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First American paperback edition published in 2006 by Enchanted Lion Books, 45 Main Street, Suite 519, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Copyright © 2002 Philip Stokes/Arcturus Publishing Limted 26/27 Bickels Yard, 151-153 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3HA

Glossary © 2003 Enchanted Lion Books All Rights Reserved.

The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier hardcover edtion of this title for which a CIP record is on file.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59270-046-2 ISBN-10: 1-59270-046-2

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Edited by Paul Whittle Cover and book design by Alex Ingr A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3 PhilosopyEncLionImp 11/8/06 3:54 pm Page 3

Philip Stokes

ENCHANTED LION BOOKS New York A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3 PhilosopyEncLionImp 11/8/06 3:54 pm Page 4

Contents

The Presocratics The Scholastics The Liberals

Thales of Miletus ...... 8 St Anselm ...... 48 Adam Smith ...... 106 Pythagoras of Samos . . . . . 10 St Thomas Aquinas ...... 50 Mary Wollstonecraft . . . . 108 Xenophanes of Colophon 12 John Duns Scotus ...... 52 Thomas Paine ...... 110 Heraclitus ...... 14 William of Occam ...... 54 Jeremy Bentham ...... 112 John Stuart Mill ...... 114 The Eleatics The Age of Science Auguste Comte ...... 116

Parmenides of Elea ...... 16 Nicolaus Copernicus ...... 56 Zeno of Elea ...... 18 Niccolò Machiavelli ...... 58 The Evolutionists Desiderus Erasmus ...... 60 Charles Darwin ...... 118 The Academics Thomas More ...... 62 Henri Louis Bergson . . . . 120 Francis Bacon ...... 64 A.N. Whitehead ...... 122 Socrates ...... 20 Galileo Galilei ...... 66 Plato ...... 22 Thomas Hobbes ...... 68 Aristotle ...... 24 The Pragmatists Sir Isaac Newton ...... 70 Ernst Mach ...... 124 The Atomists Charles Peirce ...... 126 The Rationalists Democritus ...... 26 William James ...... 128 Epicurus ...... 28 René Descartes ...... 72 John Dewey ...... 130 Antoine Arnauld ...... 74 Nicolas Malebranche . . . . . 76 The Cynics The Materialists Benedict de Spinoza ...... 78 Diogenes of Sinope ...... 30 Karl Marx ...... 132 Gottfried von Leibniz . . . . . 80 Friedrich Engels ...... 134 Vladimir Lenin ...... 136 The Stoics The Empiricists Sigmund Freud ...... 138 Marcus Tullius Cicero . . . . 32 John Locke ...... 82 Carl Jung ...... 140 Philo of Alexandria ...... 34 David Hume ...... 84 John Maynard Keynes . . 142 Lucius Annaeus Seneca . . 36 Thomas Reid ...... 86 Marcus Aurelius ...... 38 Voltaire ...... 88 The Existentialists Jean-Jacques Rousseau . . 90 Søren Kierkegaard ...... 144 The Sceptics Denis Diderot ...... 92 Friedrich Nietzsche ...... 146 Sextus Empiricus ...... 40 Edmund Husserl ...... 148 The Idealists Martin Heidegger ...... 150 The Neoplatonists George Berkeley ...... 94 Jean-Paul Sartre ...... 152 Plotinus ...... 42 Immanuel Kant ...... 96 Albert Camus ...... 154 The Christians Johann Schiller ...... 98 Simone de Beauvoir . . . . . 156 Frederick Schelling ...... 100 St Augustine of Hippo . . . 44 George Hegel ...... 102 Boethius ...... 46 Arthur Schopenhauer . . . 104 A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3 PhilosopyEncLionImp 11/8/06 3:54 pm Page 5

Introduction

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, The Linguistic Turn than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Gottlob Frege ...... 158 Hamlet, I.v. Bertrand Russell ...... 160 hen Shakespeare’s Hamlet utters those Ludwig Wittgenstein . . . . 162 memorable lines, he is worrying about the Ferdinand de Saussure . . 164 spirit of his dead father haunting both the George Edward Moore . . 166 W battlements of the castle and his own troubled mind. Moritz Schlick ...... 168 Shakespeare was writing in the time of Bacon and Lev Vygotsky ...... 170 Galileo, in a world already shaped by the ideas of Rudolph Carnap ...... 172 Machiavelli and Copernicus. Ever the social A.J. Ayer ...... 174 commentator, he was more than likely using Hamlet Alfred Tarski ...... 176 to offer a riposte to the pronouncements of the new J. L. Austin ...... 178 ‘age of science’, the philosophy of his time, which Gilbert Ryle ...... 180 was moving away from the spiritual and ever-closer Noam Chomsky ...... 182 to a wholly materialist conception of the world. Hamlet’s pronouncement nevertheless provides a The Postmodernists useful characterisation of the aim of the philosophers Claude Levi-Strauss . . . . . 184 in this book. Exactly what more is there to ‘heaven Michel Foucault ...... 186 and earth’ that is not represented in the knowledge Jacques Derrida ...... 188 we already possess? There is little unity to the answers provided by the thinkers you will find here, but that The New Scientists is only to be expected. On the one hand philosophy is like any other human endeavour, situated within and Emile Durkheim ...... 190 confined by the context of its day and yet on the other Albert Einstein ...... 192 hand, it tries to wrestle with and expand the Karl Popper ...... 194 boundaries of current thought. It is neither a science, Kurt Gödel ...... 196 interested in the collection and organisation of new Alan Turing ...... 198 information, nor an art, representing a reaction to the B.F. Skinner ...... 200 world as perceived. Philosophy, then, is an altogether Thomas Kuhn ...... 202 unique activity. With this in mind, the thoughts of the Paul Feyerabend ...... 204 great philosophers explored in the following pages W.V.O. Quine ...... 206 will be all the clearer if we approach them with some understanding of the nature and value of their enterprise. Picture Credits ...... 208 If there is one thing that characterises both the Glossary ...... 209 method and the results of philosophical inquiry, it must be the general lack of consensus that precedes the whole process, and often remains even after the work is complete. The reason for this lies in the kinds of questions philosophers are interested in. Many questions outside of philosophy seem to have answers

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

that command widespread agreement; this is typical, for instance, of science subjects. In the sciences, many answers enjoy a general consensus because people agree both on the assumptions upon which the questions are based and on the application of certain concepts within that discipline. Nonetheless, there are some questions that arise, both in science and elsewhere, where none of the suggested answers command widespread acceptance, even given shared assumptions and an agreement about concepts. These are the sorts of questions in which philosophers are typically interested. The reason philosophers have trouble agreeing, then, is partly because that is the nature of the subject (philosophy deals in questions that people in general don’t agree on) and partly because philosophers go about their business by challenging assumptions and concepts in order to generate new perspectives on recalcitrant problems. Despite the inherent difficulty of philosophy, its value should not be underestimated. As recent discoveries in genetics and biotechnology have shown, it is impossible to know what to do with scientific discoveries without reflecting on what sort of a society we want to live in and what duties we owe each other, our descendants and the environment. Answers to all these questions depend on what conception we have of ourselves as human beings and what we think that means for the best way to live. None of these issues are questions for science or for art, but for philosophy. Since philosophers are engaged in exploring every avenue of thought, it should cause no surprise that many of their conclusions strike us as unacceptable in some way or another. At least one of the merits of such work is that it can indicate what we should not believe. But it should be equally appreciated that the conclusions of philosophers have also had profound effects. The two great superpowers of the twentieth century, the USA and the USSR, were born of the philosophical writings of Tom Paine and Karl Marx respectively. The modern information age would never have been possible without the work of the great logician Frege. Female suffrage was taken seriously only after Wollstonecraft. The Enlightenment stood in need of a Voltaire, Einstein needed Newton and Newton, in turn, relied on Aristotle. The history of social, political and technological change is inextricably bound to the history of thought. To some it has often seemed that modern philosophy is both undervalued and overlooked. They should not be so concerned. In the wider sense philosophical reflection is a natural enterprise concomitant with our inquiries on any level. It is not solely the province of specialists, but an intrinsic and indispensable part of a person’s navigation through life. If Hamlet is right, Horatio’s only response is to continue to expand the limits of his thought, in other words, to continue to dream.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Thales of Miletus c.620–?540 BC

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The Presocratics: Thales of Miletus

The first natural scientist and analytical philosopher in Western intellectual history

redited as the first philosopher of According to his metaphysics, water was Ancient Greece, and therefore the the first principle of life and the material world. founder of Western philosophy, Thales Seeing that water could turn into both vapour by hailed from the Ionian seaport of evaporation and a solid by freezing, that all life Miletus, now in modern Turkey. required and was supported by moisture, he MiletusC was a major centre of development for postulated that it was the single causal principle both science and philosophy in Ancient Greece. behind the natural world. In a crude anticipation Thales, probably born somewhere around 620 BC of modern plate tectonics, Thales professed that is mainly remembered as the presocratic the flat earth floated on water. Aristotle tells us philosopher who claimed that the fundamental that Thales thought the earth had a buoyancy nature of the world is water. Aristotle mentions much like wood, and that the earth floated on him, as does Herodotus, and these are really our water much like a log or a ship. Indeed, many only accounts of Thales’ background. However, floating islands were said to be known to the his significance as a philosopher is not so much sea-farers of Miletus, which may have served as what he said, but his method. Thales was the first either models or evidence for Thales’ theory. He thinker to try to account for the nature of the even accounted for earthquakes as being due to world without appealing to the wills and whims the rocking of the earth by subterranean waves, of anthropomorphic, Homerian gods. Rather, he just as a ship may be rocked at sea. From the port sought to explain the many diverse phenomena he of Miletus he would have been familiar with the observed by appealing to a common, underlying phenomenon of sedimentation, possibly believing principle, an idea that is still germane to modern it to be the spontaneous generation of earth from scientific method. He is also credited by Herodotus water, an idea held as recently as the 18th century. with correctly predicting that there would be a Having sought to give a naturalistic solar eclipse in 585 BC during a battle between explanation of observable phenomena, rather the Medes and the Lydians. As such, Thales can than appealing to the wills of gods, Thales with some justification be thought of as the first claimed that god is in all things. According to natural scientist and analytical philosopher in Aetius, Thales said the mind of the world is god, Western intellectual history. that god is intermingled in all things, a view that Thales had other modern traits, for it also would shortly appear contemporaneously in a seems that he was something of an entrepreneur. number of world religions, most notably According to one story, Thales made a fortune Buddhism in India. Despite his metaphysical investing in oil-presses before a heavy olive crop speculations being clearly mistaken, it seems – certainly he would have had to be wealthy in that Thales was a modern thinker in more ways order to devote time and thought to philosophy than one, pre-empting many ideas in religion, and science in seventh century BC Ancient philosophy and science. Greece.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Pythagoras of Samos c.570–480 BC

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The Presocratics: Pythagoras of Samos

The ultimate nature of reality is number

robably born around the mid-sixth • • • century BC no exact date is known • • • as to when Pythagoras lived. Despite • • • • his name being familiar to every Both the triangle and the number 10 – the schoolchild for Pythagoras’ Theorem, decad – became objects of worship for the whichP states that the square of the hypotenuse of Pythagoreans. In Pythagorean thought, the a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the number 10 is the perfect number because it is squares of the remaining two sides, it is likely made up of the sum of the first four integers, as that this was known both to the Babylonians – shown in the tetractys. The integers themselves where Pythagoras is thought to have travelled were thought to represent fundamental ideas – in his youth – and the Egyptians. the number one representing the point, two the Pythagoras was a somewhat shadowy figure line, three the surface and four the solid. Further, and like Socrates after him wrote nothing himself, it was thought that there were ten heavenly preferring to leave his students to document his bodies – five planets, the sun, the moon, the earth thoughts. Reputed to be a mystic as well as a and a mysterious and invisible ‘counter-earth’ thinker, the school he founded would nowadays (probably invented to make the celestial number be thought of as a religious cult that taught many up to ten) all revolving around a central fire. unusual and strange doctrines including, After Pythagoras’ death, his school splintered notoriously, the veneration for – and abstinence into two camps. One maintained his religious and from the eating of – beans. Pythagoras also mystical teachings, while the other concentrated preached reincarnation and the transmigration of on his mathematical and scientific insights. The souls and is largely responsible for the modern latter continued to believe the nature of the belief in numerology, later popularised by universe must be essentially arithmetical. Units Nostradamus. of number, points, were somehow thought to According to Pythagoras, the ultimate nature possess spatial dimensions and be the ultimate of reality is number. This idea developed out of constituents of objects. An idea later criticised his theory of music, in which he proved that the by both Parmenides and Zeno. The Pythagorean intervals between musical tones could be cosmogony also encountered grave problems expressed as ratios between the first four integers due to one of Pythagoras’ own discoveries. For (the numbers one to four). Since part of Pythagoras had shown how the ratio of the Pythagoras’ religious teaching consisted in the diagonal through a square to its sides could not claim that music has a special power over the be expressed as a whole number. The problem soul, infused as it is into the very fabric of the of ‘the incommensurability of the diagonal’ led universe, the belief that number is the ultimate to the discovery – or invention, depending on nature of reality quickly followed. your philosophical point of view – of irrational The Pythagoreans went on to venerate certain numbers. Though a major problem for the numerical patterns, especially the so-called Pythagorean cosmogony, irrational numbers ‘tetractys of the decad’. The tetractys is a diagram have proven a major and lasting development in that represents the first four numbers in a mathematical thinking. triangle of ten dots:

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Xenophanes of Colophon c.570–?475 BC

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The Presocratics: Xenophanes of Colophon

‘If horses could draw, they would draw their gods like horses’

ike many of the presocratic possibility of mud. The speculation was not philosophers whom we know of entirely unreasonable at the time, having the mainly through mention by later virtue of at least being based on observation. authors, exact dates for Xenophanes For Xenophanes had noticed the fossil remains of are uncertain. What is known is that sea-creatures embedded in the earth, and guessed LHeraclitus mentions him as a contemporary and that perhaps the world periodically dried up, critic of Pythagoras, and we can thus date him returning to its original muddy state, trapping as living roughly at around the same time. and preserving the earth’s creatures as it did so Exiled by the Persian wars in Ionia to before reversal of the process. southern Italy, Xenophanes wandered the polities Xenophanes was also the first known thinker of Ancient Greece as a poet and freethinker. to anticipate Socrates’ caution regarding claims Following Thales, he criticized the Homerian of certain knowledge. Philosophical certainties concept of anthropomorphic gods. Homer’s gods, could not be had, according to Xenophanes, for Xenophanes complained, had all the immoral even if we chance to hit upon the truth, there is and disgraceful traits of flawed human beings no way of knowing for certain that things are and should hardly be the object of veneration. as we think they are. Nevertheless, this does not In one of the earliest known expressions of make philosophical inquiry useless, for exposing cultural relativism, Xenophanes remarked that errors in our thinking can at least tell us what is Homer’s gods were simply a reflection of certainly not the case, even if it cannot tell us Homerian culture. As he proclaimed, ‘the what certainly is the case. This idea has a modern Ethiopians make their Gods black and snub- counterpart in the falsificationist methodology of nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes Karl Popper. and red hair’. If oxen and horses had hands and There is little coherent or underlying structure could paint, Xenophanes said, oxen would no to Xenophanes’ thought, or at least not that we doubt paint the forms of gods like oxen and can tell from the fragments that have come down horses would paint them like horses. Likewise, through history. This is perhaps unsurprising for he criticized Pythagoras’ doctrine of the someone who was essentially a refugee of the transmigration of souls, making fun of the idea political turbulence in Asia Minor and who that a human soul could inhabit another animal. propagated his thoughts and speculations mostly Xenophanes held some vague concept of a single in the form of oral poems and stories. deity that was ‘in no way like men in shape or in Nonetheless, Xenophanes clearly had enough thought’ but rather ‘causing all things by the influence to be remembered and mentioned by thought of his mind’. those that followed him. Quite probably it is his Like Thales before him, Xenophanes criticism of the Homeric gods, still revered speculated about the underlying principles of throughout the Hellenistic world during and long natural phenomena. Whereas Thales had after Xenophanes’ time, that attracted a great conceived the first principle to be water, deal of attention to him. Xenophanes proposed the rather less glamorous

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Heraclitus c.?600 –?540 BC

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The Presocratics: Heraclitus

War and strife between opposites is the eternal condition of the universe

verything is in a state of flux, or dominance, none shall ever completely change, and war and strife between extinguish or vanquish the other: ‘The sun may opposites is the eternal condition of not overstep his measure; for the Erinyes, the the universe. So claimed Heraclitus, handmaids of Justice, shall find him out’. whilst famously condemning his This universal tension ensures that change is fellowE citizens of Ephesus as so witless they continual, that everything is in a state of flux. should hang themselves and leave the city to the Permanence does not exist in the universe, only rule of children. An antagonist of the first order, the permanent condition of change as a result Heraclitus ridiculed Homer, claiming he should of the transformations of Fire. This implies that have been turned out and whipped, and further whilst nothing remains changeless within the poured scorn on the ideas and intellectual universe, the universe itself is eternal. The integrity of both Pythagoras and Xenophanes, universe ‘was ever, is now, and ever shall be, amongst others. an ever-living Fire’. Seeking to understand the basic structure Heraclitus, unlike the emerging rationalist of the universe, Heraclitus thought the three philosophers of his period, chose not to explain principal elements of nature were Fire, Earth the reasons behind his thinking in very great and Water. However, Fire is the primary element, detail. Indeed, the fragments of his works that controlling and modifying the other two. ‘All survive are so obscure that even those who things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all followed in his footsteps, principally the Stoics, things…the transformations of Fire are, first of nicknamed him ‘the riddler’. His works are written all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half in aphoristic and prophetic style, with a clear whirlwind’. contempt for those that cannot see what is clearly The cosmic fire has its counterpart in the before them. Heraclitus is undoubtedly a mystic human soul, which in weak men is tainted by the and there are strong affinities between his ‘watery’ elements of sleep, stupidity and vice. writings and the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching The virtuous soul can survive the death supposedly written by Lao Tzu (‘Old Master’) at of its physical body and eventually rejoin the around the same time. Whether Heraclitus had cosmic fire. However, the process of separation any contact with the oriental tradition, or vice and unity is continual. Mirroring the Oriental versa, is impossible to determine. concepts of yin and yang, Heraclitus believed the Heraclitus conception of reality as a process, dynamism between opposites was the driving an ever-changing flux, stands in stark contrast force and eternal condition of the universe. ‘Men to almost the entire subsequent development of do not understand that being at variance it also metaphysics emanating from Aristotle. Two agrees with itself, there is a harmony, as with the thousand years of metaphysical speculation has bow and the lyre’. Heraclitus continues to tell us consisted in reflecting on the nature of substances that ‘God is day and night, winter and summer, and the qualities that they can, do or must war and peace, fullness and hunger’. Strife and possess. Only closer to our own times, in the opposition are both necessary and good, for the works of Bergson and Whitehead, is metaphysics concept of universal tension ensures that whilst once again conceived not as the study of opposites may enjoy periods of alternating substances, but as the study of a process.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Parmenides of Elea c.510–?440 BC

ittle is known of Parmenides’ life reasoned argument in which, perhaps as a and background, and fragments of a reaction to Heraclitus, Parmenides attempts to poem entitled On Nature are all that prove that change is impossible and that reality survive of his work. Nevertheless, it is singular, undivided and homogenous. L contains one of the first examples of In the first part of his poem, ‘The Way of

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The Eleatics: Parmenides of Elea

‘One cannot know that which is not – that is impossible’

Truth’, which was revealed to him, he claims, something that is not. If something is green, it in meeting with a goddess, Parmenides is not red, if something is a man, it is not a dog, distinguishes between an inquiry into what is a house is not a cart, and so on. But since by his and an inquiry into what is not. The latter, he previous argument Parmenides has shown that says, is impossible. ‘One cannot know that which negative existential claims are impossible, it is not – that is impossible – nor utter it; for it is seems one cannot make positive existential the same thing that can be thought, that is’. The discriminations either. To distinguish X from Y, essence of this somewhat cryptic argument is is to say that X is not Y, precisely that which that in order to think of something which is not Parmenides claims is impossible. Therefore, one – let us say, ‘a unicorn’ for example – one must cannot logically discriminate between different be thinking of something: there must be some things in the world. One can only say, idea present to the mind, presumably the idea of Parmenides concludes, that everything is and a unicorn. But to think of a unicorn means that hence, the true nature of reality – that which is – the unicorn (or the idea of a unicorn) exists in must be that of an undivided, homogenous, the mind, and therefore it cannot be truly said single entity. that unicorns completely fail to exist. The By similar argument Parmenides attempts argument turns principally on two complex to show that change is also impossible. If one can issues. First, exactly what is meant by ‘exists’ think of something that will exist in the future, here? What is the difference between existing in then it must exist in one’s mind now. If one can the world and existing in the mind? This begins a remember something or someone that has passed controversy that will reappear throughout much away, then they must be present to your mind at of the history of philosophy in many different the time you are thinking of them. Therefore, contexts, but most notoriously in Anselm’s Parmenides concludes, coming into being and ontological argument, some 1500 years later. passing away are illusory, change is illusory: Second, what are the connections between everything is one, undivided, changeless and thoughts, words, and things? If that debate eternal. started with Parmenides, it has taxed almost It is clear to the modern reader that every major thinker ever since, up to and Parmenides’ reasoning is unsound, but it would including the seminal works of the twentieth not be until the rise of modern philosophical logic century by philosophers such as Bertrand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and W.V. Quine. negative existential claims would be clearly Since Parmenides thought that to think of understood. However, apart from the historical something is to give it some semblance of importance of the first known attempt at logical existence, then one cannot think of anything deduction, later to be perfected in the work of that is truly ‘not’. It follows that one can only Aristotle, Parmenides is significant for think of that which is. Now comes the second highlighting the intricacies and logical part of Parmenides’ deductive reasoning, the first complications inherent in the notions of known example of a formal deduction in the existence and the relationship between language, history of Western thought. For to think of thought and reality. anything that is implies the existence of

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Zeno of Elea 490 BC–?

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The Eleatics: Zeno of Elea

Achilles can never catch the tortoise no matter how fast he runs

here are two Zenos known to decides to see how fast he can run the track in a philosophy: Zeno of Elea, and the stadium. Before he can reach the end he must later Zeno of Citium (c 320 BC), who first get to the half way point, but before he does is now only remembered as the so he must get to the halfway point of that, and founder of Stoicism (see Seneca and the half way point of that, and so on indefinitely. TMarcus Aurelius). Zeno of Elea, a student of If space is made up of an infinite series of points Parmenides, is best known for his defence of one can never move any distance at all; to Parmenides against the followers of Pythagoras complete a journey one would have to pass every in a series of graphic paradoxes. Zeno’s point, and one cannot pass an infinite series of paradoxes are the first recorded example of points in a finite amount of time. Similarly, in argument by the logical technique of ‘reductio ad the famous Achilles and the Tortoise paradox, absurdum’ (literally, reduction to absurdity) in Zeno asks us to imagine Achilles giving the which an opponent’s view is shown to be false tortoise a head start. But before he can get to because it leads to contradiction. where the tortoise is, it will have moved a little Defending Parmenides’ view that the common- farther on, and before he can get to that spot it sense notions of change and plurality are illusory, will have moved a little farther on again, and so Zeno developed a series of paradoxes to show that on indefinitely. Achilles can never catch the they lead to very uncommon, nonsensical tortoise no matter how fast he runs, for every conclusions, thereby proving that they cannot time he moves the tortoise moves too. Therefore represent the true nature of the world. motion through time (i.e. change) is impossible. Zeno offers two series of arguments levelled Zeno’s argument seems to show that space against the idea of the plurality of things and cannot consist of an infinite series of points. We against the idea of motion. First, Zeno wants to cannot make the obvious move of claiming that show that there cannot be many different things space is infinitely divisible, for the same in the world, despite the seemingly obvious argument given earlier against the idea of evidence of our senses. Any three dimensional plurality. Any line or distance can be divided object is divisible into many parts. It can be into a smaller line, and that into a smaller line repeatedly divided until one gets down to the very still, and so on indefinitely. If one can talk about basis of matter, or substance. But then even atoms a physical magnitude one can also talk of half can be split, as can - modern science tells us - the that magnitude. In this way, Zeno tried to defend constituents of atoms, neutrons and protons. Parmenides’ view that the true nature of reality is Indeed it seems that logically anything that has a an unchanging, indivisible whole. Kant, Hume physical magnitude can be divided into half that and Hegel all offered solutions to Zeno’s magnitude. Therefore one cannot say that matter paradoxes, none of which were entirely is composed of a collection of spatially extended successful. Only by using modern set-theoretic units or points, since one can continue dividing mathematics, which abandons the Euclidean anything that is extended, ad infinitum. Therefore definition of a line as a series of points, has a matter must be continuous, not discrete. reasonably satisfactory answer to Zeno been Zeno’s arguments against the idea of motion found. take essentially the same form. Suppose Achilles

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Socrates c.470–399BC

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The Academics: Socrates

‘The only thing I know is that I know nothing’

ocrates lived through times of great certain knowledge of some particular subject. It political upheaval in his birthplace is chiefly through the influence of Socrates that of Athens, a city which would philosophy developed into the modern discipline eventually make him a scapegoat for of continuous critical reflection. The greatest its troubles and ultimately demand danger to both society and the individual, we hisS life. Much of what is known about Socrates learn from Socrates, is the suspension of critical comes through the works of his one time pupil thought. Plato, for Socrates himself was an itinerant Loved by the city’s aristocratic youth, philosopher who taught solely by means of Socrates inevitably developed many enemies public discussion and oratory and never wrote throughout his lifetime. In his seventieth year, any philosophical works of his own. or thereabouts, after Athens had gone through Unlike the Greek philosophers before him, several changes of leadership and a period of Socrates was less concerned with abstract failing fortunes, Socrates was brought to trial on metaphysical ponderings than with practical charges of ‘corrupting the youth’ and ‘not questions of how we ought to live, and what the believing in the city gods’. It would seem that good life for man might be. Consequently, he is the charges were brought principally to persuade often hailed as the inventor of that branch of Socrates to renounce his provocative public philosophy known as ethics. It is precisely his speaking and convince the citizens of Athens concern with ethical matters that often led him that the new leadership had a tight rein on law into conflict with the city elders, who accused and order. With a plea of guilty he might perhaps him of corrupting the minds of the sons of the have walked away from the trial and lived out wealthy with revolutionary and unorthodox the rest of his life as a private citizen. However, ideas. in characteristic style, he robustly defended Socrates was certainly a maverick, often himself, haranguing his accusers and claiming claiming to the consternation of his interlocutors that god himself had sent him on his mission to that the only thing he was sure of was his own practice and teach philosophy. When asked, upon ignorance. Indeed much of his teaching consisted being found guilty, what penalty he thought he in asking his audience to define various common should receive, Socrates mocked the court by ideas and notions, such as ‘beauty’, or ‘the good’, suggesting a trifling fine of only 30 minae. or ‘piety’, only to show through reasoned Outraged, a greater majority voted for Socrates argument that all of the proposed definitions and to be put to death by the drinking of hemlock common conceptions lead to paradox or than had originally voted him guilty. absurdity. Some of his contemporaries thought Unperturbed, Socrates readily agreed to abide by this technique disingenuous, and that Socrates the laws of his city and forbade his family and knew more than he let on. However, Socrates’ friends from asking for a stay of execution. method was meant to provide salutary lessons in Socrates’ trial, death and final speeches are the dangers of uncritical acceptance of wonderfully captured by Plato in his dialogues orthodoxy. He often railed against, and made Apology, Crito and Phaedo. dialectic victims of, those who claimed to have

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Plato c.427–347BC

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The Academics: Plato

‘The safest characterisation of Western philosophy

is that of a series of footnotes to Plato’ A.N. Whitehead

tudent of Socrates and founder of endorsing Platonism in this respect. the Academy, the first reported The Theory of Forms also underlies Plato’s institution of higher education – most contentious and best known work, The no philosopher has had a greater Republic. In a quest to understand the nature and or wider-ranging influence in the value of justice, Plato offers a vision of a utopian historyS of philosophy than Plato. Alfred North society led by an elite class of guardians who are Whitehead once said, with much justification, trained from birth for the task of ruling. The rest that the safest characterisation of Western of society is divided into soldiers and the philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to common people. In the republic, the ideal citizen Plato. There is no topic of philosophical concern is one who understands how best they can use for which one cannot find some view in the their talents to the benefit of the whole of society, corpus of his work. and bends unerringly to that task. There is little Accordingly it can be difficult to characterise thought of personal freedom or individual rights such a vast and comprehensive canon of thought. in Plato’s republic, for everything is tightly However, much of Plato’s work revolves around controlled by the guardians for the good of the his conception of a realm of ideal forms. The state as a whole. This has led some, notably world of experience is illusory, Plato tells us, since Bertrand Russell, to accuse Plato of endorsing an only that which is unchanging and eternal is real, elitist and totalitarian regime under the guise of an idea he borrowed from Parmenides. There communist or socialist principles. Whether must, then, be a realm of eternal unchanging Russell and others who level this criticism are forms that are the blueprints of the ephemeral right or not is itself a subject of great debate. But phenomena we encounter through sense it is important to understand Plato’s reasons for experience. According to Plato, though there are organising society in this way. The Republic is many individual horses, cats and dogs, they are an attempt, in line with his theory of forms, to all made in the image of the one universal form of discover the ideal form of society. Plato thinks ‘the horse’, ‘the cat’, ‘the dog’ and so on. Likewise, there must be one ideal way to organise society, just as there are many men, all men are made in of which all actual societies are mere imperfect the image of the universal ‘form of man’. The copies, since they do not promote the good of all. influence of this idea on later Christian thought, Such a society, Plato believes, would be stronger in which man is made in the image of God, is only than its neighbours and unconquerable by its one of many ways in which Plato had a direct enemies, a thought very much in Greek minds influence on Christian theology. given the frequent warring between Athens, Plato’s Theory of Forms, however, was not Sparta and the other Hellenistic city-states. But restricted to material objects. He also thought more importantly, such a society would be just to there were ideal forms of universal or abstract all its citizens, giving to and taking from each concepts, such as beauty, justice, truth and their due, with each citizen working for the mathematical concepts such as number and class. benefit of the whole. Whether Plato’s republic is Indeed, it is in mathematics that Plato’s influence an ideal, or even viable society, has had scholars is still felt strongly today, both Frege and Gödel divided ever since.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Aristotle 384–322BC

ristotle’s achievements in the scientist, astronomer, political theorist and the history and development of inventor of what is now called symbolic or formal western thought are both stunning logic. He wrote extensively on biology, and unrivalled. More than just a psychology, ethics, physics, metaphysics and A philosopher, Aristotle was a politics and set the terms of debate in all these

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The Academics: Aristotle

More than just a philosopher, Aristotle was a scientist, astronomer and political theorist

areas right up to modern times. Indeed, his be exact laws of human nature, whilst writings on justice are still required reading for maintaining that certain metaphysical categories undergraduates reading Law. – such as quantity, quality, substance and relation After his death his works were lost for some – were applicable to the description of all 200 years or so, but fortunately were phenomena. rediscovered in Crete. Later translated into Latin If there is one common thread to much of by Boethius around 500 AD, Aristotle’s influence Aristotle’s work it lies in his conception of spread throughout Syria and Islam whilst teleology, or purpose. Perhaps as a result of his Christian Europe ignored him in favour of Plato. preoccupation with biological studies, Aristotle Not until Thomas Aquinas reconciled Aristotle’s was impressed by the idea that both animate and work with Christian doctrine in the 13th century inanimate behaviour is directed toward some did he become influential in western Europe. final purpose (‘telos’) or goal. It is common to Aristotle received his education from age explain the behaviour of people, institutions and seventeen in Plato’s ‘Academy’, where he stayed nations in terms of purposes and goals (John is for some 20 years until Plato’s death. Later he sitting the bar exam to become a barrister; the founded his own institution, ‘the Lyceum’, where school is holding a fête to raise funds for the he would expound a philosophy altogether roof; the country is going to war to protect its different both in method and content from that of territory), and likewise modern evolutionary his former teacher. biology makes use of purposive explanation to More than any other philosopher before him, account for the behaviour of, for instance, genes Aristotle made much of observation and strict and genetic imperatives. However, Aristotle classification of data in his studies. For this thought the concept of purpose could be invoked reason he is often considered as the father of to explain the behaviour of everything in the empirical science and scientific method. Unlike universe. His reasoning lay in the idea that his predecessor Plato, Aristotle always undertook everything has a natural function and strives his investigations by considering the regarded towards fulfilling or exhibiting that function, opinions of both experts and lay people, before which is its best and most natural state. It is by detailing his own arguments, assuming that some means of the concept of function that Aristotle grain of truth is likely to be found in commonly then ties his ethics to his physics, claiming that held ideas. Aristotle’s method was nothing if not the natural function of man is to reason, and to rigorous and lacked the proselytising tone of reason well is to reason in accordance with many of his predecessors. virtue. Unlike the opposing ethical theories of In contradistinction to both Plato and the Kant and Mill, both of which view actions as the Presocratics, Aristotle rejected the idea that the subject of ethical judgements, Aristotle’s ethics many diverse branches of human inquiry could, focuses on the character of the agent as that in principle, be subsumed under one discipline which is morally good or morally bad. This so- based on some universal philosophic principle. called ‘virtue ethics’ was revived with much Different sciences require different axioms and critical success by Alistair Macintyre in late 20th admit of varying degrees of precision according century moral philosophy. to their subject. Thus Aristotle denied there could

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Democritus c.460–370BC

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The Atomists: Democritus

The fundamental nature of the universe consists of indivisible atoms in constant motion

lthough it is said that in Athens absolute space in which atoms are eternally in Democritus was hardly recognised motion. One might suppose that Parmenides by the intellectual elite, he would have objected to this on logical grounds: to nevertheless can be seen as say that there is a void is to say the void exists, so representing the pinnacle of one can only claim on pain of contradiction that presocraticA thought and his atomist metaphysic the void is the absence of being or of existence. has been much admired for its distinctly modern Democritus’ solution, ingenious for its novelty flavour. even if not entirely convincing, was to abandon According to Democritus, the fundamental the old idea (an idea ironically reinvented in nature of the universe consists of indivisible Einstein’s relativistic physics) that the void or atoms in constant motion and travelling in an space must be conceived of as a property of infinite void. Material objects are temporary matter. Rather, Democritus held that the infinite concatenations of these atoms, made and void was merely the absence of matter and destroyed as atoms come together or disperse materially independent of the existence of atoms. according to natural forces, whilst the atoms This problem, of the relationship between the themselves are eternal and indestructible. In void and matter, or in philosophical parlance, on answer to Zeno, Democritus held that whilst the ontological status of space, would reappear atoms could be geometrically divided, it is only much later in the protracted debates between matter containing spaces – literally, parts of the Isaac Newton – who would uphold Democritus’ void between the atoms – that can be physically idea of absolute space as a kind of receptacle for divided. An atom itself could not be physically matter – and Leibniz, who thought of space as divided since it is perfectly solid, completely merely a relation between physical objects. The excluding the void, and thereby indivisible. history of the debate is interesting in its own Democritus’ atomism represents a cogent right, for until Einstein, the general opinion attempt at unifying the thought of earlier amongst philosophers and scientists was that philosophers. With Heraclitus, the atomist Democritus and Newton were correct, whereas it philosophy agrees that change and motion are now seems that Parmenides, Leibniz and Einstein both possible and necessary states of nature. have the better of the argument. But there is also a certain sympathy with Democritus’ atomic theory has other modern Parmenides’ claim that non-existence or non- connotations. For he also held that every event being is problematic. For Democritus, anything in the universe is causally determined by that exists is a concatenation of atoms, even preceding events, on account of the fact that thoughts in the mind. Yet along with both material objects behave according to the impacts Parmenides and Zeno, Democritus agreed that of atoms upon each other, much as one billiard motion would be impossible if the universe ball striking another causes each to alter its consisted of nothing but matter. The universe course. A more sophisticated version of this would be an immense solid where change is view, called ‘determinism’, has been both impossible, just as Parmenides had claimed. To vigorously defended and denied in the recent account for motion Democritus postulated that history of modern philosophy and remains a live the only true non-being is the infinite void, the issue to this day.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Epicurus 341–270BC

orn to a poor Athenian colonist of contemporary life were salved by the pursuit in Samos, Epicurus was neither of pleasure without fear of divine punishment. wealthy nor aristocratic and In essence, Epicurus follows Democritus’ apparently suffered from ill health atomism but with one important modification. for much of his life. His philosophy According to Epicurus, atoms in the void Brepresents a creative blend of the metaphysical originally moved in undisturbed parallel lines. interests of the Presocratics with the ethical However, some atoms swerved from their course concerns of Socrates. In line with Democritus, by a spontaneous act of free will. The resulting Epicurus espoused an atomistic metaphysics but collisions giving rise to the myriad forms of combined and justified it with a brand of things and the phenomenal world as we now therapeutic hedonism, in which the anxieties know it. This important modification of atomism

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The Atomists: Epicurus

Epicurus’s ethics consisted in the pursuit of happiness, conceived of as the elimination of pain

allowed Epicurus to proclaim mechanism but perhaps unsurprising that central to his reject determinism as an explanation of human philosophy were both prudence and temperance. behaviour, one of the primary reasons for Epicurus also taught that wisdom was the dissatisfaction with Democritus’ philosophy. greatest virtue, for through it we could learn Although he kept to the idea that the soul was which pleasures to seek and which to avoid. itself nothing but the movement of atoms in the Moreover, he professed that no one could be material body, some atoms could freely ‘swerve completely happy unless they lived a virtuous in the void’. This mysterious and wholly life, not because virtue was good in itself, but unaccounted for property allowed Epicurus to because it led to pleasurable consequences and maintain a concept of human free will against the absence of pain and fear. the critics of earlier atomic theories. Like Democritus and other Presocratics before It is clear, however, that Epicurus’ real him, Epicurus rejected the idea of anthropomor- interest was not in speculative metaphysics phic gods who were cognisant of human affairs. but with a practical philosophy of life which Indeed, he was the first to formulate an argument required atomism only for its theoretical that later became called ‘the problem of evil’ for underpinnings. His ethical teaching consisted those who maintain that there is an all-loving, in the pursuit of happiness, which he conceived all-knowing, all-powerful deity. Noting the many of as the elimination of pain, both mental and ills suffered by people in the world, Epicurus physical. Of the two, Epicurus taught, mental pain complained, ‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but is the worse, for severe physical pain either soon not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, abates and can be brought under control but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he of the mind, or results in death. Death was not both able and willing? Then how can there be to be feared, since there is no afterlife and no evil?’ Even so, Epicurus was not an atheist, since avenging gods, the soul being, in accordance he believed there were gods, but that these gods with the doctrine of atomism, merely the had no interest in human affairs, which would concatenation of atoms which will be dispersed only have distracted them from their own pursuit upon bodily death. Mental anguish, on the other of pleasure in contemplation. hand, in the form of anxiety and fears, could Epicurus’ philosophy represents a curious continue unabated and result in distraction, mix of opposing ideas. He is at once a hedonist depression and other psychological ills. who preaches prudence and temperance, a theist Although thought of as a hedonist because who rejects divine intervention and the survival of his emphasis on the pursuit of pleasure, it of the soul, and an atomist who upholds both would be a mistake to think of Epicurus as mechanism and free will. His followers became condoning a promiscuous or decadent lifestyle, known as the Epicureans, the most famous of an accusation unjustly levelled at him by the whom was Lucretius. Epicurean philosophy stoic philosopher, Epictetus. On the contrary, he enjoyed almost six hundred years of popularity, was aware that many of the bodily pleasures remaining faithful to the teachings of its founder brought with them pain or had painful throughout, before being eclipsed by the Roman consequences. He himself was a man of little interest in Stoicism. means and of poor health, given which it is

