Survival of the Fittest Modern Philosophers (1600-1920 CE)
For a general description of this series, see the main page for the survival of the fittest philosophers.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 CE) was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.
Survives
Hobbes is famous for describing the natural state of mankind (the state pertaining before a central government is formed) as a war of every man against every man in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” This is an apt description of a species characterized primarily by competition. Unchecked competition narrows time horizons and does lead to a shortened existence.
Hobbes’ account of human nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology. Yes. We cooperate in order to better compete. Over all time horizons, self-interested cooperation explains the survival of genes, the survival of the self, and the survival of the species.
Needs to Adapt
Hobbes was one of the main philosophers who founded materialism (matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter). He argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal matter in motion. Materialism is the basis for reality and it has discovered no evidence of god, heaven, or hell. Human thoughts are brain states.
The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature.” In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order. Hobbes advocated absolute monarchy but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid. Cooperative groups outcompete individualistic groups. This is why society develops from “states of nature.” Cooperation is maintained by recognizing the right of the individual, the equality of all men and women, and the consent of the governed. Absolute monarchies are incompatible with consent. Economic theory demonstrates the need to have monopoly providers for public goods such as justice, but representative government with checks and balances in the system is a better solution to the need to enforce and engender cooperation.
Gone Extinct
Leviathan was written during the English Civil War; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war. In particular, the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected: the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers. Right diagnosis - wrong solution. A better one was yet to come.
Survives
Hobbes is famous for describing the natural state of mankind (the state pertaining before a central government is formed) as a war of every man against every man in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” This is an apt description of a species characterized primarily by competition. Unchecked competition narrows time horizons and does lead to a shortened existence.
Hobbes’ account of human nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology. Yes. We cooperate in order to better compete. Over all time horizons, self-interested cooperation explains the survival of genes, the survival of the self, and the survival of the species.
Needs to Adapt
Hobbes was one of the main philosophers who founded materialism (matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter). He argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal matter in motion. Materialism is the basis for reality and it has discovered no evidence of god, heaven, or hell. Human thoughts are brain states.
The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature.” In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order. Hobbes advocated absolute monarchy but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid. Cooperative groups outcompete individualistic groups. This is why society develops from “states of nature.” Cooperation is maintained by recognizing the right of the individual, the equality of all men and women, and the consent of the governed. Absolute monarchies are incompatible with consent. Economic theory demonstrates the need to have monopoly providers for public goods such as justice, but representative government with checks and balances in the system is a better solution to the need to enforce and engender cooperation.
Gone Extinct
Leviathan was written during the English Civil War; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war. In particular, the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected: the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers. Right diagnosis - wrong solution. A better one was yet to come.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650 CE) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the father of modern philosophy, and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings.
Survives
Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, and he expressed it in this way: “Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect, which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.” Logic and reason are the fundamental tools by which all experience is turned into knowledge. The questions of philosophy guide our explorations. As we have filled in the tree of life with our knowledge, a picture of morality and wisdom is indeed coming into focus.
Descartes wrote a response to skepticism about the existence of the external world. He argued that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Who but the most vain and childish can doubt that the external world exists?
Needs to Adapt
Descartes was a major figure in 17th-century continental rationalism (a view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification), later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought (theory that knowledge arises from sense experience) consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Hume. Descartes attempted to construct a system of knowledge discarding perception as unreliable and instead admitting only deduction as a method. The extreme forms of rationalism and empiricism are just that - extreme. The truth lies in the middle. Knowledge comes from using reason to understand our sense experiences. The iterative nature of the scientific method is what hones this process towards truth. In a large and changing universe, eternal absolutes are extremely difficult to prove. We must act based on the best available knowledge. This leaves us almost entirely with probabilistic knowledge, which means we must act with confidence and caution appropriate to the probability, being especially careful in realms where knowledge is uncertain and consequences are large.
Descartes is also known for his theory of dualism, suggesting that the body works like a machine, that it has the material properties of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics, whereas the mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics. Descartes argued that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional. Very nearly extinct. At least Descartes proposed a bi-directional relationship between the mind and the body. While the exact way that consciousness arises from the body is still a mystery, a much wider mind-body interaction is universally accepted now.
Gone Extinct
Descartes is best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum"; I think, therefore I am. I feel, therefore I am. The universe responds to my actions, therefore I am. Others detect me, therefore I am. There is much evidence for our existence and the existence of others and other things. Our inner thoughts are actually the least convincing of these arguments.
Descartes believed that only humans have minds. This led him to the belief that animals cannot feel pain, and Descartes' practice of vivisection (the dissection of live animals) became widely used throughout Europe until the Enlightenment. How very sad for other animals is the ignorance and hubris of humans.
Survives
Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, and he expressed it in this way: “Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect, which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.” Logic and reason are the fundamental tools by which all experience is turned into knowledge. The questions of philosophy guide our explorations. As we have filled in the tree of life with our knowledge, a picture of morality and wisdom is indeed coming into focus.
Descartes wrote a response to skepticism about the existence of the external world. He argued that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Who but the most vain and childish can doubt that the external world exists?
Needs to Adapt
Descartes was a major figure in 17th-century continental rationalism (a view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification), later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought (theory that knowledge arises from sense experience) consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Hume. Descartes attempted to construct a system of knowledge discarding perception as unreliable and instead admitting only deduction as a method. The extreme forms of rationalism and empiricism are just that - extreme. The truth lies in the middle. Knowledge comes from using reason to understand our sense experiences. The iterative nature of the scientific method is what hones this process towards truth. In a large and changing universe, eternal absolutes are extremely difficult to prove. We must act based on the best available knowledge. This leaves us almost entirely with probabilistic knowledge, which means we must act with confidence and caution appropriate to the probability, being especially careful in realms where knowledge is uncertain and consequences are large.
Descartes is also known for his theory of dualism, suggesting that the body works like a machine, that it has the material properties of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics, whereas the mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics. Descartes argued that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional. Very nearly extinct. At least Descartes proposed a bi-directional relationship between the mind and the body. While the exact way that consciousness arises from the body is still a mystery, a much wider mind-body interaction is universally accepted now.
Gone Extinct
Descartes is best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum"; I think, therefore I am. I feel, therefore I am. The universe responds to my actions, therefore I am. Others detect me, therefore I am. There is much evidence for our existence and the existence of others and other things. Our inner thoughts are actually the least convincing of these arguments.
Descartes believed that only humans have minds. This led him to the belief that animals cannot feel pain, and Descartes' practice of vivisection (the dissection of live animals) became widely used throughout Europe until the Enlightenment. How very sad for other animals is the ignorance and hubris of humans.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677 CE) was a Dutch Jewish philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes’ mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy’s most important contributors.
Survives
Spinoza opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism. He contended that everything that exists in Nature (i.e., everything in the Universe) is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality that surrounds us and of which we are part. Yes. Everything has evolved within this universe. Nothing has come from outside of it.
Animals can be used in any way by people for the benefit of the human race, according to a rational consideration of the benefit as well as the animal’s status in nature. This sounds wrong to many modern ears, but key to its survival is the requirement to conduct a rational consideration of benefits. Just as humans must cooperate with each other to survive, we must cooperate with other animals to survive as well. Conservation is one form of cooperation. Husbandry can also be mutually beneficial to species - especially where we have created domestic species that willingly live in homes and on farms. Enslavement of animals is detrimental to their well-being, and through the poisons of stress and disease, and diet-induced obesity, to our health as well. Scientific experimentation on captive animals is rarely beneficial enough to compensate for the way it undermines the ethic of cooperation that must constantly be upheld to be truly meaningful.
Needs to Adapt
Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism in as much as both philosophies sought to fulfill a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness. However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. When used properly, reason can direct the emotions. Better cognitive appraisals help us replace negative emotions with positive emotions - no matter how strong they are. The strongest emotion is the joy of being alive. In that sense, Spinoza is correct. Reason helps us discover which actions lead to this ultimate emotion, and it can use that emotion as motivation for actions that require sacrifice and the endurance of unpleasant emotions in the short-term.
Good and evil are related to human pleasure and pain. Spinoza held good and evil to be relative concepts, claiming that nothing is intrinsically good or bad except relative to a particular individual. What is good is what ensures survival. What is evil is what brings extinction. We have evolved to feel pleasure for survival and pain for extinction. We use reason to recognize and avoid short-term pleasures that cause long-term pain. Judgment of the balance that must be achieved is sometimes difficult or even impossible to know ahead of time. In this sense, present choices between good and bad must be judged with probability under relative circumstances. After the fact though, judgments of good and evil are not relative to particular individuals. They are known objectively.
All rights are derived from the State. (Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.) This is true by definition. But the State must recognize its purpose in aiding society to survive. Where it does, the rights it grants will be just. Where it does not, the restrictions it creates are wrong.
Gone Extinct
Spinoza was a thoroughgoing determinist who held that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For him, even human behavior is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. He wrote: "men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.” Extreme versions of free will and determinism are just that - extreme. The truth lies in the middle and is easier to understand when timescales are introduced. In the short-term, on biological timescales such as those concerning biochemistry, molecular biology, and cellular biology, events are determined by their current states. In the medium-term, on biological timescales such as those concerning organismic biology, and sociobiology, free will is not only possible, it determines the states that arise in the short-term and the long-term. In the long-term, on biological timescales such as those concerning ecology and evolutionary biology, the characteristics of competitiveness, cooperativeness, and adaptability are required for survival. In that sense, the long-term is determined. The free will that occurs in the medium-term, and the randomness of destructive cosmological events, means that who survives is unknown. Evolution is blind. We are not.
Spinoza believed that God exists but is abstract and impersonal. Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine. In the universe, anything that happens comes from the essential nature of objects, or of God/Nature. According to Spinoza, reality is perfection. Reality is harsh. There is nothing divine about the history of extinction in the universe. We must do what we need to do to survive.
Survives
Spinoza opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism. He contended that everything that exists in Nature (i.e., everything in the Universe) is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality that surrounds us and of which we are part. Yes. Everything has evolved within this universe. Nothing has come from outside of it.
Animals can be used in any way by people for the benefit of the human race, according to a rational consideration of the benefit as well as the animal’s status in nature. This sounds wrong to many modern ears, but key to its survival is the requirement to conduct a rational consideration of benefits. Just as humans must cooperate with each other to survive, we must cooperate with other animals to survive as well. Conservation is one form of cooperation. Husbandry can also be mutually beneficial to species - especially where we have created domestic species that willingly live in homes and on farms. Enslavement of animals is detrimental to their well-being, and through the poisons of stress and disease, and diet-induced obesity, to our health as well. Scientific experimentation on captive animals is rarely beneficial enough to compensate for the way it undermines the ethic of cooperation that must constantly be upheld to be truly meaningful.
Needs to Adapt
Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism in as much as both philosophies sought to fulfill a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness. However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. When used properly, reason can direct the emotions. Better cognitive appraisals help us replace negative emotions with positive emotions - no matter how strong they are. The strongest emotion is the joy of being alive. In that sense, Spinoza is correct. Reason helps us discover which actions lead to this ultimate emotion, and it can use that emotion as motivation for actions that require sacrifice and the endurance of unpleasant emotions in the short-term.
Good and evil are related to human pleasure and pain. Spinoza held good and evil to be relative concepts, claiming that nothing is intrinsically good or bad except relative to a particular individual. What is good is what ensures survival. What is evil is what brings extinction. We have evolved to feel pleasure for survival and pain for extinction. We use reason to recognize and avoid short-term pleasures that cause long-term pain. Judgment of the balance that must be achieved is sometimes difficult or even impossible to know ahead of time. In this sense, present choices between good and bad must be judged with probability under relative circumstances. After the fact though, judgments of good and evil are not relative to particular individuals. They are known objectively.
All rights are derived from the State. (Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.) This is true by definition. But the State must recognize its purpose in aiding society to survive. Where it does, the rights it grants will be just. Where it does not, the restrictions it creates are wrong.
Gone Extinct
Spinoza was a thoroughgoing determinist who held that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For him, even human behavior is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. He wrote: "men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.” Extreme versions of free will and determinism are just that - extreme. The truth lies in the middle and is easier to understand when timescales are introduced. In the short-term, on biological timescales such as those concerning biochemistry, molecular biology, and cellular biology, events are determined by their current states. In the medium-term, on biological timescales such as those concerning organismic biology, and sociobiology, free will is not only possible, it determines the states that arise in the short-term and the long-term. In the long-term, on biological timescales such as those concerning ecology and evolutionary biology, the characteristics of competitiveness, cooperativeness, and adaptability are required for survival. In that sense, the long-term is determined. The free will that occurs in the medium-term, and the randomness of destructive cosmological events, means that who survives is unknown. Evolution is blind. We are not.
Spinoza believed that God exists but is abstract and impersonal. Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine. In the universe, anything that happens comes from the essential nature of objects, or of God/Nature. According to Spinoza, reality is perfection. Reality is harsh. There is nothing divine about the history of extinction in the universe. We must do what we need to do to survive.
John Locke (1632-1704 CE) was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self. He was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. Locke defines the self as "that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends.” He does not, however, ignore "substance," writing that "the body too goes to the making of the man.” The Lockean self is therefore a self-aware and self-reflective consciousness that is fixed in a body. Destruction of the body in the form of Alzheimer’s, amnesia, or stroke, leads one to lose that continuity of consciousness by the self. That doesn’t change the identity of the individual. Identity is therefore independent from consciousness. Identity lies at the Mind x Body intersection. One helpful analogy is to say identity is like a river. Not the water that flows through it, but the channel that actually forms the river. When storms occur and water is high, the river is deepened. When drought occurs, the river slows and silts up. When earthquakes or glaciers reshape the landscape, the riverbed may hold no water at all. If we know the events that carved the river, we can recognize its identity no matter what state it is in. Likewise, we can recognize identity when we know the events that shaped it. If you know the river and are told the volume of water that will flow its way, you know what the river will look like. If you know a person and are told the events that will occur to them, you will recognize how they handle it. This is how we know people after long absences, and this is how changes during brief separations can surprise us.
Locke's political theory was founded on social contract theory. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Locke believed that human nature is characterized by reason and tolerance. In a natural state all people were equal and independent, and everyone had a natural right to defend his “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions.” This was the basis for the phrase in America, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There are no rights in the natural state - nature is harsh and takes what it can. It is competition within evolutionary systems that causes everyone to defend their life, health, liberty, and possessions. If they did not, they would not survive. Rights only come from the state, which are granted in return for recognizing the benefits of social cooperation. In a natural state, humans were hierarchical and fought to establish dominance and subservience, but we have learned that it is more efficient to cooperate and not to fight to maintain hierarchies.
Locke argued that property is a natural right and it is derived from labor. Labor creates property, but it also does contain limits to its accumulation: man’s capacity to produce and man’s capacity to consume. According to Locke, unused property is waste and an offense against nature, although money makes possible the unlimited accumulation of property without causing waste through spoilage. Again, only the state can grant rights. Nature grants no right to property no matter how much labor has been put into it. Ask bees or beavers. Notice that humans also feel the “right” to property even when they have not worked at all for it - as in inheritance. Waste and inefficiency are missed opportunities to live better and stave off extinction. Money has made possible the creation of inequality exponentially greater than in the natural state. These levels of inequality are grave threats to the ethics of social cooperation.
