “human nature”) and assume that they are somehow eternal, and that all we 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. - Noam Chomky - Chomsky’s ethical analyses are based on what he calls the “principle of universality.” At root, this principle is relatively simple. It says that at the very least we should apply to ourselves the same standards that we apply to others. This is a principle that Chomsky claims has always been central to any responsible system of ethics. The central psychological insight here is that we are fond of using ethical language as a way of protesting about others, but that we are less inclined to pass judgment on ourselves. - Habermas - in the 18th century, a variety of public spaces emerged that were outside state control, including literary salons and coffee houses. These were places where individuals could gather to engage in conversation or reasoned debate. This growth of the public sphere led to increased opportunities to question the authority of representational state culture. The public sphere became a “third space”, a buffer between the private space of our immediate friends and family, and the space occupied by state control. By establishing a public sphere, we also open up more opportunities for recognizing that we have interests in common with other private individuals—interests that the state may fail to serve. This can lead to questioning the actions of the state. Habermas believes that the growth of the public sphere helped to trigger the French Revolution in 1789. The expansion of the public sphere, from the 18th century onward, has led to a growth of democratically elected political institutions, independent courts, and bills of rights. But Habermas believes that many of these brakes on the arbitrary use of power are now under threat. - Jacques Derrida - First, Derrida is suggesting that if we take seriously the idea that meaning is a matter of différance, of differing and of deferring, then if we want to engage with the question of how we ought think about the world, we must always keep alive to the fact that meaning is never as straightforward as we think it is, and that this meaning is always open to being examined by deconstruction. Second, Derrida is suggesting that in our thinking, our writing, and our speaking, we are always implicated in all manner of political, historical, and ethical questions that we may not even recognize or acknowledge. - Rorty - Rorty suggests that knowledge is not so much a way of mirroring nature as “a matter of conversation and social practice.” When we decide what counts as knowledge, our judgement rests not on how strongly a “fact” correlates to the world, so much as whether it is something “that society lets us say.” What we can and cannot count as knowledge is therefore limited by the social contexts that we live in, by our histories, and by what those around us will allow us to claim. “Truth,” said Rorty, “is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying.” - Irigaray - In Sex and Genealogies (1993) she writes: “Everywhere, in everything, men’s speech, men’s values, dreams, and desires are law.” Irigaray’s feminist work can be seen as a struggle to find authentically female ways of speaking and desiring that are free from male-centeredness. - Said - 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 civilization to the world—a view not shared by the people they claimed to be helping. Empires plunder and control, while masking their abuses of power by talking about their “civilizing” missions. If this is the case, Said warns, we should be wary of present-day claims by any state undertaking foreign interventions. - Cixous - For Cixous, a thread that runs through centuries of thought is our tendency to group elements of our world into opposing pairs, such as culture/nature, day/night, and head/heart. Cixous claims that these pairs of elements are always by implication ranked hierarchically, underpinned by a tendency to see one element as being dominant or superior and associated with maleness and activity, while the other element or weaker aspect is associated with femaleness and passivity. - Kristeva - for Kristeva herself, the very notion of feminism is problematic. Feminism has arisen out of the conflict women have had with the structures that are associated with male dominance or power. Because of these roots, Kristeva warns, feminism carries with it some of the same male-centered presuppositions that it is seeking to question. 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 to be successful in achieving true emancipation, it must constantly question its relationship to power and established social systems—and, if necessary “renounce belief in its own identity.” - 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. - Singer - Singer’s utilitarianism is based on what he refers to as an “equal consideration of interests.” Pain, he says, is pain, whether it is yours or mine or anybody else’s. The extent to which non-human animals can feel pain is the extent to which we should take their interests into account when making decisions that affect their lives, and we should refrain from activities that cause such pain. - Zizek - According to Žižek, 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. Žižek says that these failures allow those on the left to maintain a “safe moralistic position”, because their failures mean that they are never in power, or truly tested by action. He describes this stance as the “comfortable position of resistance”, which allows an avoidance of the real issues—such as re-evaluating the nature of political revolution. For Žižek, a dedicated Marxist, serious questions about the nature of political power are obscured by endlessly trying to justify utopia’s elusiveness.