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Diogenes of Sinope 400–325BC

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The Cynics: Diogenes of Sinope

Nicknamed ‘the dog’ for his vagrant lifestyle, Diogenes was described as ‘a Socrates gone mad’

ontemporary of Aristotle, Diogenes’ purposefully open oneself up to ridicule and abuse style and method of philosophy could in order to remain emotionally detached. Though not have been further removed from more radical and uncompromising, Diogenes’ that taught at Plato’s Academy. philosophy has its counterpart in the teachings of Diogenes was a charismatic and the oriental schools of Buddhism and Taoism. Cenigmatic character and inspiration for the However, critics complain that Diogenes’ lifestyle Cynics, a school of thought that rejected the is self-indulgent, relying on the generosity and complications and machinations of civic life. productivity of others to support his vagrant Whether Diogenes ever actually wrote down his lifestyle. There is a philosophical point here, not ideas is open to question, but if so they are all just a pragmatic one, concerning the lost and it would seem out of keeping with his universalisability of ethical prescriptions. If lifestyle and philosophy for him to have done so. everyone were to follow Diogenes’ example Diogenes professed a simplistic lifestyle, society would collapse making it economically foregoing the trappings and distractions of civic impossible for anyone – including Diogenes – to life in favour of a devotion to the mastery of the concentrate on the mastery of the self. Therefore self. Equally he reviled metaphysics and the Diogenes’ philosophy is elitist – it cannot be intellectual pretensions of philosophers. Diogenes universally followed. claimed that happiness could only be achieved by Such criticism hardly troubled the Cynics, the living ‘according to nature’. This meant satisfying loose collection of philosophers who followed in only the most basic requirements of the body by Diogenes’ footsteps. It must be noted that the the simplest means possible. Nicknamed ‘the dog’ term ‘Cynic’ had a different connotation from the for his vagrant lifestyle, Diogenes was allegedly modern one, being derived from the Greek word described by Plato as ‘a Socrates gone mad’. He ‘Kyon’ meaning ‘dog’, Diogenes’ nickname. In made his living by begging, refusing to wear Ancient Greece and Rome, where a resurgent anything but the simplest of cloth and was Cynicism also enjoyed brief popularity around renowned for outrageous public stunts – once 1 AD, the term stood for what we would now reputedly masturbating in front of a crowd to understand as asceticism. As such it would be show how easily and trivially sexual desires can over simplistic to pass off the Cynics’ philosophy be sated. as merely self-indulgent or elitist. The Cynics’ According to Diogenes, mastery of the self, popularity coincided with times of economic or ‘self-sufficiency’, leads to both happiness turbulence and social unrest. Their ideas, which and freedom but requires constant practice taught that the one thing of real value – which and training in the face of adversity. His was neither family, friends, cultural values or uncompromising philosophy requires that one material goods, but the mastery of the self – should abandon all property, possessions, family was the one thing that could not be taken away ties and social values in order to minimise the no matter how calamitous a misfortune one distraction of ‘illusory’ emotional and might suffer. As a general philosophic principle it psychological attachments. But to avoid such has merit and was highly influential upon the distractions is not enough. One must aggressively later Stoic philosophers. attack society to help liberate others, and

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Marcus Tullius Cicero 106–43BC

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The Stoics: Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero’s dialogues are principally a ‘pick and mix’ of the three leading Greek philosophical schools

or much of his life Cicero was known philosophy, as well as make it more appealing to as a Roman politician, lawyer and a modern audience. orator, who despite his humble origins, In this aim Cicero is largely judged to have rose to pre-eminence among the been successful. The philosophical vocabulary conservative Roman aristocracy. As a invented by him is responsible for Latin Fyouth he had travelled and studied in Greece and becoming the primary philosophical language maintained a firm interest in philosophy over Greek: despite the invention of modern throughout his public life. He maintained languages, Latin remained the primary language friendships with philosophers from all the leading of philosophy right up until the Renaissance. schools but it was not until his retirement, Even Descartes’ hugely influential Meditations on finding himself in the political wilderness, that he First Philosophy, published in 1641, was written devoted his final years to translating large parts first in Latin and only later translated into of the Greek corpus into Latin. Much of our French. Its most famous conclusion ‘Cogito ergo knowledge of Greek thought is due to Cicero’s sum’ (popularly translated as ‘I think, therefore I translations and he remains a primary source for am’) is still today referred to in philosophical students of Hellenistic philosophy. schools by its Latin name, ‘the Cogito’. Of Cicero’s many works the most important Although philosophy no longer uses Latin as include his Academica, on the impossibility of its first language, many of Cicero’s philosophical certain knowledge, the De Finibus and De Officiis, terms are still in common employment today. in which he discusses the ends of human action Latin phrases such as a priori (meaning ‘prior to and the rules of right conduct, the Tusculan experience’), a posteriori (derived from Disputations, concerning the problems of experience), a fortiori (even more so), reductio ad happiness, pain, the human emotions and death, absurdum (reduction to absurdity), ceteris and On the Nature of Gods and On Divination, paribus (a caveat meaning ‘other things being both concerned with theological matters. equal’), are not just in common philosophical Mostly produced in the last two years of his usage but also, in some cases, set the agenda for life, Cicero’s philosophy comprises a mixture of the philosophical debate. For example, the great scepticism in the theory of knowledge and debate between empiricists and rationalists (see stoicism in ethics. He was largely critical of all Locke and Leibniz, respectively) is primarily a things Epicurean. Although he maintained a debate over whether there can be such a thing as claim to some originality in his thought, Cicero’s a priori knowledge – as the rationalists maintain dialogues are principally a ‘pick and mix’ of the – or whether all knowledge is a posteriori, in three leading Greek philosophical schools. This other words, derived from experience. In both was neither by accident, nor disguised. Cicero logic and philosophical logic, Latin terms remain felt that the more modern Latin language could in current and widespread use. resolve and clarify the problems of Greek

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Philo of Alexandria c.20BC–?

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The Stoics: Philo of Alexandria

Philo of Alexandria was something of an odd fish in classical thought

hilo of Alexandria, sometimes world, the mind to the divine. Following Plato’s known as Philo Judaeus or Philo tripartite account of the soul, Philo maintains Alexandrinus, was something of an that the two parts of the soul, the rational and the odd fish in classical thought. A Jew irrational, are bound together by the spirit. both by birth and upbringing, he is The resemblance with Greek philosophy does principallyP remembered for his philosophical not end there, however. Combining Plato’s ideas commentaries on the scriptures. His family, of a in the Republic with a dash of Aristotle, Philo sacerdotal line, was one of the most powerful of holds that the telos or goal of man is to become the populous Jewish colony of Alexandria. His like a god, to reach out to the divine in brother Alexander Lysimachus was steward to contemplation and so return as far as possible Anthony's second daughter, and married one of to the divine source. Moreover, Philo is also his sons to the daughter of Herod Agrippa, whom heavily influenced by the Stoics, and in he had put under financial obligations. Philo particular is keen to emulate their use of allegory received a Jewish education, studying the laws to provide a philosophical exegesis of the and national traditions, but he also followed the scriptures. The scriptures should not be read Greek plan of studies (grammar with reading of literally, says Philo, but as containing hidden the poets, geometry, rhetoric, dialectics) which he truths, waiting to be found by those with the regarded as a preparation for philosophy. His patience and will to discover them. works show that he had a first hand knowledge All this leads to the question of how far, or of the stoical theories then prevailing, and his whether at all, Philo is an original thinker. We thought is heavily influenced by Plato and the have included him here not just to represent Stoics, and his great knowledge of Greco-Roman an unusual class of philosopher – an orthodox culture and philosophy was always put to service Jew with a bent for Greek intellectualism, but in the defence of Judaism. Particularly concerned also because Philo aims to do more than just with interpreting the book of Moses, Philo’s synthesise Greek and Jewish wisdom. His thought was nevertheless never really popular ambition is wholly Judaic. By showing that what with his Jewish contemporaries and it appears is valuable in Greek thought is already present in his thought was largely preserved for posterity Judaism he offers a defence and justification for by early Christian thinkers. the received wisdom of his culture. Surprisingly, Nonetheless, Philo’s reading of the old he was popular amongst and exerted a great Testament, and in particular the book of Moses, influence upon many early Christian scholars that takes a definite Platonic turn, and specifically the followed him, in particular Origen (second century Plato of the Timaeus rather than the later, more AD). But the danger for Philo, as more than one considered works. For Philo, man is created by commentator has noted, is that the influence God, first as a form in the mind – or Logos – of Greek philosophy exerts on him is so strong that God, and next as a corporeal being possessed of he does not appear to realize that his own an incorporeal soul. So constituted, man is religious foundations are in danger of being swept ‘a border-dweller, situated on the borderline away. No one would claim Philo’s thought has between the divine and the non-divine’. Philo been completely overwhelmed by its Greek claims that the corporeal body belongs to the influence, but it is surely compromised by it.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4BC–AD65

on of Seneca the Elder, the younger and finally, after falsely being accused of Lucius was born in Cordoba, Spain. plotting against Nero, whom he had tutored as a He was educated in philosophy from small boy, Seneca took his own life in AD 65. an early age in Rome, where he would Nevertheless, he had a successful career as a flirt with death at the hands of three lawyer and amassed a personal fortune. He wrote emperorsS during his lifetime. Caligula would many works, which can be categorised into have had him killed but was dissuaded on the – broadly three main kinds. First, there are his inaccurate – grounds that Seneca was anyway essays on Stoic philosophy, then the sermonising destined to live a short life. Claudius exiled him Epistles, and finally his plays, often depicting

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The Stoics: Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The heart of his philosophy was the belief in a simple life devoted to virtue and reason

graphic violence. His many plays include The the Stoics did not pursue a hedonistic lifestyle. Trojan Women, Oedipus, Medea, The Mad Rather, Seneca insists that the only good is Hercules, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, virtue. Doing the right thing is of paramount Agamemnon and Thyestes. importance and one should show an attitude of Seneca was a Stoic philosopher but with a indifference to all else. Each and every one of us, somewhat pragmatic bent. Unlike the other professes Seneca, has a god within him guiding Stoics who often aspired to lofty goals few if any us along the path set for us by Providence. We could ever reach, Seneca moderated his can attain happiness only by acting in accord philosophy with a more practical approach. As with our own true nature, as revealed by our with the other Stoics, the heart of his philosophy inner guide, and by being content with one’s lot was the belief in a simple life devoted to virtue in life. Altruism and simple living are essential to and reason. However, his extant works, Seneca’s idea of correct living. particularly the one hundred and twenty-four The importance Seneca places on doing the essays of his Epistles, but also to a degree his right thing in his philosophy appears to be essays, contain the same tone, being often sincere, given the manner of his death as persuasive entreaties rather than expositions of reported by the Roman historian, Tacitus. Upon technical philosophy. He is constantly trying to hearing Nero’s sentence, Seneca slashed his arms administer advice to his reader rather than and legs and gave an erudite speech to his wife impart philosophical wisdom. It is said that and a gathered audience. His wife Paulina, in Boethius was consoled by reading Seneca whilst despair, attempted to take her own life at the in prison. One particular passage to Seneca’s same time, to which Seneca said, ‘I have shown grieving mother is illustrative of his sermonising you ways of smoothing life; you prefer the glory style: ‘You never polluted yourself with make-up, of dying. I will not grudge you such a noble and you never wore a dress that covered about as example.’ However, the Emperor’s soldiers much on as it did off. Your only ornament, the prevented Paulina from carrying out the deed by kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the tying her up. Despite his wounds, Seneca great honour of modesty. So you cannot use your lingered on. Tacitus reports that Seneca ‘begged sex to justify your sorrow when with your virtue Statius Annaeus...to produce a poison with which you have transcended it. Keep as far away from he had some time before provided himself, the women’s tears as from their faults’. same drug which extinguished the life of those This sermonising is typical of Seneca’s work who were condemned by a public sentence of the and becomes more frequent as he matures. His people of Athens [i.e. the hemlock of Socrates]. It Stoicism is tinged with a kind of pseudo- was brought to him and he drank it in vain, religious flavour but importantly reflects a chilled as he was throughout his limbs, and his concern with ethical and moral principles at the frame closed against the efficacy of the expense of metaphysics. Seneca’s stoicism is less poison…He was then carried into a bath, with the a theoretical philosophy than a guide to living. steam of which he was suffocated, and he was Like the Epicureans, the Stoics thought that a burnt without funeral rites. So he had directed in proper understanding of the world would his will, when even in the height of his wealth transform our daily lives. Unlike the Epicureans, and power he was thinking of his life’s close.’

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Marcus Aurelius 121–180

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The Stoics: Marcus Aurelius

‘The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts’

dopted son of the Emperor Pius, philosophers of the East. Simple living and Marcus Aurelius himself became contentment with one’s lot go hand in hand with Roman emperor for almost 20 stoicism, but run the risk of leading to quietism. years until his death in 180 AD. As a means of social control Stoicism is the ideal He is known for his only work ‘religion’, since the more that people are willing theA Meditations or Writings to Himself, written, to accept that things are just as they are, the less according to critics, in the midst of the Parthian trouble they are likely to give the Emperor. war when he might have better used his time Though it is unlikely that Marcus Aurelius directing the army. Still, as a ‘converted’ Stoic, professed Stoicism for political purposes – the he had great concern for the social problems of Meditations seem sincere enough – it is a factor the poor, slaves, and the imprisoned. Despite this, of his philosophy that should not be ignored. he continued, as emperor, with the persecution of The rationale behind the Stoic insistence on the growing Christian population, undoubtedly living ‘in accordance with nature’ stems from because he saw them as a threat to the Roman a certain biological outlook. According to the religion and way of life, based as this was on Stoics, all ‘ensouled beings’ (by which they mean conquest, polytheism, and the deification of dead what we would now call ‘sentient life’) strive emperors. His own life ended as a result of the towards self-preservation. Self-preservation leads plague, whilst he was planning a campaign to a being to look for that which is in tune with its increase the domain of the Empire to the north. nature and appropriate to its own being. Man, The importance of his Meditations lies in their being endowed with reason, seeks not just food, practical and aphoristic Stoic message. A warmth and shelter, but also that which is good loosely-organised set of thoughts relating to for the intellect. Ultimately, Reason allows us to stoic philosophy, they nevertheless represent an choose that which is in tune with our true nature example of a living ethic, of a teaching closer with greater accuracy than if we merely follow to religion than to philosophic speculation. our animal instinct. For example, the following is typical of Marcus Central to this Stoic outlook is an Aurelius: ‘The happiness of your life depends understanding of what constitutes the good or on the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard most appropriate life for human beings. Whilst accordingly, and take care that you entertain no many thinkers might suppose health or wealth, notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable the Stoics insist that the ultimate good must be nature’. good at all times. It is conceivable that wealth Like Seneca before him, Marcus Aurelius might sometimes be detrimental to a person, and believed that a divine providence had placed so too even health, if for example, my strength reason in man, and it was in the power of man to were put to ill-doing. Accordingly, the Stoics be one with the rational purpose of the universe. conclude that the only infallible good is virtue. The Stoic philosophy was primarily concerned Virtue includes the usual list of Greco-Roman with living in accordance with both one’s own excellences: wisdom, justice, courage, and nature and universal Nature, perhaps best moderation. understood in the sense meant by Taoist

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Sextus Empiricus c. 100–200

othing is known of Sextus in which Sextus Empiricus sets forth the doctrine Empiricus’ biography, only that his of the Pyrrhonian Sceptics. It is solely due to the name is attached to some of the survival of his works that we know anything most important surviving works of of the Sceptics and a great deal more than we the Roman era, the eleven volumes otherwise would about many of the earlier Greek Nof Arguments against the Dogmatists and philosophers. Founded by Pyrrho around the 3rd Mathematicians and the Outlines of Scepticism, century BC, the Pyrrhonian Sceptics expounded a

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The Sceptics: Sextus Empiricus

The intention [of scepticism] is to bring about a kind of therapeutic apostasy

formidable counter-philosophy to contemporary colourless. Of course, we can give explanations as schools of thought, principally the Aristotelians, to why snow ‘appears’ white and water ‘appears’ the Epicureans and the Stoics. Pyrrho, like colourless, but to do so is only to favor one way Socrates and several other philosophers of the of looking at things over another. Someone could Ancient world, wrote nothing himself nor took equally give an alternative and incompatible much care to elucidate his philosophy for others, explanation to account for the same appearances. so far as we can tell. Nonetheless, this did not Because of the logical gap between reality and stop his followers from documenting and appearance, a gap we cannot close because developing his philosophy which seems to have knowledge of reality is always mediated by the culminated in the voluminous works of Sextus fallible bodily senses, there is no way of proving Empiricus. that things are really one way rather than another. The philosophy of the Sceptics is at once both How does this lead to tranquillity rather than simple and far-reaching. It is simple in that it intellectual anxiety? Sextus argues thus: suppose turns on one principal claim, which is that one someone asserts that things are assuredly either cannot assert any proposition with any better good or bad. Such a person will remain troubled justification than one can assert its contradictory. throughout life, feeling hard done by insofar as Thus Pyrrho’s philosophy is said to be summed they lack the good things and are recipients of up in the dictum ‘No more this than that’, the bad. On the other hand, if they are fortunate meaning that one is no more justified to assert to benefit from a bounty of good things, they a proposition ‘X’ than its negation, ‘not X’. It is will remain anxious not to lose them, living in far-reaching because the intention of sceptical fear of a change of fortune. But the sceptic, by philosophy is not to simply checkmate the suspending all judgement of what is good or bad, intellect into philosophical apathy, a result right or wrong, true or false, neither pursues nor common amongst philosophy students who are avoids anything with any passion or intensity. rarely taught the deeper import of scepticism. He remains indifferent to the vicissitudes of life, Rather, the intention is to bring about a kind of and hence achieves tranquillity. therapeutic apostasy, which Sextus clearly shows Critics have complained that Sceptical will lead to tranquillity and peace of mind, the philosophy is not a possible way of life, that ultimate ambition of sceptical philosophy. passing judgement is a natural and unavoidable Sextus offers a battery of sceptical arguments psychological function. Moreover, the sceptical to back his claim that for any proposition its claim is self-defeating. If it is true that one contradictory can be asserted with equal cannot justifiably assert a proposition over its justification. Clearly, the same object can look negation, then this applies to the sceptical claim very different from a distance than it does from itself. Paradoxically, this seems only to add nearby, but why should we think the closer merit to the sceptical view. If one cannot inspection more truthful than the other? conclusively pass judgement on scepticism one Sometimes it is only by standing back that way or the other, perhaps one should indeed something can be seen clearly. To someone who avoid passing judgement at all, just as the sceptic claims snow is white, it could be pointed out that recommends. snow is only frozen water, and that water is

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Plotinus 205–270

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The Neoplatonists: Plotinus

Plotinus believed in a trio of divinities, these being the One, the Intellect and the Soul

orn in Egypt and educated almost source of reality. After the One comes the Intellect entirely in the Greek tradition, or ‘Nous’, which corresponds to intuitive Plotinus eventually settled in Rome knowledge. The Intellect is also difficult to after an expedition to the Orient with describe in language, but Plotinus offers us the Emperor Gordian was abandoned various analogies. The Intellect is like the light of whenB Gordian was assassinated by the Roman the Sun, it illuminates the One, and is the means army. The times of Plotinus were the beginning of by which the One contemplates itself. The troubled times that would soon spell the end of Intellect is the source and ground of the the old Roman Empire, and its division into archetypes, or Platonic Forms (see Plato), of Eastern and Western Empires. Indeed, Plotinus is material things. Thought and the objects of regarded as the last great thinker of the Roman thought are united in the Intellect, there is no age. division between subject and object, perceiver Plotinus’ fame lies in his reworking and and perceived. The next level of reality is Soul, development of the philosophy of Plato, work that which corresponds to rational or discursive would give rise to what later became known as thinking. There is a higher and lower division, ‘Neoplatonism’, although his philosophy is also between the higher and inward-facing Soul, influenced by Aristotle and the Roman Stoics. looking towards the divine by means of the His many works were collected and edited by Intellect, and the lower and outward-facing Soul. his student Porphyry under the title Enneads. The Plotinus calls this lower part Nature. It is this, title derives from the Greek word for ‘nine’, lower, outer-facing Nature, that is responsible for reflecting the fact that there are nine chapters or the material world. As human beings, both levels treatises to each of the six books in the collection. of the Soul are present in us, and it is up to us to Plotinus’ philosophy combines the mystical choose between being concerned with the lower with the practical, and was to have a great level concerns of the body, or to look inward and influence on Christian theology. His philosophy contemplate the higher realities of the Intellect. is aimed at helping the student to return, in The key to understanding Plotinus’ union or communion, to the One or ultimate cosmogony lies in understanding that the three Being by means of contemplation. As in levels of reality, the One, the Intellect and the Christian theology, Plotinus believed in a Soul, are logical progressions, or levels of tripartite of divinities, these being the One, contemplation, of a singular eternal reality, the Intellect and the Soul. However, unlike the rather than temporal successions of coming-into- Christian trinity, these are not on an equal being. Time is only created by the inadequate footing but are rather successive ‘stages’ or ability of Nature to contemplate the divine. emanations of contemplative being. According to Plotinus, it comes about in the The One, which Plotinus – following Plato – lower order of material existence because Soul, sometimes referred to as ‘the Good’, is beyond unlike the Intellect, is unable to contemplate the description. Language can only point to the One, Forms immediately, but instead must and even the many names of the One are not its contemplate them as fragmented objects true names. Rather, it is the ineffable, mystical perceived in moments of succession.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

St Augustine of Hippo 354–430

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The Christians: St Augustine of Hippo

Rational thought is the servant of faith:

‘unless thou believe thou shalt not understand’ Isaiah

eligious scholar and philosopher, heaven. Augustine found this doctrine subversive Augustine produced works, and distasteful. He argued, following the Epistle principally his Confessions and his of St Paul, that all men are born in sin. City of God, that are classics in both Redemption is only possible by the grace of God the philosophy of religion and regardless of our actions on Earth. Adam, in RChristian doctrine. Born in Algeria, he studied in taking the apple had condemned himself and all Carthage, Rome and Milan before returning to of mankind to damnation. Our only salvation lies North Africa to found a monastery. He was made in repentance, but this does not guarantee that we Bishop of Hippo Regius in 395. will be chosen to go to heaven and not to hell. At the heart of Augustine’s philosophy is the Augustine’s arguments, later revived by belief that only through faith can wisdom be Calvin and eventually abandoned by the Catholic attained. He saw both philosophy and religion as Church, are skilled rationalisations of St Paul’s quests for the same thing, namely truth, but with Epistle to the Romans. But nowhere does he the former inferior to the latter in this pursuit. The question the assumptions of the Epistle, philosopher without faith could never attain to concentrating instead on drawing out the logical the ultimate truth, which for Augustine was conclusions of the Scripture. beatitude, or ‘the enjoying of truth’. Although In more recent times, Augustine’s Confessions reason alone could attain to some truths, received attention from Wittgenstein, not for its Augustine maintained that rational thought was religious or even philosophical pronouncements, the servant of faith. but for the way in which Augustine describes the One of Augustine favourite texts, quoted from learning of language: Isaiah, held that ‘unless thou believe thou shalt ‘When they (my elders) named some object, not understand’. One must believe in order to and accordingly moved towards something, I acquire understanding. This idea of Augustine’s saw this and I grasped that the thing was called was not mere slavish following of Christian by the sound they uttered when they meant to doctrine. Indeed, in his youth he had renounced point it out. Their intention was shown by their religion, finding the scriptures intellectually bodily movements, as it were the natural language unsatisfying. After converting to Christianity in of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play his early thirties, it became his aim to show how of the eyes…Thus as I heard words repeatedly used reason could prove the tenets of faith. This was in their proper places in various sentences, I the idea that informed his philosophy. gradually learnt to understand what objects they Augustine’s use of reason to justify the signified; and ... I used them to express my own doctrines of faith is best known, famously or desires’ (Confessions, I. 8). infamously depending on one’s point of view, for At the beginning of his posthumously putting down the so-called ‘Pelagian heresy’. published Philosophical Investigations, Pelagius had questioned the notion of original Wittgenstein famously called this common-place sin, and further held, in accordance with the conception ‘the Augustinian picture of language’. notion of free will, that when a person does good Much of the rest of the Investigations is a they do so from the virtue of their own moral successful repudiation of the Augustinian character. As a result they are rewarded in conception of language.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Boethius 480–524

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The Christians: Boethius

Those who do ill shall suffer more if they are not caught than those that are

oethius died relatively young on is a god, but by nature there is only one God, but account of being executed by the there may be many by participation’. Gothic King, Theodoric. This The discovery that God is synonymous with singular misfortune was to prove of Good leads Boethius into considering the so- enormous consequence upon, not to called problem of evil (see Epicurus). Boethius’ Bmention benefit to, the development of Western solution is Aristotelian in essence, conceiving thought. For it was while imprisoned and the divine providence as rather like a spectator awaiting execution that the Roman senator of the Universe rather than an intervening agent. Boethius wrote his De Consolatione Philosophiae In effect, this amounts to a denial of God as an (The Consolation of Philosophy), the most widely omnipotent being. Nevertheless, there are read and influential book, after the Bible, up to elements of karmic retribution in Boethius’ and throughout the Middle Ages. philosophy. For he maintains that those who do The Consolation takes the form of a dialogue, ill shall suffer more if they are not caught than between Boethius and Philosophy. The style is those that are. Boethius’ logic, however, is unusual, being alternately written in prose and straightforward rather than mystical. Those who verse. Boethius’ thoughts and reflections are avoid punishment continue to be bad, rather written in prose, whilst the wisdom of his than good, and therefore move themselves yet interlocutor, Philosophy, appears in verse. further from blessedness and ultimate happiness. Boethius, faced with execution, seeks to ‘Virtuous men are always powerful, and bad men find solace for his misfortunes. Despite being always weak,’ claims Boethius, ‘for both desire a Christian and a hero of the Catholic Church, the good but only the virtuous get it’. unlike Augustine, Boethius appeals to reason Boethius goes on to discuss the perennial rather than faith for his consolation. In the book problem of free will and determinism. The he sets out and defines some of the perennial problem arises for him because of the paradox problems of philosophy, including the problem of between man being free to choose whether to evil, free will and determinism, the nature of be good or bad, and God’s foreknowledge of justice and of virtue. Boethius, primarily everything that will happen. If God knows that motivated by Plato in his philosophical views, you intend to do something before you even do finds that, ‘The substance of God consisteth in it, you could hardly do otherwise. But if you nothing else but goodness’. In other words, for could not do otherwise then it appears you do Boethius, God and ‘Goodness’ are synonymous. not have free will. Boethius’ solution is a rather This entails an interesting theological unsatisfactory compromise that allows free development, given that Boethius is revered as human agency in regard to moral choices. a Christian scholar. For Philosophy goes on to Nevertheless, there can be no denying that reveal to Boethius that in so far as any man is Boethius’ work, written while under the threat of truly good he is a god. ‘They who obtain divinity execution, is a masterpiece of philosophical become gods. Wherefore every one that is happy sincerity equal to The Last Days of Socrates.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

St Anselm 1033–1109

orn at Aosta in Burgundy, Anselm the chagrin of older and more established was a pious child and sought candidates. During the next thirty years he wrote admission to the monastic life at the his philosophical and theological works and was early age of 15. The local Abbot, appointed Abbot of Bec. however, refused him on his father’s Now remembered as the father of the Binsistence. After his mother’s death, Anselm took Scholastic tradition and Archbishop of to travelling. Eventually he arrived at the Abbey Canterbury from 1093 until his death, Anselm is of Bec and began studying under the renowned of philosophical interest mainly for his logical Prior Lanfranc. He eventually took his monastic arguments in two major works, the Monologion orders in 1060. Only three years later, when (meaning ‘Soliloquy’) and the Proslogion Lanfranc was appointed Abbot of Caen, the (Discourse), both of which gave various young Anselm succeeded him as Prior much to arguments intended to prove the existence of 48 A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3 Philos 228x163 Text All 11/8/06 4:15 pm Page 49

The Scholastics: St Anselm

The quality of perfection is an attribute only applicable to God

God. By the 12th century the works of Plato and exist, for by Anselm’s reasoning it would be less Aristotle had been rediscovered and reinterpreted than perfect if it did not. Thus, complained by the scholastics who attempted to synthesise Gaunilo, Anselm’s reasoning licences the early Greek ideas with medieval theology. existence of all sorts of imaginary objects and Following the Greek tradition, it is said that must therefore be faulty. In response, Anselm Anselm’s students had been concerned to hear a claimed that the quality of perfection is an rational justification for the existence of God attribute that only applies to God, and therefore that did not rely merely on the acceptance of his ontological argument cannot be used to scripture or doctrinal teaching. Anselm’s most prove the existence of imaginary islands or famous response to this challenge was to become anything else. famously known as ‘the ontological argument for Versions of Anselm’s ontological argument the existence of God’ which has been called by were later used by both St. Thomas Aquinas and some one of the most hotly debated issues in the Rene Descartes and were, much later still, heavily history of philosophy. criticised by Immanuel Kant. Kant’s principle Consider, invites Anselm, that by the term complaint was that the concept of God as a ‘God’ we mean something than which nothing perfect being does not entail that God exists greater can be thought of. Given that even the since ‘existence’ is not a perfection. The concept non-believer or, as Anselm calls him, the Fool, of a perfect being that exists is no more or less accepts that this is what the concept of God great than the concept of a perfect being that entails, the existence of God would seem to does not exist. Philosophers agree that the follow necessarily from the definition. For it problem with Anselm’s argument revolves would be a contradiction to suppose that God is around the fact that we surely cannot ascertain on the one hand something than which nothing whether something exists or not merely by greater can be thought of and on the other hand analysing the meaning of a word or concept. does not exist. For a God thought of that does However, exactly what logical error is being not really exist is not so great as one thought of committed by attempting to do so has remained that does exist, and since one can clearly think of a cause of much dispute amongst philosophers God and suppose he exists, then something than and logicians. which nothing greater can be thought of must be The argument was taken up again in more something that exists. recent times, in the 1960s, when the philosopher Anselm’s ontological argument is ingenious Norman Malcolm revived a lesser known variant in its simplicity. While most people agree that of Anselm’s argument which sidesteps the there is something rather fishy about it, opinion objections made by Kant and others. According has been divided as to exactly what is the matter to Malcolm, Anselm argues in the Proslogion that with the argument. The earliest critic of Anselm if it is possible that a necessary being could exist, was a contemporary Benedictine monk called then it must exist, for it would be a contradiction Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. Gaunilo argued that if to say a necessary being does not exist. God Anselm’s reasoning were correct, then one could could only fail to exist if the concept of God was conceive of a lost island that was the most self-contradictory or nonsensical, and this, perfect island there could ever be. Since by declares Malcolm, remains to be shown by definition the island is the most perfect it must opponents of the ontological argument.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

St Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274

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The Scholastics: St Thomas Aquinas

‘If the hand does not move the stick, the stick will not move anything else’

he favoured philosopher of the conclusion, that there is a thing which does Catholic Church, Aquinas is principally cause itself, namely, God. Philosophers have remembered for reconciling the criticized this form of arguing as confused, since philosophy of Aristotle with Christian the proposition that appears to be proven in the doctrine. Born in northern Sicily, he conclusion is the very same proposition denied in wasT educated first at the University of Naples and the argument. later at Cologne, and lectured at Paris and Naples. In the third Way, it is noted that we observe Aquinas was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XII. that things in the world come to be and pass While much of Aquinas’ work was away. But clearly not everything can be like this, Aristotelian in derivation, he also extended and for then there would have been a time when clarified many of Aristotle’s ideas and made nothing existed. But if that were true then many original contributions to Aristotelian nothing could ever have come into being, since thought. Chief amongst Aquinas’ many something cannot come from nothing. Therefore achievements are the ‘Five Ways’, or proofs of something must have always existed, and this is the existence of God, from his Summa what people understand by God. The first, second Theologica. The Five Ways are the clearest and and third Ways of Aquinas’ arguments are often most succinct attempt to prove the existence of called variations of a more general argument, the God by means of logical argument. Cosmological Argument. In the first of the Five Ways, Aquinas says the In the fourth Way, Aquinas offers a version existence of God can be proved by considering of the Ontological Argument (see Anselm). In the concept of change. We can clearly see that Aquinas’ version some things are noted to exhibit some things in the world are in the process of varying degrees of a quality. A thing may be change, and this change must be a result of more or less hot, more or less good, more or less something else, since a thing cannot change of noble. Such varying degrees of quality are caused itself. But the cause of the change itself, since in by something that contains the most or perfect the process of change, must also be caused to amount of that quality. For just as the sun is the change by something other than itself, and so on hottest thing, and thus the cause of all other again, ad infinitum. Clearly, there must be things being hot, so there must be some fully something which is the cause of all change, but ‘good’ thing which makes all other things good. which itself does not undergo change. For, as That which is most good is, of course, God. Aquinas says, ‘if the hand does not move the Finally, in the fifth Way, Aquinas relies on stick, the stick will not move anything else’. The Aristotle’s notion of ‘telos’ or purpose. All things first mover, Aquinas concludes, is God. aim towards some ultimate goal or end. But to be In the second Way, arguing in a similar guided by a purpose or a goal implies some mind manner to the first, Aquinas notes that causes that directs or intends that purpose. That director always operate in series, but there must be a first is, once again, God. Versions of Aquinas’ cause of the series or there could not be a series cosmological and ontological arguments are still at all. Interestingly, both the first and second accepted by the Catholic Church today, though Ways proceed on the assumption that a thing modern philosophers have almost unanimously cannot cause itself. Yet this is precisely his rejected all five of Aquinas’ Ways.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

John Duns Scotus 1266–1308

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The Scholastics: John Duns Scotus

Duns Scotus is immortalised in the English language for giving his name to the term ‘dunce’

Franciscan scholar and Scholastic Duns Scotus held that two things cannot be philosopher, Duns Scotus was individuated merely by claiming they are different born in Scotland but travelled substances occupying different spatial (and widely, teaching in Oxford, Paris possibly temporal) locations. The reason this idea and Cologne, where he died is insufficient, claims Duns Scotus, is that Aprematurely. Known as the ‘Subtle Doctor’ in his substance is never identified by itself per se (in time, Duns Scotus is immortalised in the English this regard he is a precursor of Hume). For any language for giving his name to the term ‘dunce’. object is only identified by means of its attributes While the term may now refer to stupidity, or or qualities. Strip all these away – extension, slow learning, the Dunses were schoolmen who, solidity, opaqueness, and so – and one is left with following Duns Scotus, opposed many of the a nothing rather than a something. So what is it, classical teachings. They insisted that nothing exactly, that is supposed to be the bearer of these can be known without divine illumination. qualities, situated as it is, in space and time? Duns Scotus maintained that there are, with the Duns Scotus’ answer was that what help of divine illumination, but three modes of individuates one thing from another is not its knowing that do not require further proof. First, place in space and time, since we cannot clearly there are principles known by themselves; identify what the ‘it’ is over and above the following Cicero’s vocabulary, these would be exhibition of certain qualities, but rather the called a priori. Second, there are things known particular combination of qualities exhibited. immediately by experience and third, there is In other words, the form of the thing itself. knowledge of our own actions. A follower of This leads immediately to the objection that Augustine in many respects, particularly in his two things may possess all the same qualities, Platonism, he nevertheless disputed Augustine’s two genetically cloned apples for instance, but rejection of Pelegianism, and upheld a belief in clearly they are not one and the same object, free will. Against Aquinas, Duns Scotus also but two. Duns Scotus’ reply is to make space and affirmed the immaculate conception, much to the time themselves qualities of an object, in other pleasure of Rome. words, part of a thing’s form. After all, no one His greatest influence, however, concerns in any school of thought has (yet) claimed that certain logical and linguistic debates. Though space and time are part of the substance of a begun in medieval times, they have become the thing. Therefore they must be part of its form, in centrepiece of many modern controversies in the other words, part of the combination of qualities philosophy of language. Amongst these there is that makes a thing what it is. According to Duns the concern over the principle of individuation – Scotus, no two objects can ever have the same a matter later taken up in detail by Leibniz. combination of qualities, and that it is only by According to Duns Scotus, that which means of form and not substance that we tell two individuates one thing from another depends on things apart. If we maintain that space and time form rather than on matter. The distinction, are part of the qualities or form of an object, then between something’s form and its substance, is of course, Duns Scotus is quite correct to say no borrowed from Aristotle and constitutes a firm two things could ever have exactly the same rejection of Platonism in this regard. combination of qualities.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

William of Occam ?–1347

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The Scholastics: William of Occam