Gone Extinct
Locke postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. Recent experiments with infants have revealed that they come “pre-wired” with some emotional and learning capabilities. This is more evidence that it is not nature or nurture, but nature x nurture. It is more evidence for the middle way.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self. He was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. Locke defines the self as "that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends.” He does not, however, ignore "substance," writing that "the body too goes to the making of the man.” The Lockean self is therefore a self-aware and self-reflective consciousness that is fixed in a body. Destruction of the body in the form of Alzheimer’s, amnesia, or stroke, leads one to lose that continuity of consciousness by the self. That doesn’t change the identity of the individual. Identity is therefore independent from consciousness. Identity lies at the Mind x Body intersection. One helpful analogy is to say identity is like a river. Not the water that flows through it, but the channel that actually forms the river. When storms occur and water is high, the river is deepened. When drought occurs, the river slows and silts up. When earthquakes or glaciers reshape the landscape, the riverbed may hold no water at all. If we know the events that carved the river, we can recognize its identity no matter what state it is in. Likewise, we can recognize identity when we know the events that shaped it. If you know the river and are told the volume of water that will flow its way, you know what the river will look like. If you know a person and are told the events that will occur to them, you will recognize how they handle it. This is how we know people after long absences, and this is how changes during brief separations can surprise us.
Locke's political theory was founded on social contract theory. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Locke believed that human nature is characterized by reason and tolerance. In a natural state all people were equal and independent, and everyone had a natural right to defend his “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions.” This was the basis for the phrase in America, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There are no rights in the natural state - nature is harsh and takes what it can. It is competition within evolutionary systems that causes everyone to defend their life, health, liberty, and possessions. If they did not, they would not survive. Rights only come from the state, which are granted in return for recognizing the benefits of social cooperation. In a natural state, humans were hierarchical and fought to establish dominance and subservience, but we have learned that it is more efficient to cooperate and not to fight to maintain hierarchies.
Locke argued that property is a natural right and it is derived from labor. Labor creates property, but it also does contain limits to its accumulation: man’s capacity to produce and man’s capacity to consume. According to Locke, unused property is waste and an offense against nature, although money makes possible the unlimited accumulation of property without causing waste through spoilage. Again, only the state can grant rights. Nature grants no right to property no matter how much labor has been put into it. Ask bees or beavers. Notice that humans also feel the “right” to property even when they have not worked at all for it - as in inheritance. Waste and inefficiency are missed opportunities to live better and stave off extinction. Money has made possible the creation of inequality exponentially greater than in the natural state. These levels of inequality are grave threats to the ethics of social cooperation.
Gone Extinct
Locke postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. Recent experiments with infants have revealed that they come “pre-wired” with some emotional and learning capabilities. This is more evidence that it is not nature or nurture, but nature x nurture. It is more evidence for the middle way.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727 CE) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived.
Survives
Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution. Just a brief note to acknowledge the debt our view of the universe owes to the breakthroughs that Newton published.
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Newton was also highly religious. He was an unorthodox Christian, and wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and mathematics, the subjects he is mainly associated with. What a shame a mind like his wasted this much time on religious ideas that had no impact.
Survives
Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution. Just a brief note to acknowledge the debt our view of the universe owes to the breakthroughs that Newton published.
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Newton was also highly religious. He was an unorthodox Christian, and wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and mathematics, the subjects he is mainly associated with. What a shame a mind like his wasted this much time on religious ideas that had no impact.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716 CE) was a German philosopher, polymath, and mathematician. He invented infinitesimal calculus independently of Newton, and his notation has been in general use since then. He also invented the binary system, the foundation of virtually all modern computer architectures. Leibniz invoked seven fundamental philosophical principles.
Survives
1) Identity/contradiction. If a proposition is true, then its negation is false and vice versa. Basic logic.
3) Sufficient reason. "There must be a sufficient reason for anything to exist, for any event to occur, for any truth to obtain.” Yes. Nothing happens spontaneously or supernaturally.
Needs to Adapt
2) Identity of indiscernibles. Two things are identical if and only if they share the same and only the same properties. This is frequently invoked in modern logic and philosophy. The "identity of indiscernibles" is often referred to as Leibniz's Law. It has attracted the most controversy and criticism, especially from corpuscular philosophy and quantum mechanics. This is either a circular tautology or incorrect depending on how it is interpreted.
Gone Extinct
4) Pre-established harmony. "The appropriate nature of each substance brings it about that what happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others, without, however, their acting upon one another directly.” A dropped glass shatters because it "knows" it has hit the ground, and not because the impact with the ground "compels" the glass to split. Every "substance" only affects itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to "harmonize" with each other. Complete bunk. Where would this harmony reside in an object? The standard worldview of cause and effect is much more compelling and useful.
5) Law of Continuity. Natura non saltum facit - nature makes no leap. The principle expresses the idea that natural things and properties change gradually, rather than suddenly. This is merely a matter of definition of what is gradual and what is sudden. Mutations and chemical reactions cause changes that occur in nanoseconds.
6) Optimism. "God assuredly always chooses the best.” Our universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one God could have made. Note that the word optimism here is used in the classic sense of optimal, not in the mood-related sense, as being positively hopeful. If that is true, then given the inefficiencies, pain, and suffering we see in nature, god surely is not the most supreme being there could be, so therefore he must not be god. Reverse ontological argument!
7) Plenitude. Leibniz believed that the best of all possible worlds would actualize every genuine possibility, and argued that this best of all possible worlds will contain all possibilities, with our finite experience of eternity giving no reason to dispute nature's perfection. There are plenty of reasons to dispute nature’s perfection. What an excellent mathematician. What a silly philosopher.
Survives
1) Identity/contradiction. If a proposition is true, then its negation is false and vice versa. Basic logic.
3) Sufficient reason. "There must be a sufficient reason for anything to exist, for any event to occur, for any truth to obtain.” Yes. Nothing happens spontaneously or supernaturally.
Needs to Adapt
2) Identity of indiscernibles. Two things are identical if and only if they share the same and only the same properties. This is frequently invoked in modern logic and philosophy. The "identity of indiscernibles" is often referred to as Leibniz's Law. It has attracted the most controversy and criticism, especially from corpuscular philosophy and quantum mechanics. This is either a circular tautology or incorrect depending on how it is interpreted.
Gone Extinct
4) Pre-established harmony. "The appropriate nature of each substance brings it about that what happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others, without, however, their acting upon one another directly.” A dropped glass shatters because it "knows" it has hit the ground, and not because the impact with the ground "compels" the glass to split. Every "substance" only affects itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to "harmonize" with each other. Complete bunk. Where would this harmony reside in an object? The standard worldview of cause and effect is much more compelling and useful.
5) Law of Continuity. Natura non saltum facit - nature makes no leap. The principle expresses the idea that natural things and properties change gradually, rather than suddenly. This is merely a matter of definition of what is gradual and what is sudden. Mutations and chemical reactions cause changes that occur in nanoseconds.
6) Optimism. "God assuredly always chooses the best.” Our universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one God could have made. Note that the word optimism here is used in the classic sense of optimal, not in the mood-related sense, as being positively hopeful. If that is true, then given the inefficiencies, pain, and suffering we see in nature, god surely is not the most supreme being there could be, so therefore he must not be god. Reverse ontological argument!
7) Plenitude. Leibniz believed that the best of all possible worlds would actualize every genuine possibility, and argued that this best of all possible worlds will contain all possibilities, with our finite experience of eternity giving no reason to dispute nature's perfection. There are plenty of reasons to dispute nature’s perfection. What an excellent mathematician. What a silly philosopher.
George Berkeley (1685-1753 CE) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism," later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others.
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Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Berkeley’s theory of immaterialism contends that individuals can only know directly sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter.” The theory also contends that ideas are dependent upon being perceived by minds for their very existence, a belief that became immortalized in the dictum, Esse est percipi - to be is to be perceived. Over a century later Berkeley's thought experiment was summarized in a limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply: There was a young man who said "God / Must find it exceedingly odd / To think that the tree / Should continue to be / When there's no one about in the quad." // "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; / I am always about in the quad. / And that's why the tree / Will continue to be / Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” Well that was fun. Abstractions such as matter are categories. They are definitions we can use to group actual objects together in order to study and understand them better. We created and defined the abstractions. They do not exist in the physical sense of the word, but we can know them for what they are. Also, the physical universe happily went on before us and wouldn’t care if we went extinct.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Berkeley’s theory of immaterialism contends that individuals can only know directly sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter.” The theory also contends that ideas are dependent upon being perceived by minds for their very existence, a belief that became immortalized in the dictum, Esse est percipi - to be is to be perceived. Over a century later Berkeley's thought experiment was summarized in a limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply: There was a young man who said "God / Must find it exceedingly odd / To think that the tree / Should continue to be / When there's no one about in the quad." // "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; / I am always about in the quad. / And that's why the tree / Will continue to be / Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” Well that was fun. Abstractions such as matter are categories. They are definitions we can use to group actual objects together in order to study and understand them better. We created and defined the abstractions. They do not exist in the physical sense of the word, but we can know them for what they are. Also, the physical universe happily went on before us and wouldn’t care if we went extinct.
Charles-Louis de Secondat baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755 CE), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world.
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Montesquieu saw two types of governmental power existing: the sovereign and the administrative. The administrative powers were the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. These should be separate from and dependent upon each other so that the influence of any one power would not be able to exceed that of the other two, either singly or in combination. This was radical because it completely eliminated the three estates structure of the French monarchy: the clergy, the aristocracy, and the people at large represented by the Estates-General, thereby erasing the last vestige of a feudalistic structure. The separation of powers is an enormous contribution to political design as it removes the dominance of a competitive absolute hierarchy and replaces it with a structure that encourages and ensures a balance between cooperation and competition. Keeping a sovereign around undermines the cooperative spirit of the society. It would be done away with in France soon after this though.
Likewise, there were three main forms of government, each supported by a social principle: monarchies - free governments headed by a hereditary figure, e.g. king, queen, emperor, which rely on the principle of honor; republics - free governments headed by popularly elected leaders, which rely on the principle of virtue; and despotisms - enslaved governments headed by dictators, which rely on fear. Fear is no way to prosper and survive. Life seeks to avoid fear. Despotism is easily ruled out. Honor is used to justify hierarchies (I am honorable / you must honor me), which are inherently unstable. Society is stronger when humans cooperate because they are considered equals. Progress is greater when effort and innovation can come from anyone and bring rewards and benefits to all. Monarchies are therefore dismissed. When virtue is understood to come from actions that promote the long-term survival of the species, then that is a proper basis to build a society upon. Republics that don’t rely on virtue will eventually crumble and give way to virtuous ones. This is the best way to organize government.
Gone Extinct
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Montesquieu saw two types of governmental power existing: the sovereign and the administrative. The administrative powers were the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. These should be separate from and dependent upon each other so that the influence of any one power would not be able to exceed that of the other two, either singly or in combination. This was radical because it completely eliminated the three estates structure of the French monarchy: the clergy, the aristocracy, and the people at large represented by the Estates-General, thereby erasing the last vestige of a feudalistic structure. The separation of powers is an enormous contribution to political design as it removes the dominance of a competitive absolute hierarchy and replaces it with a structure that encourages and ensures a balance between cooperation and competition. Keeping a sovereign around undermines the cooperative spirit of the society. It would be done away with in France soon after this though.
Likewise, there were three main forms of government, each supported by a social principle: monarchies - free governments headed by a hereditary figure, e.g. king, queen, emperor, which rely on the principle of honor; republics - free governments headed by popularly elected leaders, which rely on the principle of virtue; and despotisms - enslaved governments headed by dictators, which rely on fear. Fear is no way to prosper and survive. Life seeks to avoid fear. Despotism is easily ruled out. Honor is used to justify hierarchies (I am honorable / you must honor me), which are inherently unstable. Society is stronger when humans cooperate because they are considered equals. Progress is greater when effort and innovation can come from anyone and bring rewards and benefits to all. Monarchies are therefore dismissed. When virtue is understood to come from actions that promote the long-term survival of the species, then that is a proper basis to build a society upon. Republics that don’t rely on virtue will eventually crumble and give way to virtuous ones. This is the best way to organize government.
Gone Extinct
Voltaire (1694-1778 CE) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, free trade, and separation of church and state.
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Voltaire’s best-known work, Candide, attacks the passivity inspired by Leibniz's philosophy of optimism. Yes. The universe is not perfect - it is uncaring and will crush us if we let it. We must progress and remain vigilant to survive.
Voltaire is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rights – the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion. We owe a great debt to history’s courageous polemicists. May their example be followed. Fair trials and freedom of belief are necessary in virtuous societies. And the church must be kept separate from the functions of the state - chief among these, the education of its citizens.
Needs to Adapt
Like many other key figures during the European Enlightenment, Voltaire considered himself a deist. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the natural laws of the universe. Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles, tending instead to assert that a god (or "the Supreme Architect") does not alter the universe by intervening in it. This idea is also known as the clockwork universe theory, in which a god designs and builds the universe, but steps aside to let it run on its own. No evidence for supernatural intervention has ever been found so it is right to dismiss this with great certainty. As we have little understanding for how the universe came to be - why there is something rather than nothing - a belief in a supreme architect is hard to suppress. Now that much of the history of the universe is understood though, the blindness and cruelty of extinction would imply either a blind god or a cruel god. If such a god did exist, it would be better to ignore it and plot against it.
Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static and oppressive force useful only as a counterbalance since its "religious tax," the tithe, helped to create a strong backing for revolutionaries. Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. Voltaire long thought only an enlightened monarch could bring about change, given the social structures of the time and the extremely high rates of illiteracy, and that it was in the king's rational interest to improve the education and welfare of his subjects. An enlightened monarchy is better than an ignorant democracy. Given the state of the world and the lack of better examples, Voltaire’s analysis and resulting recommendations were good steps towards a better society. However, we see that the beauty of democracy is its ability to evolve through meritocratic trial and error and the example it sets for cooperation, while monarchies become static without the spur of competition to urge it on, and rigid in its insistence on hierarchy. Democracy was the better path.
Gone Extinct
Survives
Voltaire’s best-known work, Candide, attacks the passivity inspired by Leibniz's philosophy of optimism. Yes. The universe is not perfect - it is uncaring and will crush us if we let it. We must progress and remain vigilant to survive.
Voltaire is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rights – the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion. We owe a great debt to history’s courageous polemicists. May their example be followed. Fair trials and freedom of belief are necessary in virtuous societies. And the church must be kept separate from the functions of the state - chief among these, the education of its citizens.
Needs to Adapt
Like many other key figures during the European Enlightenment, Voltaire considered himself a deist. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the natural laws of the universe. Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles, tending instead to assert that a god (or "the Supreme Architect") does not alter the universe by intervening in it. This idea is also known as the clockwork universe theory, in which a god designs and builds the universe, but steps aside to let it run on its own. No evidence for supernatural intervention has ever been found so it is right to dismiss this with great certainty. As we have little understanding for how the universe came to be - why there is something rather than nothing - a belief in a supreme architect is hard to suppress. Now that much of the history of the universe is understood though, the blindness and cruelty of extinction would imply either a blind god or a cruel god. If such a god did exist, it would be better to ignore it and plot against it.
Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static and oppressive force useful only as a counterbalance since its "religious tax," the tithe, helped to create a strong backing for revolutionaries. Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. Voltaire long thought only an enlightened monarch could bring about change, given the social structures of the time and the extremely high rates of illiteracy, and that it was in the king's rational interest to improve the education and welfare of his subjects. An enlightened monarchy is better than an ignorant democracy. Given the state of the world and the lack of better examples, Voltaire’s analysis and resulting recommendations were good steps towards a better society. However, we see that the beauty of democracy is its ability to evolve through meritocratic trial and error and the example it sets for cooperation, while monarchies become static without the spur of competition to urge it on, and rigid in its insistence on hierarchy. Democracy was the better path.