Occam’s Razor: ‘Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’

ccam was a political and religious preferable where possible. It is a principle maverick, in trouble with the strongly adhered to today in both scientific and Church for much of his life on philosophical theory building, despite being account of his teachings. He is difficult to justify rationally. well-remembered in philosophical The principle underlies both Occam’s schoolsO today for the adage known as ‘Occam’s epistemology (theory of knowledge) and his razor’ (see below). A Bachelor of Oxford, he fled metaphysics. Occam held that universals only to Munich after being called to defend his views exist as part of human understanding. In reality in front of a Papal commission at Avignon in everything is singular. In other words, concepts 1324. He died in 1347, probably from the Black like ‘species’, ‘redness’, or even ‘man’, which Death which was raging in Munich at around name a range of objects that are united by some that time, still hoping for reconciliation with the common form or feature, are purely inventions Church. His name is sometimes given the variant of the human understanding: ways of collecting spelling ‘Ockham’ on account of speculation that together many individual objects for he was born either at Ockham in Surrey or psychological simplicity. In reality there are only Ockham in Yorkshire. Neither can definitively lay individuals. Universals do not exist. In modern claim to be the place of his birth. terminology, this makes Occam a ‘nominalist’, This principle now famously known as and opposed to Plato’s idea of abstract, universal ‘Occam’s Razor’ is a methodological principle forms that are the archetypes of individual, concerning ontology. ‘Entia non sunt material objects. multiplicanda praeter necessitatem’ translates Along with nominalism, the principle of from the Latin as ‘Entities are not to be multiplied ‘Occam’s Razor’ can also be seen as a reflection beyond necessity’. The principle reflects the idea of an atomistic world-view. In some sense a that given two theories that equally explain the precursor of the logical atomism of Bertrand data, one should choose that theory which posits Russell and the early thought of Wittgenstein, the minimum number of entities. Why one should Occam held that reality is ultimately composed of opt for the simplest theory is not a judgement simple, singular objects that exist independently that can easily be philosophically defended, but and absolutely. No single thing depends on any nevertheless maintains a strong intuitive appeal. other for its existence and change is merely the ‘Occam’s Razor’ (so-called because the principle re-ordering and rearranging of singulars. These encourages one to cut out unnecessary singulars, according to Occam, gained their complications from theory) is ultimately existence by being posited by God but remain aesthetic: why postulate two things when one independent of any divine machinations in their will do? Or as Occam is said to have put it, ‘It is causal and operative powers. In this way, Occam vain to do with more what can be done with upholds both the possibility of free will and moral fewer’. In other words, simplicity is always responsibility in human affairs.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Nicolaus Copernicus 1473–1543

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The Age of Science: Nicolaus Copernicus

Copernicus revived the idea that the earth and planets revolve around the sun

orn in Poland and graduate of Cracow man’s central place in creationist stories of the University, Copernicus studied Greek universe. By using Pythagorean calculations, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, however, Copernicus managed to predict and astronomy and theology before account for various astronomical observations becoming a canon of the cathedral at with amazing accuracy. Although Copernicus Frauenberg,B where he finally settled. Inventor of claimed his work was no more than hypothetical, modern astronomy, Copernicus did more to eventually the weight of evidence would be too revolutionise man’s conception of himself and his great to be resisted, and before long Copernicus place in the universe than perhaps any other would famously be supported by Galileo Galilei, thinker, before or since. Even if his work would Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, amongst have a profound and negative impact on the others. Though still not widely accepted during Church, he was a man of impeccable orthodoxy. his lifetime, by the end of the following century Although he delayed publication of his findings Copernicus’ idea would have been refined to the for fear of censure by the Church, it is clear that point of irrefutability. he believed his views were not inconsistent with The heliocentric theory would soon be his theology. condemned by the Church, but Copernicus was Prior to Copernicus, astronomers had favoured careful during his life not to incur its wrath, the view, following both Aristotle and Ptolemy, unlike Galileo after him. Indeed Copernicus even that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, dedicated the work in which he proclaims the with both the stars, sun and the moon revolving heliocentric theory, the De Revolutionibus about it. Known as the Ptolemaic system, this Orbium Celestium, with apparent sincerity, to the view was wholly in keeping with many Pope. It was only later, in Galileo’s time, that the theological teachings, in which the universe is Church condemned Copernicus’ work as seen to be created by God for the express purpose heretical. of man. The effect of Copernicus’ work was to So great and profound was the effect of turn all this on its head. Copernicus’ hypothesis on the intellectual world Probably first posited by Aristarchus of Samos that philosophers and scientists have since coined around 340 BC, Copernicus revived the idea that the phrase ‘Copernican Revolution’ to describe the earth and planets revolve around the sun, world-changing ideas. The effect of the original which remains in a fixed position. Moreover, he ‘Copernican Revolution’ on the development of proclaimed that in this system the earth has a Western thought, both philosophical and twofold motion. On the one hand it turns on its scientific is difficult to exaggerate. It gave birth own axis, rotating one full turn every twenty-four to the scientific age and helped remove many of hours, and on the other it completely the superstitious and ignorant beliefs so typical of circumnavigates the sun every 364 days. This the time. It would, for better or worse, lead to the heliocentric (sun-centred) system was vigorously decline of the power of the church, and to a new resisted by the Church, which saw it as usurping age of scientific inquiry and invention.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Niccolò Machiavelli 1467–1527

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The Age of Science: Niccolò Machiavelli

Never has the phrase ‘the ends justify the means’ been more appropriate

lorentine-born philosopher of the The heart of Machiavelli’s teachings consists Italian Renaissance, Machiavelli was a in the manipulation of others, including the diplomat and dramatist, but is best populace, for power. To this end, although remembered for his hugely influential Machiavelli does not teach that virtue is good and notorious work of political theory, in itself, it can often serve one’s political ends TheF Prince,which has made his name to appear to be virtuous. This is perhaps the synomymous with political machinations. doctrine that has caused most outrage against Providing a detailed analysis of successful, if on Machiavellian thought. But Machiavelli himself occasion immoral, political techniques, is unconcerned with such weak and even Machiavelli’s text is still used today by students hypocritical sensibility. If, as we have said, one’s of both philosophy and politics. In The Prince, ends are good in themselves, all that matters is Machiavelli concentrates on those techniques a that one brings them about; in order to do this, successful politician must use if he is to achieve Machiavelli tells us, one must have more power his political ends, without regard to the moral than one’s opponents. Without doubt, The Prince justification of the means thereby employed. is a work meant only for those that have the fibre Often criticised by detractors for its lack of moral to take this fact, surely true, however unpleasant, sensibility, it is nevertheless a work of great seriously. intellectual integrity and consistency. Although The Prince is unflinching in its In The Prince, Machiavelli considers how best teachings, it must be read alongside a leader can achieve his ends once he has Machiavelli’s longer and more balanced work, determined that the ends he has identified are the Discourses, if his own views are to be fairly worthwhile. Never has the phrase ‘the ends justify understood. In the Discourses, he provides more the means’ been more appropriately applied than detailed background as to what he thinks makes it is to Machiavellian technique. The book is a good and successful constitution. His political almost entirely practical, rarely speculating on ideal is the republic run by the Princes, leaders of the rightness or wrongness of the methods the principalities, but held in check by both the adumbrated therein. noblemen and ordinary citizens, all of whom Nonetheless, The Prince does contain certain share a part in the constitution. As Russell theses about which political ends are good. rightly says in his commentary on Machiavelli, Machiavelli thinks there are three primary the Discourses might easily be read by an political ‘goods’: national security, national eighteenth century liberal without occasioning independence, and a strong constitution. Beyond much surprise or disagreement. Machiavelli has this, he is almost entirely concerned with practical no time for tyrannies, not because people have questions of how to go about securing political an inalienable right to freedom, but because success. It is vain to pursue a good political end tyrannies are less stable, more cruel and more with inadequate means, for it will surely fail. One inconstant than governments held in esteem by must pursue one’s convictions with strength and a reasonably content population. It is the courage if one is to be successful, employing achievement of such a government that is whatever means necessary. Machiavelli’s prime political concern.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Desiderius Erasmus 1466–1536

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The Age of Science: Desiderus Erasmus

For Erasmus, religion is…a confidence in human reason to know and worship God

utch humanist philosopher and worship ‘from the heart’ that has no need of theologian, Erasmus was the the offices and intermediaries supplied by the illegitimate son of a priest and was Church. True religion, Erasmus insists, is a form himself forced into a monastic life of Folly, in the sense that it is simplistic and by his guardians. In the monastery direct, not convoluted with unnecessary Dat Steyr his lifelong passion for Latin began, and sophistications and dogmatic doctrine. For he quickly outstripped the ability of his tutors. Erasmus, religion is based on a thorough-going He escaped the monastic life in his late twenties humanism, understood in its classical sense as and proceeded to travel and study widely. He a confidence in human reason to know and eventually came to England and struck up a worship God. friendship with Thomas More, which lasted until In similar vein, Erasmus was no friend of the latter’s death at the hands of Henry VIII. It scholasticism, nor indeed of the philosophical was whilst making his way to England on a fathers of his day, Plato and Aristotle. Erasmus’s subsequent visit from Italy that he conceived his hero was Augustine, from whom he took the best known work, In Praise of Folly. Arriving at doctrine that reason must be the servant of faith. More’s house in London, he quickly committed Apart from In Praise of Folly and his later it to paper and published it, with More’s support, Colloquia much of his work consisted in Greek in 1509. and Latin translations of the Bible. In Praise of Folly has a dual purpose. On the Erasmus had enormous influence on ushering one hand, Erasmus uses it to satirise and inveigh in the Reformation, but surprisingly, in the against the offices and institutions of the Church, struggle between the Catholics and the for which he had developed a deep hatred during Protestants, the latter of whom were undoubtedly his time at Steyr. He attacks the monastic orders closer to Erasmus’ religious ideas, he eventually and their conception of worship as consisting in sided with the Catholics. This apparent ‘the precise number of knots to the tying on their contradiction reflects his somewhat timid nature. sandals’. With more venom he goes on, ‘It will be He could not condone the violence of the pretty to hear their pleas before the great tribunal: Lutherans, preferring to attack the Catholics with one will brag how he mortified his carnal appetite words rather than actions. When More was by feeding only upon fish: another will urge that executed by Henry VIII for refusing to accept his he spent most of his time on earth in the divine supremacy over the Pope as head of the Church exercise of singing psalms… but Christ will of England, Erasmus is quoted as saying, ‘Would interrupt: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, More have never meddled with that dangerous …I left you but one precept, of loving one another, business, and left the theological cause to the which I do not hear anyone plead that he has theologians’. A quote that brings into sharp relief faithfully discharged.”’ the difference between his character and the This introduces the central theme of Erasmus’s uncompromising, incorruptible nature of More. Folly, namely his concern with religion as a

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Thomas More 1478–1535

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The Age of Science: Thomas More

More’s vision of Utopia is a kind of Christian communism

ir Thomas More, friend and supporter be removed in case of tyranny. Interestingly, More of Erasmus, led a dangerous but does not rule out slavery in his ideal society. So- incorruptible political life which called ‘bondsmen’ are given the distasteful jobs would earn him the death penalty that More does not want his happy citizens to from the same King who once partake in, such as slaughtering the livestock and knightedS him, Henry VIII. Unimpressed by serving up communal dinners. The bondsmen are Henry’s solicitations, More’s determined people serving penal sentences for the breaking of adherence to Catholic orthodoxy prevented him any of the Utopian laws, such as virginity before from recognising either Henry’s divorce from marriage and chastity during wedlock. Bondsmen Catherine of Aragon or his subsequent self- are also drawn from other societies from among appointment as head of the English Church in those who have been condemned to death. order to marry Anne Boleyn. Fortunately for the Whilst More’s Utopia possesses some history of Western thought, More managed to admirable liberal qualities it is also, alas, complete his most important philosophical work, aesthetically oppressive in the same way as Utopia in good time, 1518 in fact, before Henry Maoist and Cambodian regimes have been in took his head in 1535. the real world. More expects all his citizens to In More’s Utopia, a traveller brings back tales wear the same plain, undifferentiated dress. of an island in the South Seas where everything is Architecturally it is oppressively dull. Each organised in the best possible way. The book takes of the fifty-four towns are built according to the form of a dialogue, in which the traveller, an identical plan. The streets are all twenty feet Raphael Hythloday, divulges the wise ways of across and every home is exactly alike. The Utopia as he found them in the five years he spent residents swap homes on a regular basis there. More’s vision of Utopia is a kind of according to the law to discourage the idea of Christian communism, in which there is no private ownership, although since all the houses personal property, internal commerce or personal are alike this seems somewhat unnecessary. ambition. Each member of society works six hours Like The Republic of Plato, it is doubtful that a day regardless of their job. This, says More, is More’s utopian vision could provide the basis for entirely satisfactory in terms of providing enough a realistic model of any society, let alone the labour. For other societies only require the poor to transformation of an existing one. Nevertheless, work long and exhausting days because of the the value of Utopia lies in the articulation of existence of the idle rich. certain social and socialistic ideals in an age very The Utopia provides for its citizens by means far removed from such philanthropic concerns. of a system of farms, each consisting of at least Bertrand Russell probably sums up the problem forty workers. There are intellectuals and with More’s vision best when he says, ‘life in governors in More’s visionary society, but these More’s Utopia, as in most others, would be are chosen by merit and only remain in their jobs intolerably dull. Diversity is essential to so long as they prove satisfactory. There is also an happiness, and in Utopia there is hardly any’. elected Prince who acts as head of state, but can

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Francis Bacon 1561–1626

nglish philosopher of science, Francis Learning, New Atlantis and the Novum Organum. Bacon was the forerunner of the famed Bacon was also an essayist and enjoyed a British school of philosophers that successful legal and political career, in particular include Locke, Berkeley, Hume, J. S. after James I’s succession of Elizabeth, whereupon Mill and Bertrand Russell. Bacon’s he was made Lord Chancellor until being found importantE works include The Advancement of guilty of corruption.

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The Age of Science: Francis Bacon

‘The repetetive occurrence of an incident does not guarantee that the same thing will happen again’

Attributed as the originator of the saying However, unlike others of his time, and later, ‘knowledge is power’, his importance as a Hume, Bacon was less interested in the problem of philosopher is most notable with regard to his justifying inductive generalisations, than in how concern for scientific method. Bacon was to generate good inductive hypotheses out of the troubled by the two schools of thought that had masses of data collected by observation. Bacon come out of Platonism and Aristotelianism devised a new method. To illustrate it, Bacon respectively. Firstly, the rationalist view that shows how one might generate an hypothesis on knowledge could be gained by examining the the nature of heat. One should, Bacon tells us, list content and meanings of words – a view Bacon all those things in which the property under dismissed as like spinning a web from the inside investigation, in this case heat, of one’s own head. Secondly, the Aristotelians, is present, then all those things in which the intent on collecting masses of empirical data, property is absent and finally all those cases where equally useless at helping a man arrive at which admit of varying degrees of the property any scientific hypotheses. What was needed, in question. From such a list, Bacon believes the insisted Bacon, was a new way of collating and natural hypothesis will present itself, which in organising data that would help generate this case, as he well knew at the time, is that heat inductive hypotheses. is produced according to the movement or Bacon, like many of his contemporaries excitation of molecules within a body. and predecessors, had been concerned with the Although Bacon’s method is undoubtedly one problem of induction, a problem that would later way of applying order to a body of data, and receive an astonishingly sceptical response from even perhaps a useful way in some cases, it Hume. The problem of induction, as Bacon’s nevertheless seems unlikely to fulfil his ambition, contemporaries saw it, was that the mere repetitive which was to find a systematic way of deriving occurrence of an incident does not guarantee that scientific hypotheses from the arrangement of the same thing will happen again. To give a simple data. It is unlikely that there ever could be such example, suppose a man draws nine blue marbles a system. Bacon failed to take into account the out of a bag of ten. It is no more likely that the creativity and imaginative aspect of scientific tenth marble will be blue than it is that it will be theory building. No matter how systematically red. The previous instances do not guarantee one organises data, inductive hypotheses cannot anything about the following instance. be guaranteed to appear out of them. One may Bacon saw that the answer to this problem lay find that some facts deductively follow from a in placing the emphasis of investigation on certain ordering of data, but that is not what looking for negative instances to disconfirm Bacon was after. hypotheses, rather than finding ways of Despite his failure in this regard, Bacon confirming them. This is a striking precursor to nevertheless made some important contributions Karl Popper’s twentieth century falsificationist to the philosophy of science and to the problem scientific methodology and his much vaunted of induction, not least, as we have seen, in being claim of ‘solving the problem of induction’. As the first to stress the importance of negative Popper readily admits, he owes much to Francis instances. Bacon.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Galileo Galilei 1564–1642

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The Age of Science: Galileo Galilei

The first to discover the law of falling bodies, Galileo was far more than just an astronomer

talian philosopher, astronomer, scientist discover the law of falling bodies, or constant and mathematician, Galileo is probably acceleration, published after his recantation and best remembered for his work in support whilst still under house arrest in 1638, in his of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the Discourse on Two New Sciences. Moreover, what solar system. For the sake of his life, would later be Newton’s celebrated First Law of GalileoI recanted his views in 1633, admitting Motion was directly taken from Galileo’s principle that the earth did not spin on its own axis. It is of inertia, namely that a body moves in a straight unlikely that the recantation was sincere and he line with uniform velocity unless acted upon. This nevertheless remained under house arrest. principle was important in helping to support the In 1608 the Dutchmen Lippershey invented Copernican theory. Critics of Copernicus had the telescope. Within two years Galileo used it claimed that if the heliocentric theory were true, to dramatic effect, showing by his astronomical then a falling body should not fall in a straight observations that the Ptolemaic or geocentric line, but in fact land somewhat to the west of the theory which held that the Earth was at the centre point from which it was dropped, on account of of the universe, was seriously flawed. Galileo also the eastwise rotation of the Earth. It had been observed that the Milky Way was in fact made up proven by experiment that this was not the case, of many millions of individual stars. He observed a result which led many to dismiss Copernicus as the phases of Venus and discovered the moons of wrong even if they did not share the religious Jupiter, which had theological experts up in arms. reasons for dismissing him. It took Galileo’s work Indeed, Galileo’s findings attracted such sharp in dynamics to show why the prediction was not criticism, both from secular and ecclesiastical fulfilled. Simply put, the falling stone retains the quarters that he felt compelled to offer, both in his rotational velocity of the Earth. defence and in reply to his critics, the Letter to the Philosophically, Galileo held that ‘the book of Grand Duchess Christina in 1615. In the Letter, nature is written in the language of mathematics’. Galileo argues that scientific and theological He was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy matters should not be confused. Science could not and a great admirer of Archimedes. He also cast doubt on religious doctrine, only strengthen maintained, like Locke, that there was a it. Nonetheless he was condemned by the metaphysical distinction between the primary and Inquisition, first in private communication in secondary qualities of bodies. The former 1616 and later in 1633, when he publicly are essential and inherent in objects, whereas the recanted. latter exist only insofar as they cause certain Although his work was instrumental in effects in the minds of observers. Undoubtedly, bringing the Copernican system into prominence, Galileo was a great thinker who risked much in Galileo was far more than just an astronomer. the pursuit of truth, helping to set free the quest Much of his important work lay in dynamics and for knowledge from the chains of religious the principles of movement. He was the first to dogmatism.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Thomas Hobbes 1588–1679

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The Age of Science: Thomas Hobbes

Without the rule of law, the life of man would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’

ritish philosopher and author of the every man, against every man’ and the result famous political treatise Leviathan. would inevitably be that the life of man would be Although Hobbes made important ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. contributions in a number of other Accordingly, Hobbes advances the notion of a fields, including geometry, ballistics social contract by which we are kept – and keep Band optics, it is for his work as a political thinker each other – from falling into this dark, natural that he is best known. Like both Bacon and state of war and strife. Every man operates, says Descartes, Hobbes sought to underpin his Hobbes, according to a natural law of self- inquiries not by finding out more facts but by preservation. We each naturally want what is finding and using a new methodology. Unlike good for ourselves, and the covenant ensures Descartes, his concerns were more political than that this can only be gained by taking into epistemological, but he borrowed from him, and account the good of others. other contemporaries such as Galileo and Hobbes’ social contract is premised upon the Newton, the idea that if the natural sciences naturalistic forces that drive human beings. It is could be underpinned by axiomatic laws of unsurprising, therefore, that Hobbes turns out to nature, then this should also be the case for the be a materialist, for whom everything in the social sciences. Hobbes’ method was to apply the universe is corporeal, ruling out the existence of rule of natural law to the realm of politics. such things as incorporeal spirits or souls. Even Hobbes’ new political science first appeared God is merely matter. Not since the presocratic in his Elements of Law in 1640, a treatise not Greeks had a philosopher advanced such an intended to be published, but rather for use by unremitting materialism. Although in the spirit supporters of King Charles I to justify the king’s of his times, many of his contemporaries actions to an increasingly hostile Parliament. hesitated to make so bold as he, fearing the Hobbes spent the next ten years in self-imposed censure of the Church. exile in France, where he made a name for This materialism, however, had to make way himself as a serious thinker. His De Cive, for some element of free will without invoking published in Paris in 1642, develops the themes the incorporeal soul or mind. For although of the Elements, but his thought is exhibited at Hobbes made much of the natural state of man, its best in his masterpiece, the Leviathan. he had to give some account of how societies According to Hobbes man acts according to came about according to a covenant. For Hobbes, certain natural laws. In an analogy reminiscent free will and determinism were not mutually of Newton’s first law of motion, which says exclusive, but compatible notions. Just as water is matter will behave in a uniform way unless acted unconstrained and yet will always flow to earth, upon, Hobbes believes the natural state of man is so is man free but constrained by natural law. So one of war and strife, unless acted upon and long as a man is free to follow his natural governed by the rules of social living. Only a inclinations, which ultimately are to survive and covenant kept by the rule of the sword can keep multiply, he is free to act. That man’s inclinations man from falling back into his natural state. are determined by his nature presents no problem Without the covenant, Hobbes tells us, society for Hobbes. would disintegrate and it would be ‘a war of

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Sir Isaac Newton 1642–1727

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The Age of Science: Sir Isaac Newton

Newton’s insight was that the universe runs according to law-governed mechanical principles

mathematician and physicist, advent of Einstein’s relativistic physics (see also Newton produced work – Democritus). philosophical to a degree – which Claiming that his method was empirical and served mainly as an impetus for inductive, rather than rationalist and deductive, many of the philosophers of his Newton was also fond of criticising Descartes. Aand succeeding generations, including Locke and It is thanks to Newton that empiricism began to Kant, both of whom owed much to him. Newton’s enjoy a period of dominance over rationalist principal work, the Philosophiae Naturalis philosophy. However, Newton owed much to Principia Mathematica contains his theory of Descartes’ thought, and it is likely that his own gravity and laws of motion. His later work, speculations could not have begun but for the the Opticks, is primarily concerned with optical work already undertaken by his rationalist physics but also contains speculations on predecessor. mechanics, religion and morals. He was to be Undoubtedly Newton’s greatest achievement involved in a series of disagreements with was his theory of gravity, from which he was Leibniz, initially over which of them was the first able to explain the motions of all the planets, to invent the calculus, and later over the issue of including the moon. Newton proved that every the status of space and time (see below). planet in the solar system at all times accelerates The insight behind Newton’s physics was towards the sun. The acceleration of a body that the universe runs according to law-governed towards the sun is at a rate inversely mechanical principles. This idea was to have a proportional to the square of its distance from profound influence on John Locke, whose it. This led to Newton’s law of universal gravity: philosophy may be seen as the philosophical ‘every body attracts every other with a force working out of Newton’s physical principles. directly proportional to the product of their Locke was determined to make sense of human masses and inversely proportional to the square understanding in a way consistent with of the distance between them’. The law of Newtonian mechanics. As a result, he argued universal gravity allowed Newton to predict for a causal theory of perception and for a all of the planetary motions, the tides, the distinction between primary and secondary movements of the moon and of the comets. It qualities of objects. was a striking achievement that would not be Kant, in similar fashion, recognised that superseded until Einstein, although even with the everything in the phenomenal world had to advent of Einsteinian relativity, Newton’s conform to Newton’s principles, but that this mechanics still holds good – and indeed is still order was for the most part imposed by the used on account of its simplicity for predicting psychological apparatus of the mind. Kant’s the movement of so-called ‘medium-sized’ philosophy gave support to Newton in the quarrel objects – anything that is neither bigger than the with Leibniz over whether space and time should solar system nor smaller than the eye can see. be conceived of as absolute or merely as relations Newton’s work is a profound and remarkable between objects. The debate seemed to have been achievement in the history of human thought. won hands down by the Newtonians until the

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

René Descartes 1596–1650

rench philosopher and mathematician, First Philosophy set the agenda for speculation in Descartes is often called the father of the philosophy of mind and epistemology for at modern philosophy. Known to least the next 300 years. He raised problems of physicists as the discoverer of the law such radical scepticism about our knowledge of of refraction in optics, Descartes’ most the world that he suggests that the only thing famousF work is in philosophy. Meditations on one can be certain of is the fact of one’s own

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The Rationalists: René Descartes

‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am)

existence, an insight summed up in his famous can be sure, at least, that he is sitting in his maxim ‘cogito ergo sum’, popularly translated as study, or is a Frenchman with an interest in ‘I think therefore I am’. philosophy and so on. But he recognises that Descartes’ program in the Meditations is to there is no clear and distinct way of telling the put the edifice of human knowledge upon secure difference between reality and dreaming. How foundations. Reviewing his beliefs, he finds that does he know that the life he thinks he is leading many are contrary. Some are more or less is not just part of a dream? There are no clear justified than others; some, such as the ways of distinguishing between waking life and a propositions of mathematics, seem certain; others life merely dreamt. readily turn out to be false. He resolves to put So, rejecting all perceptual knowledge, some kind of order into this jumble of beliefs so Descartes turns to what he believes on account that justification of one proposition may follow of his own internal reflections. Surely he knows from another. In order to do that he needs to that 2 + 3 = 5, that a mother is older than her begin with whatever is most certain and daughter, that a triangle has three sides? But it infallible. The question is, where to start? could be the case, reflects Descartes, that he is the Descartes comes up with an ingenious subject of a massive deception. Now Descartes program. Rather than attempt to examine and imagines a scenario wherein he might be deceived order each belief in turn, a task impossible to by a divinely powerful, but malignant being; a contemplate, he decides to examine his beliefs demonic being that could manipulate his against a method of doubt. The method of doubt thoughts, as God might if he were not supremely consists in questioning the source of his beliefs good, into thinking anything the demon might and asking whether that source is infallible. If choose. This idea of wholesale radical deception not, he can be sure that any belief from that has been the subject of recent popular films such source cannot be relied upon to provide the as The Matrix and Twelve Monkeys. Descartes foundations of knowledge. realizes, however, that there is one proposition To begin with, Descartes notes that many of that neither the evil demon nor even God could his beliefs are derived from his senses, or from ever make false. This is that at any time when he perception. He notes that the senses, however, thinks, it must be the case that he exists. For he can often mislead. A stick may look bent viewed must exist in order to be able to think. By such half submerged in water, the true size of the sun reasoning Descartes is led to the cogito as the one and the moon is many times greater than would certain, infallible rock of knowledge. appear from sight and so on. One can even suffer For Descartes, the cogito was the beginning of hallucinations such that what one thinks to be a project in which he attempted to prove the there does not exist at all. Descartes resolves not existence of God, in order to guarantee the rest to trust completely that which has deceived him of human knowledge. His commentators, once, and therefore rejects any information unimpressed by his weak version of Anselm’s obtained through the senses as being uncertain ontological argument or his own ‘trademark and fallible. argument’ to prove the existence of God, have Even so, one might think that although the taken the Meditations to be the definitive work of senses may deceive from time to time, Descartes epistemological scepticism.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Antoine Arnauld 1612–1694

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The Rationalists: Antoine Arnauld

Precision of thought is essential to every aspect and walk of life

ast-born son of a lawyer who fathered judgement to be made. Finally, ordering is a twenty children, Arnauld became a mental activity which reflects the method of the theologian, logician and philosopher. new inductive sciences. He collaborated with both Nicole and Arnauld accepts the general tenets of Cartesian Pascal, on their famous The Art of thought. In line with Descartes’ ontological LThinking, which later became known as ‘the Port dualism, Arnauld commits himself to the idea that Royal Logic’ or sometimes just ‘The Logic’. He is speech is part of the material world and bound by also remembered as the author of several of the its laws, but thought, belonging to the essence of replies to Descartes’ Meditations on First the mind, is not so constricted. This leads to a Philosophy, gaining in the process a reputation distinction in Arnauld’s work between grammar as an intellectually rigourous and perceptive on the one hand, which belongs to speech; and critic, and bringing attention to the problem now logic, which belongs to the realm of thought. In known as ‘the Cartesian circle’. the four-fold classification of the Logic, Arnauld Like Descartes, Arnauld is a firm rationalist. places logic itself firmly within the faculty of In The Art of Thinking, he proclaims that the reason, but insists that reasoning is merely an main aim of logic is to inculcate clear thinking. extension of judging. Thus he writes, ‘nothing is more to be esteemed This idea is important for it reflects one side than aptness in discerning the true from the of a foundational debate concerning the status of false. Other qualities of mind are of limited use, logic. Is logic, as Arnauld would have it, merely a but precision of thought is essential to every tool of clear thinking in order to aid rhetoric, or aspect and walk of life. To distinguish truth from does it reflect universal laws of thought that error is difficult not only in the sciences but also correspond to reality? This latter view, to which in the everyday affairs men engage in and Arnauld and the Port Royal logicians were hostile, discuss. Men are everywhere confronted with holds that there are three laws of thought that are alternative routes – some true and others false – necessary principles for any rational creature, and reason must choose between them. Who even God. These are the law of non-contradiction, chooses well has a sound mind, who chooses ill a the law of identity, and the law of the excluded defective one. Capacity for discerning the truth is middle. These state respectively that a proposition the most important measure of minds.’ cannot be simultaneously asserted and denied; The Art of Thinking consists of four parts that if A is identical to B, then anything that is corresponding to the principal operations of true of A is also true of B; and that every the mind: conceiving, judging, reasoning and proposition is determinately either true or false. ordering. Conceiving and judging imply a Modern developments in both logic and physics knowledge of language, since it is concepts and (quantum physics) have cast doubt on the propositions, essentially linguistic items, that are universality of at least two of these so-called laws, conceived and judged. Reasoning is a higher- giving support to the Port Royals’ contention that level function of conceiving and judging, logic is merely the refinement of clear thinking in required when the concepts that form aid of argumentation, or rhetoric. a proposition are not sufficiently clear for a

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Nicolas Malebranche 1638–1715

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The Rationalists: Nicolas Malebranche

Whenever we think we are doing something, God is really doing it for us

rench philosopher, theologian and contemporaries, Geulincx, will be useful. chief developer of Cartesian thought. Suppose there are two clocks, running in perfect Although his principal work, The harmony: when clock A points to the hour, clock Search after Truth covers a wide B will sound the chime. If you saw only clock A variety of topics, Malebranche is but heard clock B you might be led to believe Fremembered principally for his theory of that clock A caused clock B to sound. So, claimed occasionalism as a solution to Descartes’ mind- Malebranche, it is with the mind and body. They body problem. are like two clocks wound up by God and kept in In Cartesian thought, the mind (‘res cogitans’) synchronicity with each other through divine and the body (‘res extensa’) are two distinct and acts. Whenever I will to move my arm, God utterly different kinds of thing. In fact, in causes my arm to move on that occasion. Cartesian ontology there are only three kinds Whenever we think we are doing something, God of substance: mind, matter and God. Descartes is really doing it for us. insisted – as part of his proof of the ‘cogito’ – that The doctrine of occasionalism solved the the mind must be utterly distinct from corporeal problem of mind-body interaction for Cartesian things. However, this immediately leads to a philosophers (although it is unlikely that Descartes problem of causal interaction. Clearly we are would have accepted it), but proved unpopular aware that our minds and bodies interact. When with other thinkers. Alternative solutions to the my body is hurt, I feel pain; equally, when I problem, however, have not been forthcoming, and decide to lift my arm, my arm will indeed rise. If philosophers eventually sought to dissolve the Descartes is correct in his assertion that mind and problem by rejecting the dualism of mind and body are distinct, the causal connection between body. This, in principle, is Spinoza’s solution and the two is left mysterious. How is it possible that is also the impetus behind materialism in the a non-physical thing, the mind, can be the cause philosophy of mind (that view which claims the of changes in physical things? mind is really just the brain, or a function of the Malebranche’s solution relies on his brain, and consists in nothing other than matter theological beliefs. According to Malebranche, or the arrangement of matter in a certain specified individual minds are merely limitations of the way: see also Gilbert Ryle). Faced with the one universal mind that is God. They have no unacceptability of Malebranche’s occasionalism, power to cause anything whatsoever in the and with Hume’s scepticism concerning causation physical world. Nor, however, do physical objects in general, some Cartesians have tried to defer the have the power to cause movements in other problem by claiming that since causation is not physical objects, since to cause something to understood very well in any event, it is not a happen is to know how to bring that happening special problem for Cartesian philosophy, but a about. Accordingly, claimed Malebranche, the problem for philosophy in general. Though this only causal power is God. may be true, it is unlikely that any reasonably In order to account for the appearance of successful theory of causation would support the causal interaction between minds and bodies, an Cartesian distinction between two different kinds analogy put forward by one of Malebranche’s of substance, mind and matter.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Benedict de Spinoza 1632–1677

utch philosopher of Jewish origin, proved his theorems of geometry. Spinoza’s Spinoza remains one of the most ambitious project is perhaps one of the greatest compelling if difficult philosophers ever undertaken in philosophy and it is a mark of of the Rationalist school. Greatly his greatness that, to a considerable extent, he influenced by Descartes and Euclid, was remarkably successful in this undertaking. Dhe takes rationalism to its logical extremes, In the posthumously published Ethica ordine determining to set out the principles of an ethical geometrico demonstrata (Ethics demonstrated in system in axiomatic format, much as Euclid geometrical order), Spinoza sets out the axioms

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The Rationalists: Benedict de Spinoza

There is only one substance, and that substance we can conceive of as either Nature or God

which he takes to be self-evident and then not of the sort that philosophers are generally proceeds, step by step, to deduce ethical used to. Each individual, says Spinoza, is a conclusions. Like Descartes, he is concerned to set localised concentration of the attributes of knowledge on logical foundations: his ethical reality, really a quasi-individual, since the only conclusions must therefore first be founded on a true individual is the universe in totality. Insofar number of ontological, metaphysical and as the quasi-individual is ruled by his emotions, epistemic beliefs. Each of these is, in turn, he is unfree and at the mercy of finite demonstrated in geometric fashion. understanding. To become free, the individual Central to Spinoza’s philosophy is the idea, must, by means of rational reflection, understand similar to that of Parmenides, that everything in the extended causal chain that links everything the universe is One. There is only one substance as one. To become aware of the totality of the and that substance we can conceive of as either universe is to be freed, not from causal Nature or God. This substance has infinitely determinism, but from an ignorance of one’s true many attributes but human beings, being finite, nature. can only perceive two of them, extension and What then, of wickedness, sin and evil? thought. Unlike Descartes, who thought mind Since everything is part of one reality, there is and body were two separate kinds of thing, no such thing as evil from the viewpoint of the Spinoza argues that mind and body are just whole – ‘sub specie aeternitis’ (from the aspect different ways of conceiving the same reality. of eternity). That which appears evil does so only This reality, Nature or God, is wholly self- because we lack the understanding to see the contained, self-causing and self-sufficient. bigger picture, the chain of causes that makes all Everything in the universe is part of God, and events a necessary part of divine reality. Though everything that happens is a necessary part or many were shocked by this in Spinoza’s day, it expression of the divine nature. The upshot of reflects the same sentiment expressed by those this pantheistic view is to remove free will from Christians who persevere in the face of adversity the realm of human actions. After all, if human by claiming that ‘God moves in mysterious ways’ beings are part of the divine reality there is no and ‘ours is not to reason why’. Of course, for room for independent causal actions. Spinoza is Spinoza, to reason why is exactly what we must more than happy with this conclusion, he is a do to attain freedom. thorough-going determinist: ‘…experience tells Interestingly, Spinoza’s philosophy is both us clearly that men believe themselves to be free mystical, rational and theistic. Yet he was simply because they are conscious of their excommunicated from the Jewish community for actions and unconscious of the causes whereby his views, denounced as an atheist by Christians these actions are determined; further, it is plain and declared so wicked that at one time his that the dictates of the mind are simply another books were publicly burnt. Leibniz, who owes a name for the appetites that vary according to the great deal to him, rarely acknowledges the debt. varying state of the body.’ Despite the rigour and integrity of his work, Nevertheless, Spinoza does find a way of Spinoza remains one of the lesser studied and making room for a kind of freedom, though it is least regarded of all the rationalist philosophers.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz 1646–1716

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The Rationalists: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

God has chosen to make actual the best of all possible worlds

erman philosopher, Leibniz is the emperor of Rome, and you could not have not third of the three great rationalists, been a reader of this book. To deny any of these after Descartes and Spinoza. Like true propositions about these individuals would them, his philosophy proceeds from be to take something essential away from what an Aristotelian notion of substance, makes that individual what he or she is. conceivedG of as that which is the bearer of This view follows naturally from Leibniz’s property but is itself not a property of anything concept of a monad. Commentators have almost else. Even so, Leibniz rejected Spinoza’s view that universally rejected it, however, not least because there is only one substance, taking the opposite it seems to eradicate any possibility of free will. view: that there are an infinity of individual Even so, Leibniz’s work here raised a whole new substances, which he named ‘monads’. and important debate concerning what the A monad is in one sense similar to the atoms criteria of personal identity are. If not every of Democritus and yet more akin to the property of an individual is essential to a geometrical points of Pythagoras. Like atoms, person’s identity, which, if any, are? monads are the ultimate indivisible elements Philosophers have argued that what of reality of which all material things are constitutes personal identity, what makes the constituted. But they are not themselves either Caesar that crossed the Rubicon the same Caesar extended nor composed of matter. In a completely that entered Rome is ‘bodily continuity’: the original thesis Leibniz holds that a monad is a continuous spatio-temporal history of the same psychological entity, which, when embodied in physical body from one event to the other. human beings, he calls ‘souls’. However, this notion is problematic on at least Fundamental to Leibniz’s ‘monadology’ is the two counts. First, as physiologists well know, notion that a monad is a unified, independent the cells that constitute the body are completely substance. Accordingly, everything that is true of renewed every seven years. Since the Caesar a monad is contained within it and it therefore seven years after the crossing of the Rubicon is cannot enter into any causal relation with any not physically the same Caesar that made the other monad (the debt to Spinoza here is clear). crossing, we stand in need of an account of Leibniz expressed this point in a logical way, ‘bodily continuity’ that does not depend on the saying that of every true proposition, the physical constitution of the body. This remains predicate is contained within the subject. What problematic. Secondly, both legally and this amounts to is the extreme view that every medically, we allow that sometimes an individual truth is a necessary truth – a conclusion Leibniz is not always one and the same person, if for does not shy away from but embraces, claiming instance they have suffered some severe that everything happens the way it does because psychological trauma. So some element it must, and it must because God has chosen to of psychological integrity seems necessary to make actual the best of all possible worlds. the concept of personal identity. But finding a Things could only have been different if God had suitable criterion of psychological identity has chosen to actualise a different possible world. proven as elusive as finding a criterion of This view makes personal identity a very rigid personal identity. The issue remains a live one notion. Julius Caesar could not have not been an in ethics, metaphysics and psychology.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

John Locke 1632–1704

n his day, John Locke was an important Revolution’ of 1688. It is for his views on the political figure and author of the liberal nature of human knowledge, however, in his exposition Two Treatises of Government. Essay Concerning Human Understanding that he An associate of the Earl of Shaftesbury, is remembered in modern philosophy. Twenty Locke spent time in exile in Holland, years in the writing, the book was to exert such Ireturning to England after the ‘Glorious an influence on the next 100 years of Western

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The Empiricists: John Locke

The mind at birth is like a blank slate, waiting to be written on by the world of experience

thought that its author is considered by many ‘warm’, ‘round’, ‘hard’ and so on. Complex ideas to be the greatest British philosopher of all time. are constructions out of simple ideas, and are the The works of Berkeley, Kant and Hume are all product of internal mental operations. These direct successors to Locke’s Essay. include all our ideas of familiar material objects, The subject of Locke’s Essay, as given in the such as tables, chairs, cats, dogs and horses. But title, is the nature of human understanding, complex ideas need not represent anything real that is, the very way in which the human mind in the world. This accounts for ideas like that of a collects, organises, classifies and ultimately unicorn, a complex idea itself made up from makes judgements based on data received conjoining other complex ideas, such as ‘horse’ through the senses. Greatly influenced by the and ‘horn’. scientific turn of his day, and a personal friend of Among Locke’s simple ideas is a distinction two renowned contemporary scientists, Robert between those that are primary qualities of objects Boyle and Isaac Newton, Locke’s intent was to and others that are secondary qualities. The set the foundations of human knowledge on a distinction divides those qualities thought to be sound scientific footing. He had read with great essential and inherent to all objects and those that interest Descartes’ Meditations, but rejected the are apparent only on account of the effect objects rationalist philosophy that underpinned its have on our senses. Primary qualities are those conclusions. For Locke, there could be no innate such as solidity, extension, shape, motion or rest, knowledge: rather, everything we know must be and number. Secondary qualities are those such as derived from experience, through the actions of colour, scent and taste. These are secondary the physical world on our sense organs. This is because, according to Locke, they do not inhere in the view now known as empiricism, a view still objects themselves, but are causally produced only central, in essence if not detail, to the in our minds by the effect of an object’s primary philosophies of Quine and other modern qualities upon our senses. Another way of thinkers. Locke’s detractors, the Rationalists (see conceiving them is to say primary qualities are Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz) with whom the objective (really exist) and secondary ones Empiricists battled for ideological supremacy subjective (only exist in the minds of observers). throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, have In the popular conundrum of whether a falling their modern counterparts in the supporters of tree makes a sound when there is no one to hear Noam Chomsky and his philosophy of innate, or it, Locke’s view would be that the falling tree generative, grammar. creates vibrations in the air, but that there is no Locke states that the mind at birth is like a ‘sound’ strictly speaking, since sound is not a ‘real’ blank slate, or tabula rasa, waiting to be written or primary quality. This view, sometimes called on by the world of experience. All human ‘scientific essentialism’, leads to the metaphysical knowledge is derived from ideas presented to the conclusion, plausible to many modern thinkers, mind by the world of experience. However, these that without a perceiving mind, there is no such ideas can be classified into two general sorts. thing in the world as colour or sound, sweet or There are complex ideas and simple ideas. Simple sour and so on; but there are really such things as ideas are the immediate products of sensory shape, extension and solidity, independently of stimulation, examples would be ‘yellow’, ‘bitter’, whether anyone perceives them or not.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

David Hume 1711–1776

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The Empiricists: David Hume

There is no justification for believing that there is any causal necessity in the ordering of events

avid Hume is the philosophical continuous succession of perceptual experience. ‘I hero of modern day sceptics and am,’ Hume famously says, ‘nothing but a bundle of empiricists, renouncing all perceptions’. Following a similar line of thought, knowledge except for that which Hume notices that the force that compels one can be gained from the senses. event to follow another, causation, is also never DAlas, as Quine would later famously say, echoing experienced in sense impressions. All that is given Hume, what can be garnered from the senses is, in experience is the regular succession of one kind after all, not much. of event followed by another. But the supposition From Locke, Hume drew the conclusion that that the earlier event, the so-called ‘cause’, must all human knowledge is based on relations be followed by the succeeding event, the ‘effect’, is amongst ideas, or ‘sense impressions’. Anything merely human expectation projected onto reality. not given in experience is mere invention and There is no justification for believing that there is must be ruthlessly discarded. As a result he denies any causal necessity in the ordering of events. the existence of God, the self, the objective Hume’s scepticism does not stop there, and existence of logical necessity, causation, and even human belief in causation is just a special case of the validity of inductive knowledge itself. His aim a more general psychological trait: inductive is twofold: at once demolitionary – to rid science reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the process that of all falsehoods based on ‘invention rather than leads us to make generalisations from observing experience’ – and constructive, to found a science a number of similar cases. For example, having of human nature. Much impressed with how Isaac observed many white swans but no black swans, Newton had described the physical world one might seemingly be justified in the according to simple mechanical laws, Hume had a conclusion that ‘All swans are white’. Equally, mind to do something similar for the nature of being aware that men often die, we conclude ‘All human understanding. His Treatise on Human men are mortal’. But such generalisations go Nature is a painstaking study in experiential beyond what is given in experience and are not psychology in search of general principles. In this logically justified. After all, black swans were Hume can be seen as having failed spectacularly, found in Australia, and there is always the primarily because his whole taxonomy of logical possibility of coming across an immortal ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’ is derived from the much man. Hume claimed that inductive reasoning discredited Cartesian model. Nevertheless, Hume’s could not be relied upon to lead us to the truth, negative program is a devastating example of the for observing a regularity does not rule out the power of logical critique. His sceptical results, possibility that next time something different especially regarding induction, remain a problem will occur. Since all scientific laws are merely for modern philosophers. generalizations from inductive reasoning, this Hume observes that we never experience our so-called ‘problem of induction’ has been an own self, only the continuous chain of our urgent one for philosophers of science. Trying to experiences themselves. This psychological fact show how induction is justified has taxed them leads Hume to the dubious metaphysical throughout the 20th Century. Karl Popper is conclusion that the self is an illusion, and that in notable for offering the most promising solution fact personal identity is nothing but the to Humean scepticism.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Thomas Reid 1710–1796

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The Empiricists: Thomas Reid

‘The general is, and at the same time is not, the person who was flogged at school’

cottish philosopher who, like Kant, have taken a standard from the enemy in his first was inspired by the writings of his campaign, and to have been made a general in fellow Scot, David Hume. Reid advanced life; suppose, also, which must be produced two principal works, admitted to be possible, that, when he took the namely his Inquiry into the Human standard, he was conscious of his having been MindSand the later Essays on the Intellectual flogged at school, and that, when made a general, Powers of Man. he was conscious of his taking the standard, but Reid felt that Hume’s sceptical conclusions had absolutely lost the consciousness of his were inevitable but unacceptable. Consequently, flogging.’ and logically, the only move left open to him was Now Reid proceeds to argue that on Locke’s to object to the assumptions upon which Hume’s criterion of personal identity, the general is the philosophy was based. Principally, this amounted same person as the brave officer, and the brave to rejecting the assumption, common to officer is the same person as the boy, but since Descartes, Locke and Berkeley as well as Hume, there is no psychological connection between the that ideas in the mind are intermediaries between general and the boy, it turns out the general and the subject and the world. Rather, Reid espoused the boy are not the same person. The force of the a form of direct perception in an attempt to deny argument is not just that we intuitively think the Hume’s conclusions and bring philosophy back boy and the general are the same person. A to common-sense. defender of Locke might maintain that in a very Although he made original contributions in real sense the general is a vastly different person this regard, Reid’s importance in philosophy has from the child. Rather the strength of the ‘Brave gone down not so much for his own work but for Officer’ argument lies in showing that Locke’s his masterful criticisms of Locke and Berkeley. position results in a contradiction, entailing, as In particular, his criticism of Locke’s criterion of Reid puts it, that ‘the general is, and at the same personal identity helped to bring out the time is not, the same person with him who was importance of this debate in philosophy (also see flogged at school’. This result comes about Leibniz). because of a logical principle known as the Locke had maintained that a sufficient transitivity of identity. In short, the transitivity of criterion of personal identity was psychological identity is the principle that if A = B, and B = C, connectedness. What this amounts to is the idea then A = C. Reid’s ‘Brave Officer’ argument shows that an individual is the same person over time that Locke’s criterion of personal identity just so long as they maintain a psychological contradicts this rule. As a result the contradiction connection, principally memory, from one time to makes a nonsense of Locke’s criterion as either a another. Reid objected to this with his famous necessary or sufficient condition of identity. ‘Brave Officer’ argument, which can be no more Accordingly, Locke’s criterion must be rejected. succinctly put than in Reid’s own words: ‘Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school for robbing an orchard, to

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Voltaire 1694–1778

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The Empiricists: Voltaire

‘He [the theist] laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he succours the needy and defends the oppressed’

oltaire was born Francois-Marie most widespread; for the simple worship of Arouet, to a wealthy Parisian a God has preceded all the systems of the world. family. Intended for the legal He speaks a language that all peoples understand, profession, Voltaire rebelled while they do not understand one another. He has against his family’s wishes and brothers from Peking to Cayenne, and he counts Vpursued a literary career, much to the all wise men as his brethren. He believes that embarrassment, at times, of his parents. He was religion does not consist either in the opinions of imprisoned in the Bastille for penning libellous an unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain display, poems, during which time he wrote tragedies and but in worship and justice. The doing of good, adopted the name of Voltaire. After a second there is his service; being submissive to God, there spell in prison, he quit France for England, where is his doctrine. The Mohamedan cries to him: he came under the lasting influence of the works “Have a care if you do not make the pilgrimage to of Locke and Newton. Mecca!” “ Woe unto you,” says a Recollet, “if you Following Locke and Newton, Voltaire do not make a journey to Notre-Dame de Lorette!” championed reason over superstition and, though He laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he he held certain deistic beliefs, denounced the succours the needy and defends the oppressed.’ power of the clergy. He later contributed to what It is small wonder the Church found him proved to be perhaps the greatest intellectual vexatious. But Voltaire’s interests were much project of the times, the Encyclopedia edited by wider than theology. During his time in England, Diderot and Jean d’Alembert. The Encyclopedia he had also greatly admired the English was to become the subject of further controversy constitution. On considering democracy, he for Voltaire, as it was considered to be a challenge writes, ‘One questions every day whether a to faith by encouraging people to look to the republican government is preferable to a king’s power of reason. government. The dispute ends always by Alongside his championship of reason, Voltaire agreeing that to govern men is very difficult. The became a strong voice in calls for freedom of Jews had God Himself for master; see what has expression. Since he had himself been persecuted happened to them on that account: nearly always for his writings this was, perhaps, a natural have they been beaten and slaves but do you not consequence of his own experience. Accordingly find today they cut a pretty figure?’ he wrote many satires on what he saw as the As a philosopher Voltaire is not by his own abuse of power by society’s elite, inevitably work particularly original. However, he must be bringing himself into conflict with this elite once included in any retrospective of Western thought again. Typical of his view of religion is the for the huge influence his writings have had. following excerpt from his Philosophical Voltaire did more to popularise and instigate ‘the Dictionary, an eminently readable work even by age of reason’ than any other philosopher. His today’s literary standards, in which he relates the style is always readable, provocative and laced qualities of a theist: ‘Reconciled in this principle with wit. Not until the plays and stories of the with the rest of the universe, he does not embrace existentialists in the twentieth century would any of the sects, all of which contradict each philosophy be again so popularly read. other; his religion is the most ancient and the

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778

ousseau was born in Geneva, the son nearly forty years old, but soon became famous of a watchmaker. Rousseau’s mother on its publication. He became the leading French died in child birth and his father philosopher of the Enlightenment, responsible for showed little interest in him: the inaugurating the Romantic movement in young Rousseau was left in Geneva Continental philosophy. Despite his success as a Rwhen his father was exiled to Lyons. At the age writer, Rousseau fell out with almost everyone of fourteen Rousseau left Geneva and after who knew him, including the Catholics and Mme several adventures, ended up in Turin. Several de Warens, who had by this time become his more years of wandering from place to place mistress. He fell out too with the Protestants and passed until he was taken into the private care of the Government of France after publishing The a certain Madame de Warens. Under her care he Social Contract. He ended his days alone in took to reading and study and spent some eight poverty and despair having fled from country to years there until obtaining a job as secretary to country. After quarrelling with his one-time the French Ambassador in Venice. He did not friend David Hume in England, he finally expired write his first independent work until he was in Paris, most probably committing suicide.

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The Empiricists: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains’

Apart from his collaboration on Diderot’s individual selfish wills. ‘Each of us puts his Encyclopedia, Rousseau’s best works are his person and all his power in common under the Confessions, Emile, and The Social Contract. supreme direction of the general will, and, in our The Social Contract is Rousseau’s magnum corporate capacity, we receive each member as opus, in which he provides a blueprint for the an indivisible part of the whole’. The general will, ideal society, in contrast to the contemporary however, appears to generate a force that is social, political and educational climate which he greater than the sum of its parts. There is a had criticized in his earlier work, particularly suggestion in Rousseau’s writings that the Emile and The Origin of Inequality. In these general will takes on the aspect of a personal works, Rousseau had argued that injustice was a will, over and above the members of the society result of institutions which suppress the natural that give it power. The populace have a duty to will and ability of men. In the later book, obey, leading to the interpretation of Rousseau as Rousseau introduces his famous concept of ‘the condoning totalitarianism. What is often missing noble savage’, declaring that ‘Men in a state of in this interpretation, is, firstly, Rousseau’s nature do not know good and evil, but only their insistence that the direct democracy he advocates independence’, and this along with ‘the is only really practicable in small city-states, and peacefulness of their passions, and their indeed Rousseau takes as his model and ideal the ignorance of vice, prevents them from doing ill’. city-states of Ancient Greece that were known at Man was born free, and he is everywhere in times to practise just this sort of democracy. chains’. With this famous opening line, Rousseau Secondly, and this is the significance of the small begins The Social Contract. Frequently city-state, insofar as the sovereign can impose misinterpreted as a blueprint for totalitarianism, legislation upon the members of the state in the Rousseau’s work stressed the connection between name of the general will, the sovereign is no liberty and law, freedom and justice. The ruler, more than the community itself in its legislative emphasises Rousseau, is the agent of the people and collective capacity. In other words, as not the master, and yet his doctrine of an Rousseau sees it, there can be no disharmony abstract general will appears to license the between the interests of the sovereign and the tyranny of the majority over minorities. For interests of the people, since by definition, the although Rousseau esteems the democratic former is constituted from the latter. process, he combines it with a duty of all those However, one should not overlook the fact who participate in society to obey that which is that there are serious tensions in Rousseau’s for the greater good of the state, thus eroding concept of a social contract. Rousseau is not so any notion of individual rights. Indeed, Rousseau much the idealist that he does not realise there insists explicitly that any notion of individual will be times when an individual’s will runs rights must be forsaken. counter to the general will. In such cases there is The general will, Rousseau tells us, is the will no compromise: the individual shall be forced to of all those directed to their own common comply, or in Rousseau’s pithy but rather chilling interests and must be understood as distinct from words, ‘This means nothing less than that he will ‘the will of all’, which is merely the aggregate of be forced to be free’.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Denis Diderot 1713–1784

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The Empiricists: Denis Diderot

Pre-empted Freud by suggesting that childhood experiences influenced development of moral values

long with Rousseau and Voltaire, Like the writings of Voltaire, Diderot’s would Diderot is considered the third great not go without censure, and Diderot too was figure of the Enlightenment. The arrested and imprisoned for espousing a version ‘Enlightenment’ refers to the of materialist atheism. Despite three months currents of ideas and attitudes incarceration, Diderot completed and published Athat appeared in Europe in the late 17th and 18th the first volume of the Encylopaedia in 1751. centuries. Whilst there are various disunited Throughout the next twenty years a further 16 strands of Enlightenment thought, they all share volumes of writings, accompanied by 11 volumes a drive to break the power of dogmatic religion of plates would appear, despite numerous attempts and throw of the shackles of superstition, by the authorities to suppress it. Diderot’s co- appealing instead to the power of reason. Feudal editor resigned upon publication of the seventh social relationships and political absolutism were volume in 1758, for fear of censure. Even the also rejected. Inspired by the new science of publisher, Le Breton, without Diderot’s knowledge, Galileo and Newton, the Enlightenment is the secretly edited out certain material in the final beginning of the so-called ‘Age of Reason’. At its corrected proofs. Diderot, however, was heart was a conflict between the Church’s undaunted, although deeply wounded when he domination of intellectual life, and the inquiring learnt of Le Breton’s deceit. mind, struggling to know and understand the Diderot wrote a number of other pieces in world through reason. Enlightenment thinkers his lifetime, in which he espoused his materialist believed truth could be arrived at by a combination philosophy and presented some remarkable of reason, empirical observation and a healthy dose insights in biology and chemistry which of systematic and critical doubt. However, foreshadowed later developments. In particular, underlying all this was a fundamental belief in the his speculations on the origin of life, which universe as an essentially rational progression. dispensed with the need of divine intervention Diderot, born to a cutler in Langres, France, were a remarkable precursor of Darwin’s was educated by the Jesuits in Paris. In 1745 the evolutionary theory. He also pre-empted Freud by publisher André Le Breton commissioned him to suggesting that childhood experiences were translate an English encyclopaedia into French. influential in the development of moral values. What actually happened was that Diderot and his Despite its huge impact on the development co-editor for a time, Jean d’Alembert, along with a of Western thought, the Enlightenment period team of like-minded ‘litterateurs’, scientists and eventually failed because of the over-emphasis even clergy (not to mention of course, Voltaire), on reason and rationality at the expense of other re-wrote the whole work. Many of the articles human characteristics. Both Hume and Kant were written exclusively by Diderot himself. What criticised it in this respect. Reason, Hume they created was an encyclopaedia that brought famously declared, is merely the slave of the out the essential principles and applications of passions. In other words, it is instrumental in every art and science then known, but bringing about our desires, but is not the underpinned by a modern, rationalist philosophy fundamental driving force of mankind, let alone and a belief in the progress of human inquiry. the universe at large.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

George Berkeley 1685–1783

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The Idealists: George Berkeley

‘To be is to be perceived’ (esse est percipi)

rish philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, behind and supporting our perceptions. Locke and Berkeley is renowned as the father of others had resisted this suggestion by making the philosophical idealism, who endeavoured distinction between primary qualites, such as to show how, using their own assumptions, solidity, extension and figure, and secondary the materialism of Locke and Newton was qualities, such as colour, taste and smell, claiming Iuntenable. His most famous adage is ‘esse est only secondary qualities are mind-dependent. percipi’ (‘to be is to be perceived’). But Berkeley’s arguments appear to show that Following Locke’s own causal theory of there is no valid distinction between primary and perception, Berkeley, like others, noted that it secondary qualities in perception. As a result, implies a logical gap between the subject and everything turns out to be mind-dependent. If reality. This logical gap, often called by something fails to be an idea in someone’s mind, philosophers ‘the veil of perception’, is generated it fails to exist, hence Berkeley’s famous saying in the following way. The causal theory of ‘to be is to be perceived’. Of course, such a view perception holds that objects in the external leads to an immediate criticism, which is that if world have a causal effect on our senses and in so there were no material substrate behind our ideas, doing produce ideas in the mind of the observer. how is it that things persist when no one perceives Thus an ordinary vase begins a chain of causal them? When I close the door on the bedroom, it events first in the retina of the observer, and would seem to fail to exist according to Berkeley, subsequently in the neural pathways of the if there is no one inside to continue perceiving it. observer that lead him to see ‘a vase’. The seeing Berkeley’s reply is that our perceptions are ideas of the vase, however, is a construct inside one’s produced for us by God. God perceives everything mind, a fact seemingly supported by the existence at all times, so the closed room still exists since it of hallucinations, and visual images in dreams. is perceived in the mind of God. If the perception of the vase is a construct – or The following limerick by Ronald Knox sets ‘idea’ to use Berkeley’s term – in the mind, then it out the objection to Berkeley and his reply: follows that what we actually see is not the real There was a young man who said, ‘God cause of the idea, the actual vase, but only the Must think it exceedingly odd idea itself. Accordingly, it is a matter of conjecture If he finds that this tree to suppose that the cause of the construct actually Continues to be resembles what we perceive. It could be, for all we When there’s no one about in the Quad.’ know, that ideas of vases are caused by something wholly un-vase like. But since all our perceptions Reply: of the world are generated inside the mind, we Dear Sir: have no way of telling whether reality really does Your astonishment’s odd: resemble our ideas or not. I am always about in the Quad. Using a series of arguments employing this And that’s why the tree ‘veil of perception’, Berkeley concludes that since Will continue to be, we never perceive anything called ‘matter’, but Since observed by only ideas, it is an untenable conjecture to Yours faithfully, presume that there is a material substance lying GOD.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Immanuel Kant 1724–1804

robably the greatest and most windows. Undoubtedly apocryphal, the story influential philosopher since nevertheless highlights the fact that Kant was a Aristotle, Kant spent almost the very unadventurous fellow, with little interest in whole of his life exclusively music or the arts but with a passion for in his birthplace, Königsberg. Popular mathematics, logic and science. Kant claimed in mythP has it that the Königsberg professor, an his work to have discovered and laid out inveterate bachelor, was so regular in his daily universal principles of thought applicable to the constitutional that housewives would set their whole of mankind and for all time. clocks by the time at which he passed their Kant’s influence stems largely from the first

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The Idealists: Immanuel Kant

‘What are the necessary preconditions for having any experience at all?’

two of his three Critiques – the mammoth and idea Kant proudly called his ‘Copernican cryptic Critique of Pure Reason (1781), in which revolution’. Like Copernicus, who had turned the he sets out to discover and justify the principles traditional idea of the sun orbiting the earth on underlying objective judgements about reality; its head, Kant had solved the problem of how the and the shorter, more lucid Critique of Practical mind acquires knowledge from experience by Reason (1788), in which he attempts to give a arguing that the mind imposes principles upon rational justification for ethical judgements. experience to generate knowledge. This idea The Critique of Judgement (1790), principally was later to have great influence on the concerned with the ideas of beauty and purpose, phenomenologists and gestalt psychologists of has received considerably less attention. the twentieth century. In the first of his Critiques, Kant was Just as Kant had laid down laws of thought concerned to justify metaphysics as a legitimate in his first Critique, so in his second he claimed subject of inquiry. In Kant’s eyes, it had been to have discovered a universal moral law which brought into disrepute by the impasse between the he called ‘the categorical imperative’. He gave rationalists (see Leibniz) and the empiricists (see several formulations of this law, the first of Hume). The former claimed that metaphysical which was ‘act by that maxim which you can judgements - the fundamental principles upon at the same time will as a universal law’. In which all knowledge is based - are known and essence, this categorical imperative is an justified purely by the intellect. The empiricists on expression of the oft-heard moral remonstration: the other hand, claimed that the human mind is ‘what if everybody did that?’ Kant realised that like a blank sheet or tabula rasa waiting to be taking this seriously entailed that some moral written upon by the world of experience. rules could not be rationally broken. Suppose an Kant’s genius was finding a way to synthesize agent is about to break a promise but stops first these two opposing views. His fundamental to consider Kant’s imperative: ‘could I will that insight sprang from posing the question, ‘what promise breaking become a universal law?’ are the necessary preconditions for having any According to Kant the answer is no, for it is only experience at all?’ He argued that in order for against the background of some people keeping human beings to interpret the world the human promises that the practice of promising makes mind had to impose certain structures on the flux any sense. Thus one cannot rationally assert that of incoming sense-data. Kant attempted to define everyone should break their promises and hence, these in terms of twelve fundamental judgements argued Kant, we have a duty as rational creatures he called the Categories (substance, cause/effect, to keep them. reciprocity, necessity, possibility, existence, Kant thought this kind of reasoning could be totality, unity, plurality, limitation, reality and applied to many of our most cherished moral negation) which could only be applied within a imperatives and would entail the obedience of any spatial and temporal framework. Thus Kant rational creature. Versions of Kant’s theory of claimed both the Categories and space and time, moral duty, often called deontological theories, which he called ‘forms of intuition’, were have been widely upheld and defended by imposed on phenomenal experience by the philosophers up to and including the present day. human mind in order to make sense of it. This

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Johann Christoph Schiller 1759–1805

erman philosopher inspired by concerned with our experiences in relation to Kant, Schiller produced work of music, poetry and the visual arts. Profound great importance in the philosophy aesthetic experiences can induce contemplative of art, or aesthetics. Aesthetics is and emotional reactions, which we tend to Gthat branch of philosophy describe using such terms as ‘beautiful’,

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The Idealists: Johann Christoph Schiller

‘Fear only affects us as sensuous beings, and cannot hold sway over our will’

‘inspiring’, ‘moving’, ‘exquisite’ and the like. The sublime is generated when the force of nature Philosophers are interested in aesthetic is so vast that it dwarfs the possibility of experience and judgement partly for sake of the resistance from the preservation-drive. In our subject itself, but also for the connected issues it ‘sensuous being’ this gives rise to the mortal fear raises in ethics, epistemology, the philosophy of of pain, but in our conception-drive the mind and metaphysics. Schiller’s best thoughts on awareness of the independence of the will results this subject are contained in his essay Of the in a kind of delight. Thus, Schiller says, even as Sublime. we succumb as beings of Nature, ‘we as beings of Schiller’s philosophy of art begins in his Reason, as beings not belonging to Nature, feel psychology and philosophy of mind. Schiller absolutely independent’. To experience the distinguishes two kinds of basic, natural impulses. sublime, ‘it is thus absolutely required, that we First there is the impulse of self-preservation, see ourselves fully isolated from every physical which impels us to maintain our circumstances, means of resistance, and seek succour in our non- to continue our existence, what Schiller calls ‘the physical self. Such a subject matter must preservation-drive’. Second, there is what Schiller therefore be frightful to our sensuousness.’ The calls ‘the conception-drive’. This conception-drive necessity of fear to the sublime is shown up by is the urge to change our circumstances, to be experience. Just insofar as man tames nature, efficient and give expression to our existence. building dams to stop floods, or a yoke to tame These two different drives are the twin impulses of the natural power of the horse, to that degree preservation and progression. The preservation- does nature become less sublime. Equally, when drive, Schiller asserts, is allied with the sensations at times nature overwhelms and, as Schiller puts or feelings of the body, whilst the conception- it, ‘shames the artifice of man’ – the horse breaks drive is allied, naturally, with perception, thinking free of the yoke, the river overwhelms the dam – and representation. so nature becomes sublime again. Schiller uses this dichotomy to give an Schiller goes on to argue that just as wherever interesting psychological account of fear, and there is mortal fear there is the sublime, so is it subsequently of aesthetic experience. Fear, he true that wherever we experience the sublime fear tells us, is a natural defence mechanism to alert is generated in the preservation-drive. Our the preservation-drive to kick into action when aesthetic reactions to works of art as opposed natural conditions become adverse to our to the power of nature lie in the fact that they do survival. Schiller says, ‘If the danger is of the not threaten our physical security, but rather our kind to which resistance is futile, then must fear moral security. Great works of art call into ensue. Thus an object, whose existence conflicts question the established, conservative and with the requirements for ours, is, if we do not preserved notions that constitute our moral feel that our power measures up to it, an object security. The conception-drive is startled by, but of fear’. Yet, he goes on to say, fear only affects does not fear, the danger. Thus Schiller’s notion of us as sensuous beings, and cannot hold sway aesthetic experience is perhaps best summed up in over our will. his own epigram: ‘Great is he, who conquers the Schiller uses this idea to give his account of frightful. Sublime is he, who, while succumbing to aesthetic experience, or as he calls it ‘the sublime’. it, fears it not’.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Frederick Wilhelm Schelling 1775–1854

erman philosopher who took up the self on one side and the external world on the challenge of bridging the gap other, in a number of his works, the most between subjectivity and objectivity important of which is his early, yet monumental engendered by Descartes, and not System of Transcendental Idealism. satisfactorily answered by either Following Kant, Schelling makes a distinction SpinozaGor Kant. Schelling tried to resolve the between ‘transcendental philosophy’, concerned problem of Cartesian dualism, with the conscious with the most fundamental elements of cognition

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The Idealists: Frederick Wilhelm Schelling

Schelling outlines his enterprise as the reconciliation of the subjective with the objective

and experience, and natural philosophy, the unbounded possibility. But insofar as it posits science of what we ordinarily take to be the itself as an object of study, it must become finite external world. Schelling invites us to consider to itself. In trying to make sense of this paradox, that they presuppose each other. If one begins Schelling says the limiting and the ideal are really with natural philosophy one must give an reflections of one another. The subject and the account of the phenomenon of the conscious object in self-consciousness are one and the same self as it arises in nature. If one begins with the thing. They are identical. Schelling now sees the phenomenology of consciousness one must give spiritual activity of self-consciousness as identical an account of the origin of material objects as with the Absolute, or God. Tellingly, Hegel, one of they arise in conscious experience. Thus, as the most abstruse philosophers of all time, says of Hegel comments on Schelling, ‘these two Schelling’s work at this point, ‘All this is a tangled separate processes are as a whole very clearly mass of abstractions’. expressed: the process which leads from nature The position Schelling arrives at after such to the subject, and that leading from the ego to tangled abstractions is not that far removed from the object’. that of Spinoza. For Schelling, the Absolute or Schelling outlines his enterprise as the ‘World-Soul’ is expressed through the dual reconciliation of the subjective with the objective. aspects of nature and mind. Everything that These are really one and the same. A proper exists is part of the One. The Universe or cosmos transcendental philosophy should show how the is a complete entity unfolding in time, and it is two are united into one, part of the same all- Absolute, by which Schelling means nothingness embracing truth, aspects of the Absolute. is not part of its nature. However, Schelling goes Schelling describes the way in which the further than Spinoza, for he argues that the scientific investigation of the natural world leads conscious self is itself the consciousness of the to the inevitable conclusion of the existence of a Universe, the ‘World-Soul’, as it unfolds and subject, and thereby the recognition of expresses itself through time. Through man, then, intelligence in the natural order. In this respect the Absolute becomes conscious of itself. he follows the Aristotelian conception of a The idea, though criticized in parts by Hegel teleological or purpose driven natural world. But and other post-Kantian philosophers, was Schelling’s vision is much more encompassing enormously popular at the time. It elevated the than Aristotle’s and only really comes to light individual artist into someone expressing not when he discusses how one starts from the only his own ideas but the ideas of the Absolute, subjective and works towards the objective. of God himself. Ultimately, however, even According to Schelling, transcendental Schelling’s supporters had to admit his attempt at philosophy must begin with the subjective showing how the subjective and objective are awareness of self, in other words, self- reconciled was a failure. His ideas remain consciousness. The system of transcendental important philosophically, however, for the idealism is ‘the mechanism of the origination of influence they exerted on the various works of the objective world from the inward principle of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger and spiritual activity’. In self-consciousness, the self is Whitehead. both subject and object. The ego is infinite,

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770–1831

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The Idealists: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Ultimate truth is slowly uncovered through the unfolding evolution of the history of ideas

erman idealist born in Stuttgart, synthesis now becomes a new thesis, for which an Hegel produced perhaps the most antithesis will sooner or later become apparent, difficult and yet influential works of and once more generate yet another synthesis, any philosopher since Kant. His and so the process continues. most important are The This gradual, and in Hegel’s view, necessary GPhenomenology of the Spirit, an early work, and unfolding of thought is a progression towards the more mature Philosophy of Right. Taking up absolute truth, indeed towards an absolute where Kant left off, Hegel attempts to construct a universal mind or spirit. But truth for Hegel is grand metaphysic that will close the gap between not propositional. In other words truth does not appearance and reality that Kant’s ‘transcendental belong to assertions that say the world, or reality, idealism’ seemed to have left wide open. is of such and such a nature. Rather, attainment In Kant’s metaphysics, since the mind imposes of truth in Hegelian philosophy is the attainment certain categories on experience, all that human of completeness, or the transcendence of all knowledge can attain to is a complete and limitation. Ideas, or to use Hegel’s terminology, systematic knowledge of the phenomena concepts, are that which are capable of being presented to the mind. This leaves the reality false rather than assertions or propositions. behind those appearances, what Kant called ‘the Falsehood is merely limitation, the incomplete noumenal world’, utterly beyond any possible understanding of the absolute. This entails that human conception. It was a result Kant saw as for Hegel falsified scientific theories are not in inevitable, but which Hegel found unacceptable. themselves wholly wrong, but merely do not tell In Hegel’s philosophy, ultimate truth is slowly the whole story. They are limited conceptions of uncovered through the unfolding evolution of the a more all-embracing truth. history of ideas. There is an absolute truth which, Hegel’s dialectic process concludes with a Hegel claims, is not propositional truth but rather grand metaphysical conception of universal mind. conceptual. This difficult idea is best approached He tells us: ‘The significance of that ‘absolute’ by first understanding Hegel’s views on the commandment, ‘know thyself’, whether we look development of history and of thought. at it in itself or under the historical circumstance According to Hegel, the fundamental principle of its first utterance – is not to promote mere of the understanding mind is the commitment to self-knowledge in respect of the particular the falsehood of contradictions. When an idea is capacities…of the single self. The knowledge it found to involve a contradiction, a new stage in commands means that of man’s genuine reality – the development of thought must occur. Hegel of what is essentially and ultimately true and real called this process ‘dialectic’. Hegelian dialectic – of spirit as the true and essential being’. begins with a thesis, initially taken to be true. The complexities of Hegelian philosophy are Reflection reveals that there is a contradictory manifold and so too, perhaps as a result of both point of view to the thesis, which Hegel calls the this and the obscurity of his writings, are the ‘antithesis’, that has an equal claim of legitimacy. many schools and philosophical influences that Faced with two incompatible ideas, thesis and arose from his work. Perhaps the most significant antithesis, a new and third position becomes influence exerted by Hegelian philosophy, apparent, which Hegel calls the ‘synthesis’. The however, is in the work of Karl Marx.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860

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The Idealists: Arthur Schopenhauer

In music and arts we can contemplate the universal will apart from our own individual strivings

essimistic post-Kantian philosopher. appearances as striving – the will to live – is Schopenhauer’s best work, The World nevertheless revealed to my subjective self as Will and Representation, is a immediately and non-conceptually. Schopenhauer remarkably erudite exploration of never really explains in what this immediate some key Kantian themes combined awareness consists, only that the will is not Pwith a helping of Eastern philosophy. something that belongs to the individual, but is a Schopenhauer helped popularise the abstruse universal striving force manifest, trapped, in the work of Kant to the general public and brought individual being by its insatiable desire to reveal the philosophical ideas contained in the Vedas and itself in the world of appearances. Upanishads into Western culture for the first time. Unlike Nietzsche who would later take up and Like Hegel, to whom he took a vain dislike venerate this idea of will, Schopenhauer does not whilst they both taught at the University of Berlin, see the will as something to be glorified, but Schopenhauer takes as his starting point the something to be resisted. We are all at the mercy unknowability of things-in-themselves, the very of the will, it infects everything we think and do, reality that stands behind the phenomenal world it is the true essence of the universe but also the in Kantian metaphysics. Unlike Hegel, cause of all our suffering, since we are slaves to Schopenhauer accepts Kant’s point that the reality its demands. Schopenhauer does believe, behind the world of appearances – the noumenal however, that there is a way in which we can world – is unknowable to the subjective self. overcome the will, through contemplation of the However, there is a back-door into the world of arts and in particular, of music. In music and the things-in-themselves, or as Schopenhauer puts it arts we can contemplate the universal will apart in typical picturesque style, ‘a way from within from our own individual strivings. In stands open to us to that real inner nature of contemplation, we can attain a measure of things to which we cannot penetrate from objectivity and relinquish the constant demands without. It is, so to speak, a subterranean passage, and striving of the will for transient goals. a secret alliance, which, as if by treachery, places Schopenhauer is also keen to point out that us all at once in the fortress that could not be the will can be overcome by the intellectual taken from outside’. realisation that our mortal selves are mere slaves, This ‘subterranean passage’ is found by tools of the universal will and that death, realising that ‘we ourselves are also among those consequently, is not to be feared. The universal entities we require to know, that we ourselves are will is eternal, and our individual lives are not to the thing-in-itself’; a view Schopenhauer claims be valued since it is the will’s desire to exist in is implicit in Kant’s work but one the great the world of appearances that gives rise to our metaphysician overlooked. individual existence and, consequently, our Schopenhauer’s idea is roughly this. The suffering. This view leads naturally to a subjective ‘I’ is only revealed to us in the world of justification of suicide, but Schopenhauer tries to phenomena, so it cannot be this that constitutes circumvent this by claiming that suicide is an act our real essence (that which is a ‘thing-in-itself’). of will and constitutes a surrender of the intellect Our real essence is will. The will is the thing-in- rather than the victory that can be attained itself which, while exhibited in the world of through contemplation.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Adam Smith 1723–1790

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The Liberals: Adam Smith

‘Unintended consequences of intended action’ will be to the benefit of society at large

cottish philosopher of morals, would either go out of business or be forced to politics and economics, Smith was a lower his prices to a competitive rate. The model contemporary of Hume and is very assumes the absence of a monopoly, both in the close to him in outlook and labour and economic markets. philosophic temperament. His lectures The belief that ‘unintended consequences of onS ethics and logic were published under the title intended action’ will be of benefit to society held Theory of the Moral Sentiments but he is most great imaginative power over the industrial famous for his work of political economics, The philanthropists of the 18th and 19th centuries Wealth of Nations. and provided the philosophical groundwork for Favoured philosopher of Margaret Thatcher the later ethical theories of Bentham and Mill. and darling of Conservative economists, Smith is However, criticism is not hard to come by. It is famous for his views on private property, the free surely a blinkered view, if comforting for the market economy and the doctrine that entrepreneurial capitalist, to suppose that ‘unintended consequences of intended action’ pursuing one’s own self-interest constitutes a will be to the benefit of society at large. The idea magnanimous and philanthropic act towards behind this most fortunate if true of principles is society at large. One has only to review the social that in intentionally serving one’s own interests history of industrial Britain, to witness the one unintentionally serves the interests of treacherous and exploitative working practices society as a whole. of the industrial age, the extreme poverty and A simple example will illustrate the essence of degrading social conditions of the suffering Smith’s idea. Suppose that Jones, in seeking his working classes, to realise Smith’s idealistic own fortune, decides to set up and run his own model has far more serious ‘unintended’ business, manufacturing some common item of consequences. What has largely brought an end everyday need. In seeking only to provide for his to such conditions in the industrialised West is own fortune, Jones’ entrepreneurial enterprise not a triumphant adherence to Smith’s principles has a number of unintentional benefits to others. in Western economics, but a shifting of the First, he provides a livelihood for the people in poverty and exploitative working practices from his employ, thus benefiting them directly. one part of the world to another. In other words, Second, he makes more readily available some the living conditions of those in the West has common item which previously had been more improved to the detriment of other countries difficult or more expensive to obtain for his insofar as the labour required to support Smith’s customers, thus easing one, if only minor, aspect economic philosophy has been removed from of their lives. The forces of market economy Western societies and transferred to those of the ensure that these unintentional benefits occur, Third World. for if Jones’ workers could find more profitable Regardless of one’s political views on Smith, employ elsewhere they would either cease to The Wealth of Nations is one of the most work for him or he would have to raise their important and deservedly read works of economic salaries in order to secure a workforce. Likewise, and political philosophy in the history of Western if Jones’ product was available more readily or thought. It needs to be read and understood by its less expensively from some other source, Jones detractors as much as it does by its supporters.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Mary Wollstonecraft 1759–1797

he original feminist, Wollstonecraft, Wollstonecraft’s most important work, who died in childbirth at the early Vindication of the Rights of Women was preceded age of thirty-eight, was a radical by a pamphlet, Vindication of the Rights of Man, thinker who campaigned both for the in which she argued that the British people had rights of women but also for the the right to remove a bad king and that slavery Trights of man, in similar style to Thomas Paine. and the treatment of the poor at that time were

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The Liberals: Mary Wollstonecraft

‘The neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore’

immoral. Indeed, unlike some strands of the proceeds from the increase of reason, knowledge modern feminist movement, Wollstonecraft saw and virtue, it can only be to the benefit of both the rights of both men and women as mutual and sexes to maximise these qualities. To treat inextricably linked. women as mere trifles encourages them to be For Wollstonecraft, the evil of her days and the cunning and sly, debases their natural talents means by which to put them right, lay in and fosters discord in the home that can only be education. In the introduction to the Rights of reflected upon and perpetuated in the children. Women, she observes, ‘I have turned over various In the cause of female suffrage Wollstonecraft books written on the subject of education, and argues that whilst men reject the rights of women patiently observed the conduct of parents and the they can make no appeal to women’s duties, as management of schools; but what has been the either wife or mother. Can women not vote result? A profound conviction that the neglected because they are not rational? If, so, quips education of my fellow-creatures is the grand Wollstonecraft, sardonically, ‘it will be expedient source of the misery I deplore’. to open a fresh trade with Russia for whips; a In particular, she was concerned with the way present which a father should always make to his women’s natural abilities were being suppressed son-in-law on his wedding day, that a husband through an education that emphasised the may keep his whole family in order by the same qualities required to flatter and serve men rather means; and without any violation of justice reign, than enhance their natural abilities as people. She wielding this sceptre, sole master of his house, writes, ‘One cause of this barren blooming I because he is the only being in it who has reason: attribute to a false system of education, gathered the divine, indefeasible earthly sovereignty from the books written on this subject by men breathed into man by the Master of the universe. who, considering females rather as women than Allowing this position, women have not any human creatures, have been more anxious to inherent rights to claim, and by the same rule, make them alluring mistresses than wives; and the their duties vanish, for rights and duties are understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by inseparable’. this specious homage, that the civilized women of Wollstonecraft’s book was truly revolutionary, the present century, with a few exceptions, are shocking many of her contemporaries. She only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to was once patronisingly described as ‘a hyena in cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities petticoats’, not just for her views on women’s and virtues exact respect’. rights but also for calling for the abolition of the Although Wollstonecraft is clear that it is monarchy and the dissolution of the power of the male-dominated society that has encouraged Church, both of which she saw as oppressive women to be ‘docile and attentive to their looks regimes. Had she not suffered an early death the to the exclusion of all else’ and that marriage is cause of women’s rights may have advanced merely ‘legal prostitution’, she is adamant that much quicker than it in fact did. As it is, it is this is as much to the detriment of men as it is to significant that philosophy would have to await women. ‘Let woman share the rights and she will the arrival of Simone de Beauvoir, nearly 200 emulate the virtues of man’, proclaims years later, before finding another female thinker Wollstonecraft. Since the good of society of such influence.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Thomas Paine 1737–1809

nglish born political philosopher, when he tried to do the same thing there. Paine not only invented the term Awareness of his importance in the formation ‘United States of America’, he inspired of the American constitution and the American the revolutions both there and in ‘way of life’ is pivotal to understanding the EFrance. He was forced to flee England entity that is modern day America.