Gone Extinct
David Hume (1711-1776 CE) was a Scottish philosopher, economist, historian, and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
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The classic philosophical treatment of the problem of induction was given by Hume. Hume highlighted the fact that our everyday habits of mind depend on drawing uncertain conclusions from our relatively limited experiences rather than on deductively valid arguments. For example, we believe that bread will nourish us because it has done so in the past, despite no guarantee that it will do so. However, Hume immediately argued that even if induction were proved unreliable, we would have to rely on it. Rather than approach everything with severe skepticism, Hume advocated a practical skepticism based on common sense, where the inevitability of induction is accepted. Yes. The universe is larger than we can know and it is moving and changing. Eternal and absolute knowledge is unlikely to be found. We must rely on probability and act with confidence and caution according to the likelihood of our knowledge being true.
Needs to Adapt
In a famous sentence in the Treatise, Hume circumscribes reason's role in the production of action: Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. We are not bound by any laws of nature to act on every emotional state we feel. Reason arises in nature to help life choose between actions that satisfy short-term desires or long-term needs. The joy of the survival of life is our deepest feeling so reason can be said to serve that emotion, but reason rules over other emotions as it instructs us about which actions we should take and which emotions we should feel.
Hume's views on human motivation and action formed the cornerstone of his ethical theory. Given that one cannot be motivated by reason alone, requiring the input of the passions, Hume argued that reason cannot be behind morality: Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason. Morality does arise from the ultimate emotion - the joy of the survival of life. Our reason is required to uncover which actions are ultimately moral or not.
Hume does not believe, as Locke does, that private property is a natural right, but he argues that it is justified since resources are limited. If all goods were unlimited and available freely, then private property would not be justified, but instead becomes an "idle ceremonial.” Hume also believed in unequal distribution of property, since perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry. Perfect equality would thus lead to impoverishment. There are no natural rights - in the state of nature, unchecked competition reigns and might makes right. In a society, we cooperate in order to better compete with death. Members of society receive rights in return for their participation. Property should be accumulated according to effort and participation in that society - not according to means or need. Perfect equality is trying to attain perfect cooperation, when a balance between cooperation and competition is what is required.
Gone Extinct
Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism. The thesis of compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the mechanist belief that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, whose happenings are governed by the laws of physics. Compatibilists define free will in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism. Hume argued that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behavior be caused and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honor, if good; nor infamy, if evil. This logical contortion highlights the contradiction that arises from trying to define the universe as deterministic. The universe is blind. Our reason helps to illuminate which actions we should take to navigate its darkness. Intention and causation are not necessary for an action to be judged good or evil. Those judgments are based on objective reality and whether or not the actions promote or hinder the long-term survival of life. Praise or blame for these actions is tied to intention. The magnitude of reward or punishment doled out from society should be proportional to the intention.
Hume is well known for his treatment of the ‘is–ought’ problem. Hume stated that many writers make claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is. However, Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and it is not obvious how we can get from making descriptive statements to prescriptive. Life is alive. Life ought to act to remain alive. All else flows from this solution to the is-ought problem.
Survives
The classic philosophical treatment of the problem of induction was given by Hume. Hume highlighted the fact that our everyday habits of mind depend on drawing uncertain conclusions from our relatively limited experiences rather than on deductively valid arguments. For example, we believe that bread will nourish us because it has done so in the past, despite no guarantee that it will do so. However, Hume immediately argued that even if induction were proved unreliable, we would have to rely on it. Rather than approach everything with severe skepticism, Hume advocated a practical skepticism based on common sense, where the inevitability of induction is accepted. Yes. The universe is larger than we can know and it is moving and changing. Eternal and absolute knowledge is unlikely to be found. We must rely on probability and act with confidence and caution according to the likelihood of our knowledge being true.
Needs to Adapt
In a famous sentence in the Treatise, Hume circumscribes reason's role in the production of action: Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. We are not bound by any laws of nature to act on every emotional state we feel. Reason arises in nature to help life choose between actions that satisfy short-term desires or long-term needs. The joy of the survival of life is our deepest feeling so reason can be said to serve that emotion, but reason rules over other emotions as it instructs us about which actions we should take and which emotions we should feel.
Hume's views on human motivation and action formed the cornerstone of his ethical theory. Given that one cannot be motivated by reason alone, requiring the input of the passions, Hume argued that reason cannot be behind morality: Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason. Morality does arise from the ultimate emotion - the joy of the survival of life. Our reason is required to uncover which actions are ultimately moral or not.
Hume does not believe, as Locke does, that private property is a natural right, but he argues that it is justified since resources are limited. If all goods were unlimited and available freely, then private property would not be justified, but instead becomes an "idle ceremonial.” Hume also believed in unequal distribution of property, since perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry. Perfect equality would thus lead to impoverishment. There are no natural rights - in the state of nature, unchecked competition reigns and might makes right. In a society, we cooperate in order to better compete with death. Members of society receive rights in return for their participation. Property should be accumulated according to effort and participation in that society - not according to means or need. Perfect equality is trying to attain perfect cooperation, when a balance between cooperation and competition is what is required.
Gone Extinct
Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism. The thesis of compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the mechanist belief that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, whose happenings are governed by the laws of physics. Compatibilists define free will in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism. Hume argued that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behavior be caused and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honor, if good; nor infamy, if evil. This logical contortion highlights the contradiction that arises from trying to define the universe as deterministic. The universe is blind. Our reason helps to illuminate which actions we should take to navigate its darkness. Intention and causation are not necessary for an action to be judged good or evil. Those judgments are based on objective reality and whether or not the actions promote or hinder the long-term survival of life. Praise or blame for these actions is tied to intention. The magnitude of reward or punishment doled out from society should be proportional to the intention.
Hume is well known for his treatment of the ‘is–ought’ problem. Hume stated that many writers make claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is. However, Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and it is not obvious how we can get from making descriptive statements to prescriptive. Life is alive. Life ought to act to remain alive. All else flows from this solution to the is-ought problem.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778 CE) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.
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Rousseau’s novel, Emile, or On Education, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. Rousseau’s philosophy of education is not concerned with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil’s character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. In order to understand what character and moral sense are, many facts (listed above and below) are required. For society to act well and propagate the survival of life, all members of society need to receive this education. Otherwise, the evolutionary system becomes unstable as free riders and cheaters win, cooperation falters, and competition rises to levels that require a short-term focus.
Perhaps Jean Jacques Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self-governing. Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed Social Contract (i.e., that of Hobbes), which led to the modern state, was made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful, who tricked the general population into surrendering their liberties to them and instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence and hierarchy. The inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed. The first men to put up a fence probably had to defend their property using force. Only over time as people realized the huge benefits that come from the division of labor, property accumulation, and trade, was the contract made to recognize that force was a drag on the system. Still, we have not evolved sufficient control over our short-term emotional pulls, so cheaters need to be guarded against with fences and more. Individuals could be free and happy within a republic. In fact, they must be or the republic will collapse. This is why no empires to date have remained in power. Wherever inequality and suppression of freedom have taken hold, the cooperation within society weakened and the society dissolved. Citizens must understand this. The government must understand its role. Our cooperative social contract must be improved and understood to be signed by all.
Gone Extinct
In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. Rousseau deplores Hobbes for asserting that since man in the "state of nature...has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue.” On the contrary, Rousseau denied that morality is a construct or creation of society. Rousseau held that uncorrupted morals prevail in the state of nature. He considered morality as natural, in the sense of innate, an outgrowth of man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise the emotions of compassion or empathy, and which are shared with animals. Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape so the natural goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad. But definitions for good and evil do arise from nature - good is that which promotes the long-term survival of life. Because man must be able to cope with extreme competition in order to survive, the emotions that cause him to inflict pain and dominance are also innate. That does not make them good. So a solitary chimpanzee can be said to do bad in the same way that man does. But we have evolved reason to help us understand that such competitive behaviors are disastrous in the long-term. It is not surprising that before the discovery of evolution, Rousseau’s understanding of the state of nature misses these points. The rest of his errors flow from this misconception.
Anglophone critics erroneously attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage; an oxymoronic expression that was never used in France and which grossly misrepresents Rousseau's thought. Contrary to what his many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally - just that terms such as justice or wickedness are inapplicable to pre-political society, as Rousseau understands it. To him, morality proper or self-restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Morality and justice do exist in pre-civilized as well as animal societies. It can be better developed once its origins and justifications are more fully understood.
For Rousseau, progress has curbed the well-being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in Civil Society, can man be ennobled - through the use of reason. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it forever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Progress is the wellspring of the well-being of humanity and it requires the evolution of sociobiological morals. Civil society reinforces our cooperate behavior, allowing us to compete better with death and ultimately survive longer. Civil society does pose challenges to humans evolved with short-term emotional fuses, but these can be overcome through reason and education. As this occurs, the downtrodden that may be worse off than they would be in the state of nature will gradually disappear.
In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion. There is nothing artificial in amour-propre. It arises to help one survive in a competitive environment. Fortunately, reason helps us to understand that cooperation for the long-term benefit is better for everyone. Reason helps us to ignore and not act upon the pleasure we may feel in the pain or weakness of others. Reason, through cognitive behavioral training, can even help us to no longer feel such emotions. Progress does not need to cause jealousy, fear, and suspicion. Progress helps us stay adaptable and stave off extinction. That is to be celebrated with great joy.
Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. The mistaken premises of Rousseau ultimately lead him to a vile conclusion of disregard for arts and sciences. He would mistakenly bring about our extinction more quickly if he could.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Rousseau’s novel, Emile, or On Education, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. Rousseau’s philosophy of education is not concerned with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil’s character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. In order to understand what character and moral sense are, many facts (listed above and below) are required. For society to act well and propagate the survival of life, all members of society need to receive this education. Otherwise, the evolutionary system becomes unstable as free riders and cheaters win, cooperation falters, and competition rises to levels that require a short-term focus.
Perhaps Jean Jacques Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self-governing. Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed Social Contract (i.e., that of Hobbes), which led to the modern state, was made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful, who tricked the general population into surrendering their liberties to them and instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence and hierarchy. The inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed. The first men to put up a fence probably had to defend their property using force. Only over time as people realized the huge benefits that come from the division of labor, property accumulation, and trade, was the contract made to recognize that force was a drag on the system. Still, we have not evolved sufficient control over our short-term emotional pulls, so cheaters need to be guarded against with fences and more. Individuals could be free and happy within a republic. In fact, they must be or the republic will collapse. This is why no empires to date have remained in power. Wherever inequality and suppression of freedom have taken hold, the cooperation within society weakened and the society dissolved. Citizens must understand this. The government must understand its role. Our cooperative social contract must be improved and understood to be signed by all.
Gone Extinct
In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. Rousseau deplores Hobbes for asserting that since man in the "state of nature...has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue.” On the contrary, Rousseau denied that morality is a construct or creation of society. Rousseau held that uncorrupted morals prevail in the state of nature. He considered morality as natural, in the sense of innate, an outgrowth of man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise the emotions of compassion or empathy, and which are shared with animals. Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape so the natural goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad. But definitions for good and evil do arise from nature - good is that which promotes the long-term survival of life. Because man must be able to cope with extreme competition in order to survive, the emotions that cause him to inflict pain and dominance are also innate. That does not make them good. So a solitary chimpanzee can be said to do bad in the same way that man does. But we have evolved reason to help us understand that such competitive behaviors are disastrous in the long-term. It is not surprising that before the discovery of evolution, Rousseau’s understanding of the state of nature misses these points. The rest of his errors flow from this misconception.
Anglophone critics erroneously attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage; an oxymoronic expression that was never used in France and which grossly misrepresents Rousseau's thought. Contrary to what his many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally - just that terms such as justice or wickedness are inapplicable to pre-political society, as Rousseau understands it. To him, morality proper or self-restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Morality and justice do exist in pre-civilized as well as animal societies. It can be better developed once its origins and justifications are more fully understood.
For Rousseau, progress has curbed the well-being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in Civil Society, can man be ennobled - through the use of reason. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it forever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Progress is the wellspring of the well-being of humanity and it requires the evolution of sociobiological morals. Civil society reinforces our cooperate behavior, allowing us to compete better with death and ultimately survive longer. Civil society does pose challenges to humans evolved with short-term emotional fuses, but these can be overcome through reason and education. As this occurs, the downtrodden that may be worse off than they would be in the state of nature will gradually disappear.
In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion. There is nothing artificial in amour-propre. It arises to help one survive in a competitive environment. Fortunately, reason helps us to understand that cooperation for the long-term benefit is better for everyone. Reason helps us to ignore and not act upon the pleasure we may feel in the pain or weakness of others. Reason, through cognitive behavioral training, can even help us to no longer feel such emotions. Progress does not need to cause jealousy, fear, and suspicion. Progress helps us stay adaptable and stave off extinction. That is to be celebrated with great joy.
Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. The mistaken premises of Rousseau ultimately lead him to a vile conclusion of disregard for arts and sciences. He would mistakenly bring about our extinction more quickly if he could.
Adam Smith (1723-1790 CE) was a Scottish moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economics, and one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Wealth of Nations is considered his magnum opus and is the reason Adam Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics.
Survives
The Wealth of Nations expounds that the free market, while appearing chaotic and unrestrained, is actually guided to produce the right amount and variety of goods by a so-called "invisible hand.” Smith opposed any form of economic concentration because it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital. He advanced the idea that a market economy would produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers, and would optimally allocate society's resources. Smith believed that when an individual pursues his self-interest, he indirectly promotes the good of society. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and warned of their "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices.” Again and again, Smith warned of the collusive nature of business interests, which may form cabals or monopolies, fixing the highest price that can be squeezed out of the buyers. Smith also warned that a true laissez-faire economy would quickly become a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith was similarly wary of the Division of Labor, about which he said, “In the progress of the division of labor, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labor, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently only one or two. ...The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” A huge debt is owed to Smith for our understanding of the modern economy and how it can provide wealth for all in staggering abundance as compared to the past. Smith also seemed to have an excellent grasp of the need to balance competition with cooperation, and of the need for regulation of the economy for its maximum benefit. If only free market advocates really understood the father of their ideas. Or perhaps they do and still seek to exploit it.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith critically examined the moral thinking of the time and suggested that conscience arises from social relationships. His aim in the work is to explain the source of mankind's ability to form moral judgments, in spite of man's natural inclinations toward self-interest. Scholars have previously perceived a conflict between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; the former emphasizing sympathy for others, while the latter focuses on the role of self-interest. In recent years, however, most scholars regard the works as emphasizing different aspects of human nature that vary depending on the situation. Smith was no extremist. He understood the need to balance the short-term and long-term, self and society, and competition and cooperation. A true giant in the evolution of human knowledge.