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The Liberals: Thomas Paine

The proceeds of land and property tax should be invested in a welfare system

Having emigrated to the New World in the chance to gain momentum. In France, Paine early 1770s, Paine became editor of the was at first welcomed and given a seat in the Pennsylvania Magazine and published one of the National Convention. However he was later first essays calling for the abolition of slavery. imprisoned and only just escaped execution. With the beginning of the American Revolution, Paine developed his ideas on civil rights and Paine made himself famous by publishing his justice in his Agrarian Justice. He argues that a book Common Sense. In it, he argues against the state is predicated on the basis that it makes its notion of a ruling class, insisting that government citizens better off than they otherwise would be and society must be kept distinct. Independence without its constitution. But, he finds, many of for the American Colonies, Paine argued, was both the poorest people in the civilized societies of morally and practically justified. He continued to Europe are in a worse state than the so-called write and publish pamphlets throughout the War ‘uncivilized’ native American Indians. The of Independence in support of the revolution. inequity has much to do with land and property After the success of the war for American ownership, a privilege Paine suggests should be independence, Paine went first to France and then taxed since the generation of wealth that makes to England. In response to Burke’s Reflections on it possible requires the support of society. The the Revolution in France, Paine wrote and proceeds of land and property taxes should be published The Rights of Man, his seminal treatise invested in a welfare system, access to which is on democracy and republicanism. According to a right of every citizen. Paine, all men are born with equal rights. The In 1802 Paine returned to America, but it was necessity of social living can, however, bring not to be a happy homecoming. In The Age of about situations where we impinge on the rights Reason, Paine had argued against both atheism of others. Moreover, we may not always have the and Christianity in favour of a deism which means to protect our rights from others who do rejects any appeal to divine revelation. Rather, not respect them. Consequently, it is necessary the belief in God is claimed to be intrinsically to develop the state and a constitution in which reasonable, a logical conclusion to the question individual rights are encoded as civil rights, of why anything exists at all. Paine rejects both enforced by the state on behalf of the individual. organized religion and the Bible’s portrayal of The only morally acceptable constitution is that a vindictive, vengeful God. Unfortunately for of the democratic republic in which citizens are Paine, America was deeply Christian and frowned granted the further right to vote in order to upon his religious writings, despite his previous choose their own leaders. It is just this right, to service to her. Though he remained in the United choose one’s leaders, that the hereditary States for the rest of his life, he died in obscurity. monarchies of France and England deny to their Paine’s work is characterized by a rare people, providing justification enough to abandon integrity that rails against political oppression, them as immoral constitutions. organized religion and poverty. Despite the The British Government, in response, charged massive influence of his early writings he Paine with treason, causing him to flee back to remains a philosopher who, curiously, is rarely France. With Paine gone, the government mentioned. quashed the British revolution before it had

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Jeremy Bentham 1748–1832

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The Liberals: Jeremy Bentham

What one ought to do is to maximise pleasure and minimise pain

orn in London, Bentham was trained encouraged to naturally do what they ought to to become a lawyer but became do, in other words, to promote the greatest good dissatisfied with its over-complex for the greatest number, in order to avoid pain. language and conflicting principles. Punishment was thus always intended as a means He undertook instead an inquiry into of reform and carefully calculated so that its Bthe very nature and basis of law, morals and long-term consequences, though painful for the politics, which he found could be united by a punished in the short term, would lead to an single principle. This principle, which insists that increase in pleasure. To this end, Bentham even the good for man is the attainment of pleasure constructed a ‘felicific calculus’, to aid the and the absence of pain, is a reflection of the calculation of the exact quantity of pain and simple hedonistic psychology known and pleasure that would result from a given action. promoted since the time of Epicurus. However, It is interesting that Bentham makes no Bentham wove the principle – which he called the distinction between happiness and pleasure. To principle of utility – into the very fabric of experience pleasure is to be happy as far as philosophy, society and culture, popularising a Bentham is concerned, a view that would be system of ethics, known as ‘utilitarianism’, that is criticised by his utilitarian successor, John Stuart still of major importance today. Mill. Moreover, Bentham’s idea that pleasure and Bentham’s genius was to show how the pain can be calculated quantitatively, in units of covenants of law, politics and ethics could all be equal value, counted like buttons in a jar, makes recast in the more simple language of utility, no allowance for the different quality of various which is concerned only with maximising that experiences; again a problem Mill would later which we desire and minimising that which we wrestle with in his developments of the utilitarian fear. Utilitarianism is based on a very simple view ethic. of human nature. Bentham says: Perhaps the greatest problem faced by ‘Nature has placed mankind under the Bentham’s system, and to a certain extent one governance of two sovereign masters, pain and even modern day utilitarian theories have not pleasure… They govern us in all we do, in all we fully resolved, is that created by the subjugation say, in all we think: every effort we can make to of individuals for the good of the majority. If all throw off our subjection will serve but to that matters in an ethical dilemma is ‘the greatest demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may happiness of all those whose interest is in pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality he question’ as an aggregate total, there seems no will remain subject to it all the while.’ obvious reason why one person’s entire pleasure From this follows one simple moral rule, that should not be sacrificed for the aggregate good what one ought to do is to maximise pleasure and of the whole. What Bentham’s utilitarianism minimise pain. As a keen reformer of political, lacks, in similar fashion to the ‘social contract’ of legal and social institutions, Bentham argued that Rousseau, is any notion of an individual’s rights. such institutions should be set up in accordance Despite this, the ethical system popularised by with this rule. He famously designed a prison, the Bentham and developed by Mill and many others ‘panopticon’, in which prisoners would be visible has held, and continues to hold, a strong to the authorities at all times, and thus intuitive appeal to many thinkers.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

John Stuart Mill 1806–1873

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The Liberals: John Stuart Mill

Actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, wrong as they produce the reverse

aught exclusively by his father, James satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than Mill, the young John Stuart was a fool satisfied’. Accordingly, Mill distinguishes something of a childhood genius, between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures, to be learning Greek at the age of three, and taken into account in the utilitarian calculation. assisting his father in writings on The utilitarian ethic has a strong intuitive Tpolitical economics by his early teens. Around the appeal due to its simplicity, but it has age of twenty he had a breakdown, and began to nevertheless, particularly in Mill’s exposition, react against the intellectual influence of both his come in for wide-ranging and sustained criticism. father and Jeremy Bentham. Mill produced his However, much of the criticism that is directed at most important work, A System of Logic in mid- Mill in particular (rather than the theory in life, but is principally remembered now for his general) results from taking his Utilitarianism out short and much later work Utilitarianism of the context of his overall thought. For published in 1863. example, modern commentators have complained Mill’s utilitarianism is a refinement of the that Mill’s ethical principle is too demanding. If views advanced both by his father and Bentham. every action must tend toward the increase of Like Bentham, Mill maintains that the pleasure and the decrease of pain, it looks as fundamental guide to moral action should be the though even our ordinary day to day behaviour maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation turns out to be immoral. Surely, if I intend to live of pain. Mill formulated this as ‘the Greatest sincerely according to Mill’s ethic, I should Happiness Principle’, which holds that ‘actions donate all of my disposable income to charity, are right in proportion as they tend to promote and think about the wider consequences of my happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the chosen employment. Is everything I do promoting reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended happiness at the expense of unhappiness? pleasure, and the absence of pain; by Such universal altruism may be meritorious; unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure’. it is not, however, a doctrine or consequence of Mill recognized two failings in Bentham’s Mill’s philosophy. His whole system is one of earlier theory. In calculating the relative amounts radical liberalism. He makes it quite clear that we of pain and pleasure in his ‘felicific calculus’, should only be concerned with morality in those Bentham had weighted each unit of good or aspects of life that require sanctions to deter harm equally. Mill saw that pleasure cannot be specific kinds of conduct. Otherwise a person is reduced to a mere quantitative analysis without morally and legally free to pursue their life as taking into account certain qualitative aspects. they see fit. Critics of Mill have repeatedly The pain of losing one’s favourite pet is unlikely overlooked that in the wider context of his to be equivalent to the pain of losing a relative, philosophy he clearly distinguishes between but then on other occasions and for some other what is right and what is good. Mill nowhere people, perhaps it may be; Bentham’s calculus suggests that we are at all times compelled to act made little room for such distinctions. Secondly, for the good; only that when questions of right Mill insisted that some pleasures were of greater and wrong arise, what is right is what is good, value than others. He famously writes that ‘it is and what is good is that which promotes the better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig greatest happiness of all.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Auguste Comte 1798–1857

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The Liberals: Auguste Comte

‘The intellect should be not the slave of the passions but the servant of the heart’

n unusual and perhaps insists, economic, cultural and social conditions unbalanced character, Comte had all affect each other according to the state of an early career characterized by knowledge in each arena. In dynamics, the academic brilliance punctuated science of change, the development of society by events in which he became a mirrors the development of intellectual progress. Astudent rebel, mental patient and failed suicide. Thus, according to Comte, just as historically In his lifetime he never held a professorship at knowledge began with theology and metaphysics any university, despite the helpful intervention of before arriving at positivism, so social orders friends on his behalf, amongst them, J.S. Mill. have progressively moved through stages of Nonetheless, this French philosopher became the theocracy, monarchy, anarchy and arrived at, posthumous hero of the twentieth century or were due to arrive at in Comte’s vision, a new Positivist movement and inspiration for the trend social order led by science. towards ‘scientism’ (that view which claims It was the working out in detail of this final science is, in Quine’s immortal words, ‘the final stage of the social order that saw Comte soften his arbiter of truth’). Comte was also the self- earlier views. He professes a new ‘Religion of professed founder of sociology, familiar to Humanity’, in which he recognises the important, sociology students the world over, and the first cohesive, social role played by religious and to apply the methods of science to the study of ideological beliefs. In professing this new people and society. His most important work in ‘religion’, however, Comte envisages himself as which these ideas are set out, Course on Positive the High Priest of a new cult. Unsurprisingly, it is Philosophy, would later be contradicted by his generally felt that at this point Comte had passed more mature but romantic ideas which tried to from the detached objective view of epistemology, find a place for religious sentiment in a secular which had informed his earlier work, into the world. realm of the absurd. In his early work, Comte held that theological In trying to explain Comte’s later writings, and metaphysical speculations should be commenatators have cited his involvement with abandoned in favour of a rigorous ordering of Mme Clotilde de Vaux, who by his own admission, confirmable observations that alone should apparently taught him the importance of constitute the realm of human knowledge. ‘subordinating the intellect to the heart’. In his The ordering of ‘positive science’ begins with later writings, such as The Catechism of Positive mathematics and progresses in degrees of Religion, Comte makes room for a morality that he complexity through astronomy, physics, sees implicit in the scientific endeavour itself. The chemistry and biology. After biology comes the truth revealed by science maintains man’s new science of sociology, which is the study of humility and imposes a naturalistic kind of law or the ‘statics and dynamics’ (terms borrowed from justice. Echoing Hume, Comte now professes that engineering) of society. Statics, the science of the intellect should be, not the slave of the forces in equilibrium, as applied to social passions, but the servant of the heart. Needless to phenomena, engenders the view that no part of say, it is in his earlier rather than later writings the ‘social consensus’ can be overhauled without that Comte has exerted his widest influence. radically affecting the whole. As a result, Comte

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Charles Robert Darwin 1809–1892

he young naturalist’s voyage aboard its influence on almost every intellectual the Beagle in 1831 provided Darwin discipline. with observational material to put Prior to Darwin, the received wisdom forward the most influential theory inherited from Plato and only partially modified of modern times, the theory of by Aristotle, was that every natural kind, be it evolution.T Set out in detail in his Origin of gold, silver, animal or plant, can be thought of as Species and later The Descent of Man, the having essential qualities that make it what it is, simplicity of Darwin’s theory does nothing to and accidental qualities, that it may gain or lose detract from either its power of explanation nor without suffering a change of identity. Applied to

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The Evolutionists: Charles Robert Darwin

Complex design arises naturally without the need to posit a designer

the natural world, what makes an individual a Natural selection thus has two components. member of one species rather than another is First, the minor differences that exist between that it is an instance of a particular kind, a dog individuals, and second the principle of or horse, rose or nettle. Clearly there are inheritance that passes these differences down differences amongst different types of dogs as through the generations. Aboard the Beagle, there are between individual dogs. But these are Darwin noted how topological and geographical ‘accidental differences’. All dogs share certain features could magnify these differences. A major fundamental qualities which make them dogs geological or climatic event might make some and not cats or horses. Call these fundamental minor feature the difference between life and qualities the ‘essence’ of a kind. death in that region. Accordingly, any individuals Philosophers had long wondered how to without that feature would become extinct. account for essences. From where did they The so-called ‘essential’ differences between appear? The obvious answer had always been species is nothing more, Darwin showed, than they were the work of a grand designer. God ‘descent by modification’. Descendents are designed the forms of things which are used as modified by time and environment to the point blueprints for the production of individuals. where what looks like ‘design’ is merely the Darwin’s work would show that complex design survival of inheritable qualities. What qualities could arise naturally without the need to posit survive are not pre-ordained by a divine creator, either a designer or a blueprint. but depend on the vicissitudes of circumstance. The background to evolutionary theory lies in Thus Darwin’s Origin of Species solves the the work of Thomas Malthus on population problem of ‘the origin of essences’, in his own explosion. Malthus noted that in order to avoid words, because, ‘it will be seen that I look at the extinction a population must continually expand. term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake However, there will inevitably come a time when of convenience to a set of individuals closely population outstrips available resources. resembling each other, and that it does not Necessarily, some will die and others survive. essentially differ from the term variety, which is Darwin’s theory begins by asking, in the lottery given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms’. of who will survive and who will perish, what Critics have complained that evolutionary determines the winners from the losers? He notes theory is scientifically vacuous because it is ‘If…organic beings vary at all in the several parts incapable of refutation. If true, Darwin’s idea of their organization…I think it would be a most would be less of a theory and more of a blind extraordinary fact if no variation had ever faith. However, Darwin himself was clear about occurred useful to each being’s own welfare…if what could falsify the theory. ‘If it could be variations useful to any organic being do occur, demonstrated that any complex organ existed, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have which could not possibly have been formed by the best chance of being preserved in the struggle numerous, successive, slight modifications, my for life; and from the strong principle of theory would absolutely break down’. So far, no inheritance they will tend to produce offspring alternative theory has provided the required similarly characterized. This principle of demonstration to meet Darwin’s challenge. preservation, I have called…Natural Selection.’

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Henri Louis Bergson 1859–1941

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The Evolutionists: Henri Louis Bergson

Bergson rejects any kind of ‘teleological’ explanation of evolution

rench philosopher whose work and adapting itself as it meets its antithesis, influenced Alfred North Whitehead, matter, which is always trying to limit and Bergson was once described as not constrain it. Bergson rejects any kind of appearing to be in vogue ‘because ‘teleological’ explanation of evolution, such as everybody believes his philosophy that found in Aristotle’s idea that everything is Fmore or less’. striving to fulfil a pre-ordained purpose. This sort Bergson’s philosophy proceeds from a funda- of conception Bergson calls ‘inverse mechanism’ – mental distinction between life force, the ‘élan the idea that everything is determined not by prior vital’, and matter. These are really two conflicting cause but by some future potentiality. Bergson impulses of the universe. The one, the urge to rejects both as deterministic. The ‘élan vital’ is the continually create and diversify, the other an proof of free will. It is an unpredictable force of entropic compulsion to make everything uniform, change that settles for a time into organized to dissipate energy and resist the flow of life. forms, because of the downward pressure of These two conflicting forces are reflected in matter, before moving and diversifying once Bergson’s theory of knowledge. According to him, more. Thus Bergson gives an account of how the intellect which interprets the ‘flux of matter was forced to diversify into animate and experience’ in terms of discrete, repeatable items inanimate forms, how the animate diversified into of observation represents the way of Matter. Its plants and animals, and how animals, through the greatest achievement is geometry. It denies the diversification that is man, produce the further continuous flow of experience and attempts to diversification between intellect and intuition. The know reality by means of identifying and ‘élan vital’ is the driving force of novelty, as seen classifying experience into repeatable and discrete in works of Art and Literature. Such works, units. Contrasted with this is ‘instinct’. Instinct is Bergson maintains, are always a product of prior the creative force, less concerned with space than influence, and yet they are much more than just with time. Since succession is the characteristic of the sum of their parts. They embody a unified idea experience, the creative force has always the which can only arise from the intuition of the quality of ‘duration’, of perpetually ‘coming-into- artist. being’ without ever being made. In his later work Bergson connects the ‘élan This complex idea rests on Bergson’s notion vital’ with the notions of love and God. Although of ‘duration’. The intellect attempts to deal with Bergson says the opposing realities of life and the continuous flow of experience by breaking matter, ‘a reality making itself in a reality time up into discrete ‘moments’. But Bergson unmaking itself’, are inextricably linked, it is claims the discretion is artificial. In experience clear he thinks the ‘élan vital’, the way of there is a constant interpenetrability of past and intuition and instinct, superior and more worthy present. Change is continuous and dynamic, not of veneration than the way of matter, of intellect discrete and static. and ultimately of reason. His work thus Bergson is careful, however, not to fall into a continues a trend of anti-intellectualism in trap of claiming that the ‘élan vital’ is progressive French philosophy that began with Rousseau and or moving towards some purposed fulfilment. It continues to this day in Derrida. is, in his view, an aimless meandering, struggling

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Alfred North Whitehead 1861–1947

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The Evolutionists: Alfred North Whitehead

The history of science cannot be separated from the cultural environment in which it is pursued

nglish philosopher and co-author, with parameters of space and time. Whitehead’s Russell, of the Principia Mathematica, project is to integrate science as part of the social Whitehead is best known for his sciences, reversing the modern trend to think of ‘philosophy of organism’. He rejects the social sciences as ‘folk theories’, naïve materialism in favour of a philosophy scientific theories awaiting development. Ecentred around ‘the concepts of life, organism, Central to this project is a reinterpretation of function, instantaneous reality, interaction, order what we understand by ‘nature’. Materialism of nature’. Whitehead tries to repair the gap made has always conceived nature as that which lies by materialism which split the notions of purpose, behind sense experience, as that which is value and meaning from scientific explanation. causally responsible for sense-perception. The To understand Whitehead’s ‘philosophy of view engenders the split between primary and organism’ one must start with his critique of secondary qualities first made explicit by Locke, materialism, ‘a scheme of scientific thought where secondary qualities are thought to be framed by mathematicians, for mathematicians’. merely ephemeral effects caused in the mind by This scheme, originally intended to serve a set of the primary qualities of objects. Whitehead social and epistemological purposes which have thinks such a split unwarranted and undesirable, now been served, not only remains intact, but, for if true, he says, ‘The poets are entirely Whitehead believes, has now got out of control. mistaken’. Rather than praising the rose for its The principal problem with the scheme is the scent, or the nightingale for its song, ‘they way it has left no room for notions of value, should address their lyrics to themselves, and meaning and purpose within scientific should turn them into odes of self-congratulation explanation. Such notions are criticised by on the excellency of the human mind’. For materialists as subjective, immaterial and non- Whitehead, nature is not the underlying causal factual. They proclaim to uphold a science substrate of our perceptual experience, but rather unencumbered by value judgements, a science nothing more than that which is observed by that is valueless and objective, and thereby, perception. Science should address itself to the universally true. Whitehead finds such a view relations between perceptual events and do away hypocritical and inconsistent. For in rejecting with the outmoded claim to be investigating an values in this way, the materialist is upholding a underlying, abstract ‘matter’. particular value system. Moreover, the history of Whitehead may have been a philosopher science cannot be separated from the cultural, before his time. His ‘philosophy of organism’, social and political environment in which it is while not widely accepted, does form one of the pursued. History shows that generalisations from first, and most systematic, attempts of twentieth scientific research to political and social century philosophy to break away from the conclusions are widespread. The values of society traditional problems of contemporary and the outcome of scientific research are not so philosophy. It is important as a source of clearly delineated as the materialist believes. stimulating and useful ideas to the growing In place of materialism, Whitehead suggests number of philosophers, who, like Whitehead, we operate with the concept of ‘organism’ rather see materialism as fundamentally wrong-headed. than ‘substance’, and ‘event’ in place of the

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Ernst Mach 1838–1916

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The Pragmatists: Ernst Mach

‘We know only one source which directly reveals scientific facts – our senses’

ustrian scientist and philosopher of Consistency and depth are requirements that science, Mach is widely regarded as insist on a lack of contradiction and the greatest the most direct influence on the possible explanatory force. Vienna Circle group of philosophers In line with Mach’s insistence that scientific (see Schlick and Carnap) and laws are merely conceptual tools, it follows that Alargely responsible for the emergence of Logical one should not talk of proof in science. To ‘prove Positivism in the 20th Century. a theory’ implies that one has shown that it must Mach railed against metaphysical conjectures somehow, necessarily, be true but on Mach’s that had no basis in sense experience, declaring, conception of science the best a theory can do ‘We know only one source which directly reveals is order our knowledge so as to help us most scientific facts – our senses’. Accordingly, all that effectively ‘control and predict’ our environment. can be said about reality is whatever is contained An upshot of Mach’s philosophy of science, in a complete description of sense experience. and one he does not fail to notice himself, is Anything other than that goes beyond the that the unobservable ‘posits’ of our scientific evidence and therefore beyond justification. theories, items such as atoms, electrons, fields The upshot of this, Mach tells us, is that science and waves, cannot be accorded any substantial should be reconstructed as an account of the facts existence. Indeed, Mach says to accord any given in sense-experience. material status to such concepts is to invoke ‘the Echoing the thought of William James, Mach sham ideas of the old metaphysics’. The idea is insists in pragmatic style that, ‘According to our resurgent in Quine, who claims the posits of our conception, natural laws are a product of our physical theory have no greater epistemological psychological need to feel at home with nature; footing than ‘Homer’s gods’. Mach even goes so all concepts transcending sensation are to be far in his The Science of Mechanics to work out justified as helping us to understand, control the content of Newton’s mechanics without and predict our environment, and different postulating absolute space and time, force or conceptual systems may be used to this end in any other ‘transcendent’ notions. different cultures and at different times with Mach’s extreme empiricism, however, has equal propriety’. implications that seem to engender anti-realism, Foreshadowing Quine’s philosophy of or idealism. For by relying only on what is given science, Mach goes on to insist that, given two in perceptual experience, Mach is either denying empirically equivalent conceptual schemes, the metaphysical reality of a mind-independent theory choice is not arbitrary, but should rather world, or he is denying the possibility that we be conditioned by considerations of simplicity, can ever have any knowledge of such a world, consistency and depth. Simplicity is a commonly confining it to the same ‘noumenal’ realm that praised virtue of scientific theories, though there Kant was forced to postulate. Indeed, even in his has rarely been given any good philosophical own time, Mach was criticised by Lenin as ‘an reason to prefer it, other than by invoking the enemy of materialism.’ principle of ‘Occam’s Razor’ (see Occam).

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Charles Sanders Peirce 1839–1914

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The Pragmatists: Charles Sanders Peirce

Peirce sees knowledge as a means of stabilizing our habitual behaviour in response to doubt

merican scientist whose interest particularly concerned with the difference in philosophy began as a hobby, between belief and doubt. He rejects Descartes’ Peirce is responsible for one of ‘paper doubt’ – doubts considered merely as an the most recent influential intellectual exercise – and so sidesteps the whole movements in philosophy, issue of epistemological scepticism. Rather, says PragmatismA or, as he later renamed it to Peirce, real doubt ensues when recalcitrant distinguish his views from James and others, experience – not reflection – causes us to waver Pragmaticism. in our beliefs. A belief, as Peirce understands it, According to Peirce, the guiding principle of is not some intellectual disposition to assent to a his ‘pragmaticist’ philosophy is ‘if one can define proposition, but a behavioural habit manifest in accurately all the conceivable experimental action. Accordingly, when real doubt ensues it phenomena which the affirmation or denial of disrupts our usual behavioural patterns. Cartesian a concept could imply, one will have a complete doubt, on the other hand, can make no difference definition of the concept’. This view, then, is to the way we act. Always scientific and principally concerned with establishing the pragmatic in his work, Peirce suggests that meaning of concepts and beliefs, a philosophical knowledge, which he defines as the resolution emphasis that would come to dominate in the of disrupted habits by the revision of belief, is a ‘linguistic turn’ of the twentieth century. ‘homeostatic’ process. Homeostasis is a concept One immediate effect of Peirce’s pragmaticism borrowed from physiology, in which the body is to distinguish metaphysical propositions that employs reaction systems to return to normal are, literally, nonsense from the genuinely functioning in response to environmental upsets. meaningful propositions of ‘scientific Similarly, Peirce sees knowledge as a means of metaphysics’. The former are those propositions stabilising our habitual behaviour in response which have no sense on account of not to doubt. representing any idea that has observable, Unusual in Peirce’s pragmatic philosophy is sensible effects that can be accorded the continued insistence that truth is neither a any practical significance. Scientific matter of coherence in our belief systems nor metaphysics, Peirce maintains, is an obser- success in action. Peirce never denies that truth in vational discipline concerning the first and most some way corresponds with reality, and that there very basic elements of experience, often just must be general, independent laws of nature. those elements that are so fundamental they are Though commentators have found this to create a difficult to discern. Thus scientific metaphysics tension in Peirce’s work, it is uncompromisingly and science are not part of one continuous honest. For Peirce recognizes that the assumption discipline – as many of Peirce’s philosophical on which all pragmatic theories are based – that descendents would later claim – but maintain the prediction is possible – logically requires traditional hierarchical order of foundational and regularities in experience. Moreover, the only succeeding disciplines, respectively. scientific hypothesis that can make sense of the Peirce’s foundational, scientific metaphysics appearance of such regularities is one that takes accordingly begins with phenomenology, the way reality to consist of phenomena governed by things are presented to us in experience. He is laws.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

William James 1842–1910

orn in New York and brother of difference anywhere that doesn’t make a Henry James (the novelist), James difference elsewhere’. graduated from Harvard in medicine According to James, empiricism has laid too but later became a professor of much emphasis on the elements and origin of psychology and philosophy. He is experience, without attending to the importance Bmost famous for his ‘pragmatist’ philosophy of how those elements, or ‘sense-data’, are which is captured by his dictum ‘there can be no related and used to predict future experience.

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The Pragmatists: William James

‘There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere’

James insists all knowledge is pragmatic – in afforded to us only once, and which will have other words, something is either true or right just far-reaching consequences if taken? James insofar as it has a successful application to the claims the issue of religion is both forced and world. Moreover, philosophical questions can be momentous. settled by attending to the difference competing In line with his pragmatism, however, James answers would make to the lives of people who does not attempt any rationalistic proofs of the chose one option over another. If two competing existence of God. Equally, he accepts that there theories offer no immediate practical differences, is no straightforward empirical evidence that can then the best theory may still be found by settle the matter one way or another. However, considering what effects believing in one or the there are good reasons, both empirical and other might have, and whether the mere belief in pragmatical, that justify ‘the will to believe’. a theory would contribute to successful living. First, James reiterates the point that religious This idea, in particular, informs James’ view of belief is both ‘forced’ and ‘momentous’ – for religion, found in his two most famous works, certainly momentous things follow if it is true. The Will to Believe and The Varieties of Religious Now, if we must decide, then in the spirit of Experience. pragmatism and empiricism we should consider According to James, some questions require what difference opting to believe will have on our that we take a stand, that a sit-on-the-fence lives compared to not believing. Since a life of attitude is not possible with what he calls ‘forced’ religious belief has a positive effect of bringing issues. A forced issue is one in which a neutral discipline, motivating force and strength into our stance or the refusal to commit is ruled out. character, James considers that it does indeed Unlike having the choice of calling something have a pragmatic effect: to make our lives better true or false a forced issue is, James says, akin to than if we do not believe. being asked ‘either accept this truth or go without Although James was an orthodox Protestant, it’. No middle ground is possible. James thinks the he was perhaps unaware that his argument, choice whether to believe in God or not is a if sound, is applicable not just to his own ‘forced’ issue of this kind. To back agnosticism or religious beliefs, but to any kind of religious scepticism in this case is tantamount to telling belief. Commentators have noticed that this others that ‘to yield to our fear of being in error is would widen the scope of ‘religion’ to include wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it any kind of ‘over-beliefs’ by which people may be true’. But this is mere dupery, he tells us, organize and motivate their lives. These might asking the question, ‘what proof is there that include such varied passions as science, sport, dupery through hope is so much worse than communism, capitalism or hedonism, as well as dupery through fear?’ The point is that an traditional and fundamentalist ideology. Whether agnostic attitude is just as much a choice as or not James is right that living one’s life in believing. accordance with some doctrinal beliefs can instil If an issue is forced, James considers that we qualities we might otherwise lack, the argument then have to ask if it is ‘momentous’ or not. seems too weak to justify all the claims that one By this he means whether it is a unique, life- is committed to by a religious life. changing, opportunity. Is it a decision that is

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

John Dewey 1859–1952

hen Bertrand Russell wrote by claiming that Dewey is ‘generally admitted to his retrospective analysis of be the leading living philosopher of America’. philosophical thought in Undoubtedly Dewey’s influence is present in the 1946, The History of Western work of Quine, who subsequently held that W Philosophy, he concluded it mantle until his death at Christmas, 2000, and

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The Pragmatists: John Dewey

‘The truth is that which works’

Russell’s epithet is testament to the influence of The end result of this process is a successful pragmatist thought both then and now on resolution of the problem with the adoption of a American philosophy. new hypothesis that works. This led to Dewey’s Dewey’s pragmatism consisted in replacing famous remark that ‘the true is that which works’. the notion of truth as ‘correspondence to reality’ We are warranted in asserting an hypothesis only with truth as successful rules for action. He went on the condition that it works, any further claim beyond his predecessors, however, in developing of it ‘corresponding to reality’ is, in Dewey’s his pragmatism as an instrumentalist theory of view, a ‘metaphysical’ claim that adds nothing both logic and ethics in which the notion of either to what we already know about or to what ‘warranted assertability’ does all the same work we can do with the hypothesis. as the notion of ‘truth’ but without the Dewey was keen to extend the instrumentalist metaphysical baggage. approach beyond the theory of knowledge and Following Peirce, Dewey upheld the idea that into ethics, education and social theory. Societies, knowledge is a state of the human organism like individuals, are characterized by habitual which consists in the settling of beliefs, patterns of action. When such patterns break understood as habits of behaviour that have down, they too must be repaired in light proven successful in action. However, when of the five stages mentioned above. For Dewey, habitual behaviour is disrupted by novel or what is ethically ‘good’ is ‘a unified orderly unexpected experiences, the organism must release in action’ of conflicting tensions and engage in reasoning or ‘intellection’. Dewey impulses that arise out of moral conflicts. The characterized five different states of the good, like the true, is ultimately what works. reasoning process. Dewey’s instrumentalism shares certain First, when the organism’s habitual patterns affinities with the existentialist work of of action are disturbed, it will nevertheless Heidegger, a connection explored in depth by continue to act in order to resolve the situation. the contemporary philosopher, Richard Rorty. Since its principle of action (belief) has proven Both Dewey and Heidegger reject the prevailing unsuccessful it must begin a process of philosophical emphasis on the subject as an ‘intellection’. The second stage then, is to extract isolated spectator in an external world in favour the significant elements of the situation in order of a being embedded in an environment which it to formulate it as a problem-solving exercise. The must manipulate, adapt and control. The next step involves ‘hypothesis construction’, the organism is nothing more than ‘the organization creative use of imagination to provide possible of a material system in space-time’, and whose answers. The fourth stage that Dewey identifies is features and capacities (psychological, social, the use of reason to weigh up and order the ethical and so on), ‘their emergence, development alternative hypotheses. This consists in reckoning and disappearance’, are wholly ‘determined by up the different experiences each hypothesis changes in such organizations’. Clearly, Dewey’s might actually result in. Finally, ‘testing’ or work falls within the scientific paradigms of the experiment is the process by which hypotheses modern age and represents a sustained attempt to are eliminated as they are tried out in the court of work out the philosophical implications of that experience. framework.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Karl Marx 1818–1883

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The Materialists: Karl Marx

Economics is the primary conditioning factor of life

orn in Treves, Germany, Marx lived judgements about what is best, or right, or just. the latter part of his life in England Rather, Marx insists that socialism is necessarily and is buried at Highgate cemetery the most efficient means of securing that which in London. His work, along with that human beings strive for, namely the goods of Engels, profoundly influenced required for survival. Since socialism is the most Bpolitical events in Russia and Eastern Europe in efficient way to ensure productivity, the progress the twentieth century, and he was the darling of of ‘dialectical materialism’ has no need of moral both European and American intellectuals up sentiments. Socialism is, according to Marx, until the 1960s. His most influential works are a natural outcome of the economic conditions The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. operating on the human being. Marx’s philosophy owes a great deal to Hegel, It is at this point that the reversal of Hegel’s from whom he borrowed the notion of ‘dialectic’. idealism in Marx’s materialism can be seen in Marx, however, rejects Hegel’s idealism and his purely philosophical terms. Whereas Hegel’s notion of truth unfolding towards the Absolute, history of ideas insists that it is the dialectic in favour of a purely atheistic ‘dialectical progress of concepts – developments in human materialism’. understanding – that fuel social and political For Marx, the fundamental condition of change, Marx asserts that it is transformations in humanity is the need to convert the raw material economics that give rise to new ways of thinking, of the natural world into the goods necessary for to the development of ideas. This reflects Marx’s survival. Consequently, production, or in other underlying view concerning epistemology and words economics, is the primary conditioning phenomenology. For Marx, the mind does not factor of life. Taking a historical perspective, Marx exist as a passive subject in an external world, records, ‘The hand-mill gives a society with the as the prevailing empiricist tradition emanating feudal lord; the steam-mill a society with the from Locke would have it. Along with Kant, industrial capitalist’. According to dialectical Marx shares the view that the mind is actively materialism, there is a three-sided conflict engaged with the objects of knowledge. But between economic classes. The landowners whereas Kant only went so far as to propose that created by feudalism were opposed by the rise of our psychological apparatus imposes certain the middle classes, forcing a ‘synthesis’, that is, a structures on the flux of experience, Marx held new economic class, the industrial employers of that the subject and object of experience are in a capitalism. However, the new ‘thesis’ of capitalism continual process of adaptation. We must order generates the antithetical force of the proletariat, our experience in practical ways, so as to make or working classes. The synthesis that Marx it useful to our survival. In modern terminology envisages from this conflict, the inevitable what Marx is proposing is a version of dialectical outcome, is socialism. instrumentalism or pragmatism, but at the more His reasons for supposing that socialism is the basic phenomenological level, as in the necessary outcome of the modern economic existentialist phenomenology of Heidegger, conflict are not, though such may appear at rather than at the scientific or epistemological times to be the case from his passionate level, as in Dewey and James. revolutionary invective, predicated on ethical