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Survives
The Wealth of Nations expounds that the free market, while appearing chaotic and unrestrained, is actually guided to produce the right amount and variety of goods by a so-called "invisible hand.” Smith opposed any form of economic concentration because it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital. He advanced the idea that a market economy would produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers, and would optimally allocate society's resources. Smith believed that when an individual pursues his self-interest, he indirectly promotes the good of society. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and warned of their "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices.” Again and again, Smith warned of the collusive nature of business interests, which may form cabals or monopolies, fixing the highest price that can be squeezed out of the buyers. Smith also warned that a true laissez-faire economy would quickly become a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith was similarly wary of the Division of Labor, about which he said, “In the progress of the division of labor, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labor, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently only one or two. ...The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” A huge debt is owed to Smith for our understanding of the modern economy and how it can provide wealth for all in staggering abundance as compared to the past. Smith also seemed to have an excellent grasp of the need to balance competition with cooperation, and of the need for regulation of the economy for its maximum benefit. If only free market advocates really understood the father of their ideas. Or perhaps they do and still seek to exploit it.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith critically examined the moral thinking of the time and suggested that conscience arises from social relationships. His aim in the work is to explain the source of mankind's ability to form moral judgments, in spite of man's natural inclinations toward self-interest. Scholars have previously perceived a conflict between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; the former emphasizing sympathy for others, while the latter focuses on the role of self-interest. In recent years, however, most scholars regard the works as emphasizing different aspects of human nature that vary depending on the situation. Smith was no extremist. He understood the need to balance the short-term and long-term, self and society, and competition and cooperation. A true giant in the evolution of human knowledge.
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804 CE) was a German philosopher during the Enlightenment. Kant created a new widespread perspective in philosophy that has continued to influence philosophy through to the 21st century. One of his most prominent works is the Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.
Survives
Kant defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude - Dare to Know. Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. Sapere aude, indeed!
Kant's "Copernican revolution," placed the role of the human subject or knower at the center of inquiry into our knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they are independently of us or of how they are for us. Yes, but our senses and our tools and our reasoning can tell us very much about reality.
Kant invented critical philosophy, the notion of being able to discover and systematically explore possible inherent limits to our ability to know through philosophical reasoning. Yes. The limitations of our senses within the size and scope of a changing universe do entail limits to our ability to know.
Kant created the concept of "conditions of possibility," that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that to understand or know them we have to first understand these conditions. From Plato to Descartes, what was presented by the senses was deemed illusory and denigrated. It was believed that the perceptions ought to be overcome to grasp the thing-in-itself, the essential essence, a la Plato’s allegory of the cave. With Kant comes a transition in philosophy from this dichotomy to the dichotomy of the apparition/conditions-of-appearance. There is no longer any higher essence behind the apparition. It is what it is, a brute fact, and what one must now examine is the conditions that are necessary for its appearance. Yes. And an understanding of these conditions necessary for appearance comes from the natural sciences. We must know them all in order to understand reality.
Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed through epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge, we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He concluded that all objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such nature which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. Yes. Senses are understood through reason. And the limits on our senses place limits on what we can know. We have developed tools to aid our understanding of the universe all the way back to the Big Bang, but we may not be able to conduct research into the metaphysical origins of the universe beyond that. We will try of course, but in the meantime, we should not allow speculations about gods that hide behind our knowledge to rule our lives in any way when there is no evidence for their existence, benevolence, or usefulness.
Kant divides the feeling of the sublime into two distinct modes - the mathematical sublime and the dynamical sublime. The mathematical sublime is situated in the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or that appear absolutely great. This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In the dynamical sublime, there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character. Given that the meaning of life is to perpetuate the long-term survival of life, it follows that we should feel awe when contemplating infinity and extinction. Exposure to both of these concepts does aid our judgment and moral character in choosing actions that comport with the meaning of life.
Needs to Adapt
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative," and is derived from the concept of duty. Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed by all in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. Regardless of recent relativist trends in philosophy, universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Yes, but Kant did not discover it. The single Categorical Imperative is that life must act to perpetuate the long-term survival of life.
Kant asserted that because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted that people are reasonably justified in believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not. An enlightened approach and use of the critical method required that, "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Since we cannot know the entirety of the universe at one time, it is impossible to prove that something does not exist. This does not mean we should run our lives based on anything that might exist. The natural basis for morality (that which is good promotes the long-term survival of life) has been discovered. Society should be organized around this principle. It should not be based on any purported divine revelations that arose prior to scientific methods. As Kant said, we may ask which of the alternatives is in our best interest. Clearly, a rational society based on the natural laws of the universe is better than an irrational one split into irreconcilable camps by faith in unknowns.
Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the pleasure that attends the free play of the imagination and the understanding. A pure judgment of taste is in fact subjective insofar as it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgments of taste, i.e. judgments of beauty, lay claim to universal validity. It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense. Emotional responses were evolved to aid in the decision making of an animal so that it can better perpetuate the long-term survival of life. Given this objective fact, the apprehension of beauty is not entirely subjective. The relative strength of the emotional responses to beauty are relative to the emotional makeup of the individual and the cognitive appraisals the individual is focusing on, but it is true that that which promotes survival can be said to be beautiful. Objects and ideas can be said to contain greater or lesser beauty in relation to their power to promote survival to a greater or lesser extent. Physical beauty is fleeting. Beautiful knowledge lasts.
Gone Extinct
Kant is known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the ideal a priori condition of our internal intuition. Kant never concluded that one could form a coherent account of the universe and of human experience without grounding such an account in the "thing in itself.” Exactly how to interpret this concept was a subject of some debate among 20th century philosophers. Schopenhauer described transcendental idealism as a "distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in itself, and a recognition that only the phenomenon is accessible to us because "we do not know either ourselves or things as they are in themselves, but merely as they appear. Opposing Kantian transcendental idealism is the doctrine of philosophical realism, that is, the proposition that the world is knowable as it really is, without any consideration of the knower's manner of knowing. Modern physics investigates the nature of time and space. Modern neurosciences are helping to tease out the manner in which we gain knowledge of reality. Transcendental idealism fades away. See more below.
Before discussing his theory of transcendental idealism, it is necessary to explain Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are those that are true by definition; e.g., all bachelors are unmarried. Synthetic propositions are those whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., all bachelors are happy. Analytic propositions require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand them. On the other hand, synthetic statements are those that tell us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside of their linguistic content. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (e.g. Hume) and rationalists (e.g. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience in order to be known. Kant, however, contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge, but knowledge that is not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. Kant argues that once we have grasped the concepts of addition, subtraction, or the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need any empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and in this way it would appear that arithmetic is in fact analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved thus: if the numbers five and seven in the calculation 5 + 7 = 12 are examined, there is nothing to be found in them by which the number 12 can be inferred. Such it is that "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not - the mathematic judgment "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. And so Kant proves a proposition can be synthetic and known a priori. No!! All 5’s plus 7’s are 12’s. Kant is being too reductionist here. He misses the point that the entire mathematical system of numbers and operations is analytic or understood by definition alone. Speaking in definitions alone does not get you to a reality beyond those definitions. Kant proves nothing about synthetic and a priori knowledge. Transcendental idealism rests on a falsehood. Sometimes one must dig deeper to uncover the inconsistencies behind an abstruse belief.
Kant posited that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind. Objective experience is grasped by the human mind. Reality occurred long before the human mind came into existence and it would blindly continue on without us.
Kant believed moral autonomy - which is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces - was central to humanity. Morality arises from nature. They are the rules that allow life to survive. That is not a manipulative or distorting force. We must use our reason to discover which actions allow life to survive in the long term, and our judgment to balance the needs of the short-term with the needs of the long-term. Moral conformity is central to life and therefore happiness.
Kant asserted the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means. This is a dangerous belief that leads to selfish and relativistic individualism. Life is the end. Humans are a means for the existence of life. If, for example, it were known that human actions would destroy all other life, which would of course then end humanity, it would be necessary to stop humans. Life can go on without humans. Humans cannot go on without life. We serve life. And we would be happier if we understood that, instead of perpetuating the selfish viewpoint of the individual as if it were disconnected from life. Interior consciousness allows this myth to survive, but the bodily origins of consciousness and the worldly origins of the body show that it is a fallacy. Reason and understanding show us that this is a fallacy. Given this, it is important to stress that within a society, individuals are still ends. All members must be treated equally and with respect in order for all of society to cooperate, thrive, and survive.
Survives
Kant defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude - Dare to Know. Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. Sapere aude, indeed!
Kant's "Copernican revolution," placed the role of the human subject or knower at the center of inquiry into our knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they are independently of us or of how they are for us. Yes, but our senses and our tools and our reasoning can tell us very much about reality.
Kant invented critical philosophy, the notion of being able to discover and systematically explore possible inherent limits to our ability to know through philosophical reasoning. Yes. The limitations of our senses within the size and scope of a changing universe do entail limits to our ability to know.
Kant created the concept of "conditions of possibility," that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that to understand or know them we have to first understand these conditions. From Plato to Descartes, what was presented by the senses was deemed illusory and denigrated. It was believed that the perceptions ought to be overcome to grasp the thing-in-itself, the essential essence, a la Plato’s allegory of the cave. With Kant comes a transition in philosophy from this dichotomy to the dichotomy of the apparition/conditions-of-appearance. There is no longer any higher essence behind the apparition. It is what it is, a brute fact, and what one must now examine is the conditions that are necessary for its appearance. Yes. And an understanding of these conditions necessary for appearance comes from the natural sciences. We must know them all in order to understand reality.
Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed through epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge, we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He concluded that all objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such nature which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. Yes. Senses are understood through reason. And the limits on our senses place limits on what we can know. We have developed tools to aid our understanding of the universe all the way back to the Big Bang, but we may not be able to conduct research into the metaphysical origins of the universe beyond that. We will try of course, but in the meantime, we should not allow speculations about gods that hide behind our knowledge to rule our lives in any way when there is no evidence for their existence, benevolence, or usefulness.
Kant divides the feeling of the sublime into two distinct modes - the mathematical sublime and the dynamical sublime. The mathematical sublime is situated in the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or that appear absolutely great. This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In the dynamical sublime, there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character. Given that the meaning of life is to perpetuate the long-term survival of life, it follows that we should feel awe when contemplating infinity and extinction. Exposure to both of these concepts does aid our judgment and moral character in choosing actions that comport with the meaning of life.
Needs to Adapt
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative," and is derived from the concept of duty. Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed by all in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. Regardless of recent relativist trends in philosophy, universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Yes, but Kant did not discover it. The single Categorical Imperative is that life must act to perpetuate the long-term survival of life.
Kant asserted that because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted that people are reasonably justified in believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not. An enlightened approach and use of the critical method required that, "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Since we cannot know the entirety of the universe at one time, it is impossible to prove that something does not exist. This does not mean we should run our lives based on anything that might exist. The natural basis for morality (that which is good promotes the long-term survival of life) has been discovered. Society should be organized around this principle. It should not be based on any purported divine revelations that arose prior to scientific methods. As Kant said, we may ask which of the alternatives is in our best interest. Clearly, a rational society based on the natural laws of the universe is better than an irrational one split into irreconcilable camps by faith in unknowns.
Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the pleasure that attends the free play of the imagination and the understanding. A pure judgment of taste is in fact subjective insofar as it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgments of taste, i.e. judgments of beauty, lay claim to universal validity. It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense. Emotional responses were evolved to aid in the decision making of an animal so that it can better perpetuate the long-term survival of life. Given this objective fact, the apprehension of beauty is not entirely subjective. The relative strength of the emotional responses to beauty are relative to the emotional makeup of the individual and the cognitive appraisals the individual is focusing on, but it is true that that which promotes survival can be said to be beautiful. Objects and ideas can be said to contain greater or lesser beauty in relation to their power to promote survival to a greater or lesser extent. Physical beauty is fleeting. Beautiful knowledge lasts.
Gone Extinct
Kant is known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the ideal a priori condition of our internal intuition. Kant never concluded that one could form a coherent account of the universe and of human experience without grounding such an account in the "thing in itself.” Exactly how to interpret this concept was a subject of some debate among 20th century philosophers. Schopenhauer described transcendental idealism as a "distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in itself, and a recognition that only the phenomenon is accessible to us because "we do not know either ourselves or things as they are in themselves, but merely as they appear. Opposing Kantian transcendental idealism is the doctrine of philosophical realism, that is, the proposition that the world is knowable as it really is, without any consideration of the knower's manner of knowing. Modern physics investigates the nature of time and space. Modern neurosciences are helping to tease out the manner in which we gain knowledge of reality. Transcendental idealism fades away. See more below.
Before discussing his theory of transcendental idealism, it is necessary to explain Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are those that are true by definition; e.g., all bachelors are unmarried. Synthetic propositions are those whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., all bachelors are happy. Analytic propositions require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand them. On the other hand, synthetic statements are those that tell us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside of their linguistic content. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (e.g. Hume) and rationalists (e.g. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience in order to be known. Kant, however, contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge, but knowledge that is not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. Kant argues that once we have grasped the concepts of addition, subtraction, or the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need any empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and in this way it would appear that arithmetic is in fact analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved thus: if the numbers five and seven in the calculation 5 + 7 = 12 are examined, there is nothing to be found in them by which the number 12 can be inferred. Such it is that "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not - the mathematic judgment "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. And so Kant proves a proposition can be synthetic and known a priori. No!! All 5’s plus 7’s are 12’s. Kant is being too reductionist here. He misses the point that the entire mathematical system of numbers and operations is analytic or understood by definition alone. Speaking in definitions alone does not get you to a reality beyond those definitions. Kant proves nothing about synthetic and a priori knowledge. Transcendental idealism rests on a falsehood. Sometimes one must dig deeper to uncover the inconsistencies behind an abstruse belief.
Kant posited that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind. Objective experience is grasped by the human mind. Reality occurred long before the human mind came into existence and it would blindly continue on without us.
Kant believed moral autonomy - which is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces - was central to humanity. Morality arises from nature. They are the rules that allow life to survive. That is not a manipulative or distorting force. We must use our reason to discover which actions allow life to survive in the long term, and our judgment to balance the needs of the short-term with the needs of the long-term. Moral conformity is central to life and therefore happiness.
Kant asserted the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means. This is a dangerous belief that leads to selfish and relativistic individualism. Life is the end. Humans are a means for the existence of life. If, for example, it were known that human actions would destroy all other life, which would of course then end humanity, it would be necessary to stop humans. Life can go on without humans. Humans cannot go on without life. We serve life. And we would be happier if we understood that, instead of perpetuating the selfish viewpoint of the individual as if it were disconnected from life. Interior consciousness allows this myth to survive, but the bodily origins of consciousness and the worldly origins of the body show that it is a fallacy. Reason and understanding show us that this is a fallacy. Given this, it is important to stress that within a society, individuals are still ends. All members must be treated equally and with respect in order for all of society to cooperate, thrive, and survive.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism.
Survives
Bentham's position included arguments in favor of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, usury, and the decriminalization of homosexual acts. He also made two distinct attempts during his life to critique the death penalty. Bentham is widely recognized as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights - he argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark in determining their proper treatment. The survival of all of these ideas into the modern age shows how Bentham’s philosophy was facing the right direction.
Needs to Adapt
Bentham was one of the main proponents of Utilitarianism - an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall happiness. By happiness, he understood it as a predominance of pleasure over pain. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing all its consequences. Maximum happiness comes from the joy of long-term survival for life. This requires much wisdom of society and individuals. Once happiness is defined in this way, utilitarianism works well for an ethical theory. Long-term consequences of actions are often hard to determine though so we must be prudent in our experimentation and decisions.