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Friedrich Engels 1820–1895

riend and collaborator of Marx, Engels capitalist economics to its necessary outcome, is largely responsible for developing socialism. His book The Condition of the Working and expounding the concept of Class in England, written whilst living in ‘dialectical materialism’ within the Manchester in the 1840s, is a masterpiece of social Marxist framework. Along with Marx, observation and an important historical record. EngelsF is credited with being the first to argue that Lenin describes it as ‘a terrible indictment of the working class and its demands will drive capitalism and the bourgeoisie…written in

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The Materialists: Friedrich Engels

‘One can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together’

absorbing style and filled with the most authentic Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism and shocking pictures of the misery of the English on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, proletariat.’ everywhere social warfare, every man’s house in Unlike many like-minded contemporaries, a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering however, Engels did not view the working class under the protection of the law, and all so as a problematic outcome of capitalism. Many of shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks those who objected to the social horrors created before the consequences of our social state as by the industrial revolution thought that what they manifest themselves here undisguised, and was needed was a way of running the economy can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still that did not generate a proletariat. Marx and hangs together’. Engels, however, took the opposite view. The Engels records that starvation was a common more workers there are, the greater their strength phenomenon amongst the unemployed. But even as a force for revolution. The increasing size of the employed should not rest content, thinks the proletariat only hastens the advent Engels. ‘True, it is only individuals who starve, of socialism. Moreover, it is the very condition of but what security has the working-man that it the working class which will drive it to help itself may not be his turn tomorrow? Who assures him once they realise that socialism is, and should be, employment, who vouches for it that, if for any their political ideal. reason or no reason his lord and master It is generally thought that it was Engels, discharges him tomorrow, he can struggle along rather than Marx, who developed Hegel’s idea with those dependent upon him, until he may that the universe is undergoing a constant process find some one else “to give him bread”? Who of change and development into the doctrine of guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice ‘dialectical materialism’. Unlike Hegel, Engels was to obtain work, that uprightness, industry, thrift, a materialist – what was undergoing the dialectic and the rest of the virtues recommended by the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis was not bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No ideas but matter. Just as material causes underlie one. He knows that he has something today and natural phenomena, so the development of society that it does not depend upon himself whether he is conditioned by the development of material shall have something tomorrow’. forces, which he construed as the forces of Of course, by combining such erudite polemics material production. Since productivity depends with philosophy, Marx and Engels would become on the relations people enter into in order to effect the philosophical fathers of the communist the production of goods, it seemed that this single revolution across half the world. For that reason fact could explain all social phenomena, including alone Marx and Engels might justifiably be laws, aspirations and ideals. thought as the most influential philosophers of The social conditions of the working class all time. The republics that would be realised in were so appalling, it seemed to Engels, that the response to their philosophy would put an end to dialectic process could have but one possible the fear of unemployment, but how far they outcome, namely socialism. He writes, ‘What satisfied the other, immaterial, needs of their is true of London, is true of Manchester, citizens may only be judged by history. Birmingham, Leeds, is true of all great towns.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Vladimir Illych Lenin 1870–1924

ndoubtedly the most influential government until his retirement due to ill-health exponent of the ideas of Marx in 1922. Trained as a lawyer he turned the and Engels, Lenin, founder of the theoretical words of Marx and Engels into the Bolshevik party and leader of the practical deeds that led to the formation of the U October Revolution, led the Soviet Soviet Republic. His voluminous essays are

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The Materialists: Vladimir Illych Lenin

‘Freedom of criticism’ means freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas…into socialism

probably best exemplified by his call-to-arms introduction, he complains, ‘the new “critical” message in What is to be Done? trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than Under the Tsars, Lenin was twice exiled, a new variety of opportunism…“freedom of together with his wife Nadezhda Krupsakaya, for a criticism” means freedom to introduce bourgeois total of ten years, and these years he spent in ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism’. With Europe, particularly England, Switzerland and that pronouncement, it might fairly be argued, the France. After observing political events in Europe, concept of freedom in Soviet politics ended. Lenin came to the conclusion that the revolution Instead, what was required, Lenin saw, was in Russia would have to take a different path. He a determined drive to make the peasantry both argued that as the Russian people had no tradition class-conscious and revolutionary. In his writings, of democracy, the revolution required a therefore, he pursued an aggressive style in which ‘vanguard’: an elite cadre of intellectuals and he proclaimed no one could be politically politically conscious ideologists that would be the impartial. The idea that philosophy should be leading group of the proletariat. The proletariat, in non-partisan was a bourgeois idea professed to line with traditional Marxist ideas, must form the keep the proletariat in place. The so-called basis of absolute rule, but their democratic voice analytic ‘objectivity’ espoused by the positivist would be expressed by the vanguard, who alone philosophers like Mach, was nothing more than had the vision and ideology to lead the country the means by which imperialist forces defended with competence and skill. their bourgeois class interests and justified the Famously, Trotsky objected to the policies of the ruling class. The means by which concentration of power into an elite which, he Lenin reached this conclusion has, alas, been foresaw, would have the dire consequences that historically proven to rest on a complete misinter- ensued under Stalinism. However, Lenin felt that, pretation of the scientific discoveries of his day. left to the Russian peasantry, the theoretical and Nevertheless, Lenin maintains that philosophy organizational problems of running the socialist cannot stand apart from the social conflicts in nation could never be solved. Commentators have which it is situated. Since society consists in suggested that in his European travels, Lenin had mutually hostile classes, any system of thought, become exasperated by the endless controversies scientific or philosophical, must have arisen out and petty arguments within the revolutionary of, and reflect the interests of, those classes. Lenin movement and that it was this that persuaded him writes, ‘To expect science to be impartial in a of the inefficacy of the democratic process. wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to Indeed, in What is to be Done?, Lenin opens with expect impartiality from manufacturers on the an attack on the constant calls for the ‘freedom of question of whether workers’ wages ought not to criticism’ by the leftist Marxists. ‘Freedom,’ Lenin be increased by decreasing the profits of capital.’ exclaims, ‘is a grand word, but under the banner The politicising of philosophy and science would of freedom for industry the most predatory wars be extended to every arena of Russian life. Such were waged, under the banner of freedom of was the force and vigour of Lenin’s brand of labour, the working people were robbed. The Marxism, based as it was on a dictatorial elite, modern use of the term “freedom of criticism” that it would come to deserve its own name in the contains the same inherent falsehood.’ In the same history of communism, Marxism-Leninism.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Sigmund Freud 1856–1939

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The Materialists: Sigmund Freud

‘When I was young, the only thing I longed for was philosophical knowledge’

ustrian psychologist and inventor of measuring the results of psychoanalytic of ‘psychoanalysis’, Freud has had practice. a monumental impact on Western Despite such philosophical concerns, the thought and philosophy. His best popularity of psychoanalytic treatment is work is contained in The apparent and such popularity, its supporters AInterpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology would maintain, must surely be an indicator of Everyday Life, Three Studies on Sexuality and of its success. However, it is important to Future of an Illusion. Though trained as a distinguish several logically independent claims. physician rather than a philosopher, Freud That personalities can be understood by famously said, ‘when I was young, the only thing interpreting an account of childhood experiences I longed for was philosophical knowledge, and is one claim; that the interpretation given of such now that I am going over from medicine to an account represents some objective truth about psychology I am in the process of attaining it’. the patient is another; and that this process of The key to understanding Freud’s work is ‘conversation and interpretation’ can effectively two-fold. On the one hand psychoanalysis is treat nervous illnesses is a third. The popularity predicated on the view that certain early of psychoanalysis could be attributable childhood experiences, are ‘repressed’ by the to the truth of any, all or none of these claims. Ego into the Unconscious. Typically, these are In purely theoretical term, Freud’s division of experiences that the child feels would elicit a publicly responsible Ego suppressing the disapproval, and crucially for Freud, are tied in impulses of the Unconscious also invites with the child’s sexual identity in relation to one criticism. In particular, it attributes conflicting or both of its parents. The second element of intentional or purposive agency to distinct realms Freud’s theory concerns the separate, empirical of the mind. Sartre criticized Freud’s psychology claim, that such repressed memories are the cause for incoherently proposing that the conscious of physiological disruptions, particularly nervous censor, the Ego, suppresses unconscious desires. illness. Thus, Freud defines psychoanalysis as ‘a If the Ego is not conscious of the unconscious procedure for the treatment of the medically ill’. ideas or desires, how could it be in a position to As one commentator has pointed out, know that they must be repressed? however, it is an entirely unusual kind of medical Despite this, philosophy in general has reacted treatment, in that nothing passes between the well to Freud’s theoretical principles. Freud doctor and patient except conversation. The himself suggested that his psychology represented doctor’s ‘treatment’ consists in eliciting repressed a new ‘Copernican revolution’. Just as Copernicus memories from the patient by interpreting the had shown that the Earth is not at the centre of responses to his questions. This has led critics, the universe, as Darwin had shown that man is notably Popper, to question the scientific status not lord and master over the animal kingdom, but of Freud’s procedure. Since the interpretation by merely a continuous extension of it, so Freud the doctor is neither objective nor ‘testable’, in claims to have proven that the conscious mind, or the ordinary scientific sense, and is moreover the self, is not ‘master of its own house’, as all protected from scrutiny by the ethos of doctor- rationalist and Cartesian philosophies presuppose. patient confidentiality, there is no objective way

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Carl Gustav Jung 1875–1961

wiss psychologist and therapist, Jung Unlike Freud, Jung would divide the psyche was for a time the disciple of Freud, into the ego, the personal unconscious and the but he would go on to outline a theory collective unconscious. His reading of Freud, very different from Freud’s materialistic interjected with ideas from mythology, religion psychoanalysis. His works are and philosophy, led him to posit a universal numerous,S but his most accessible are Man and unconscious that revealed itself in symbolic form his Symbols, and the autobiographical Memories, through dreams, mysticism and religion. Dreams, Reflections. The key to Jung’s idea of a collective

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The Materialists: Carl Gustav Jung

Ultimately, Jung claims, the self is fully realised in death

unconscious lies in the notion of an ‘archetype’. either one being ‘better’ than the other. According According to Jung, the collective unconscious to Jung, introverted personalities were those, determines that our experience is conceived such as himself, whose ‘ego’ was turned more according to certain organizing principles, the towards the internal and unconscious, whereas archetypes. There are any number of archetypes, extroverts were orientated more towards outer too many to be fully classified, claimed Jung. reality and external activity. However, he did outline some of the most The distinction plays an important role in powerful archetypes that shape our lives and Jung’s notion of the self. The self is the master account for our behaviour. archetype, that principle by which we structure One such archetype is the ‘mother’ archetype. our whole lives. Jung thought the self was in a Although it is clear that having a mother is a constant process of development, which became necessary biological relationship, Jung’s mother fully realised when all aspects of our personalities archetype amounts to more than just the common are equally expressed. Thus to be overly introvert relation that we all bear to some other human or overly extrovert represents an immaturity in being. The mother archetype reflects a development. However, if we develop normally, psychological need. What is significant about the as we get older we tend to balance out the mother archetype, Jung tells us, is that we all different aspects of our personality. Ultimately, expect something or someone in our lives to fulfil Jung claims, the self is fully realized in death. the role of nurturing us and providing us with Critics have found Jung’s psychology overly comfort in times of stress. This is an evolutionary mystical and in parts unscientific, inasmuch as need so it should come as no surprise that Jung the emphasis, as with Freud’s theory, is on says we come into the world ready to want subjective interpretation which appears to be mother, to seek her, to recognize and to deal with incapable of falsification. However, it has been her. Ordinarily we project this need on to our enormously popular and practically fruitful. biological mother. However, where Jung’s Jungian psychology has led to the development theory comes into action in psychotherapy is in of highly accurate personality profiling, such as revealing the patterns of behaviour people exhibit the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and contributed when the biological mother has not fulfilled the to the development of psychometric testing, the archetypal role. For instance, someone whose use of which is now widespread in human biological mother did not fulfil the archetypical resources departments for assessing the role may find themselves attracted to ‘mother- suitability of candidates for employment. substitutes’, the church, the army, national Jung’s synthesis of Freudian psychology with patriotism and so on. mysticism is the first reputable attempt to bring Jung went on to distinguish between a number Eastern philosophical principles into arena of of different personality types, and invented the modern Western thought. As such it represents terms ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ to describe two of a return to the mysticism found in the Ancient the most basic. These have become synonymous Greek philosophers from Pythagoras onwards, with being shy or being an exhibitionist, but but which has since been overlooked due to the Jung’s explanation of these ideas was far more emphasis placed on materialism and rationalism. sophisticated and not judgemental as regards

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

John Maynard Keynes 1883–1946

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The Materialists: John Maynard Keynes

Downturns in the economy are short-term problems stemming from a lack of demand

rained initially as a mathematician, intervention could lead to a stable free market and influenced by the work of Russell economy. However critics deplored the idea of and Whitehead, Keynes gave up government intervention in the trade cycle. It working on probability theory in order encouraged the anti-liberal idea that social to pursue his idea in economics. He problems should be solved by government, foundedT a school of thought, Keynesian and indeed that government should look to economics, the only one in that subject to bear academics to show them how to solve such an author’s name. His best known works are The problems. Nothing could have been more Economic Consequences of Peace, in which he repugnant to the supporters of the classical predicted that the high levels of reparation being ‘laissez-faire’ economics of Adam Smith and levied on Germany after the First World War J.S. Mill. On the classical view, the economy would result in political instability, and his functions best when there is no interference from General Theory of Employment, Interest and government. Smith and Mill believed that the Money. It is the second of these works that has natural economic order will, so long as it is not had such a massive effect in social, political and disturbed by governmental meddling, tend ideological terms. towards the maximum well-being of both the In his General Theory, written in the individual and society. This kind of controversy depression years of the 1930s, Keynes still rages today, both in politics, economics and optimistically argues that downturns in the philosophy. economy are short-term problems stemming Keynes’ theories were followed for much of from a lack of demand. Keynes offered a simple the subsequent years in the UK until around the if radical solution: the government should boost 1970s, with controversial results. Although short-term demand through public spending. supporters are quick to point out that the Once the economy returns to buoyancy the practical interpretation of his ideas has rarely government reclaims its budget deficit by been agreed upon, critics will retort that Japan increasing taxes and reducing public spending. and Germany, two powerhouses of post-war The underlying principle is straightforward world economics, both refrained from adopting enough: government spending should be Keynesian policies. Ethical issues concerning inversely proportional to private trade. When globalisation also have a Keynesian dimension, trade is booming, government should spend anti-globalisation supporters should note: the little, when the economy slumps, public spending two ethical pariahs of world trade, the should go up. But what was radical about this International Monetary Fund and the World proposal was the general principle that the Bank, were both Keynesian inventions. government should intervene in the economy to Ultimately, economic thought has moved on control demand, an idea that has come to be from Keynes, but his work remains the yardstick known as ‘demand management policy’. with which all other theories are measured. Keynes’ theory was seen at the time as the Although his work began in probability theory as answer to Marx’s prediction that the boom and a response to Russell and Whitehead, his ideas bust cycle of capitalism would inevitably lead to were to have a dramatic effect on the world as socialism. Keynes showed how government we know it.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855

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The Existentialists: Søren Kierkegaard

‘Each age has its depravity. Ours is…a dissolute pantheistic contempt for individual man’

anish philosopher born in complains, ‘What I really lack is to be clear in my Copenhagen, Kierkegaard is often mind what I am to do, not what I am to know… considered the father of existen- the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, tialism, (see, for example, Sartre). to find the idea for which I can live and die’. It is He was the youngest of seven a theme that recurs throughout all existentialist Dchildren, five of whom, along with their mother, thought, and is what justifiably identifies had already died by the time he was twenty-one. Kierkegaard as ‘the first existentialist’, though he He himself only lived to be 42. His early work On would not have recognised the label himself. the Concept of Irony proved a masterful criticism The answer is religious belief, which of the philosophy of Hegel, whilst his later works Kierkegaard holds to be a matter of passion not offered sustained criticism of the State church, reason. Reason can only undermine faith, never which he found to be incompatible with his own justify it. For even though one might indulge in Christian beliefs. rationalistic proofs of God’s existence, in the Kierkegaard’s work once more returns manner of Anselm or Aquinas, these nevertheless ontological prominence to the Cartesian have nothing at all to do with a belief in God. One individual as opposed to either the species or the must choose to believe in God passionately and whole, as seen in the works of Spinoza, Hegel personally, not as a mere intellectual exercise. An and Marx, for whom the individual is, more or authentic belief acquires its force from within, as less, an irrelevance. Against this conception a ‘leap of faith’ without the guidance of reason to Kierkegaard rails: ‘Each age has its characteristic reassure us that what we are doing is ‘right’ or depravity. Ours is perhaps not pleasure or ‘true’. Such reassurances would, after all, indulgence or sensuality, but rather a dissolute maintains Kierkegaard, remove the need for faith pantheistic contempt for individual man’. if God’s existence were simply a matter of However, Kierkegaard is anything but Cartesian common-sense or rational reflection. in every other respect. His work is probably best Kierkegaard’s later works frequently attack summed up by his own famous epigrams, that the institutions of the Christian church, which ‘the conclusions of passion are the only reliable he claims are the very antithesis of Christianity. ones’ and ‘What our age lacks is not reflection Going through the motions of a Christian life – but passion’. attending church, following ordained ethical For Kierkegaard, the whole history of thought precepts, reciting scripture and so on – has has been preoccupied by the wrong concerns. nothing to do with the religious life if it does not Since the Greeks, philosophy has concentrated involve a personal and direct confrontation with on architectonic metaphysical schemes, the divine. venerating reason or experience in order to Towards the end of his life Kierkegaard’s comprehend and make sense of the world. But reputation suffered considerably for both his none of these systems take into account the conflict with the Church and a long running fundamental human condition. We are, at every public feud with the Press. He nevertheless enjoys turn, faced with the need to make decisions. a reputation today not just as a forerunner of the Choice is our starting point, constant companion, influential existentialist movement, but as a and heaviest burden. In his Journals Kierkegaard masterful essayist with great persuasive style.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900

ne of the most profound, enigmatic national socialists in Germany, Nietzsche’s and ultimately controversial philosophy has wrongly gained the reputation of philosophers in the whole of the supporting Nazism, though his concept of the Western canon, Nietzsche has been Übermensch or ‘superman’, is in fact closer to variously appropriated, vilified, Aristotle’s man of virtue than the glorified Aryan veneratedO or simply misunderstood. Through the hero. Elisabeth’s edited and altered collection of relationship of his sister, Elisabeth, with the Nietzsche’s writings, published shortly after his

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The Existentialists: Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s philosophy has wrongly gained the reputation of supporting Nazism

death as The Will to Power, has done much to particularly hostile to Christianity, which he mar the reception of Nietzsche’s thought in the famously calls a ‘slave morality’. In it he saw twentieth century. As a result, despite the resentment of the weak towards the strong. comprehensive reassessment in academic circles, Those who failed to have the courage to master it may be another hundred years before their own passions, who lacked, ultimately, inner Nietzsche’s philosophy is widely appreciated for strength of character, sought revenge on those the genius that it is. Freud said of Nietzsche that stronger than themselves, not in this life, but ‘he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself in a fictional ‘other’ world, where some other than any other man who ever lived or was ever power, namely God, would wreak vengeance on likely to live’. their behalf. Son of a Protestant minister, Nietzsche gained Unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche did not see a professorship at the University of Basel at the the will to power as something to be resisted, but remarkable age of only twenty-four. After ten pursued and affirmed. It is, Nietzsche insists, the years, ill health forced him to retire into a exuberance of spring, the affirmation of life, the solitary and vagrant lifestyle travelling across saying of ‘Yes!’ However, as has already been Europe, whence he devoted himself to writing suggested, Nietzsche did not advocate the and recuperation. He eventually achieved dominance of the strong over the weak, nor worldwide fame during the last ten years or so of suggest that mastery of the will to power his life. Of this he was probably unaware, since, belonged to some special elite by virtue of birth. in 1889, Nietzsche suffered a final and Rather he described, historically, how the irreversible breakdown and remained insane domination of the strong results in, and is until his death. necessary to, what we would now call the Nietzsche’s writings are varied and cover ‘evolutionary progress’ of the human being. diverse topics, from ethics and religion to But strength, as Nietzsche understands it, is metaphysics and epistemology. He is most not constituted in physical, but rather psychical, renowned, however, for his concept of ‘the will to force. The strong are those who are more power’. Influenced by Schopenhauer to a certain complete as human beings, who have learnt to extent, albeit without so much metaphysical sublimate and control their passions, to channel baggage, Nietzsche saw the fundamental driving the will to power into a creative force. force of the individual as expressed in the need to Neither, contrary to popular misunder- dominate and control the external forces standing, did Nietzsche endorse the ‘master operating upon him. As such, Nietzsche’s morality’ – moral systems peculiar to the individual requires what the existentialists would aristocracy – although it is true he thought it later give him, the power to be master of his own more life affirming than ‘slave morality’, destiny (see in particular, Sartre). as typified in Christianity. Rather, Nietzsche The frustration of this urge, Nietzsche saw, is held that the strong had a duty towards the less responsible for the existence of various moral fortunate: ‘The man of virtue, too, helps the systems and religious institutions, all of which unfortunate, but not, or almost not, out of pity, attempt to bind and subdue the will. Perhaps but prompted by an urge which is begotten by because of his father’s influence, Nietzsche was the excess of power’.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Edmund Husserl 1858–1938

erman philosopher and founder science, from real issues and problems and not of ‘phenomenology’, the descriptive merely from the consideration of other analysis of subjective processes and philosophers’ works. Nevertheless, Husserl also events that lies at the heart of all conceived this ‘scientific’ enterprise as a non- existentialist philosophies. Husserl empirical one. Rather, it is a conceptual insistedG that philosophy must proceed like exploration of perception, belief, judgement and

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The Existentialists: Edmund Husserl

One cannot separate the conscious state from the object of that state

other mental processes. Like Descartes, Husserl anything, lies behind appearances. Speculations believed in philosophy as essentially a rational about what exists beyond appearance is open to enterprise beginning with the self-evidence of doubt and scepticism, and Husserl, like Descartes one’s own subjectivity. It is a view that would before him, sees himself as being involved in a famously be rejected by Husserl’s follower and foundational inquiry whose task is to discover intellectual heir, Martin Heidegger. certainties. Since all ‘knowledge-of-things’ is Husserl’s phenomenology begins with the acquired through the intentional objects of concept of ‘intentionality’, as conceived by consciousness, any science of knowledge must Brentano. According to Brentano, all conscious begin with the intentional, with what can be states refer to a content, though that content may known without doubt. Only those phenomena or may not exist, may be abstract or particular. that form, to borrow a Kantian phrase, ‘the For instance, take someone who is afraid of necessary preconditions of experience’ can ghosts. That person’s fear is directed towards satisfy such an inquiry. something, namely ghosts, and yet this is true Beyond an inquiry into the very elements of whether we believe in ghosts or not. Similarly, if conscious experience, Husserl realises that he one believes that tomorrow it will rain, one’s faces the same obstacle as Descartes’ ‘cogito’ belief is directed towards, or refers to, tomorrow – (the conclusion popularly translated as ‘I think, a possibility rather than an actuality. therefore I am’), namely that it is impossible to Husserl, following Brentano, suggested that say anything very certain about ‘the external the intentionality of the mind entails that one world’. However, Husserl is less concerned with cannot separate the conscious state (fear, for scepticism about ‘knowledge of things’ and more example) from the object of that state (a ghost, with scepticism regarding ‘knowledge of self’. say) in an ontological sense. They can only exist For Husserl has identified consciousness with together, as two aspects of a single phenomenon, the intentional act, and yet the self is not the act, the intentional act. This leads Husserl to claim but is the observing subject of the act. But this that consciousness just is ‘directedness towards subject is never given in experience, is never, an object’. The mental state and the object of that in Husserlian terms, the object of an intentional state exist together in consciousness without act. Accordingly, Husserl endorses a view akin to implying that there is any ‘material’ object Kant, that the subject of experience is answering to the call. Pursuing this idea, Husserl transcendental – outside of the spatio-temporal thought that what is crucial to philosophy is to causal order. understand all the various ways in which this That conclusion is rejected by Heidegger ‘directedness’ or intentionality, manifests itself. but taken up again by Sartre in his Being and This constitutes Husserl’s ‘non-empirical Nothingness, in which consciousness is portrayed science’ – a pure investigation into the very as a unique phenomenon able to negate, through elements of mental processes. Husserl believed denial and imagination, what is real. Consequently that stripping away all the ‘contingent’ or it must stand outside of the ordinary causal order, unnecessary aspects of conscious experience as Husserl, Descartes and an extended line of could fulfil such an investigation. Consequently, ‘dualist’ philosophers, have long agreed. the inquiry does not need to consider what, if

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Martin Heidegger 1889–1976

erman existentialist, born in main work, Being and Time, at the University Messkirch, Baden. After studying of Freiburg. He founded existentialist theology and then philosophy, phenomenology under the influence of both Heidegger went on to study under Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s work. Notoriously, GHusserl, to whom he dedicated his Heidegger praised Hitler in a speech of the 1930s,

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The Existentialists: Martin Heidegger

It is only in full…awareness of our own mortality that life can take on any purposive meaning

an act for which he was widely criticised and course Heidegger rejects the subject-object which would do his career lasting harm. It is distinction. For him ‘being-there’ is a perspective, generally thought that he was at least a which, it turns out, is a locus of action extended sympathiser with national socialism, if not an through time. In sum, Dasein is a perspective from outright supporter. After the war he claimed it had which action originates. been a massive social experiment that had gone In Heidegger’s phenomenology, Dasein’s drastically wrong. first comprehension of objects is not of His contribution to philosophy, fortunately, determined and independent material things to be is not politically orientated and, for better or measured, analysed and classified. Rather, worse, has been highly influential. Heidegger Dasein’s first comprehension of things is as saw the history of philosophy as concerned tools: whether they are useful, whether anything with the wrong kind of questions. Ever since can be done with them, and if so, what? What Plato, Heidegger complains, philosophers have about Dasein’s comprehension of itself? been asking about what there is and what they Heidegger insists that what is characteristic of can know about what there is. For Heidegger, Dasein, as a temporal, self-conscious these questions presuppose too much. They phenomenon, is that it knows its own fate. Dasein notoriously presuppose a number of dualisms, knows that it is finite and mortal. This generates in particular the Cartesian one of subject and what he calls angst or dread. But it is only in full external world. Like Nietzsche, Heidegger and uncompromising awareness of our own rejects the division, rejects the notion of a world mortality that life can take on any purposive as external to some conscious spectator. meaning, insists Heidegger. Properly understood, In place of such dualisms, Heidegger focuses self-awareness leads to the ‘authenticity’ of a life on the question ‘What is Being?’, by which he created out of nothing, in the face of dread, by intends that before we can ask about what sorts reference only to one’s own deliberate purposes. of properties objects might be said Accordingly, on Heidegger’s view, the to have, we have first to look and examine, in a question of why there is something rather than priori fashion, what it means for something to nothing comes back to the choice of ‘being- ‘be’. The question can be seen as arising from the there’. Dasein chooses to make something out of most basic philosophical puzzle of all: ‘Why is nothing and so, without Dasein, according to there something, rather than nothing?’ Few Heidegger there would be nothing. Due to the philosophers or philosophies have ever addressed obscure language and often undefined concepts this question, yet for Heidegger an answer is which Heidegger uses, it is not clear if the thesis essential before any other philosophical is really just that without self-consciousness questions can be engaged. there would be no-one to be aware of the For Heidegger, the question ‘what is Being?’ in existence of anything. That is not a position general narrows down to considering what type of Heidegger ought to take, for it would show that being one is oneself. He gives Being the his previous rejection of the ‘mind – world’ deliberately vague name of Dasein – ‘being-there’. distinction had been presupposed all along. ‘Being-there’ is supposed to denote what we Nonetheless, it is not clear what other sense we ordinarily might call the human subject, but of can make of Heidegger’s proposal.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980

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The Existentialists: Jean-Paul Sartre

It is up to the individual to choose the life they think best

rench philosopher and principal Sartre, it is his choice whether to comply or defy spokesman for the existentialist – the consequences do not exempt one from movement in post-war France. Sartre’s making that choice. most important work, Being and This radical freedom, Sartre realises, has Nothingness owes a great debt to weighty consequences. We are responsible for manyF who had gone before him, principally, everything we do. One cannot, in Sartrean Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Nonetheless, existentialism, make excuses or defer Sartre’s philosophy possesses a clarity and force responsibility to either a divine being or human that captured the spirit of his times in a far more nature: to do so would constitute a self- powerful way than that of either his predecessors deception, or ‘bad-faith’. This leads to three, or his existentialist contemporaries, such as related burdens on the individual. Firstly, Camus, Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir. ‘anguish’, arising from the awareness of the The central theme of all existentialist weight of responsibility we each hold. Everything philosophies is the claim that ‘existence precedes we do affects not only ourselves, but by our essence’. By this Sartre intends to convey the choices and actions we set examples for the rest view that man first exists without purpose or of mankind. Such responsibility is a consequence, definition, finds himself in the world and only Sartre insists, of the fact that we define our own then, as a reaction to experience, defines the meaning of life, which is reflected in our actions. meaning of his life. When we make a choice, it is not merely a It is the flip-side of an argument presented by personal preference, but a statement to the world Aristotle in his Ethics, that man is created to that this is how life should be led. The second fulfil some purpose or goal, and that fulfilment burden is ‘abandonment’. The existentialist finds of a life consists in striving towards that goal. By it ‘extremely embarrassing’ that God does not contrast, Sartre argues that since there is no God exist. For it follows that we are thus left alone or designer to give man a purpose, it is up to the without help or guidance in moral matters. individual to choose the life they think best. Literally, we must make it up as we go along. However, Sartre’s subtle argument does not Thirdly, there is ‘despair’. By this Sartre means rely on his atheism to prove the existential that we must act without hope, foregoing the premise. For even a belief in God is, according to instinct to trust that things will turn out for the Sartre, a personal choice - it is a life and purpose best. There is no providence. We must each rely chosen. The belief in a deity can never be forced only on that which we can affect by our own will upon a person. Even if one were to have the and action. miraculous visions of Abraham, it is still up to The consequences of Sartre’s existentialism the individual to interpret those visions: the voice are clearly burdensome but unavoidable. We are of the divine or lunatic hallucinations? Only the ‘condemned to be free’. But this should not give individual, not God, can make that interpretation. cause for any kind of pessimism, as his detractors Indeed, it is a wider tenet of Sartre’s often accused his philosophy of engendering. philosophy that man is never compelled; he is Existentialism exhibits ‘a sternness of optimism’, faced with a choice at every turn. Even if a man Sartre tells us. Its optimistic message is that ‘the is imprisoned or a gun held to his head, argues destiny of man is placed within himself.’

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Albert Camus 1913–1960

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The Existentialists: Albert Camus

Suicide, as a resolution of the absurd, would be… a denial of the very condition of man’s existence

elebrated French-Algerian author, which he considers other writers – Husserl, playwright and philosopher. Camus Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers and Sartre – all shied became great friends with Jean- Paul away from. For one by one they failed to stay Sartre in Paris, where they worked faithful to the original premise of their together on the radical left-wing existentialist philosophy, which is that the absurd newspaper,C ‘Combat’. However, they fell out in is a consequence of the encounter between a 1951 and never spoke again. Camus’ best known rational human being and an irrational world. works are The Stranger, The Outsider and The One must not, Camus insists, as they have done Plague. Undoubtedly his most important in their philosophies, make any attempt to contribution to existentialist philosophy, resolve the conflict. It is irresolvable, because it however, is The Myth of Sisyphus. is a given of human existence. To resolve it is to In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus develops the deny the very phenomenon one began with. central existentialist theme of ‘absurdity’. Human Suicide is just another attempt at resolution. existence, Camus claims, is absurd. This Undoubtedly Camus backs himself, and his absurdity arises out of our attempts to make reader, into an inescapable corner. To accept sense of a senseless world. Camus tells us ‘the absurdity is to accept death. To refuse it is to absurd is born of the confrontation between accept a life on the precipice, where one cannot [this] human need and the unreasonable silence leap to comfort, but only live ‘on the dizzying of the world’. For Camus, ‘absurd’ is meant to be crest – that is integrity, the rest subterfuge’. The taken in its original comic sense, which arises dizzying crest he describes is the fully conscious out of a comparison of the ridiculous with the experience of being alive, like Sisyphus, in the face sublime, such as a man attacking a machine-gun of death and the pointlessness of one’s toils in life. nest armed only with a sword, or the fate of In the face of the absurd we must, he says Sisyphus, condemned by the Gods to eternally somewhat metaphorically, ‘revolt’. ‘Revolt’ is the push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back awareness of a crushing fate, but without the down again as he reaches the summit. resignation that ought to accompany it. Thus Sisyphus’ fate, Camus insists, illustrates the Sisyphus, who is condemned to eternal repetition futility and hopelessness of labour. We, like and fully aware of it, finds that ‘the lucidity that Sisyphus, live our lives accomplishing nothing. was to constitute his torture at the same time For, as in Russell’s poetic words, ‘all the labour crowns his victory’. We must, Camus famously of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, says, imagine Sisyphus happy, for ‘being aware all the noonday brightness of human genius, are of one’s life, and to the maximum, is living, and destined to extinction in the vast death of the to the maximum’. solar system, and the whole temple of man’s Camus thus rejects suicide as an option. We achievement must inevitably be buried beneath cannot solve the problem of the absurd by the debris of a universe in ruins’. negating its existence. It is a necessary condition Given such a pointless existence, in an of the confrontation between man and world. uncompromisingly irrational universe, Camus Suicide, as a resolution of the absurd, would be must ask ‘why should I not commit suicide?’ It is a defeat, a denial of the very condition of man’s the inevitable conclusion of existentialism, existence.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986

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The Existentialists: Simone de Beauvoir

‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’

rench novelist and philosopher, de without essence. But the identification of ones Beauvoir is largely responsible for biological gender serves, in the case of the female, inaugurating the modern feminist to define her personhood. The female becomes ‘a movement as well as significantly woman’, the meaning of which is defined by influencing the later views of Sartre. culture and society, be it the ‘domestic goddess’ DeF Beauvoir has become, wittingly or otherwise, mother and wife of the 1950s or more recently, the heroine of feminists across the world. Her the ‘Supermom’ of the 1990s . Even biological most significant philosophical works are The facts such as menstruation are always culturally Ethics of Ambiguity and, the bible of feminism, interpreted, says de Beauvoir, such that the fact of The Second Sex. Both are superior works whose it could be lived either as ‘a shameful curse, or a philosophical import has often been overlooked sexy reaffirmation of the healthy functioning of because of the determination to marginalize de one’s body’, according to societies’ conceptions. Beauvoir within the feminist movement. In the Consequently, one is not born a woman. The words of Brendan Gill’s 1953 review in ‘The New female becomes one by accepting and living the Yorker’, The Second Sex ‘is a work of art, with the role society defines as appropriate. This salt of recklessness that makes art sting.’ acceptance, however, is not automatically ‘bad De Beauvoir’s thought is a development of faith’ as Sartre would have it, and it is crucial to existentialist themes found in Sartre. In see how de Beauvoir extends and develops this particular, her most famous expression, ‘One is concept. not born, but rather becomes, a woman’, can De Beauvoir insists that acting in bad faith only be understood against the background of presupposes that one is aware of the potential for Sartrean ‘bad faith’. freedom in one’s situation, which one then According to Sartre, freedom of choice is an chooses to ignore. But the presence of this ever-present condition of human life. However, awareness is not a given. Children, for instance, because of the enormous weight of responsibility cannot act in bad faith, because others define that this entails, we are apt to make excuses, to their being, since the child lives in the world of deny our freedom to choose. Such excuses can its parents or guardian. Only when they reach an typically involve blaming the kind of person that ‘awakening’ in adolescence does existentialist we are on our human nature. But Sartre says angst take hold. Similarly, de Beauvoir argues, cowards and heroes are not born, they are women have historically had their being defined defined in action. What we are is what we do. for them through socio-economic circumstances. Thus anyone who acts heroically is a hero, Consequently they have been ignorant of the anyone who acts cowardly is a coward. But one potential for freedom in their situation, and always has the choice to act differently next hence could not be acting in ba\d faith. time. There is no such thing as ‘nature’ which It is easy to see how de Beauvoir’s ideas – that determines how we must act. Denial of this women must recognize their own freedom, define radical freedom is a kind of self-deception, or their own being, and free themselves from the ‘bad faith’ as Sartre calls it. ‘enslavement’ of a society whose rules and values Working within Sartre’s framework, de are defined by men – could be taken up as a war- Beauvoir accepts that an individual is born free, cry by the women’s liberation movement.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Gottlob Frege 1848–1925

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The Linguistic Turn: Gottlob Frege

The meaning of a term can only be given in the context of a sentence

erman philosopher whose work profound developments in the philosophy of went unnoticed in his own lifetime, language. Since neither the functional expression Frege has become one of the nor the argument assert anything individually, but greatest influences on twentieth only when they are combined to form a complete century philosophy for his work in expression, it follows that the meaning of a term Glogic and the philosophy of mathematics. That can only be given in the context of the sentence philosophy took the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ – (Frege’s ‘context principle’), by deducing what the prefacing of ontological and metaphysical contribution it makes to the sense of the whole reflections with a prior analysis of how such expression (‘the compositionality of meaning’). commitments arise in language – is largely due to This combined thesis has been Frege’s most Frege. His invention of ‘quantificational’ logic enduring legacy to the philosophy of language. was the greatest development in that subject since Having argued that meaning is now primarily Aristotle and has completely replaced Aristotelian a property of sentences, and only derivatively of ‘syllogistic’ logic in university courses. terms, Frege could then apply a distinction in Frege’s contributions to modern philosophy meaning between the sense and reference of an and logic begin with his rejection of the expression. Respectively, these are the thought Aristotelian analysis of sentences as being the sentence expresses and the objects being fundamentally of subject/predicate form. referred to or talked about by the sentence. For According to the classical analysis, a sentence instance, it is clear that ‘the Commander-in- such as ‘Socrates is wise’ can be analysed into Chief’ and ‘the President’ are talking about, or two distinct parts. First, the subject of the referring to, one and the same person. It is sentence, ‘Socrates’, and second a property equally clear, however, that the two expressions ascribed to the subject, namely ‘being wise’. express different ideas. Being Commander-in- This had been the received wisdom for over two Chief is not the same thing as being the thousand years and gave rise to some notoriously President. intractable philosophical puzzles, not least The sense/reference distinction has become concerning the notion of substance and the a centre-piece of many modern theories of ontological status of universals and particulars. meaning. It lies at the heart of philosophical Frege swept all this away by analysing projects which try to show how language is sentences on a mathematical model of function connected to reality. Since, according to Frege, and argument. On his view, the sentence ‘Socrates the sense of an expression determines what it is wise’ contains a function, ‘( ) is wise’, with refers to, it has seemed to some philosophers that ‘Socrates’ taking the place of argument for that there must be some essential connection between function; in other words, filling the gap in the what we say and what there is. This is the idea incomplete functional expression, ‘( ) is wise’. that informed the logical atomism of both This view is taken over directly from Bertrand Russell and the young Ludwig mathematics, where sentences such as ‘2 + 3’ may Wittgenstein (a view Wittgenstein would later be analysed in terms of a function ‘( ) + ( )’ reject), and continues to feature in a number of being completed by the arguments ‘2’ and ‘3’. important contemporary philosophical projects. This allowed Frege to inaugurate some