Bentham’s hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, so it follows that Bentham does not favor the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many. It should not be overlooked though that Bentham's hedonistic theory, unlike Mill's, is often criticized for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. Bentham instead laid down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create. The criteria are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offense. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham is arguing that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with. Bentham follows these statements with explanations on how antiquity, religion, reproach of innovation, metaphor, fiction, fancy, antipathy and sympathy, begging the question, and imaginary law are not justification for the creation of legislature. In addition to the multiplier affect of utilities, no minorities should ever be sacrificed for the good of a majority, no matter how maximum their number, because such sacrifice undermines the social cohesion required of our cooperative species. Bentham is on the right track with his calculations for pain and pleasure in determining the correct course of punishment to take. He misses the weight of the required tit for tat strategy though that stops cheaters from winning and undermining the stability of the evolutionary system.
Gone Extinct
Bentham opposed the ideas of natural law and natural rights, calling them "nonsense upon stilts.” Bentham did not have the knowledge of scientific discoveries about nature that we have today. The source of nature for our morality is no longer nonsensical, but now indisputable.
Survives
Bentham's position included arguments in favor of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, usury, and the decriminalization of homosexual acts. He also made two distinct attempts during his life to critique the death penalty. Bentham is widely recognized as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights - he argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark in determining their proper treatment. The survival of all of these ideas into the modern age shows how Bentham’s philosophy was facing the right direction.
Needs to Adapt
Bentham was one of the main proponents of Utilitarianism - an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall happiness. By happiness, he understood it as a predominance of pleasure over pain. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing all its consequences. Maximum happiness comes from the joy of long-term survival for life. This requires much wisdom of society and individuals. Once happiness is defined in this way, utilitarianism works well for an ethical theory. Long-term consequences of actions are often hard to determine though so we must be prudent in our experimentation and decisions.
Bentham’s hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, so it follows that Bentham does not favor the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many. It should not be overlooked though that Bentham's hedonistic theory, unlike Mill's, is often criticized for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. Bentham instead laid down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create. The criteria are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offense. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham is arguing that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with. Bentham follows these statements with explanations on how antiquity, religion, reproach of innovation, metaphor, fiction, fancy, antipathy and sympathy, begging the question, and imaginary law are not justification for the creation of legislature. In addition to the multiplier affect of utilities, no minorities should ever be sacrificed for the good of a majority, no matter how maximum their number, because such sacrifice undermines the social cohesion required of our cooperative species. Bentham is on the right track with his calculations for pain and pleasure in determining the correct course of punishment to take. He misses the weight of the required tit for tat strategy though that stops cheaters from winning and undermining the stability of the evolutionary system.
Gone Extinct
Bentham opposed the ideas of natural law and natural rights, calling them "nonsense upon stilts.” Bentham did not have the knowledge of scientific discoveries about nature that we have today. The source of nature for our morality is no longer nonsensical, but now indisputable.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831 CE) was a German philosopher and one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of the total reality as a whole was an important precursor to continental philosophy and Marxism.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" - namely, that a "thesis" (e.g. the French revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the reign of terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. the constitutional state of free citizens). The three-step process is a nice way to characterize a methodical search for knowledge. Propose a thesis, find the antithesis, let them compete and form a synthesis. Repeated ad-infinitum, this leads to powerful understanding. Hegel misunderstands the causation though as coming from the thesis itself rather than from the search for knowledge, which found the thesis lacking and simply proposed a new idea. Hegel goes further off the rails after this.
Gone Extinct
The fundamental notion of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas have internal contradictions. From Hegel's point of view, analysis or comprehension of a thing or idea reveals that underneath its apparently simple identity or unity is an underlying inner contradiction. This contradiction leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself and to a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradiction. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute idea" or "absolute knowledge.” These contradictions and tensions are a process. They are not some rational unity. They are the hallmark of knowledge evolving towards the absolute knowledge. They are the hallmark of an evolution of philosophy.
Hegel's philosophy has been labeled by some critics as obscurantist, with some going so far as to refer to it as pseudo-philosophy. His contemporary Schopenhauer was particularly critical, and wrote of Hegel's philosophy as, “a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage.” Excellent summation from Schopenhauer. To look at the scientific method winnowing down hypotheses through an evolutionary battle of survival of the fittest ideas, and calling all the surviving and expiring ideas part of some unitary whole is just to re-label reality as “everything we have seen.” Hegel does nothing to further our understanding and fails to recognize the wisdom of the truths that survive.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" - namely, that a "thesis" (e.g. the French revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the reign of terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. the constitutional state of free citizens). The three-step process is a nice way to characterize a methodical search for knowledge. Propose a thesis, find the antithesis, let them compete and form a synthesis. Repeated ad-infinitum, this leads to powerful understanding. Hegel misunderstands the causation though as coming from the thesis itself rather than from the search for knowledge, which found the thesis lacking and simply proposed a new idea. Hegel goes further off the rails after this.
Gone Extinct
The fundamental notion of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas have internal contradictions. From Hegel's point of view, analysis or comprehension of a thing or idea reveals that underneath its apparently simple identity or unity is an underlying inner contradiction. This contradiction leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself and to a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradiction. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute idea" or "absolute knowledge.” These contradictions and tensions are a process. They are not some rational unity. They are the hallmark of knowledge evolving towards the absolute knowledge. They are the hallmark of an evolution of philosophy.
Hegel's philosophy has been labeled by some critics as obscurantist, with some going so far as to refer to it as pseudo-philosophy. His contemporary Schopenhauer was particularly critical, and wrote of Hegel's philosophy as, “a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage.” Excellent summation from Schopenhauer. To look at the scientific method winnowing down hypotheses through an evolutionary battle of survival of the fittest ideas, and calling all the surviving and expiring ideas part of some unitary whole is just to re-label reality as “everything we have seen.” Hegel does nothing to further our understanding and fails to recognize the wisdom of the truths that survive.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860 CE) was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. Schopenhauer's metaphysical analysis of will, his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known thinkers.
Survives
Schopenhauer refused to conceive of love as either trifling or accidental, but rather understood it to be an immensely powerful force lying unseen within man's psyche and dramatically shaping the world. These ideas foreshadowed Darwin’s discovery of evolution, Freud’s concepts of the libido and the unconscious mind, and evolutionary psychology in general. Love, in its many forms, is one of the primary emotions we use to propagate the species and cooperate with each other for its long-term survival. It is immensely powerful.
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated only by their own basic desires, or Will to Live, which directed all of mankind. For Schopenhauer, human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. For Schopenhauer, human desiring, willing, and craving cause suffering or pain. He therefore favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, Buddhism, and Vedanta. But suppressing our desires leads to the death of the species! Striving for life is not futile. The direction is towards immortality for the species. We merely struggle with balancing short-term desires and long-term needs.
A temporary way to escape the pain of life is through aesthetic contemplation since art diverts the spectator's attention from the grave everyday world and lifts him or her into a world that consists of mere play of images. This is the next best way, short of not willing at all, which is the best way. Escapism leads to stagnation and the extinction of the species. Art should instead be used to motivate the species. It is most powerful when it does this.
Schopenhauer's moral theory proposed three primary moral incentives: compassion, malice and egoism. Compassion is the major motivator to moral expression. Malice and egoism are corrupt alternatives. Survival is the major motivator to moral expression. Egoism is feeling positive towards yourself. You are alive. This is worth celebrating and encouraging. Malice and compassion are negative and positive feelings towards others. They have their roles in a cooperative society that follows the tit for tat strategy to punish cheaters and remain stable over the long-term.
Schopenhauer described himself as a proponent of limited government. He shared the view of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the state, and of state violence, to check the destructive tendencies innate to our species, but what he thought was essential was that the state should "leave each man free to work out his own salvation.” And so long as government was thus limited, Schopenhauer preferred "to be ruled by a lion than one of his fellow rats" - i.e., by a monarch, rather than a democrat. An unelected monarchy is much more likely to produce a rat than a democratic election conducted by an educated population.
Survives
Schopenhauer refused to conceive of love as either trifling or accidental, but rather understood it to be an immensely powerful force lying unseen within man's psyche and dramatically shaping the world. These ideas foreshadowed Darwin’s discovery of evolution, Freud’s concepts of the libido and the unconscious mind, and evolutionary psychology in general. Love, in its many forms, is one of the primary emotions we use to propagate the species and cooperate with each other for its long-term survival. It is immensely powerful.
Needs to Adapt
Gone Extinct
Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated only by their own basic desires, or Will to Live, which directed all of mankind. For Schopenhauer, human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. For Schopenhauer, human desiring, willing, and craving cause suffering or pain. He therefore favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, Buddhism, and Vedanta. But suppressing our desires leads to the death of the species! Striving for life is not futile. The direction is towards immortality for the species. We merely struggle with balancing short-term desires and long-term needs.
A temporary way to escape the pain of life is through aesthetic contemplation since art diverts the spectator's attention from the grave everyday world and lifts him or her into a world that consists of mere play of images. This is the next best way, short of not willing at all, which is the best way. Escapism leads to stagnation and the extinction of the species. Art should instead be used to motivate the species. It is most powerful when it does this.
Schopenhauer's moral theory proposed three primary moral incentives: compassion, malice and egoism. Compassion is the major motivator to moral expression. Malice and egoism are corrupt alternatives. Survival is the major motivator to moral expression. Egoism is feeling positive towards yourself. You are alive. This is worth celebrating and encouraging. Malice and compassion are negative and positive feelings towards others. They have their roles in a cooperative society that follows the tit for tat strategy to punish cheaters and remain stable over the long-term.
Schopenhauer described himself as a proponent of limited government. He shared the view of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the state, and of state violence, to check the destructive tendencies innate to our species, but what he thought was essential was that the state should "leave each man free to work out his own salvation.” And so long as government was thus limited, Schopenhauer preferred "to be ruled by a lion than one of his fellow rats" - i.e., by a monarch, rather than a democrat. An unelected monarchy is much more likely to produce a rat than a democratic election conducted by an educated population.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857 CE) was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and the doctrine of positivism. He may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. His concept of sociologie and social evolutionism, though now outmoded, set the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists, evolving into modern academic sociology as practical and objective social research.
Survives
Positivism holds that in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information. Introspective and intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. Comte saw the scientific method replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. This has been a long-running theme, so again, yes. Introspection and intuition may guide directions for hypotheses and experimentation, but they cannot produce true knowledge on their own.
Needs to Adapt
Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general law of three stages. Comte's stages were (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive. The theological phase was seen as preceding the Enlightenment, in which man's place in society and society's restrictions upon man were referenced to God. Man blindly believed in whatever he was taught by his ancestors. He believed in a supernatural power. Fetishism played a significant role during this time. By the "Metaphysical" phase, he referred not to the metaphysics of Aristotle or other ancient Greek philosophers. Rather, the idea was rooted in the problems of French society subsequent to the revolution of 1789. This metaphysical phase involved the justification of universal rights as being on a higher plane than the authority of any human ruler. This stage is known as the stage of investigation, because people started reasoning and questioning although no solid evidence was laid. The stage of investigation was the beginning of a world that questioned authority and religion. In the positive scientific phase, people could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force despite the proclamations of human rights or prophecy of the will of God. Science started to answer questions in full stretch. These three phases have occurred in the history of mankind, but not in a straight line, and often all at the same time. If we want to know real truth, we do have to follow these steps, but in the blindness of evolution there is no guarantee that we will figure this out.
Comte proposed a Religion of Humanity for positivist societies in order to fulfill the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. He proposed a calendar reform called the positivist calendar in which months were named after history's greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists, arranged progressively in chronological order. Each day was dedicated to a thinker, in the manner of Catholic saint's days. In Système de Politique Positive, Comte stated that the pillars of the religion are: altruism, leading to generosity and selfless dedication to others; order: Comte thought that after the French Revolution, society needed restoration of order; progress: the consequences of industrial and technical breakthroughs for human societies. In Catéchisme Positiviste, Comte defined the Church of Humanity's seven sacraments: Introduction (nomination and sponsoring); Admission (end of education); Destination (choice of a career); Marriage; Retirement (age 63); Separation (social extreme unction); Incorporation (absorption into history three years after death). The Religion of Humanity was described by Thomas Huxley as "Catholicism minus Christianity.” Although much declined, the church survives in present day Brazil. Religion does need to be replaced, although its use of calendar reminders and ritual traditions to instruct humans is something that could be very useful. The word religion, however, connotes deity belief and worship. After evolutionary philosophy is honed, the Religion of Humanity could be replaced with something like a “Society for Life.” Some new atheists and secular humanists appear to be working along these lines already. I hope to contribute to their efforts.
Gone Extinct
Comte saw this new science, sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences and integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole. This grand vision of sociology as the centerpiece of all the sciences has not come to fruition. The biologist E.O. Wilson uses the term consilience to describe the unity of knowledge. Based on that theory, I subsume sociology into the biological sciences, slotting in above organismic biology, but below ecology in terms of size and scope. Based on its MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) nature of inquiry, philosophy could be seen as the centerpiece of all the sciences, but only in the sense of categorizing and analyzing the rest of knowledge.
Survives
Positivism holds that in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information. Introspective and intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. Comte saw the scientific method replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. This has been a long-running theme, so again, yes. Introspection and intuition may guide directions for hypotheses and experimentation, but they cannot produce true knowledge on their own.
Needs to Adapt
Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general law of three stages. Comte's stages were (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive. The theological phase was seen as preceding the Enlightenment, in which man's place in society and society's restrictions upon man were referenced to God. Man blindly believed in whatever he was taught by his ancestors. He believed in a supernatural power. Fetishism played a significant role during this time. By the "Metaphysical" phase, he referred not to the metaphysics of Aristotle or other ancient Greek philosophers. Rather, the idea was rooted in the problems of French society subsequent to the revolution of 1789. This metaphysical phase involved the justification of universal rights as being on a higher plane than the authority of any human ruler. This stage is known as the stage of investigation, because people started reasoning and questioning although no solid evidence was laid. The stage of investigation was the beginning of a world that questioned authority and religion. In the positive scientific phase, people could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force despite the proclamations of human rights or prophecy of the will of God. Science started to answer questions in full stretch. These three phases have occurred in the history of mankind, but not in a straight line, and often all at the same time. If we want to know real truth, we do have to follow these steps, but in the blindness of evolution there is no guarantee that we will figure this out.
Comte proposed a Religion of Humanity for positivist societies in order to fulfill the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. He proposed a calendar reform called the positivist calendar in which months were named after history's greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists, arranged progressively in chronological order. Each day was dedicated to a thinker, in the manner of Catholic saint's days. In Système de Politique Positive, Comte stated that the pillars of the religion are: altruism, leading to generosity and selfless dedication to others; order: Comte thought that after the French Revolution, society needed restoration of order; progress: the consequences of industrial and technical breakthroughs for human societies. In Catéchisme Positiviste, Comte defined the Church of Humanity's seven sacraments: Introduction (nomination and sponsoring); Admission (end of education); Destination (choice of a career); Marriage; Retirement (age 63); Separation (social extreme unction); Incorporation (absorption into history three years after death). The Religion of Humanity was described by Thomas Huxley as "Catholicism minus Christianity.” Although much declined, the church survives in present day Brazil. Religion does need to be replaced, although its use of calendar reminders and ritual traditions to instruct humans is something that could be very useful. The word religion, however, connotes deity belief and worship. After evolutionary philosophy is honed, the Religion of Humanity could be replaced with something like a “Society for Life.” Some new atheists and secular humanists appear to be working along these lines already. I hope to contribute to their efforts.
Gone Extinct
Comte saw this new science, sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences and integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole. This grand vision of sociology as the centerpiece of all the sciences has not come to fruition. The biologist E.O. Wilson uses the term consilience to describe the unity of knowledge. Based on that theory, I subsume sociology into the biological sciences, slotting in above organismic biology, but below ecology in terms of size and scope. Based on its MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) nature of inquiry, philosophy could be seen as the centerpiece of all the sciences, but only in the sense of categorizing and analyzing the rest of knowledge.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE) was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant. He was also an influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy. He has been called the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century.
Survives
Mill’s works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. One argument that Mill develops further than any previous philosopher is the harm principle. The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. He does argue, however, that individuals should be prevented from doing lasting, serious harm to themselves or their property. Because no one exists in isolation, harm done to oneself also harms others, and destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself. This limited definition of liberty is correct. Unfortunately, many libertarians do not recognize their ties to society. We must be given the freedom to discover our own best roles for society, but we cannot be allowed to endanger society or the survival of life in general.
Needs to Adapt
Mill's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the "greatest-happiness principle.” It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are superior to more physical forms of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.” As was said for Bentham, once the greatest happiness is defined as the joy of the survival of life (and all that entails for a cooperative society focused on the long-term), then utilitarianism tends to work well in developing a moral philosophy. But it is still merely a derivative of the principle of survival.
Mill originally believed that "equality of taxation" meant "equality of sacrifice" and that progressive taxation penalized those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore "a mild form of robbery.” Given an equal tax rate regardless of income, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore, receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. In our modern economy, income is not tied merely to effort - income is generated far out of proportion to effort by the use of technology. In a hierarchical construction, those at the top are able to abuse their power by forcing their view on others that they “deserve” the lion’s share of this surplus income. But might never makes right. This surplus income is owed to the society whose rules and history created it. The efforts of even the best individuals are not worth exponentially more than their peers so their taxation should be more progressive. This also keeps society relatively more equal, which is vital to its need for cooperation and stability. The principle easily justifies a strong inheritance tax as well.
Mill recognized wealth beyond the material, and argued that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth was destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life. He concluded that a stationary state could be preferable to never-ending economic growth. Stationary size does not necessarily mean a lack of progress. Economic growth comes from expansion and differentiation. Mill is correct that expansion cannot be indefinite. Differentiation through the progression of knowledge and freedom, however, means that perpetual economic growth may still be possible.
Gone Extinct
Survives
Mill’s works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. One argument that Mill develops further than any previous philosopher is the harm principle. The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. He does argue, however, that individuals should be prevented from doing lasting, serious harm to themselves or their property. Because no one exists in isolation, harm done to oneself also harms others, and destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself. This limited definition of liberty is correct. Unfortunately, many libertarians do not recognize their ties to society. We must be given the freedom to discover our own best roles for society, but we cannot be allowed to endanger society or the survival of life in general.
Needs to Adapt
Mill's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the "greatest-happiness principle.” It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are superior to more physical forms of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.” As was said for Bentham, once the greatest happiness is defined as the joy of the survival of life (and all that entails for a cooperative society focused on the long-term), then utilitarianism tends to work well in developing a moral philosophy. But it is still merely a derivative of the principle of survival.
Mill originally believed that "equality of taxation" meant "equality of sacrifice" and that progressive taxation penalized those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore "a mild form of robbery.” Given an equal tax rate regardless of income, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore, receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. In our modern economy, income is not tied merely to effort - income is generated far out of proportion to effort by the use of technology. In a hierarchical construction, those at the top are able to abuse their power by forcing their view on others that they “deserve” the lion’s share of this surplus income. But might never makes right. This surplus income is owed to the society whose rules and history created it. The efforts of even the best individuals are not worth exponentially more than their peers so their taxation should be more progressive. This also keeps society relatively more equal, which is vital to its need for cooperation and stability. The principle easily justifies a strong inheritance tax as well.
Mill recognized wealth beyond the material, and argued that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth was destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life. He concluded that a stationary state could be preferable to never-ending economic growth. Stationary size does not necessarily mean a lack of progress. Economic growth comes from expansion and differentiation. Mill is correct that expansion cannot be indefinite. Differentiation through the progression of knowledge and freedom, however, means that perpetual economic growth may still be possible.
Gone Extinct
Charles Darwin (1809-1882 CE) was an English naturalist who realized that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of the Species. In 1871, he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed in 1872 by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
Has Adapted and Grown
Just a quick note to insert Darwin into this timeline. It is obvious from the rest of this information that Darwin’s theory has had a major influence on mankind and our understanding of where we fit into this universe. It is hard to comprehend what it must have been like before Darwin to wonder, “Where did we all come from?” It is no wonder previous explanations ended up with something supernatural or silly. Evolution has made the history of our home known to us and new discoveries continue to unravel the meaning of life. Without this knowledge, prior philosophers had to overcome an enormous obstacle to the truth. Future ones will have no such excuse other than the momentum of history.
Has Adapted and Grown
Just a quick note to insert Darwin into this timeline. It is obvious from the rest of this information that Darwin’s theory has had a major influence on mankind and our understanding of where we fit into this universe. It is hard to comprehend what it must have been like before Darwin to wonder, “Where did we all come from?” It is no wonder previous explanations ended up with something supernatural or silly. Evolution has made the history of our home known to us and new discoveries continue to unravel the meaning of life. Without this knowledge, prior philosophers had to overcome an enormous obstacle to the truth. Future ones will have no such excuse other than the momentum of history.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855 CE) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and psychologist. His theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, and on the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives, focusing on the priority of concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. Kierkegaard has been called the Father of Existentialism, both atheistic and theistic variations.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
According to Kierkegaard, the idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsibility for their own relation to God. Communities can be supportive, but when they support a mob mentality, they are harmful. Members of congregations would find the church’s god wanting if they examined it on their own.
Gone Extinct
One of Kierkegaard’s well-known ideas is the notion popularly referred to as “leap of faith.” The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to pragmatically justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. As Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world.” Utter nonsense. We can get lots of actual evidence that a person is worthy of love. We talk to them and learn their actions. Nothing of the sort has ever been seen from a god. Doubt is a practical emotion in a world of probabilistic knowledge. Faith is an impractical, irrational response to that probability.
Kierkegaard also stressed the importance of the self and its relation to the world as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity.” This has to do with a distinction between what is objectively true and an individual's subjective relation (such as indifference or commitment) to that truth. People who in some sense believe the same things may relate to those beliefs quite differently. Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor. Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regard to religious matters, however. He argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any objective certainty about religious doctrines such as the existence of God or the life of Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the Christian doctrines are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the degree they seemed likely to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all. Faith consists in a subjective relation of absolute commitment to these doctrines. Exactly as I already described. Faith is an irrational response to a world filled with probabilities. The certainty that Kierkegaard calls for is reckless, dangerous, and promotes an unbridgeable chasm between rational and irrational humans.
Perhaps the most oft-quoted aphorism from Kierkegaard's journals, and a key quote for existentialist studies, is: "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” The motto of the suicide bomber.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
According to Kierkegaard, the idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsibility for their own relation to God. Communities can be supportive, but when they support a mob mentality, they are harmful. Members of congregations would find the church’s god wanting if they examined it on their own.
Gone Extinct
One of Kierkegaard’s well-known ideas is the notion popularly referred to as “leap of faith.” The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to pragmatically justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. As Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world.” Utter nonsense. We can get lots of actual evidence that a person is worthy of love. We talk to them and learn their actions. Nothing of the sort has ever been seen from a god. Doubt is a practical emotion in a world of probabilistic knowledge. Faith is an impractical, irrational response to that probability.
Kierkegaard also stressed the importance of the self and its relation to the world as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity.” This has to do with a distinction between what is objectively true and an individual's subjective relation (such as indifference or commitment) to that truth. People who in some sense believe the same things may relate to those beliefs quite differently. Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor. Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regard to religious matters, however. He argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any objective certainty about religious doctrines such as the existence of God or the life of Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the Christian doctrines are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the degree they seemed likely to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all. Faith consists in a subjective relation of absolute commitment to these doctrines. Exactly as I already described. Faith is an irrational response to a world filled with probabilities. The certainty that Kierkegaard calls for is reckless, dangerous, and promotes an unbridgeable chasm between rational and irrational humans.
Perhaps the most oft-quoted aphorism from Kierkegaard's journals, and a key quote for existentialist studies, is: "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” The motto of the suicide bomber.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894). Revolutionary socialist governments espousing Marxist concepts took power in a variety of countries in the 20th century. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
Survives
Marx’s doctoral thesis, which he finished in 1841, has been described as a daring and original piece of work in which he set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy. In 1843, Marx published Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in which he dealt more substantively with religion, describing it as "the opiate of the people.” Religion must give way to philosophy. Religious answers have been a soothing opiate that endangers humanity with calls for subservience or detachment that lead to stagnation. Truth comes from scientific discovery, not from divine revelation.
Needs to Adapt
Another famous Marx quote, from his Critique of Gotha Programme, was, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Abilities are diversely distributed through the population of a successful species. Need alone, however, is no basis for the distribution of wealth. This does nothing to provide incentives for work and progress, which are necessary for the survival of the species. From each according to his ability to each according to his effort.
Gone Extinct
Marx's theories about society, economics, and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, hold that all societies progress through class struggle; a conflict between an ownership class which controls production and a lower class which produces the labor for such goods. Heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, he called it the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," believing it to be run by the wealthy classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. He argued that under socialism society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat," the "workers’ state" or "workers' democracy.” He believed that socialism would, in its turn, eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. Society progresses through class cooperation. Conflicts between the classes lead to inefficiencies and instability. Unchecked capitalism promotes class differences, class competition, and class struggle. Replacing a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, who have money on their side, with a dictatorship of the proletariat, who have numbers on their side, is merely exchanging one form of class struggle for another. Putting people in charge who are led by a competitive outlook on life and have previously been squashed under that competition is a perfect recipe for what happened in the brutal communist regimes of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, Cuba, Angola, and others. Marx’s revolution was a cure far worse than the disease he diagnosed.
In 1867 the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a work which analyzed the capitalist process of production. Here, Marx elaborated his labor theory of value and his conception of surplus value and exploitation, which he argued would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit and the collapse of industrial capitalism. Labor is not the primary means of producing value - the use of technology and knowledge as the means of production are the primary creators of value. Surplus value comes about from capitalist owners having access to technology and knowledge that laborers do not have access to and cannot bargain for. Exploitation comes from this access, which arises after small differences in the rate of material accumulation become amplified through continued investment and inheritance of that material towards ever more expensive means of production. This does not lead to a collapse of profits as Marx forecasted; this leads to a concentration of profits, which can be used to fortify the owners’ access to the means of production, thus entrenching capitalism. What undermines capitalism is not the falling rate of profits, but the rising levels of inequality that foment revolution. This is a threat to the stability of society and the survival of the species. This is why access to the means of production must be shared. This is why employee-owned cooperatives are a more just and sustainable means of organizing corporations and the economy. These cooperatives must compete with one another, thus ensuring their continued investment in progress, but no few individuals capture an unfair portion of the profits to be used for exploitative means. The same principles of checks and balances of power that make government cooperative and tenable must be applied to corporations as well.
Marx's tombstone bears the carved message of the final line of The Communist Manifesto: "Workers of all lands, unite!” It shouldn’t be just Marx’s workers. All humans, unite with each other for life!
Survives
Marx’s doctoral thesis, which he finished in 1841, has been described as a daring and original piece of work in which he set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy. In 1843, Marx published Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in which he dealt more substantively with religion, describing it as "the opiate of the people.” Religion must give way to philosophy. Religious answers have been a soothing opiate that endangers humanity with calls for subservience or detachment that lead to stagnation. Truth comes from scientific discovery, not from divine revelation.
Needs to Adapt
Another famous Marx quote, from his Critique of Gotha Programme, was, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Abilities are diversely distributed through the population of a successful species. Need alone, however, is no basis for the distribution of wealth. This does nothing to provide incentives for work and progress, which are necessary for the survival of the species. From each according to his ability to each according to his effort.
Gone Extinct
Marx's theories about society, economics, and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, hold that all societies progress through class struggle; a conflict between an ownership class which controls production and a lower class which produces the labor for such goods. Heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, he called it the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," believing it to be run by the wealthy classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. He argued that under socialism society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat," the "workers’ state" or "workers' democracy.” He believed that socialism would, in its turn, eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. Society progresses through class cooperation. Conflicts between the classes lead to inefficiencies and instability. Unchecked capitalism promotes class differences, class competition, and class struggle. Replacing a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, who have money on their side, with a dictatorship of the proletariat, who have numbers on their side, is merely exchanging one form of class struggle for another. Putting people in charge who are led by a competitive outlook on life and have previously been squashed under that competition is a perfect recipe for what happened in the brutal communist regimes of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, Cuba, Angola, and others. Marx’s revolution was a cure far worse than the disease he diagnosed.
In 1867 the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a work which analyzed the capitalist process of production. Here, Marx elaborated his labor theory of value and his conception of surplus value and exploitation, which he argued would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit and the collapse of industrial capitalism. Labor is not the primary means of producing value - the use of technology and knowledge as the means of production are the primary creators of value. Surplus value comes about from capitalist owners having access to technology and knowledge that laborers do not have access to and cannot bargain for. Exploitation comes from this access, which arises after small differences in the rate of material accumulation become amplified through continued investment and inheritance of that material towards ever more expensive means of production. This does not lead to a collapse of profits as Marx forecasted; this leads to a concentration of profits, which can be used to fortify the owners’ access to the means of production, thus entrenching capitalism. What undermines capitalism is not the falling rate of profits, but the rising levels of inequality that foment revolution. This is a threat to the stability of society and the survival of the species. This is why access to the means of production must be shared. This is why employee-owned cooperatives are a more just and sustainable means of organizing corporations and the economy. These cooperatives must compete with one another, thus ensuring their continued investment in progress, but no few individuals capture an unfair portion of the profits to be used for exploitative means. The same principles of checks and balances of power that make government cooperative and tenable must be applied to corporations as well.
Marx's tombstone bears the carved message of the final line of The Communist Manifesto: "Workers of all lands, unite!” It shouldn’t be just Marx’s workers. All humans, unite with each other for life!
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903 CE) was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. He was an enthusiastic exponent of evolution and even wrote about evolution before Darwin did. Spencer is best known for coining the concept "survival of the fittest.” He was probably the first, and possibly the only, philosopher in history to sell over a million copies of his works during his own lifetime.
Survives
In 1858, Spencer produced an outline of what was to become the System of Synthetic Philosophy. This immense undertaking, which has few parallels in the English language, aimed to demonstrate that the principle of evolution applied in biology, psychology, sociology, and morality. He appeared to offer a ready-made system of belief, which could substitute for conventional religious faith at a time when orthodox creeds were crumbling under the advances of modern science. Hey, this guy sounds pretty promising.
The first objective of the Synthetic Philosophy was to demonstrate that there were no exceptions to being able to discover scientific explanations in the form of natural laws of all the phenomena of the universe. Spencer’s volumes on biology, psychology, and sociology were all intended to demonstrate the existence of natural laws in these specific disciplines. Even in his writings on ethics, he held that it was possible to discover laws of morality that had the status of laws of nature while still having normative content. Yes. The physicalist view of the universe is correct. Also, Spencer is quite prescient to accept evolution as explaining the natural basis for morality.