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Bertrand Russell 1872–1970

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The Linguistic Turn: Bertrand Russell

[Russell’s] theory of definite descriptions has become a standard tool of logical analysis

ritain’s most famous modern Since there is no such person as ‘the present philosopher, whose magisterial King of France’, do sentences of this kind count History of Western Philosophy is still as false, or meaningless? Either view creates a classic of its kind. Russell first problems. To say it is meaningless defies the very became famous for his attempt, only simple fact that one can understand what the Bpartially successful, to show how mathematics sentence is trying to assert. But to say it is false, was grounded in logic. Despite eventually seems to entail that the contradiction of (1), abandoning that project, he became famous namely within philosophy for his work in logical analysis The present King of France is not bald, and, in later life, in society for his humanist social philosophy. Interestingly Russell saw no is true. But (2) is no more true than (1). So essential connection between these two strands of how do we settle the analysis of sentences that his thought, claiming of his latter views, ‘On fail to refer in this way? Russell’s answer was these questions I did not write in my capacity as a ingenious. He proposed that such sentences are philosopher; I wrote as a human being who really descriptions which consist of a conjunction suffered from the state of the world, wished to of separate claims. Namely, first, that there is find some way of improving it, and was anxious some person who is the King of France, second, to speak in plain terms to others who had similar that there is only one person who is the King of feelings’. Critics might complain that this, rather France, and thirdly that any person that is the than his formal work in logical analysis, is surely King of France is bald. Now these propositions the task of philosophy, but it is not a view Russell can be formally decided. For they amount to a would share. conjunction in which the first proposition is false The scope of Russell’s work spans all the (that there is a King of France). Logically, any traditional areas of philosophy and incorporates statement that is a conjunction of propositions is many of the new ideas generated in the first half false if any one of the conjuncts is false. of the twentieth century. His thought continued Accordingly, the conjunction turns out false to change and develop throughout his life. regardless of whether the other conjuncts are However, it is generally held that his most treated as true or false. important contributions came in the first decade The theory of definite descriptions, in showing or so of the new century. how it is possible to speak meaningfully of things Concerned with the semantic problems of that do not exist, has become a standard tool of meaning and reference, Russell solved a long- logical analysis. It is essential to all those whose standing philosophical conundrum with his work in the philosophy of language is predicated famous ‘theory of definite descriptions’. The on theories of meaning which seek to essentially conundrum is generated out of considering connect the meaning of words with items in the whether to call a sentence true or false when it world. For if that is the underlying basis of fails to refer. For example, consider: meaning, assertions about non-existents are surely problematic without Russell’s analysis. The present King of France is bald.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951

aised in a prominent Viennese Philosophicus (1922), which later earned him a family, Ludwig Wittgenstein studied doctorate from Cambridge and exerted a lasting engineering in Germany and influence on the philosophers of the Vienna England, but became interested in Circle. Despite being only 32 when it was the foundations of mathematics and published, he declared that in it he had solved all pursuedR philosophical studies with Russell and the problems of philosophy and promptly retired Frege before entering the Austrian army during from academic life. the First World War. The notebooks he kept as a The central concern of the Tractatus is the soldier became the basis for his Tractatus Logico- relationship between language, thought and

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The Linguistic Turn: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Meaning cannot be divorced from the activities and behaviour of the language users

reality. Language, Wittgenstein insists, is the early thinking. The corpus of his later writings perceptible form of thought and bound to were published posthumously as Philosophical reality by a common logical form or structure. Investigations (1952). Following Frege, Wittgenstein insisted that the In the Investigations Wittgenstein remains meaning of linguistic expressions must be concerned with the nature of language, thought determined by the nature of the world, since and reality. Now, however, he repudiates both the otherwise the meaning or sense of an expression claim that meaning is dependent on reality and would be infected with vagueness and that language is essentially concerned with uncertainty. From Russell, he borrowed the representation. Objects are not literally the idea that both language and the world must be meanings of names, rather they serve as understood in terms of their constituent or atomic elucidations of meaning – pointing to a table parts. However, Wittgenstein broke away from his helps explain what the word ‘table’ means. teachers by arguing that the underlying logical Likewise, Wittgenstein realised, language has structure of sentences must exactly mirror or many functions. Words are like instruments or picture the essential structure of the world. This tools that we employ for many different purposes became known as his ‘picture theory’ of meaning: in different contexts. Language is not just used to sentences are representations – literally pictures – represent or describe, but also to ask questions, of possible states of affairs. Since logical order is play games, give orders, throw insults and so on. necessary for sense, Wittgenstein claimed, What a word means depends both on what it is ordinary language could not be logically being used to do and the context in which it is imperfect as both Russell and Frege had thought. employed. This gives rise to Wittgenstein’s famous On the contrary, claimed Wittgenstein, language notion of ‘a language-game’: roughly, that it is is ordered as it is, anything that can be said at all the context which explains the meaning of an can be said clearly and what cannot be said expression used in particular circumstances. The clearly must be passed over in silence. essence of Wittgenstein’s later work is that it is a After publication of the Tractatus, mistake to conceive of meaning as essentially tied Wittgenstein went into self-imposed exile, to the nature of reality. Meaning cannot be giving away his inherited fortune and living and divorced from the activities and behaviour of working in Austria, first as a schoolteacher and language users, which both reflect and explain the later as a gardener. By 1929, however, he had meaning of our words. become unhappy with elements of his early work It is hard to overestimate Wittgenstein’s and returned to Cambridge. Meanwhile, in his influence on modern philosophy. His later work absence the Tractatus had won critical acclaim had a direct influence on J. L. Austin and the and was beginning to exert major influence in Oxford ‘ordinary language’ school of philosophy European schools of thought. Wittgenstein now as well as the modern speech-act theorists. The found himself in the unusual position of being assumptions present in and worked out through the most vehement critic of his own early work. his early work, on the other hand, are still He spent the following 20 years, until the end of enshrined in the modern philosophical programs his life, trying to clarify and dispel the offered by Quine, Donald Davidson and Michael philosophical confusions that had informed his Dummett, to name just a few.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Ferdinand de Saussure 1857–1913

wiss philologist whose work has had a their notes over the three years he taught the monumental impact, first on course, and published them in 1916, as Cours de linguistics and second – through the linguistique générale (A Course in General advent of the ‘linguistic turn’ – on Linguistics), often simply referred to as the Cours. philosophy. Saussure published little In the Cours, Saussure rejects the task of ofS wide interest during his lifetime, but in the linguistics as having anything to do with either last years of his life taught general linguistics at grammar, philology or etymology. Rather, he the University in Geneva. It is said that Saussure defines the proper object of linguistic study as destroyed his notes after each lecture and thus, the system of signs employed by human beings, upon his death, left little work to indicate his the relationships of which can be studied in the ideas. Fortunately, his lectures were so extra- abstract, or as he says ‘synchronically’ rather ordinary that his students collected and collated than ‘diachronically’, in other words, without

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The Linguistic Turn: Ferdinand de Saussure

Saussure defines language as a system of signs, whose relationships can be studied in the abstract

reference to any particular historical people to effect speech. ‘Langue’ is distinguished implementation of that language. The proper from ‘parole’: the intentional production of a object of linguistic study, says Saussure, is not speech act. Saussure compares the difference the linguistic output of any given individual but between langue and parole as like that between the shared knowledge of a community of the score for a piece of music and the particular language users. Saussure tells us ‘You can performances of it. conjure up a very precise idea of this product – That said, Saussure also thought that one and thus set the language, so to speak, materially could analyse language merely by paying in front of you – by focusing on what is attention to the internal relationships between potentially in the brains of a set of individuals signs, by analysing ‘langue’. A sign’s role in (belonging to one and the same community) even ‘langue’ is defined not by considering its content when they are asleep; we can say that in each of or positive contribution, but merely by its these heads is the whole product that we call the differences to other signs in the system. Thus, for language’. He goes on ‘The language, in turn, is example, the vowel sounds in the signifiers quite independent of the individual; it cannot be ‘Mary’, ‘marry’ and ‘merry’ can only be identified a creation of the individual, it is essentially by contrasting them with each other. Similarly, social; it presupposes the collectivity.’ the ideas expressed by the signified ‘male’ must Saussure conceives of language as ‘a system be opposed to ‘female’: one cannot predicate both of signs’, but this necessarily calls for a of the same subject simultaneously, and so on. definition of ‘sign’. Saussure gives it as the This idea of negative inter-definition in a collation of a word with a concept. When a sign closed network gave rise to the ‘structuralist’ is employed in speech it has a two-fold effect. movement. Broadly speaking, the structuralist There is the physical sound pattern – the signifier movement, following Saussure, sought to – generated by vocalisation and received by the undertake studies in various social sciences by brain or mind – and there is the concept or idea – concentrating on the deep structures underlying the signified – that the sign stands for. Both are social practices. Typical examples of such ‘deposited in the mind’ as effects of one and the structures are grammar or syntax, (rather than same speech event. The signifier and the signified vocabulary use), rules of narrative rather than are inseparably linked; they are like ‘the front linguistic style, and in general anything that and back of a single sheet of paper’. Key to this studies sign systems and their rules rather than conception is the claim that the signifier and the particular expressions of the system in use. signified are wholly distinct from the spoken Later in the twentieth century there would word. The first is the cause of the other two, come the ‘poststructuralist’ reaction, with which are psychological events. philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida. The relation between the abstract sound Foucault would reject the Saussurean assumption pattern and the concept signified is, Saussure that one can define all the possible relationships insists, wholly arbitrary. But the relationship of an element, arguing that one can only look at between sound patterns in any given language the permutations that have historically arisen in can be abstracted and schematised. Saussure language use. Accordingly, the structuralist called such a schematisation ‘langue’ – the project to define abstract linguistic structures has socially shared system of signs employed by not yet been succesfully carried out.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

George Edward Moore 1873–1958

ritish philosopher and contemporary other important works include Ethics, Some Main of Russell and Wittgenstein, Moore Problems of Philosophy and Philosophical Papers. used the analysis of language as his On Moore’s view, we are entitled to our starting point in a so-called ordinary conceptions of how things are. ‘common-sense’ philosophy. Moore’s Questions of meaning and truth hardly arise in Bearly work rejected both idealism and its chief ordinary language, inasmuch as we know how to rival empiricism, in favour of a realism which use and understand the things we say. The only attempts to justify our ordinary claims to important questions are what Moore calls knowledge against the sceptical and outlandish ‘analysis of meanings’, by which he intends to views of philosophers. Moore’s linguistic method refer to a deeper level of reflection on the also underlies his work in ethics, most notably connections between concepts and their propounded in his Principia Ethica of 1903. His definitions. Such knowledge is not needed for

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The Linguistic Turn: George Edward Moore

The question of whether something is good is always an ‘open’ question

everyday use, but is an essential method of In Principia Ethica Moore’s view was that philosophical analysis. Particularly, Moore finds, ‘good’ denotes some simple non-natural, (i.e. when dealing with the more outlandish of abstract in the Platonic sense) property of which philosophical claims, which may turn out not to we are intuitively aware. He rejects both Kant’s mean very much at all once analysed properly. view that ethics is concerned with reason, and This view was to have a striking influence on the the utilitarian view (see Mill) that some natural development of Wittgenstein’s later thought, and property can be identified with ‘the good’, in indeed the work of Wittgenstein’s now published favour of an ethics predicated on value as On Certainty can be seen as a direct response judgements which are as distinct and mind- and development of Moore’s ‘common-sense’ independent as any ordinary matter of fact. approach. Value can never be defined in non-evaluative According to Moore, any concept can be terms, hence the naturalistic fallacy. But in his analysed primarily in one of two ways. It can later writings Moore abandoned the Platonic either be dissected into constituent parts, in other conception of value in favour of one in which words into more elementary concepts, or it can value-judgements are really expressions of be defined negatively by its relations to and approval or emotion, a view later developed in distinctions from other concepts (this second idea detail in the ‘prescriptivist’ theory of R.M. Hare. is similar to that of the structuralists: see Moore’s work in the philosophical analysis of Saussure). meaning also pre-empted the ideas of J.L. Moore goes on to use this method of analysis Austin. ‘Moore’s paradox’, as Wittgenstein called in his discussion of ‘what is good?’, a question he it, asserts that though it looks like a nonsense, takes to be the central problem of ethics. On there are contexts where the assertion, ‘It is Moore’s view ‘good’ is a concept that cannot be raining, but I don’t believe it’ makes sense. defined or analysed into constituent parts. It is Moore’s explanation of what appears to be a analogous to the concept of ‘yellow’. Moore says contradiction when we assert that a proposition that ‘good’ is “a simple notion, just as ‘yellow’ is a is true but claim not to believe it draws a simple notion; that, just as you cannot, by any distinction between what is asserted and what is manner of means, explain to anyone who does implied. To claim that it is raining makes an not already know it, what yellow is, so you assertion which is either true or false. Someone cannot explain what good is”. Even though all making this assertion implies that they believe it. things that are good might be pleasurable, Moore When they go on to assert ‘but I don’t believe it’, goes on to argue that although one can say of they contradict not the original assertion but the some natural property, like pleasure for instance, original implication. Nevertheless, Moore that it is good, this assertion can always realised, it is the contradiction between the meaningfully be followed by the question, why is assertion and the implication that gives the it good? Moore famously claims that the question expression the appearance of nonsense. Such of whether something is good is always an ‘open’ fine distinctions in meaning have only become question. To suppose otherwise is to commit what apparent due to the centrality of linguistic Moore called ‘the naturalistic fallacy’, the analysis, of which Moore is an early exponent, to tendency of empiricist philosophers to confuse an much recent philosophy and have helped solve idea of what is natural with what is good. some long-standing philosophical puzzles.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Moritz Schlick 1882–1936

ounder of the celebrated positivist According to Schlick, a statement is movement the ‘Vienna Circle’, meaningful if it is either true by definition (such Schlick’s work was heavily influenced as ‘All bachelors are unmarried men’) or is in by the young Wittgenstein’s Tractatus principle verifiable by experience. Thus, for Logico-Philosophicus (Treatise of Schlick, the statements of science are meaningful PhilosophicalF Logic). As a result, Schlick’s only in so far as there is some method, in primary interest was in language and meaning principle, by which they can be verified. The ‘in and led him to develop the ‘verificationist’ theory principle’ caveat is necessary to allow that false of meaning. statements are just as meaningful as true ones.

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The Linguistic Turn: Moritz Schlick

A statement is meaningful if it was either true by definition or is in principle verifiable by existence

False statements are statements which could appreciate this. Moreover, since discoveries in have been true but, as a matter of fact, turn out pure mathematics often underlie and inform not to be. Meaningless statements, on the other predictions made by physical theories, particu- hand, are those for which no experience could larly since the advent of Einstein’s theory of ever in principle lead to a confirmation. Typical relativity and Schrödinger’s quantum mechanics, examples of such statements, Schlick adamantly the dividing line between propositions of pure insists, are littered throughout the history of mathematics and pure physics is fuzzy at best. metaphysical philosophy. ‘The soul survives after A similar criticism was made, albeit from a death’, ‘God is all-knowing and benevolent’, different angle, by Quine in his famous paper, ‘Everything is One’ and such like are neither true Two Dogmas of Empiricism, in which he argues nor false but simply meaningless, according to that there can be no dividing line between Schlick. ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ (i.e., empirical) The verification principle was to have statements. enormous impact during the mid-twentieth Problems for the verificationist principle century. Since only the statements of science became apparent before Quine and modern and those true by definition are meaningful, mathematics, however. The principle criticism of some account had to be given of the propositions verificationism is that it seems to fall foul of its of ethics, aesthetics and other non-propositional own criteria for meaningfulness. The claim that a statements. For Schlick, such utterances have no statement is only meaningful insofar as there is a literal meaning, but merely express an attitude or means for its verification is itself neither exclamation on behalf of the speaker. The analytic, nor empirically testable. The principle influence of this idea can be seen on the therefore appears to rule itself as meaningless. emergence of a number ‘emotivist’ theories in This rather embarrassing conclusion led Schlick both ethics and aesthetics during this period (see, and others to try and rescue verificationism by for example, G.E. Moore). As for mathematics weakening or modifying the principle, but none and logic, their propositions fall into the same of their attempts proved very convincing. In the bracket as those true by definition. They are, end, and particularly in light of Quine’s work, the according to Schlick, literally tautologies. principle was eventually abandoned as a formal This presents a major problem for the verifi- criterion of meaning. cationist account of meaning. For although it Schlick and the other philosophers of the was not the first time that philosophers had Vienna Circle, however, had highlighted an claimed mathematical propositions to be merely important methodological principle through their true by definition, to equate them with tautology reflections on verification. Prior to their work, seems rash to say the least. By definition a philosophers had been somewhat lax at settling tautology merely repeats or implies something the precise meaning of a proposition before already stated. Yet mathematics is as much a raising questions of its truth and falsity. Their discipline of discovery as science is. One only work helped to further the growing emphasis on need look at its development from Pythagoras to language and the need for a theory of meaning the modern maths of Cantor, Hilbert, Chaos prior to the settling of further philosophical Theory and Mandelbrot’s Fractal Generations to issues.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky 1896–1934

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The Linguistic Turn: Lev Semenovich Vygotsky

The structure of speech is not simply the mirror image of the structure of thought

oviet psychologist whose 1930s work formed, but rather meaningful expressions are a on language and thought, although result of conscious processes operating upon a suppressed in his own land and not linguistic medium. The two are conceptually known in the West until 1958, has dependent, an idea that is vigorously argued had a strong influence in the for in Wittgenstein’s famous ‘private language philosophyS of mind and language, in particular argument’ and given similar expression by because of its affinities with the later work of Vygotsky’s account of language-acquisition in Wittgenstein. childhood. Vygotsky studied in the fields of linguistics, An infant, as a dependent individual, cannot psychology, philosophy and the arts before live an isolated existence: ‘He lives a common completing his most famous work Thought and life as one term in a personal relationship’. Language, published shortly after his death. Accordingly, he learns first by exposure to social His main concern is with the relationship stimuli, which he later internalises. Vygotsky between thought and language which, he says, ‘Every function in the child’s cultural believed, psychology had never investigated development appears twice: first, on the social systematically or in detail. The traditional view, level, and later on the individual level; first, articulated by Augustine, was that speech is the between people (interpsychological), and then outer expression of an inner process, thought. inside the child (intrapsychological). On this view, language and thought are logically Vygotsky’s work connects with a famous distinct but contingently related. In other words, philosophical hypothesis known as the ‘Sapir- we happen to use vocalisations as a convenient Whorf’ hypothesis, or ‘linguistic determination’. means for expressing the ideas that independently Put simply, it is the argument that the conceptual occur in our minds. The picture is intuitive and scheme one possesses directly affects the way compelling, but Vygotsky, like Wittgenstein, one thinks about and perceives the world. found it conceptually flawed. Different cultures, with different languages, Vygotsky states, ‘The structure of speech is literally perceive the world in different ways. not simply the mirror image of the structure of Whereas in English there is only one word for thought. It cannot, therefore, be placed on snow, for example, the Inuit language has many thought like clothes off a rack. Speech does not words for it. Whorf argues accordingly that since merely serve as the expression of developed Inuit make many finer discriminations about thought. Thought is restructured as it is snow than English speakers, they literally ‘see’ transformed into speech. It is not expressed but snow differently. They see subtle differences in completed in the word. Therefore, precisely snow that others do not. because of the contrasting directions of the Vygotsky is thus forced to conclude that in movement, the development of the internal and growing up within a particular linguistically external aspects of speech form a true unity.’ structured relationship, ‘the child begins to The picture Vygotsky paints here is one of perceive the world not only through its eyes but language use combining with conscious activity also through its speech. And later it is not just to form a unity. There is no causal relation to be seeing but acting that becomes informed by explained between the thought had and the word words’.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Rudolph Carnap 1891–1970

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The Linguistic Turn: Rudolph Carnap

Logical syntax provides the conventional rules that set out the forms of any meaningful proposition

erman positivist philosopher and shown to be nothing more than the ‘syntactic’ leading member of the ‘Vienna proposition that any positive or negative real Circle’, Carnap was a dominant number can be used to represent a time- figure in the development of post- coordinate. Such a proposition possesses no War philosophy in the USA. A empirical or cognitive content, but rather studentG of Frege at Jena, he went on to Vienna expresses a rule for the use of signs. and became heavily influenced by the work of Carnap believed that the logical syntax of both Russell and Wittgenstein. However, with science could be laid bare by a thorough the rise of National Socialism he left Europe for investigation into all the possible forms of a America, where he remained for the rest of his proposition, in other words into the structural life. The corpus of his work consists of over 20 relationships between all the signs in a language. books and some 80 articles which together have This, Carnap held, should be the task of made major contributions to logic, semantics and philosophy, making philosophy purely the the philosophy of science. The most important of business of linguistic analysis. At this point in these are The Logical Structure of the World and his work Carnap was convinced that the The Logical Syntax of Language. syntactic investigation into the possible Along with Schlick and Carl Hempel, Carnap combination of signs, logical syntax, could not was a strong proponent of the verification have any connection with what those signs were principle. For Carnap, this principle meant that actually used to represent. In other words, logical anything that might count as a contribution to syntax and empirical content were two distinct human knowledge can either be justified by and unrelated studies. The first belongs to observation and experience or is merely formal philosophy, the second to the various branches and expressed in tautological propositions. of science. Carnap’s best contribution to this idea was his Under the influence of Gödel and Tarski, meticulous working out of the nature of these however, Carnap was forced to revise this formal, tautological propositions, which he position. It became clear that some described as the ‘logical syntax of the language of philosophically important properties of language science’. could not be reduced to syntactic structures, in This logical syntax, Carnap held, provides the particular the property of truth, which required a conventional rules that set out the possible forms semantic analysis. Since Tarski had shown that it of any meaningful proposition. In the past, was possible to develop a formal theory of philosophers have mistaken such rules for semantics using a meta-language referring to an substantive philosophical claims, but a proper object language, Carnap now set about defining understanding of their nature shows them to be semantic rules, or definitions, for a theory of what Wittgenstein would later call ‘norms of truth. To this branch of logical analysis he made representation’. For instance, the claim ‘time significant contributions which would heavily extends infinitely in both directions’ can be influence his student and disciple, W.V.O.Quine.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Alfred Jules Ayer 1910–1989

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The Linguistic Turn: Alfred Jules Ayer

Statements about material objects can be reduced to statements about ‘sense-data’

xford philosopher famous as a in rejecting the tougher phenomenalist line in broadcaster, Ayer was, in some eyes favour of the linguistic line, he cuts away the a political radical: the Times Literary ground of explanatory force from his own Supplement warned its readers that theory. If the postulation of unobservables is his work had `successfully carried supposed to explain the occurrence of patterns Othe red flag into the citadel of Oxford University'. or regularities in sense-data, and yet such He is best known, however, for his ‘logical explanations are themselves reducible to just positivism’ and his commitment to a robust those occurrences of sense-data, then it would empiricism grounded in ‘sense-data’, a position look as though the sense-data are being invoked known as ‘phenomenalism’. His best works are to explain themselves. Ayer is aware of this Language, Truth and Logic and The Problems of problem, and passes the explanatory power to Knowledge, though he also wrote on Pragmatism, the subjunctive conditional. In other words, freedom and morality, Russell, Hume and Voltaire. regularities in sense-data are explained by Ayer’s brand of ‘linguistic phenomenalism’ hypothetical statements about what sense-data pervades his early work. It informs his view on one would receive in certain conditions. So, for scepticism, perception, memory and personal example, the fact that a tree exists in a garden is identity. On the phenomenalist view, talk of explained by reference to the hypothetical claim material objects is legitimate, but misconceived if that anyone who goes into that garden will such objects are taken to be ‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ receive sense-impressions of a tree-type nature. what appears to our senses. On the standard The tree, we can suppose, exists as a cause of version of this view, material objects turn out to those sense-impressions, but the meaning of this be ‘logical constructions out of sense-data’. Ayer’s statement cannot amount to anything more than ‘linguistic’ brand of phenomenalism does not the claim that being in a certain space-time quite endorse this view. Rather, statements about region (i.e., the garden) will occasion impressions material objects can be reduced to statements of a tree-type sort. about ‘sense-data’ – the perceptual input from Clearly, there are worries about such a view. environment to subject. What this means, In particular, the worry is that this ‘hard according to Ayer, is that although ‘the manner in empirical’ theory seems to explain less and bring which sense-data occur can be explained in terms in to doubt more than our original common- of entities which are not themselves observable; sense conceptions that it was designed to replace. [the phenomenalist] will, however, add that to talk Indeed, Ayer was aware of the problems faced by about such unobservable entities is, in the end, to phenomenalism, and his later work is a continual talk about sense-data’. refinement of the position in light of criticism. In How this works, Ayer tells us, is that any the end, it is probably fair to say that Ayer had to statement S is reducible to a class of statements weaken his position to such an extent that it lost K just so long as K is ‘on a lower epistemological all semblance of plausibility. However, in the level than S, that is, that they [K statements] refer progress and defence of his work, Ayer made to ‘harder’ data’. By ‘harder data’ here Ayer very many important contributions to the means the primary evidence of sensual input. development of issues central to twentieth Problematic for Ayer, here, of course, is that century philosophy.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Alfred Tarski 1902–1983

erhaps the greatest logician of the made a name for himself for his work on the twentieth century, Tarski’s work is foundations of mathematics. But it is principally fundamental to much of modern for his work in semantics and his definition of philosophy of language and truth in formal languages that Tarski’s influence philosophical logic. At Warsaw has been greatest. UniversityP he studied mathematics, biology, Philosophy has long struggled to find an philosophy and linguistics. Early in his career he adequate account of the concept of truth. Exactly

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The Linguistic Turn: Alfred Tarski

Truth is a property of sentences, not of the world or of states of affairs

what is it for a sentence to be true? The most Formal languages, such as those found in logic, popular answer, since Aristotle, has always been mathematics and computer programming, may be to think that a sentence is true when it somehow ‘semantically open’, just insofar as no sentence corresponds with the facts. However, trying to which mentions another sentence in the same explicate the notion of ‘correspondence’ without language counts as a well-formed formula. referring to the concept of truth in the definition The distinction between a ‘semantically open’ has proven notoriously difficult. Tarski solves that and ‘semantically closed’ language is important problem for formal languages. He was himself for Tarski. First, because he maintains that only pessimistic of applying his solution to natural semantically open languages can have a languages like English or French. Nonetheless, definition of truth. Second, because when, as in this has not stopped some philosophers from natural languages, the object language and the trying to complete such a project. meta-language are identical, paradoxes such as According to Tarski, any proposed definition the ‘liar paradox’ can be generated which are un- of truth must entail as a consequence all decidable. Consider: equivalences of the following form: 4. This sentence is false. 1. Some sentence S is true in some language L, (4) is un-decidable because in referring to itself, if and only if p. if it is true, it is false, and if it is false, it is true. Where p represents a translation of S in a Accordingly, Tarski insists that truth can only be second-order, or ‘meta’ language. completely defined for ‘open’ languages, This condition, which Tarski calls ‘Convention languages where truth is ascribed from ‘outside’ T’, might have as an instance, for example: of the language (i.e., in a meta-language) under 2. ‘Schnee ist weiss’ is true in German, if and consideration. This makes him pessimistic for the only if snow is white. chances of ever providing a definition of truth in But also equally: natural language (a pessimism that has not 3. ‘Snow is white’ is true in English, if and always been shared by his philosophical only if snow is white. descendants). These examples highlight that what is important Since truth is, according to Tarski, a property for any proposed definition of truth, according of sentences, not of the world or of states of to Tarski, is the distinction between an ‘object affairs, then any definition of truth must ascribe language’ and a ‘meta-language’. The complete that property to a sentence, just so long as that sentences, (1),(2) and (3) are all sentences couched sentence says how things stand in the world. That in a meta-language, that is, they are used to relationship is precisely what the T-convention mention and assert something of another represents. Consequently, Tarski’s view of truth is sentence. Now in the case of (3), it is clear that in line with the ‘classical’ conception of truth as a the meta-language and object language are both correspondence between language and world. English. Natural languages, such as English or However, though Tarski’s account has stimulated German, are in fact their own meta-languages, much work in an attempt to solve the problem of a peculiar feature which allows them to both defining truth in natural, or ‘closed’ languages, use and mention their own sentences. Such many philosophers remain convinced that his languages Tarski calls ‘semantically closed’. pessimism in this regard was well-placed.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

John Langshaw Austin 1911–1960

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The Linguistic Turn: John Langshaw Austin

Austin’s approach begins with an analysis of the different kinds of things we can do with words

rofessor of Moral Philosophy at necessarily exclusive. Austin is aware that many Oxford and prominent figure in utterances can involve all three kinds of acts. the ‘ordinary language’ school of Consider someone saying ‘It’s cold’, a locutionary philosophy, J.L. Austin’s two best act describing how one feels. It might also be works are Sense and Sensibilia and taken, in the context of a room with an open PHow to Do Things With Words. window, as an illocutionary act - a request to Austin’s approach begins with an analysis of close the window. Finally, insofar as the hearer the different kinds of thing we do with words. responds by closing the window, the single Philosophers have long been impressed with the utterance has also performed a perlocutionary act. fact that language is used to represent how the These distinctions significantly increase and world is, to say what is or is not the case, and deepen our understanding of the way in which thus the notion of truth has been central to the language functions and have profound effects philosophy of language. But Austin, like the later on what is required of a theory of meaning. In Wittgenstein, is keen to point out the many other particular it is interesting to note that what things we do with words. We do not just represent locutionary and illocutionary acts are performed how things are, we ask questions, give commands, depend on convention, the rules by which we tell jokes, make promises, make suggestions, give understand the meaning of the words. advice, insult, persuade and intimidate, all Perlocutionary acts, however, are causal: if through the use of words. successful they cause the occurrence of an event. This led Austin to draw a three-fold distinction In his other main work, Sense and Sensibilia, between different kinds of ‘speech-act’. First, a play on the title of a work by another famous words have a distinct, conventional, meaning. The Austen, Austin attacks the sense-data theory expression ‘the cat sat on the mat’ refers to a cat, championed by Ayer. Austin’s method is similar a mat and a relation between them, of one sitting to that of Gilbert Ryle, though he does not upon the other. This ordinary sense of meaning formally introduce the notion of ‘category- constitutes the ‘what is said’ of any particular mistake’, but he does use an analysis of the speech act, and Austin gives it the technical name ordinary use of words to show how they are of ‘a locutionary act’. Secondly, Austin notes, in presupposed and relied upon, often illegitimately, saying certain words one actually commits an act in philosophical contexts. - e.g. in saying ‘I do’ at a wedding, one makes a The ‘ordinary language’ school of philosophy promise, in saying ‘will you?’ one asks a question, thus ushered in by the work of Austin can be and saying ‘you will!’ one gives an order. Austin celebrated for two primary achievements. First, calls such acts ‘illocutionary’. Finally, he points it forced philosophy and philosophers to pay out that by saying something, one often performs greater heed to the way in which they described an action, by saying ‘I do’ one weds, by saying and explained their theories, on what notions something like ‘I will give you a better deal than they were borrowing from other contexts and the shop along the street’, I may cause a buyer to whether those borrowings were consistent or be persuaded, and so on. Such an act Austin calls not. Second, it helped to inform pragmatics or a ‘perlocutionary act’. speech-act theory, which itself is a major school These different functions of words are not of thought in both linguistics and philosophy.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Gilbert Ryle 1900–1976

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The Linguistic Turn: Gilbert Ryle

Cartesian Dualism, the myth of ‘the ghost in the machine’, rests on a ‘category-mistake’

xford philosopher who followed members’ rather than a term which describes ‘the Wittgenstein in asserting the way in which all that [they have] already seen is importance of linguistic analysis, organised.’ Ryle believed for a time that the Ryle believed, then, that the concept of the task of philosophy was to resolve mind as a distinct but non-physical entity with metaphysicalO problems by showing how the distinct non-physical properties was just such a concepts employed in their formulation were ‘category-mistake’. In this case, the mistake arises misunderstood. Principally, such problems from assuming that either the mind or mental involve the confusion of logically distinct properties can be understood in non-physical categories, an idea that led to his discussion of terms. As Ryle expertly puts it, the concept of a ‘category-mistake’. mind as non-physical is always defined in In his best known work The Concept of Mind, negative physical terms, non-spatial, non- Ryle is concerned with the difficulties raised by observable, neither in motion nor at rest. Indeed Cartesian dualism. Dualism maintains that the dualists, Ryle mockingly notes, define the mind body and mind are separate substances, one as ‘not bits of clockwork...just bits of material, the other immaterial respectively. nonclockwork’ Accordingly, mental properties can only be Ryle goes on to investigate exactly how ascribed to the latter and physical properties mental properties are explained in ordinary the former substance. This gives rise to a number language in order to adumbrate his own theory of problems, including the nature of causal of mind. He finds that mental properties are interaction between mind and body, and personal ascribed not according to the possession of some identity and the individuation of ‘minds’, to mysterious, unobservable private process – name just two. indeed, how could they be? – but with reference This apparent split of a distinct but immaterial to dispositions to behave in certain ways. To say mind inhabiting a material body, Ryle calls the of someone that they are angry is not to describe myth of ‘the ghost in the machine’ and, he their inner mental state, but to describe a insists, rests on a ‘category-mistake’. Category- disposition to behave in a certain way, to shout, mistakes do not just arise in philosophical throw things around, to brood or fume, discourse, but can appear in quite ordinary accordingly. This idea was massively influential contexts. For example, imagine a student guiding upon two distinct but related schools of twentieth his parents around his university. He shows them century thought, the ‘logical behaviourists’ (see the Library, the Faculty building, the Students’ Carnap) and the Oxford ‘ordinary language Union, the Sports facilities and so on until they philosophers’ (see Austin). have toured the whole campus. Now suppose the Ultimately, Ryle revised his notion of parents say, ‘yes, they are fine buildings, but ‘category-mistake’ in light of criticisms that the when are we going to see the University?’ Clearly notion of a ‘category’ could not be precisely the parents have misunderstood the concept of ‘a formulated. Both Aristotle and Kant had made University’. Ryle says their mistake is in thinking systematic attempts to define logical categories, that ‘ “the University” stood for an extra member but neither met with complete success. of the class of which these other units are

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Noam Chomsky 1928–

orn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the renowned professor of Linguistics, Zellig the son of a well-known Hebrew Harris, Chomsky went on to write his seminal scholar, Chomsky is perhaps one of work Syntactic Structures, published in 1957, the most widely known thinkers of which defined the field for the rest of the century. our time. His work has been pivotal Since that time, Chomsky has developed and Bin the development of linguistics in the twentieth modified his views in a number of important century. However, it is important to realise, as works, particularly in his Aspects of the Theory of shall be outlined below, that Chomsky’s work in Syntax, Language and Mind, and more recently this field proceeds from a very distinct, and by The Minimalist Program. Of his many political no means uncontroversial, philosophical writings the most influential include American viewpoint with a long heritage. He is also known Power and the New Mandarins, Human Rights for his social and political commentaries, which and American Foreign Policy and Fateful to a certain extent are also informed by the same Triangle: the United States, Israel and the philosophical assumptions. After being dissuaded Palestinians. Chomsky continues to write actively from dropping out of his University studies by in both linguistics and politics.