Needs to Adapt
The second objective of the Synthetic Philosophy was to show that these same laws led inexorably to progress. In contrast to Comte, who stressed only the unity of the scientific method, Spencer sought the unification of scientific knowledge in the form of the reduction of all natural laws to one fundamental law, the law of evolution. Spencer posited that all structures in the universe develop from a simple, undifferentiated, homogeneity to a complex, differentiated, heterogeneity, while being accompanied by a process of greater integration of the differentiated parts. This evolutionary process could be found at work, Spencer believed, throughout the cosmos. It was a universal law, applying to the stars and the galaxies as much as to biological organisms, and to human social organization as much as to the human mind. The end point of the evolutionary process would be the creation of “the perfect man in the perfect society” with human beings becoming completely adapted to social life. Spencer didn’t have the cosmological science that we have today so his view of the starting point of undifferentiated homogeneity was certainly incomplete. In the sense that survivors have learned something new, then progress does occur, but it is by no means inexorable in a universe with asteroids, supernovae, and black holes ready to tear life apart. And as long as the universe exists and moves and changes, then evolution will have no endpoint. The early naïveté of believers in evolution is starting to show in Spencer’s thinking.
Gone Extinct
For evolution to produce the perfect individual it was necessary for present and future generations to experience the “natural” consequences of their conduct. Only in this way would individuals have the incentives required to work on self-improvement and thus to hand an improved moral constitution to their descendants. Hence anything that interfered with the natural relationship of conduct and consequence was to be resisted, and this included the use of the coercive power of the state to relieve poverty, to provide public education, or to require compulsory vaccination. Although charitable giving was to be encouraged, even it had to be limited by the consideration that suffering was frequently the result of individuals receiving the consequences of their actions. Hence too much individual benevolence directed to the undeserving poor would break the link between conduct and consequence that Spencer considered fundamental to ensuring that humanity continued to evolve to a higher level of development. And here is where Spencer’s understanding of evolution goes completely off the rails. He misunderstands the fact that cooperation, society, and even government are all “natural” outgrowths of a species trying to survive.
Starting either from religious belief or from science, Spencer argued we are ultimately driven to accept certain indispensable but literally inconceivable notions. Whether we are concerned with a Creator or the substratum that underlies our experience of phenomena, we can frame no conception of it. Therefore, Spencer concluded, religion and science agree in the supreme truth that the human understanding is only capable of relative knowledge. This is the case since, owing to the inherent limitations of the human mind, it is only possible to obtain knowledge of phenomena, not of the reality underlying phenomena. Hence, both science and religion must come to recognize as the most certain of all facts that the Power, which the Universe manifests to us, is utterly inscrutable. He called this Awareness of the Unknowable and he presented worship of the Unknowable as capable of being a positive faith that could substitute for conventional religion. Indeed, he thought that the Unknowable represented the ultimate stage in the evolution of religion, the final elimination of its last anthropomorphic vestiges. Why deify that which we do not know? It only hurts us to worship our ignorance. We should instead continue to seek to know, or accept any true limitations that we do find and do what we can with the rest of our knowledge.
Spencer's last years were characterized by a collapse of his initial optimism, replaced instead by a pessimism regarding the future of mankind. It’s not surprising given the way he advocated for the strict half of evolution characterized by competition. Given our understanding of the other half of evolutionary strategy - cooperation - there is much cause for optimism.
Survives
In 1858, Spencer produced an outline of what was to become the System of Synthetic Philosophy. This immense undertaking, which has few parallels in the English language, aimed to demonstrate that the principle of evolution applied in biology, psychology, sociology, and morality. He appeared to offer a ready-made system of belief, which could substitute for conventional religious faith at a time when orthodox creeds were crumbling under the advances of modern science. Hey, this guy sounds pretty promising.
The first objective of the Synthetic Philosophy was to demonstrate that there were no exceptions to being able to discover scientific explanations in the form of natural laws of all the phenomena of the universe. Spencer’s volumes on biology, psychology, and sociology were all intended to demonstrate the existence of natural laws in these specific disciplines. Even in his writings on ethics, he held that it was possible to discover laws of morality that had the status of laws of nature while still having normative content. Yes. The physicalist view of the universe is correct. Also, Spencer is quite prescient to accept evolution as explaining the natural basis for morality.
Needs to Adapt
The second objective of the Synthetic Philosophy was to show that these same laws led inexorably to progress. In contrast to Comte, who stressed only the unity of the scientific method, Spencer sought the unification of scientific knowledge in the form of the reduction of all natural laws to one fundamental law, the law of evolution. Spencer posited that all structures in the universe develop from a simple, undifferentiated, homogeneity to a complex, differentiated, heterogeneity, while being accompanied by a process of greater integration of the differentiated parts. This evolutionary process could be found at work, Spencer believed, throughout the cosmos. It was a universal law, applying to the stars and the galaxies as much as to biological organisms, and to human social organization as much as to the human mind. The end point of the evolutionary process would be the creation of “the perfect man in the perfect society” with human beings becoming completely adapted to social life. Spencer didn’t have the cosmological science that we have today so his view of the starting point of undifferentiated homogeneity was certainly incomplete. In the sense that survivors have learned something new, then progress does occur, but it is by no means inexorable in a universe with asteroids, supernovae, and black holes ready to tear life apart. And as long as the universe exists and moves and changes, then evolution will have no endpoint. The early naïveté of believers in evolution is starting to show in Spencer’s thinking.
Gone Extinct
For evolution to produce the perfect individual it was necessary for present and future generations to experience the “natural” consequences of their conduct. Only in this way would individuals have the incentives required to work on self-improvement and thus to hand an improved moral constitution to their descendants. Hence anything that interfered with the natural relationship of conduct and consequence was to be resisted, and this included the use of the coercive power of the state to relieve poverty, to provide public education, or to require compulsory vaccination. Although charitable giving was to be encouraged, even it had to be limited by the consideration that suffering was frequently the result of individuals receiving the consequences of their actions. Hence too much individual benevolence directed to the undeserving poor would break the link between conduct and consequence that Spencer considered fundamental to ensuring that humanity continued to evolve to a higher level of development. And here is where Spencer’s understanding of evolution goes completely off the rails. He misunderstands the fact that cooperation, society, and even government are all “natural” outgrowths of a species trying to survive.
Starting either from religious belief or from science, Spencer argued we are ultimately driven to accept certain indispensable but literally inconceivable notions. Whether we are concerned with a Creator or the substratum that underlies our experience of phenomena, we can frame no conception of it. Therefore, Spencer concluded, religion and science agree in the supreme truth that the human understanding is only capable of relative knowledge. This is the case since, owing to the inherent limitations of the human mind, it is only possible to obtain knowledge of phenomena, not of the reality underlying phenomena. Hence, both science and religion must come to recognize as the most certain of all facts that the Power, which the Universe manifests to us, is utterly inscrutable. He called this Awareness of the Unknowable and he presented worship of the Unknowable as capable of being a positive faith that could substitute for conventional religion. Indeed, he thought that the Unknowable represented the ultimate stage in the evolution of religion, the final elimination of its last anthropomorphic vestiges. Why deify that which we do not know? It only hurts us to worship our ignorance. We should instead continue to seek to know, or accept any true limitations that we do find and do what we can with the rest of our knowledge.
Spencer's last years were characterized by a collapse of his initial optimism, replaced instead by a pessimism regarding the future of mankind. It’s not surprising given the way he advocated for the strict half of evolution characterized by competition. Given our understanding of the other half of evolutionary strategy - cooperation - there is much cause for optimism.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900 CE) was a German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism, nihilism, and postmodernism.
Survives
Nietzsche called himself an "immoralist" and harshly criticized the prominent moral schemes of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and utilitarianism. However, Nietzsche did not want to destroy morality, but rather to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world. He indicates his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself. The vital impulses of life are the natural source of value and therefore morality. Analysis and time have shown some of the traditional morals of the Judeo-Christian world to contradict with the long-term survival of the species. Nietzsche was correct to challenge them vociferously.
Needs to Adapt
The statement "God is dead," has become one of Nietzsche’s best-known remarks. In his view, recent developments in modern science and the increasing secularization of European society had effectively “killed” the Christian God, who had served as the basis for meaning and value in the West for more than a thousand years. Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth. Instead, we would retain only our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives. This view has acquired the name "perspectivism.” Alternatively, the death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any importance and that life lacks purpose. Anthropomorphic, meddling gods are not only dead - they never existed. This is a good thing. The multiple, diverse, fluid beliefs in gods are what created conflicting perspectives of reality. Without religion, life can come together around the one true reality of a knowable universe. Without gods, we can find one true purpose - the long-term survival of life. There is nothing of greater importance.
Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which Nietzsche deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. However, Nietzsche cautions that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow their own "inner law.” A favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are.” It is not just “exceptional” people who should be unashamed of their uniqueness. Evolution requires species to be diverse to survive in a changing universe. All of life is dependent on each other and should be proud to play their part in the symphony. Everyone should become what they are - this is a message that is central in modern positive psychology. The only true “inner law” to be found is the universal joy over the survival of life. For anyone to selfishly believe they are above this law, they have to ignore their dependence on others, negate cooperation, and undermine their own happiness, peace, and stability - which is exactly what happened to Nietzsche.
Gone Extinct
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced the concept of a value-creating Übermensch. Zarathustra's gift of the superman is given to a mankind not aware of the problem to which the superman is the solution. From Zarathustra: “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. ... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth. ... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” Evolution is the term we use for the rules that govern the way that life survives. The end product of evolution then would be immortal life. Humans may have the intellectual capacity to achieve this. We can be the end.
Nietzsche's notion of the will to power can be viewed as a response to Schopenhauer's will to live. Writing a generation before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer had regarded the entire universe and everything in it as driven by a primordial will to live, thus resulting in all creatures' desire to avoid death and to procreate. Nietzsche, however, challenges Schopenhauer's account and suggests that people and animals really want power; living in itself appears only as a subsidiary aim - something necessary to promote one's power. In defense of his view, Nietzsche appeals to many instances in which people and animals willingly risk their lives in order to promote their power, most notably in instances like competitive fighting and warfare. Nietzsche believed the will to power provided not only a basis for understanding motivation in human behavior, but he also suggested that the will to power is a more important element than pressure for adaptation or survival. In its later forms, Nietzsche's concept of the will to power applies to all living things, suggesting that adaptation and the struggle to survive is a secondary drive in the evolution of animals, less important than the desire to expand one’s power. Nietzsche eventually took this concept further still and transformed the idea of matter as centers of force, into matter as centers of will to power. Nietzsche wanted to dispense with the theory of matter, which he viewed as a relic of the metaphysics of substance. There are many examples of creatures giving up power in return for life or even just a better life. Life is the ultimate force. Power can now be seen for what it is - a strategy necessary to compete in a short-term-focused environment. There are times when this strategy is required - when enemies of life must be overpowered. But giving in to the emotional high that comes from gaining power is to relegate oneself to an insecure existence and death at the hands of another competitor.
Nietzsche's view on eternal return is similar to that of Hume: the idea that an eternal recurrence of blind, meaningless variation - chaotic, pointless shuffling of matter and law - would inevitably spew up worlds whose evolution through time would yield the apparently meaningful stories of our lives. This idea of eternal recurrence became a cornerstone of his nihilism, and thus part of the foundation of what became existentialism. Nietzsche contemplates the idea of eternal recurrence as potentially horrifying and paralyzing, and says that its burden is the heaviest weight imaginable. The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life. To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, a love of fate. It is not clear if the universe is finite or infinite, but even if it were infinite, Nietzsche misses the other logical outcome of an eternal multiverse - that not only would our own stories come true, but all other possible stories would arise as well. Any and every possibility could be repeated eternally. This does not doom us to accepting or loving our fate, but rather to choose wisely for the life we know.
Survives
Nietzsche called himself an "immoralist" and harshly criticized the prominent moral schemes of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and utilitarianism. However, Nietzsche did not want to destroy morality, but rather to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world. He indicates his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself. The vital impulses of life are the natural source of value and therefore morality. Analysis and time have shown some of the traditional morals of the Judeo-Christian world to contradict with the long-term survival of the species. Nietzsche was correct to challenge them vociferously.
Needs to Adapt
The statement "God is dead," has become one of Nietzsche’s best-known remarks. In his view, recent developments in modern science and the increasing secularization of European society had effectively “killed” the Christian God, who had served as the basis for meaning and value in the West for more than a thousand years. Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth. Instead, we would retain only our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives. This view has acquired the name "perspectivism.” Alternatively, the death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any importance and that life lacks purpose. Anthropomorphic, meddling gods are not only dead - they never existed. This is a good thing. The multiple, diverse, fluid beliefs in gods are what created conflicting perspectives of reality. Without religion, life can come together around the one true reality of a knowable universe. Without gods, we can find one true purpose - the long-term survival of life. There is nothing of greater importance.
Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which Nietzsche deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. However, Nietzsche cautions that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow their own "inner law.” A favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are.” It is not just “exceptional” people who should be unashamed of their uniqueness. Evolution requires species to be diverse to survive in a changing universe. All of life is dependent on each other and should be proud to play their part in the symphony. Everyone should become what they are - this is a message that is central in modern positive psychology. The only true “inner law” to be found is the universal joy over the survival of life. For anyone to selfishly believe they are above this law, they have to ignore their dependence on others, negate cooperation, and undermine their own happiness, peace, and stability - which is exactly what happened to Nietzsche.
Gone Extinct
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced the concept of a value-creating Übermensch. Zarathustra's gift of the superman is given to a mankind not aware of the problem to which the superman is the solution. From Zarathustra: “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. ... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth. ... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” Evolution is the term we use for the rules that govern the way that life survives. The end product of evolution then would be immortal life. Humans may have the intellectual capacity to achieve this. We can be the end.
Nietzsche's notion of the will to power can be viewed as a response to Schopenhauer's will to live. Writing a generation before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer had regarded the entire universe and everything in it as driven by a primordial will to live, thus resulting in all creatures' desire to avoid death and to procreate. Nietzsche, however, challenges Schopenhauer's account and suggests that people and animals really want power; living in itself appears only as a subsidiary aim - something necessary to promote one's power. In defense of his view, Nietzsche appeals to many instances in which people and animals willingly risk their lives in order to promote their power, most notably in instances like competitive fighting and warfare. Nietzsche believed the will to power provided not only a basis for understanding motivation in human behavior, but he also suggested that the will to power is a more important element than pressure for adaptation or survival. In its later forms, Nietzsche's concept of the will to power applies to all living things, suggesting that adaptation and the struggle to survive is a secondary drive in the evolution of animals, less important than the desire to expand one’s power. Nietzsche eventually took this concept further still and transformed the idea of matter as centers of force, into matter as centers of will to power. Nietzsche wanted to dispense with the theory of matter, which he viewed as a relic of the metaphysics of substance. There are many examples of creatures giving up power in return for life or even just a better life. Life is the ultimate force. Power can now be seen for what it is - a strategy necessary to compete in a short-term-focused environment. There are times when this strategy is required - when enemies of life must be overpowered. But giving in to the emotional high that comes from gaining power is to relegate oneself to an insecure existence and death at the hands of another competitor.
Nietzsche's view on eternal return is similar to that of Hume: the idea that an eternal recurrence of blind, meaningless variation - chaotic, pointless shuffling of matter and law - would inevitably spew up worlds whose evolution through time would yield the apparently meaningful stories of our lives. This idea of eternal recurrence became a cornerstone of his nihilism, and thus part of the foundation of what became existentialism. Nietzsche contemplates the idea of eternal recurrence as potentially horrifying and paralyzing, and says that its burden is the heaviest weight imaginable. The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life. To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, a love of fate. It is not clear if the universe is finite or infinite, but even if it were infinite, Nietzsche misses the other logical outcome of an eternal multiverse - that not only would our own stories come true, but all other possible stories would arise as well. Any and every possibility could be repeated eternally. This does not doom us to accepting or loving our fate, but rather to choose wisely for the life we know.
Max Weber (1864-1920 CE) was a German lawyer, politician, historian, political economist, and sociologist, who profoundly influenced social theory and sociology.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Weber's most famous work is his essay in economic sociology, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which also began his work in the sociology of religion. In this text, Weber argued that religion was one of the reasons for the different ways the cultures of the Occident and the Orient have developed. Weber argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism, and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. Other notable factors included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematization of government administration, and economic enterprise. In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, merely explored one phase of the freedom from magic that he regarded as an important distinguishing aspect of Western culture. He noted the shift of Europe's economic center after the Reformation away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Germany. Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. Why was that not the case with Protestantism? Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism – notably Calvinism – favored rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities, which had been given positive spiritual and moral meaning. It was not the goal of those religious ideas, but rather a byproduct – the inherent logic of those doctrines and the advice based upon them both directly and indirectly encouraged planning and self-denial in the pursuit of economic gain. The Reformation view of a "calling" dignified even the most mundane professions as being those that added to the common good and were blessed by God, as much as any "sacred" calling could. This Reformation view, that all the spheres of life were sacred when dedicated to God and His purposes of nurturing and furthering life, profoundly affected the view of work. In Weber’s research on the competition of religions around the world, we see that it isn’t the choice of god that is the differentiator, but the view towards work and the economy that made Protestantism the “winner.” Their advocacy for effort everywhere leads to progress and long-term happiness for humans. The belief in the supernatural still acts as a retardant and is therefore a danger.
Weber next posed the question why capitalism did not develop in China. He concentrated on the early period of Chinese history, during which the major Chinese schools of thoughts - Confucianism and Taoism - came to the fore. Weber argued that while several factors favored the development of a capitalist economy (long periods of peace, improved control of rivers, population growth, freedom to acquire land and to move outside of native communities, free choice of occupation) they were outweighed by others (mostly stemming from religion): technical inventions were opposed on the basis of religion, in the sense that the disturbance of ancestral spirits was argued to lead to bad luck, and adjusting oneself to the world was preferred to changing it; sale of land was often prohibited or made very difficult; extended kinship groups (based on the religious importance of family ties and ancestry) protected its members against economic adversities, therefore discouraging payment of debts, work discipline, and rationalization of work processes; those kinship groups prevented the development of an urban status class and hindered developments towards legal institutions, codification of laws, and the rise of a lawyer class. According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism represent two comprehensive but mutually exclusive types of rationalization, each attempting to order human life according to certain ultimate religious beliefs. Both encouraged sobriety and self-control and were compatible with the accumulation of wealth. However, Confucianism aimed at attaining and preserving "a cultured status position" and recommended adjustment to the world, education, self-perfection, politeness, and familial piety to achieve those ends. Puritanism used those means in order to create a "tool of God," creating a person that would serve God and master the world. Such intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were alien to the aesthetic values of Confucianism. Therefore, Weber states that it was the difference in prevailing mentality that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China. Here we see the danger in a religion that advocates adjustment to the world. It led to stagnation and thousands of years of lost progress for billions of Chinese people.
The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity, and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society. The ancient Indian social system was shaped by the concept of caste. It directly linked religious belief and the segregation of society into status groups. Weber describes the caste system, consisting of the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors), the Vaisyas (merchants), and the Shudras (laborers). Then he describes the spread of the caste system in India due to conquests, the marginalization of certain tribes, and the subdivision of castes. Weber pays special attention to Brahmins and analyzes why they occupied the highest place in Indian society for so many centuries. With regard to the concept of dharma he concludes that the Indian ethical pluralism is very different both from the universal ethic of Confucianism and Christianity. He notes that the caste system prevented the development of urban status groups. Next, Weber analyses the Hindu religious beliefs, including asceticism and the Hindu worldview, the Brahman orthodox doctrines, the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, the Hindu restoration, and the evolution of the guru. Weber asks the question whether religion had any influence upon the daily round of mundane activities, and if so, how it impacted economic conduct. He notes the idea of an immutable world order consisting of the eternal cycles of rebirth and the deprecation of the mundane world, and finds that the traditional caste system, supported by the religion, slowed economic development; in other words, the "spirit" of the caste system militated against an indigenous development of capitalism. Weber concludes his study of society and religion in India by combining his findings with his previous work on China. He notes that the beliefs tended to interpret the meaning of life as otherworldly or mystical experience, that the intellectuals tended to be apolitical in their orientation, and that the social world was fundamentally divided between the educated, whose lives were oriented toward the exemplary conduct of a prophet or wise man, and the uneducated masses who remained caught in their daily rounds and believed in magic. In Asia, no Messianic prophecy appeared that could have given "plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike.” He argues that it was the Messianic prophecies in the countries of the Near East, as distinguished from the prophecy of the Asiatic mainland, that prevented Western countries from following the paths of China and India, and his next work, Ancient Judaism, was an attempt to prove this theory. More evidence of the danger of stagnation that religion poses to society. The success of the asceticism of the Hindu and Buddhist leaders only lead to more stagnation, poverty, and disease for their people. Compared to the corrupt riches the Catholic church accumulated and the acceptance of wealth that engendered in its people, one can see that the more successful a church is at keeping to its original tenets, the worse it is for society! In the quest to survive, religion is evil.
In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the combination of circumstances that resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. It is especially visible when the inner-worldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity is contrasted with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India. Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy. For the Jew, the social order of the world was conceived to have been turned into the opposite of that promised for the future, but in the future it was to be overturned so that Jewry could be once again dominant. Since the basic tenets of Judaism were formulated during the time of Israelite confederacy and after the fall of the United Monarchy, they became the basis of the prophetic movement that left a lasting impression on Western civilization. In the final comparison of religions, we see more of the benefits of advocating progress. To repeat, none of these religions “won” based on having a better concept of god, the creation of the universe, or the way the world worked. It was their prescriptions for “what to do about it” that led to positive or negative outcomes relative to one another. Society would do even better if it left the supernatural behind altogether.
Weber was a central figure in the establishment of methodological antipositivism; presenting sociology as a non-empirical field which must study social action through resolutely subjective means. In modern practice, however, non-positivism may be equated with qualitative research methods, while positivist research is more quantitative. Positivists typically use research methods such as experiments and statistical surveys, while antipositivists use research methods that rely more on ethnographic fieldwork, conversation/discourse analysis, or open-ended interviews. While qualitative research methods are useful for gaining understanding and developing theories, a more quantitative scientific method is required to turn those hypotheses into true knowledge. Controlled studies of randomized societies is practically impossible though, so in some cases the theories are the best sociological explanations humans are likely to uncover.
In Politics as a Vocation, Weber unveils the definition of the state that it is the entity that possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, which it may nonetheless elect to delegate as it sees fit - a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. The state’s actual role is to correct for inefficiencies in the markets. Force, being an element required for the provision of the public goods of defense and justice, must be provided for by the state. And though the state has a monopoly on force, the true transparent separation of powers within a state would ensure that no one person or group could continually wield that force in a hurtful way.
Gone Extinct
Weber is also well known for his critical study of the bureaucratization of society, the rational ways in which formal social organizations apply the ideal characteristics of a bureaucracy. Weber outlines a description, which has become famous, of rationalization (of which bureaucratization is a part) as a shift from a value-oriented organization and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organization and action (legal-rational authority). The result, according to Weber, is a "polar night of icy darkness," in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control. Rational control does not have to be an iron cage of icy darkness. Rational thinking leads to right action, which leads to joyful emotions. Bureaucracy is problematic when it is run by irrational bureaucrats. This is the same problem all human organizations face. The solution is not a submission to traditional authority or charismatic authority - neither have a basis in truth. The solution is to teach humans the purpose and use of their reason - to achieve the goal of survival for life.
Survives
Needs to Adapt
Weber's most famous work is his essay in economic sociology, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which also began his work in the sociology of religion. In this text, Weber argued that religion was one of the reasons for the different ways the cultures of the Occident and the Orient have developed. Weber argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism, and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. Other notable factors included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematization of government administration, and economic enterprise. In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, merely explored one phase of the freedom from magic that he regarded as an important distinguishing aspect of Western culture. He noted the shift of Europe's economic center after the Reformation away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Germany. Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. Why was that not the case with Protestantism? Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism – notably Calvinism – favored rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities, which had been given positive spiritual and moral meaning. It was not the goal of those religious ideas, but rather a byproduct – the inherent logic of those doctrines and the advice based upon them both directly and indirectly encouraged planning and self-denial in the pursuit of economic gain. The Reformation view of a "calling" dignified even the most mundane professions as being those that added to the common good and were blessed by God, as much as any "sacred" calling could. This Reformation view, that all the spheres of life were sacred when dedicated to God and His purposes of nurturing and furthering life, profoundly affected the view of work. In Weber’s research on the competition of religions around the world, we see that it isn’t the choice of god that is the differentiator, but the view towards work and the economy that made Protestantism the “winner.” Their advocacy for effort everywhere leads to progress and long-term happiness for humans. The belief in the supernatural still acts as a retardant and is therefore a danger.
Weber next posed the question why capitalism did not develop in China. He concentrated on the early period of Chinese history, during which the major Chinese schools of thoughts - Confucianism and Taoism - came to the fore. Weber argued that while several factors favored the development of a capitalist economy (long periods of peace, improved control of rivers, population growth, freedom to acquire land and to move outside of native communities, free choice of occupation) they were outweighed by others (mostly stemming from religion): technical inventions were opposed on the basis of religion, in the sense that the disturbance of ancestral spirits was argued to lead to bad luck, and adjusting oneself to the world was preferred to changing it; sale of land was often prohibited or made very difficult; extended kinship groups (based on the religious importance of family ties and ancestry) protected its members against economic adversities, therefore discouraging payment of debts, work discipline, and rationalization of work processes; those kinship groups prevented the development of an urban status class and hindered developments towards legal institutions, codification of laws, and the rise of a lawyer class. According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism represent two comprehensive but mutually exclusive types of rationalization, each attempting to order human life according to certain ultimate religious beliefs. Both encouraged sobriety and self-control and were compatible with the accumulation of wealth. However, Confucianism aimed at attaining and preserving "a cultured status position" and recommended adjustment to the world, education, self-perfection, politeness, and familial piety to achieve those ends. Puritanism used those means in order to create a "tool of God," creating a person that would serve God and master the world. Such intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were alien to the aesthetic values of Confucianism. Therefore, Weber states that it was the difference in prevailing mentality that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China. Here we see the danger in a religion that advocates adjustment to the world. It led to stagnation and thousands of years of lost progress for billions of Chinese people.
The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity, and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society. The ancient Indian social system was shaped by the concept of caste. It directly linked religious belief and the segregation of society into status groups. Weber describes the caste system, consisting of the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors), the Vaisyas (merchants), and the Shudras (laborers). Then he describes the spread of the caste system in India due to conquests, the marginalization of certain tribes, and the subdivision of castes. Weber pays special attention to Brahmins and analyzes why they occupied the highest place in Indian society for so many centuries. With regard to the concept of dharma he concludes that the Indian ethical pluralism is very different both from the universal ethic of Confucianism and Christianity. He notes that the caste system prevented the development of urban status groups. Next, Weber analyses the Hindu religious beliefs, including asceticism and the Hindu worldview, the Brahman orthodox doctrines, the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, the Hindu restoration, and the evolution of the guru. Weber asks the question whether religion had any influence upon the daily round of mundane activities, and if so, how it impacted economic conduct. He notes the idea of an immutable world order consisting of the eternal cycles of rebirth and the deprecation of the mundane world, and finds that the traditional caste system, supported by the religion, slowed economic development; in other words, the "spirit" of the caste system militated against an indigenous development of capitalism. Weber concludes his study of society and religion in India by combining his findings with his previous work on China. He notes that the beliefs tended to interpret the meaning of life as otherworldly or mystical experience, that the intellectuals tended to be apolitical in their orientation, and that the social world was fundamentally divided between the educated, whose lives were oriented toward the exemplary conduct of a prophet or wise man, and the uneducated masses who remained caught in their daily rounds and believed in magic. In Asia, no Messianic prophecy appeared that could have given "plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike.” He argues that it was the Messianic prophecies in the countries of the Near East, as distinguished from the prophecy of the Asiatic mainland, that prevented Western countries from following the paths of China and India, and his next work, Ancient Judaism, was an attempt to prove this theory. More evidence of the danger of stagnation that religion poses to society. The success of the asceticism of the Hindu and Buddhist leaders only lead to more stagnation, poverty, and disease for their people. Compared to the corrupt riches the Catholic church accumulated and the acceptance of wealth that engendered in its people, one can see that the more successful a church is at keeping to its original tenets, the worse it is for society! In the quest to survive, religion is evil.
In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the combination of circumstances that resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. It is especially visible when the inner-worldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity is contrasted with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India. Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy. For the Jew, the social order of the world was conceived to have been turned into the opposite of that promised for the future, but in the future it was to be overturned so that Jewry could be once again dominant. Since the basic tenets of Judaism were formulated during the time of Israelite confederacy and after the fall of the United Monarchy, they became the basis of the prophetic movement that left a lasting impression on Western civilization. In the final comparison of religions, we see more of the benefits of advocating progress. To repeat, none of these religions “won” based on having a better concept of god, the creation of the universe, or the way the world worked. It was their prescriptions for “what to do about it” that led to positive or negative outcomes relative to one another. Society would do even better if it left the supernatural behind altogether.
Weber was a central figure in the establishment of methodological antipositivism; presenting sociology as a non-empirical field which must study social action through resolutely subjective means. In modern practice, however, non-positivism may be equated with qualitative research methods, while positivist research is more quantitative. Positivists typically use research methods such as experiments and statistical surveys, while antipositivists use research methods that rely more on ethnographic fieldwork, conversation/discourse analysis, or open-ended interviews. While qualitative research methods are useful for gaining understanding and developing theories, a more quantitative scientific method is required to turn those hypotheses into true knowledge. Controlled studies of randomized societies is practically impossible though, so in some cases the theories are the best sociological explanations humans are likely to uncover.
In Politics as a Vocation, Weber unveils the definition of the state that it is the entity that possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, which it may nonetheless elect to delegate as it sees fit - a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. The state’s actual role is to correct for inefficiencies in the markets. Force, being an element required for the provision of the public goods of defense and justice, must be provided for by the state. And though the state has a monopoly on force, the true transparent separation of powers within a state would ensure that no one person or group could continually wield that force in a hurtful way.
Gone Extinct
Weber is also well known for his critical study of the bureaucratization of society, the rational ways in which formal social organizations apply the ideal characteristics of a bureaucracy. Weber outlines a description, which has become famous, of rationalization (of which bureaucratization is a part) as a shift from a value-oriented organization and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organization and action (legal-rational authority). The result, according to Weber, is a "polar night of icy darkness," in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control. Rational control does not have to be an iron cage of icy darkness. Rational thinking leads to right action, which leads to joyful emotions. Bureaucracy is problematic when it is run by irrational bureaucrats. This is the same problem all human organizations face. The solution is not a submission to traditional authority or charismatic authority - neither have a basis in truth. The solution is to teach humans the purpose and use of their reason - to achieve the goal of survival for life.
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