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The Linguistic Turn: Noam Chomsky

The mind is very far from being a blank state at birth

Chomsky’s work in linguistics is predicated of Lockean empiricism, or the unconstrained free on a rationalist theory of mind, which posits, in agents of existentialism, our very nature defiance of the empiricist tradition emanating prevents us from being subjugated by extreme from Locke – and in the ascendant prior to and wayward forces. Our nature determines that Chomsky’s work – that the mind is very far from there are only certain possible political structures being a blank slate or ‘tabula rasa’ at birth, but that we can tolerate. Oppressive political systems, instead, is constrained in its operations by as in say Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New certain innate structures. Chomsky’s concern, of World, cannot completely mould our minds. Our course, is with language learning and the thoughts are not, as the behavioural ‘syntactic structures’ that underlie different psychologists earlier in the twentieth century had languages. On Chomsky’s view, all languages supposed, merely conditioned responses to share, at a fundamental level, a universal repeated stimuli. The concept of being a ‘free structure, or grammar, and this universal agent’ is as hardwired into our nature as the grammar is ‘hardwired’ in our brains, rather than constraints that act on our forms of speech. something that is learnt through teaching and This reveals a further development of experience. Chomsky’s linguistic theory. For Chomsky the The notion of a universal grammar is nature of the human mind is revealed by the relatively simple. There are something like 5000 nature of language. Not only because language is known varieties of human language. According a uniquely human activity, but also because to Chomsky, despite their many surface language ‘is the vehicle of thought’ and therefore differences, they all are constrained by certain uniquely placed to illuminate the essence of the parameters and principles that are innate, and human mind. It should be understood that by unique, to the human mind. A significant ‘mind’, Chomsky means the cognitive principles argument for this conclusion rests on what some and processes that underlie human behaviour have called the ‘productivity’ argument. and that Chomsky firmly holds to an ‘innatist’ Experimental psychologists will often attest to theory reminiscent of Leibniz and others. On this the speed at which grammatical ability develops theory, the human mind is endowed – in children around the age of two or three, an ‘hardwired’ as we have said – with certain innate ability that goes far beyond the meagre input of properties that constrain what we are like and language they’ve been exposed to. Consequently, what we can know. it would seem plausible to suppose the child has Chomsky is as well known now for his a head-start. The grammatical rules do not need numerous political writings as he is for his work to be learnt, they are hardwired in the mind: in linguistics. He has been a constant critic of US early exposure to language merely acts as a foreign policy and of US involvement in trigger, and the child develops his linguistic Vietnam, Cambodia and the Gulf Wars. He competence at an accelerated rate. remains an active supporter of radical social This hardwiring is, like other cognitive change in the US, as well as continuing his work faculties, an aspect of our human nature. as a linguist and theoretical philosopher. He Chomsky sees this as having positive political describes his political view as ‘libertarian implications. Rather than being the blank sheet socialist’ – a blend of socialism and anarchism.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Claude Levi-Strauss 1908–

elgian-born anthropologist, Levi- Elementary Structures of Kinship. Brought up in Strauss is famous for his structuralist Paris, Levi-Strauss had an early interest in anthropology which he applied, philosophy, along with de Beauvoir and Sartre, using the ideas of Saussure, to the but in 1935 went to Brazil to study sociology and study of myths. His best-known anthropology. It was as a result of his many Bworks are The Raw and the Cooked and The encounters with South American tribal cultures

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The Postmodernists: Claude Levi-Strauss

Man must suppress his natural desires and conform to rules to create a stable society

that he would develop his structuralist thesis of thought, that between nature and culture. myths but also, by extension, of the human mind. As an example, Levi-Strauss engages in a Borrowing Saussure’s distinction between detailed analysis of the Oedipus myth in which ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ (the common structure of Oedipus unknowingly slays his father and marries language and the actual use of language by a his mother to become King. Freud made much use speaker, respectively), Levi-Strauss took to of the myth in his psychoanalytic theory. analysing the variety of myths he came across Consistent with his method, Levi-Strauss insists in different cultures. He realised that the content that Freud’s reworking of the myth is just another of the myth, like the ‘parole’ of linguistics, was transformation of the story into a modern myth, unnecessary to the study of the structure of the and thus belongs to the identity of the whole myth, and that myths across different cultures, story. According to Levi-Strauss, Freud’s though distinct in content, shared a universal reworking of it is just another way of expressing structure. the dualism of nature and culture. Man must Levi-Strauss explains the genealogy of myth suppress his natural desires and conform to rules as one of continual evolution and adaptation of in order to create a stable society. a structure whose content is irrelevant. He rejects Ultimately, what he draws from his analysis the view of sociologists and psychologists before is the idea that language encodes certain dualistic him, who thought myths were timeless, elements common to human experience. Levi- meaningful stories whose significance could be Strauss’s program is, at root, supposed to be a traced back to some original story. Rather he scientific one that will clear away the inessential maintains that the content of myths only have details of how different cultures encode problems significance in their transformations from one and leave the fundamental structures and their myth into another. In consequence, Levi-Strauss relationships exposed. He comes to the conclusion tells us, the identity of a myth consists in the that the Western dualisms of subject /object, and sum total of its variants through time. mind/ matter, are just another version of a myth, From this viewpoint he goes on to claim that like the raw and the cooked, which do not name myths are frameworks, or structures, in which any essential metaphysical categories, but merely human societies encode certain universal signify an anthropological curiosity. The dualism problems. He notes that in one South American that they represent is simply that of an individual culture there is a corpus of myths that use culinary in contrast with its environment. For Levi-Strauss, themes to symbolize the transformation from what remains once we get down to the level of nature, the ‘raw’, to culture, the ‘cooked’. Similarly, structure and relations, is merely the actions and another corpus of myths uses dress and costume, words of a physical organism in a physical the hiding of nakedness, to represent environment. The transformations of myth come the development of society; yet another focuses down to nothing more than structural facts about on women as representing nature, men as the human body according to how sense-organs representing culture. Levi-Strauss thus identifies a transmit data from the environment. What his number of oppositions in human mythic structures work does, claims Levi-Strauss, is give us a clear – raw / cooked, naked / dressed, male / female, all approach to a science of human activity. of which encode a universal dualism in human

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Michel Foucault 1926–1984

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The Postmodernists: Michel Foucault

Controlling the mind is a more effective means of social control than punishing the body

ounder of a new French tradition in argues that this new emphasis on controlling philosophy. Foucault’s ‘postmodernism’ the mind, as a more effective technique of places the emphasis in philosophy on domination than controlling the body, is the subject of experience as situated in continued in the psycho-analytic method of an external world. With the advent of Freud. Whereas in the Middle Ages sex was F‘the linguistic turn’, that emphasis stressed the wholly a bodily concern, Freud redefines it as meanings of concepts rather than the impact a psychological feature of the mind. Now the concepts have had upon the world. It is with this emphasis is not on people’s sexual behaviour, historical retrospective, or ‘archaeology’, that but on their sexual intentions. Sexual behaviour Foucault is concerned. His most important works is controlled by focusing on people’s attitudes are Madness and Civilisation, Discipline and towards sex which are seen as representing a Punish: the birth of the prison and The History of fundamental facet of their identity. Though the Sexuality. individual is encouraged to speak more freely The theme that underlies all Foucault’s work is about his or her sexual inclinations than ever the relationship between power and knowledge, before, this freedom is tempered by the fear that and how the former is used to control and define their inclinations reveal something fundamental the latter. What authorities claim as ‘scientific about their personality. As a means of control its knowledge’ are really just means of social effectiveness is unsurpassed. control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in The overall intent of Foucault’s work is to the eighteenth century ‘madness’ was used to highlight how both what we take to be knowledge categorize and stigmatise not just the mentally and the concepts through which we understand ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, ourselves – those such as ‘reason’, ‘normality’, indeed, anyone whose expressions of ‘sexuality’ – are contingent, mutable and individuality were unwelcome. ‘Madness’ became ‘ahistorical’. That is, they do not evolve along the antithesis of ‘reason’ and was ascribed some ‘path of progress’ or represent a sustained promiscuously not from an ignorance of medical development, but rather change in response to science, but from the knowledge of its efficacy as the needs of authority to control and regulate a means of social control. the behaviour of the individual. Foucault continues the theme of knowledge Though Foucault’s work is dark and pessimistic usurped in the service of authority in his study in outlook, there is some room for optimism. He of the birth of the prison. He records how prisons reasserts the value of philosophy, as a discipline replaced public executions in France and argues conceived according to his method, as a means of that this reflected a realisation by the authorities redressing the balance of authority over the that controlling the mind is a more effective individual, through an exposure of the power means of social control than punishing the body. structures intended to control us. In the light of The concept of an extended, dehumanising these, we must strive to build social structures punishment holds greater terror than that of a that minimize the risk of domination, and to re- quick, if brutal, release into the freedom of death examine what we think we know in light of the through execution. effect that knowledge has on our lives. In his archaeology of sexuality, Foucault

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Jacques Derrida 1930–2004

lgerian-born French philosopher, impact on modern thought is reflected in the fact Derrida is most famous for his that by 1999 he had reportedly been cited more ‘deconstructionist’ development than 14,000 times in journal articles throughout of postmodernist themes found the previous seventeen years. in Saussure, Levi-Strauss and Derrida’s work takes as its starting point AFoucault. His most significant works to date Saussure’s structuralist approach to language, include Voice and Phenomenon, Of in which the sense of a sign is constituted by its Grammatology and Writing and Difference. His relations to and differences from other signs in

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The Postmodernists: Jacques Derrida

There is no fixed conceptual order amongst signifiers

the conceptual scheme. Unlike Saussure, concept of ‘other’, it is illegitimate to suppose however, Derrida insists that the distinction that the self is in any sense metaphysically prior between signifier and signified cannot to the concept of other. In fact, Derrida claims the legitimately be made; for him, the means of concept of self is itself a linguistic construction, expression is inseparably bound with its content. inescapably part of the ‘text’ of human language, How something is expressed is just as important but which has no metaphysical or ontological as its conventional ‘meaning’ in determining necessity. The human subject is, Derrida insists, ‘a those ideas to which it is connected and those function of language’ and that ‘there is no subject from which it should be distinguished, as devices who is agent, author and master of language’. such as poetry, rhetoric and irony make clear. Precisely what Derrida envisages as an alternative Consequently, there is, Derrida claims, no is not clear, since he is the first to admit that his fixed conceptual order amongst signifiers. own theories are bound by the same principles. If Derrida is right about this then it follows He can be neither the author nor the authority of that meaning is something that can only be his own works. distilled or interpreted from any particular This perhaps accounts for Derrida’s style of situation: there is no objective ‘structure’ as the writing, which one commentator describes as not structuralists had supposed. Indeed, Derrida goes so much philosophical theory building, as further, for in his view a sign always signifies ‘guerrilla warfare’ in which Derrida strikes, things other than which the author might retreats, punctures and parodies the theses of suppose. There is an indeterminable network of traditional philosophy. Certainly he is an associations stretching through time and use in extension of the postmodernist tradition which which any given sign ‘circulates’. What meaning rejects the so-called ‘transcendental pretence’ it has for any given person at any given time of humanism, the idea that the conscious subject can only be interpreted by that person at that is a rational, autonomous being in charge of its time, but they cannot claim any authority or own language, meaning and ultimately, it has to objectivity for their interpretation. be concluded, thought. This dissolution of objective meaning infects Undoubtedly Derrida’s work is controversial. every concept and has a significant impact on our It is presently very much in vogue in both conception of the world and of ourselves, literary theory and continental philosophy, but especially when we apply it to traditional has encountered resistance amongst analytic metaphysical concepts such as ‘self’, ‘substance’ philosophers. However one values Derrida’s and ‘idea’. Derrida argues that as they have been work, it is hard to contest the fertility of his used in the metaphysical works of philosophers, ideas, which have led to extensive re- all such concepts have been implicitly defined examination on the part of philosophers and by opposition and cannot be articulated literary critics of fundamental philosophical independently. For instance, ‘subject’ implies ideas such as identity, self-evidence, and the ‘object’, ‘self’ implies ‘other’, ‘substance’ implies objectivity of the dichotomies – fact/fiction, ‘quality’ and so on. Since the concept of ‘self’ rational/irrational, legitimate/illegitimate, cannot have conceptual independence from the observation/imagination – by which we live.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Emile Durkheim 1858–1917

enerally regarded as the father of back to it by the nature of the questions which sociology and the founder of a I met on my route’. His most important work is rigorous empirical method for the undoubtedly The Division of Labour in Society, social sciences, Durkheim which provides the theoretical framework for nevertheless considered himself a several lesser works, including Suicide and The Gsocial philosopher first and foremost. As he wrote, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. ‘Having begun from philosophy, I tend to return Durkheim’s principal task in The Division of to it; or rather I have been quite naturally brought Labour is to show that the fabric of all human

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The New Scientists: Emile Durkheim

Individuation has as a consequence moral individualism: ‘the cult of the individual’

societies is bound together by moral rules. These individuals in society develop a variety of beliefs rules serve a central function in the organization independent of any dominant moral authority. of society. Durkheim insists we must undertake a But individuation has as a consequence moral thorough investigation in order to understand individualism, or what Durkheim calls ‘the cult them. However, unlike Kant’s deontological of the individual’. The cult of the individual is a theory or Mill’s utilitarianism, the investigation new moral code which places emphasis on the should be an historical one, inquiring into moral equal right of every individual to develop their rules as they have actually operated in societies. own faculties in accord with their own beliefs. In Following Comte, he demands a ‘science of Durkheim’s own words: ‘In the same way as the morality’ to undertake this task. ideal of the less developed societies was to create What Durkheim finds, in treating morality or maintain as intense a shared life as possible, according to a scientific methodology, is that in in which the individual was absorbed, our ideal the evolution of societies from primitive to is constantly to introduce greater equality in our modern, there is a weakening of collective social relations, in order to ensure the free conscience and a move towards individualistic unfolding of socially useful forces’. conscience. In traditional societies with strong The upshot of this idea is that it turns out religious symbolism pervading the culture, there individualism, rather than reflecting an erosion of is a notable conformity amongst the individual’s moral values in society, is merely the expression moral beliefs. In other words, the moral beliefs of of new moral values in line with – and hence the each individual in a traditional society tend to be title of the book – the division of labour. In identical. Such beliefs also, remarks Durkheim, modern societies there is no longer a strict and tend to be held with a certain intensity, such that simple economic order, but diverse economic divergence from the norm will elicit strong relations whose proper functioning require a condemnation and penal sanction. By contrast, diversity of beliefs and values. Hence the ‘cult of in modern individualistic societies, there is a the individual’, a new moral code reflecting a new marked difference amongst the moral beliefs held social and economic order. by individuals in society concomitant with a Durkheim goes on to argue that the cult of the more tolerant attitude towards non-conformist individual has been misconstrued as the cult of behaviour, precisely because what is non- the self-interested ego. Durkheim maintains that conformist is as diverse as the variety of moral a collection of purely egotistical individuals beliefs. could not form a society at all, that indeed, there The originality of Durkheim’s thesis, however, has to be the recognition of others’ interests, is in showing how the increasing trend towards expressed in ‘moral individualism’ by the individualism is itself a moral phenomenon importance of equality and rights. which exhibits a collective conscience no less This provides only the barest outline of than before, albeit transformed into a new Durkheim’s work, but from this framework he expression. In order to see this, one must make went on to discuss how both religious belief and the crucial distinction between ‘individuation’ social issues such as suicide are formed by this and ‘individualism’. Individuation is just that moral individualism. His work is significant for phenomenon already discussed whereby both social philosophy and sociology.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Albert Einstein 1879–1955

erman-born physicist of Swiss time declaring, ‘I have given up the ambition even partentage, Einstein became a to get to a university’, he accepted a job in the naturalised American in 1935, after Bern patent office, where he conceived the leaving Hitler’s Germany to avoid theories of general and special relativity which persecution as a Jew. After an were to found modern physics. Einstein was also Gunpromising start to his academic career, at one politically active, both in the cause of world peace

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The New Scientists: Albert Einstein

E=mc 2 where E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light

and Zionism. In 1952 he was offered the simultaneous, but this is exactly the possibility presidency of Israel but declined, claiming he was ruled out by relativity theory. Space and time are too naïve in politics. On the relation between his not independent dimensions, but form a four- scientific and political interests he once said, dimensional unity, space-time, in which every ‘Equations are more important to me, because event can only be recorded relative to a local politics is for the present, but an equation is time-frame. something for eternity’. The second philosophically interesting The philosophical import of Einstein’s work is consequence of relativity is that although the enormous. His theory of relativity assigns an speed of light is constant, its frequency (the unprecedented importance to the role of the number of waves of light per second) varies closer observer in his description of the physical world, to massive objects like planets. This means time threatening the received notions of space and appears to run slower near a massive body than time, as found in Newton, Locke, Kant and farther away. In 1962 physicists confirmed this others. The central aspect of Einstein’s works is prediction by using two very accurate clocks, one that the speed of light is constant. It gives rise to at the base and one at the top of a water tower. the two most famous ideas of relativity physics: The clock at the base was found to run slower the equivalence of mass and energy expressed in than the other. This gives rise to the famous ‘twins the equation E = mc2 (where E is energy, m is mass paradox’. Suppose one twin goes for a lengthy and c is the speed of light), and the law that journey into space while the other stays on Earth. nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. When he returns he would appear to be much These have at least two philosophically younger than his twin. The paradox arises from important consequences. First, it follows from the assumption of an absolute time frame. The relativity that one cannot speak of an event relativity thesis means that each body carries occurring at precisely the same time for different around its own personal time scale which does observers. Each observer’s time frame is relative not, in general, agree with the time scale of other to himself. Imagine an observatory on Jupiter entities. Relative to each other, fifty years near a looking at an observatory on Earth. In each an massive gravitational body is a shorter duration astronomer looks through his eyeglass at the than fifty years far away from a massive body. other at, we might suppose, exactly the same Thus while fifty years might have passed on Earth time. Since light takes 35 minutes to travel from the space travelling twin might find he has only Jupiter to Earth, the event on Jupiter in which been away in space for thirty five years. The exact the astronomer looks through his telescope difference depends on the gravitational influences must have taken place 35 minutes before the on the two twins throughout their lives. astronomer on Earth observes the event. Equally, The philosophical consequences of Einstein’s the same applies to the astronomer on Jupiter: relativity theory, like the empirical consequences, as he observes the astronomer on Earth he is are yet to be fully known. Issues about time- observing an event that took place 35 minutes travel, the passage or ‘flow’ of time, the prior to his own time frame. It is tempting to asymmetry between past and future and between think there is some absolute position in cause and effect, are all issues that require an which the two events could be observed as understanding of Einstein’s momentous work.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Karl Popper 1902–1994

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The New Scientists: Karl Popper

The mark of a scientific theory is whether it makes predictions that could in principle serve to falsify it

iennese philosopher of science. first conjectured and then either refuted by Popper’s principal writings such as experience, (for instance when some A is Conjectures and Refutations and observed that lacks property B), or survive to The Open Society and its Enemies, await further observations of A’s. Experience can have been a major influence on never verify a theory as true, only falsify it. twentiethV century thought. Popper’s brand of Generalizations are first conjectured, then held scientific method, ‘falsificationism’ gave rise to a up to the scrutiny of experience for refutation. whole new area of debate in the philosophy of Critics have complained that Popper’s own science, and even claimed to have solved Hume’s theory implicitly employs inductive reasoning. ‘problem of induction’. Popper’s view is that a single counter-instance to According to Popper, the mark of a scientific an hypothesis is enough to falsify it. But this theory is whether it makes predictions which seems to assume that induction is reliable, could in principle serve to falsify it. The more otherwise a theory falsified this time around predictions a theory makes, ‘the better it is’. This might yet turn out to be true in the future. Of falsificationism is part of Popper’s response to course, Popper is right to claim that universal what he calls the ‘myth of induction’. Induction, generalisations, such as ‘All A’s are B’ are shown as characterised by Hume, is the method of false on the occasion of a single A that is not B; arriving at theories, laws or generalisations by but he applies his falsification principle to observing regularities in experience. But Popper scientific theories as a whole, not just universal agrees with Hume, that any generalisation goes statements. Moreover, an instance that falsifies beyond the possible evidence for it. No number ‘All A’s are B’s’ also confirms the theory ‘Some of observed cases of some A having property B A’s are B’s’. The logic of falsification and licences the conclusion that all A’s have that verification cannot be separated, as Popper had property. One simply never observes all A’s to thought. justify this conclusion. Closely tied to Popper’s conception of science Popper’s answer to this problem is based as generating theories capable of falsification is on the claim that this characterisation first his attack on the dialectics of Marx and Hegel. erroneously assumes that scientific Such ‘theories’ seem immune from empirical generalisations are conclusions; and secondly, falsification, since any experience can be fails to describe accurately the process by which accounted for by some suitable interpretation of scientists go about forming hypotheses. Rather the doctrine. It is particularly outrageous, Popper than generalisations being conclusions inferred finds, that Marxism explicitly claims to be a from evidence, they have the logical status, ‘science’. For similar reasons Popper is equally Popper insists, of conjectures. They are tentative scathing of both Plato and Freud, as enemies of hypotheses on trial, as it were, ‘in the court of the ‘open society’. experience’. Hume’s problem of induction Ultimately, Popper’s influence has been disappears because generalisations are not crucial in furthering many debates in the supported or justified by observation. On the philosophy of science, and helped give rise to the contrary, generalisations are logically prior, being work of Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Kurt Gödel 1906–1978

amous Czech mathematician and mathematics, particularly in the 1930s, it is for logician, Gödel produced theories that what is now known as ‘Gödel’s Theorem’ that he would have major repercussions in became most famous. both these subjects as well as in What is often referred to as ‘Gödel’s Theorem’ philosophy. Though he contributed a is really two related theorems of incompleteness. greatF deal to various developments in The first theorem states that in any formal

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The New Scientists: Kurt Gödel

The human mind is capable of working out truths that no…mechanical procedure can decide

(mathematical or logical) system that is internally Intelligence. Platonism in philosophy and consistent (i.e., contains no contradictions), there mathematics, is just that idea, derived from will be some well-formed proposition that cannot Plato, that abstract objects exist independently be proven either true or false, in other words, that in a ‘third realm’ – they are neither mental nor will be formally undecidable. In fact, Gödel shows physical, but occupy a distinct and eternal world that such a proposition is equivalent to an described by mathematics, logic and geometry instance of the ‘liar paradox’, a statement such as and glimpsed, at times, by effort of the intellect. ‘This sentence is not provable’, which if true, is Gödel himself was a strong believer in Platonism. false, and if false is true. The second incomplete- Now clearly the Gödel statement ‘this sentence is ness theorem shows that one cannot prove within not provable’ in the finite system is true. It is the the system that the system actually is internally very fact that it is true but unprovable within the consistent. system that establishes Gödel’s Theorem. The upshot of these two proofs had a Therefore it follows, according to Gödel and remarkable effect. First, in mathematics, it indeed more recently the famous physicist and effectively put an end to the ‘formalist’ mathematician Roger Penrose, that the human programme – derived from Kant’s metaphysics mind is capable of working out truths that no by the mathematician David Hilbert – which formal, or mechanical procedure can decide. attempted to show that classical mathematics According to Penrose and others, this scuttles consists not in the description of an hopes of Artificial Intelligence programs, since all independently real but abstract realm of entities, such machines, however complex, are formal ‘numbers’, but rather in a system of signs finite systems. constructed out of perceptual experience. Key What is clearly wrong with this argument, as to the formalist programme was the ability to Alan Turing was one of the first to point out, is give an account of infinite quantities, which are that although it is correct that there is a limitation never part of experience but are nevertheless to the power of any machine that uses a formal indispensable to mathematics. Hilbert had language, it assumes without any kind of proof worked out a theory whereby infinite quantities that the human intellect does not suffer from just could be taken as assumptions adopted for their the same kind of limitation. Perhaps for this instrumental value. Since Hilbert needed a means reason Gödel’s work has clearly not stemmed the of distinguishing and justifying valid tide of research into Artificial Intelligence, nor assumptions from invalid ones, he made done much to resurrect Platonism outside of consistency a condition of adoption. In other mathematics. However, within that discipline, words, no instrumental assumption should lead Platonism has the status of orthodoxy. Given the to a contradiction in the total system. Gödel’s centrality of mathematics to science, this must work showed that the demand for a proof of have repercussions on our philosophical consistency could never be met, and thereby reflections. We would seem obliged to either oust wrecked Hilbert’s programme. Platonism from mathematics or make some kind In philosophy, Gödel’s works was seen as a of room for it in our general conceptions of the reaffirmation of Platonism and, more recently a nature of reality, as suggested by Gödel, Penrose proof of the impossibility of Artificial and others.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Alan Turing 1912–1954

nglish mathematician, code-breaker philosophy of mind. His definition of a universal and founder of computer science, computing device, named ‘the Turing machine’ in Turing has bequeathed the possibility his honour, set generations of eager scientists to of Artificial Intelligence to science, work in the quest to develop algorithms that Eand a criterion for intelligence to the would describe the computational processes of 198 A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3 Philos 228x163 Text All 11/8/06 4:17 pm Page 199

The New Scientists: Alan Turing

Why suppose that a computer that imitates the behaviour of a thinking person is really thinking?

human thought. His ‘imitation game’, sometimes think. Why? Because any machine sophisticated simply called ‘the Turing test’ has taxed enough to replace a person in the game without philosophers’ understanding of concepts such as the detection of the interrogator (or at least with ‘intelligence’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘mind’. During a detection rate no worse than a person) must the Second World War, Turing was the leading possess just the same intelligence as a person. cryptographer at Bletchley Park, where he made The assumption, in other words, is that anything an invaluable contribution to the Allied cause by that responds intelligently is, by that very fact, helping to crack the notorious ‘Enigma’ code used intelligent. by the Germans. Turing’s ‘imitation game’ raises a number of Turing’s seminal work is contained in his interesting issues for philosophers. In particular, is famous paper Computing Machinery and it true that imitation is really enough to satisfy us Intelligence in which he poses the question ‘Can that a machine can think? A child can imitate the machines think?’. The answer to such a question, behaviour of an adult, but is not thereby an adult, of course, depends exactly on what is meant by and neither is player B, if he is a man and the terms ‘machine’ and ‘think’. But since any successfully fools the interrogator that he is a analysis of the terms is likely to presuppose an woman, thereby a woman. So why should we answer to the question rather than help us suppose that a computer that imitates the investigate it objectively, Turing proposes to behaviour of a thinking person, is really thinking? replace the question with a hypothetical game. The issue is complex, and turns in part on the Suppose, says Turing, that we define a game assumption that the level of sophistication with three players. Player A is to act as an required to fool the interrogator might only be interrogator, and the object of the game for the achieved by something that was, indeed, a interrogator is to guess the sex of the other two thinking being. On the other hand, and this is players, one of which is a man, the other a probably closer to Turing’s own view, since the woman. All the players are in separate rooms only criterion we have of conscious thought is and send and receive questions and answers via how it is manifested in behaviour (including teletype terminals. For Player B the object of the verbal behaviour), it can make no sense to call game is to confuse the interrogator and hide the one thing ‘thinking’ and another non-thinking’ identity of his or her gender. For Player C, the if their behaviour is indistinguishable to a object of the game is to help the interrogator to competent judge. guess his or her gender correctly. Clearly, since Of course, the imitation game does not imply the interrogator does not know which player is that any machine ever could pass the test, but trying to help him and which is trying to deceive does give us, if one agrees with Turing, a test him, he must be very canny in his questioning. that any candidate machine should have to take. Now Turing asks, what will happen if a Turing himself professed that by the end of the machine takes the place of Player B in this game? twentieth century we would have machines Will the interrogator guess more or less correctly capable of passing the test over 70% of the time. than he would when the players are both people? His optimism in this regard has yet to be been The answer to this question, Turing tells us, will borne out. settle the question of whether a machine can

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Burrhus Frederic Skinner 1904–1990

sychologist, philosopher and arch- the most misrepresented, the most cited and the proponent of ‘radical behaviourism’, most misunderstood’ of all contemporary Skinner attempts to explain human psychologists. His most famous works are The behaviour without recourse Behaviour of Organisms, Science and Human to any psychological or mental Behaviour and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Pproperties, an attempt that has been the cause of The roots of behaviourism lie in a rejection one of the greatest controversies in 20th century of Descartes’ dualism of a non-physical mind psychology and philosophy of mind. Familiar to lodged in a physical body. With the advent of students of psychology and sociology, Skinner has materialism in the 18th and 19th centuries, been described as ‘the most honoured and the Cartesian dualism became untenable. Ever since most maligned, the most widely recognised and Descartes’ work had been published, critics had

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The New Scientists: Burrhus Frederic Skinner

The mental realm was unnecessary to the explanation of human behaviour

found troublesome first the idea that these two future behaviour in the presence of those stimuli. metaphysically different entities could ever The upshot of this is that for Skinner, there are interact and second, what evidence could we no criminals, no heroes or cowards, geniuses or ever have of what goes on in the mental realm fools, there are merely – when one takes a proper beyond our own case, or even that others have a account of science – individuals whose behaviour psychological existence? The early 20th century is determined by the environment. He says, ‘The saw a simple and powerful answer to the hypothesis that man is not free is essential to the Cartesian problem. Behaviourists, following application of scientific method to the study of Pavlov and Watson, began to realise that the human behaviour. The free inner man who is held mental realm was unnecessary to the explanation responsible for the behaviour of the external of human behaviour. If psychology is conceived biological organism is only the prescientific of as the science of predicting and explaining substitute for the kinds of causes which are human behaviour, the whole project could be discovered in the course of a scientific analysis.’ undertaken by paying heed only to patterns of In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner tries physical responses to physical stimuli. Inner to work out the social implications of his radical processes were not the psychologist’s domain: behaviourism. Criminals and sociopaths are biologists and neuro-physiologists could deal people whose behaviour deviates from some with those. preference or generalization imposed by society. The program began with enormous success. Labelling such people as wrongdoers is a Attributions of psychological phenomena such reflection of our ignorance of the factors which as ‘John is in pain’ could be analysed not as caused their behaviour. This view is highlighted attributing some inner experience to John’s by the fact that we clearly do not hold people mental life, but as a claim that John is wincing, responsible in cases where we understand the groaning or in some other way exhibiting ‘pain- causes of their behaviour (drug dependency, for behaviour’. The obvious problem that John might instance). The idea might be given credence from be in pain but not observably so, could be the evolutionary perspective that humans are explained away by claiming some other physically continuous with animals and Skinner, overriding stimulus was preventing the ordinary having spent a lot of time controlling the expression of pain-behaviour. behaviour of rats in his laboratory, sees no Skinner’s contribution to the behaviourist reason why animal behaviour cannot be doctrine lies in his consistent employment of explained in terms of purely operant conditions. behaviourist methodology in spite of continuing There have been many valid objections to criticism which ought, it seems, to have made behaviourism, not least the fact that it ignores the behaviourism obsolete a long time ago. Skinner, causal role of our own psychological experience. however, continued to develop behaviourism Skinner’s later work is ambivalent towards these along ever more austere lines. He maintained that inner experiences. Sometimes he denies their all human behaviour can be explained in terms of existence as a Cartesian myth, at other times he ‘operant conditions’. Operant conditions are allows that they may exist but are irrelevant to a simply environmental stimuli that have proper scientific understanding of human reinforcing or adverse effects on the individual’s behaviour.

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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers

Thomas Kuhn 1922–1996

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The New Scientists: Thomas Kuhn

There are radical discontinuities between different periods of scientific investigation

lthough he wrote five books and explanatory force but requires a ‘paradigm-shift’, many articles during his career as a revolution takes place. Examples of such a philosopher, Kuhn is best known revolutions might be, for instance, Copernicus’ for his seminal work The Structure heliocentric theory of the Solar system which of Scientific Revolutions, written replaced the Ptolemaic idea that the sun revolves Aas a graduate student in theoretical physics at around the earth; or Einstein’s replacement of Harvard. Dismayed by the somewhat simplistic Newton’s theory of gravity, space and motion. accounts philosophers gave of the history of Kuhn also popularised the notion of science as a continually progressive subject ‘incommensurability’ which defied the notion that edging always closer to the truth, Kuhn argued science is on an advancing path of progress that there are radical and incommensurable towards ultimate truth. According to Kuhn, the discontinuities between different periods of rejection of a previous paradigm in favour of a scientific investigation which make the idea of completely different one rules out the possibility continuous progress untenable. of comparison. Kuhn argues that the scientists’ The history of science, Kuhn argued, is view of the world is so radically altered by the punctuated by violent intellectual revolutions acceptance of a new paradigm that old and new that overturn long periods of conservative are qualitatively and quantitatively incomparable. puzzle-solving. Periods of so-called ‘normal’ Kuhn argues that scientists operating at different science are characterised less by independent and historical periods with different paradigms live in objective research than by adherence to agreed psychologically different worlds. Kuhn says, ‘After assumptions and expected outcomes. During Copernicus, astronomers lived in a different periods of normal science anomalous or world’. His idea is that the world of Ptolemy is not unexpected findings get brushed aside as either the same world as Copernicus, for when Ptolemy irrelevant or problems to be solved another time. observes the sun he observes an object that moves Original research that questions the current around the earth, whereas Copernicus sees the assumptions of accepted theory are often central star of the solar system. debunked as wild and useless speculation. This This subjectivism in science makes the idea of gives rise to Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm. The absolute truth a questionable notion and, current paradigm is a web of interwoven according to Kuhn, one we can do without. Since assumptions and beliefs shared by a particular it is impossible to investigate the nature of community which underlies and sets the agenda reality without operating with some paradigm or for current research. According to Kuhn, only other, we should see science as the evolution of results which tend to strengthen the current ideas in response to the world. If we think of the paradigm get accepted during periods of normal evolution of ideas in much the same way as the science. The paradigm itself is never questioned evolution of organisms, then according to Kuhn, or criticized. However, from time to time there is no more reason to believe ideas are paradigms are overthrown by intellectual evolving towards some ultimate truth than there revolutions. When the paradigm fails to provide is to think that organisms are evolving towards adequate models for observed phenomena, or a some ultimate being. new, more powerful model has greater

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Paul Feyerabend 1924–1994

hilosopher of science, Feyerabend Once enamoured of both logical positivism and became notorious in the 1960s and Karl Popper’s ‘falsificationism’, he came to reject 1970s for his ‘epistemological both and became popular with the 1960s anarchism’, which attacked the alternative movements which rejected the prevailing assumption that science hegemony of scientism. Feyerabend’s classic wasP underscored by a rational methodology. work in this regard is his Against Method.

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The New Scientists: Paul Feyerabend

Science is always revolutionary, characterised by a plurality of concurrent hypotheses

Feyerabend’s disillusionment with Popper depend, ultimately, Feyerabend maintains, on began under the influence of Kuhn’s thesis of what people believe. ‘incommensurability’. However, Feyerabend goes Given this as a background, Feyerabend beyond Kuhn’s idea that science oscillates proposes to do away with the old untenable between periods of ‘normal science’ and model of corroborating a theory against such ‘revolutionary science’. Rather, he suggested, ‘facts’. Instead, we should encourage as many science is always revolutionary, since scientific competing theories as possible and compare them practice is characterised by a plurality of with one another. We choose that theory which concurrent hypotheses which are incommen- best contributes to our understanding. Empirical surable with each other. Indeed, he argues that observation must enter into this picture Kuhn’s idea of theoretical monism, in which only somewhere, but does so in a more indirect way one theory is accepted as fruitful at any given than in the traditional realist model. time, would be detrimental to the development Feyerabend’s theoretical pluralism extends of science. For according to Feyerabend, what into a methodological pluralism, or as he called drives scientific research is the competition it ‘epistemological anarchism’. He argues that in provided by a plurality of alternative theories. the quest for a plurality of theories, there is no Even if we are confident in the adequacy of a one single guaranteed method we can rely on to theory, Feyerabend maintains it is healthy to produce good results. Indeed, of scientific encourage alternatives to challenge it, which practice he says ‘there is not a single rule, will aid both our understanding of the favoured however plausible…that is not violated at some theory and increase our justification for it. time or other…there are always circumstances This view, which Feyerabend calls ‘theoretical when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, pluralism’ moves him towards relativism and anti- but to adopt its opposite’. Since there are no set realism. For Feyerabend abandons the traditional of rules, it follows that science is anarchic in conception that a theory is good just insofar as nature. Feyerabend goes on, ‘There is only one it ‘fits the facts’. There are no facts, Feyerabend principle that can be defended under all maintains, since all factual statements are theory- circumstances and in all stages of human laden. By this Feyerabend has in mind a certain development. It is the principle: anything goes.’ theory of meaning, influenced by the later work Interestingly, Feyerabend’s anarchism received of Wittgenstein. On this view, the meaning of any at first harsh criticism and then was ignored, factual statement can only be explained by principally because scholars refused to take his reference to the ‘language-game’ of which it is a extreme relativism seriously. On the other hand, part – that is, the social practices and rules that his audience outside of academic circles grew are counted as criterial for the employment of the precisely because the anarchic message of his terms in the statement. But if this is so, then it work struck a chord with certain alternative looks like the meaning of factual statements is movements in society. However much disdain embedded not in the truth of some independent academics might have toward his work, he has reality but in the conventions of social and probably reached a wider audience than any other linguistic activity, which in turn, are reflections philosopher of science. of what we believe about the world. So ‘facts’

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W.V.O. Quine 1908–2000

orn in Akron, Ohio, on 25th June entitled Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Quine was, before his death on Now regarded as a twentieth century classic Christmas Day 2000, widely regarded and de rigueur reading for philosophy students as America’s greatest living everywhere, it attacked the prevailing philosopher. His early work was assumptions of empiricist metaphysics, then Binfluential in mathematical logic, but he came to widely held and chiefly promoted by his great prominence through an article published in 1951 friend and mentor, Rudolph Carnap. In over

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The New Scientists: W.V.O. Quine

Only science can tell us about the world: it is the final arbiter of the truth

twenty books and many more articles, Quine is what our best theory of the world says there is. went on to develop and expound a systematic The upshot is that science is essentially a philosophical program the depth and breadth of pragmatic exercise concerned with predicting which had not been seen since the days of the future sensory experience. great metaphysicians of the 18th and 19th In Word and Object, Quine expands on earlier centuries. themes developing his conception of philosophy Key to Quine’s thought is the view that science and epistemology as scientific theory building, is, as he put it ‘the final arbiter of truth’. Only conditioned but not determined by sensory science can tell us about the world, and one of the experience. He develops his critique of the things science tells us about the world is that our concept of meaning begun with the attack on knowledge of it is constrained by and limited to analyticity in Two Dogmas, with a devastating sensory stimulations. Quine is the arch-empiricist, thought-experiment designed to undermine the rejecting Kant’s attempted synthesis of empiricism notion of synonymy or sameness of meaning. and rationalism to found metaphysics both in Two Quine envisages a scenario of radical translation Dogmas and throughout his later works, in which a field linguist, faced with a completely encapsulated principally in the abstruse Word and unknown native language, has to import his own Object (1960) and the more reader-friendly The conceptual scheme as an hypothesis in order to Pursuit of Truth (1990). make sense of the natives’ behaviour, since In Two Dogmas, Quine attacks two unempirical behaviour alone woefully underdetermines the assumptions of the Positivist program. First, the possible meanings of the natives’ utterances. If idea originating from Kant that there are two importing a conceptual scheme is required for different kinds of propositions, analytic ones – translation, it follows that meaning is relative to known to be true in virtue of their meaning alone the translator and the idea of sameness of (for example, ‘all bachelors are unmarried’) and meaning across different translation manuals synthetic ones – propositions known to be true or evaporates. false according to how things stand in the world Quine’s philosophy does not shy away from (that it is raining, for example, or that Bush is the the conclusion that ontology, the study of what President of the USA). Second, Quine rejects the there is, is relative to background theory. Indeed, positivist assumption that the meaning of a Quine boldly claims that physical objects are proposition can be reduced to talk about sensory ‘posits’ of our current best theory, whose stimulations. Quine convincingly shows that no existence we could conceivably deny given proposition can be true independent of suitable revisions in light of recalcitrant experience, but also that the meaning of a experience. Thus, Quine says ‘For my part I do, proposition cannot be ascertained in isolation qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and from the ‘web of beliefs’ of which it forms a part. not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific This web of belief is itself conditioned by sensory error to believe otherwise. But in point of experience. However, experience cannot be epistemological footing, the physical objects and divorced from the theory of the world used to the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. describe it. Theory and experience go hand in Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only hand, and what there is, what exists, says Quine, as cultural posits.’

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Picture Credits

Cover image: AKG London/Erich Lessing, Raphael, Arcturus Publishing Limited has made every reason- “The School of Athens”, Vatican, Rome. AKG, able effort to ensure that all permissions information Berlin/S.Domingie: Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence 44; has been sought and achieved as required. However Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 58. AKG, London: 8; 10; 48; there may be inadvertent and occasional errors in 62; 64; 66; 68; 76; 78; 80; 82; 84; 94; 96; 98; 100; seeking permission to reproduce individual photo- 102; 104; 106; 110; 112; 116; 118; 120; 122; 124; 128; graphs for which Arcturus Publishing Limited 130; 132; 134; 136; 138; 140; 142; 144; 148; 150; apologizes. 152; 154; 156; 158; 160; 162; 164; 168; 190; 192; 194. Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass. 46. The entries in this book represent the author’s person- Museo Capitolino, Rome 32. Musée Carnavalet, Paris al interpretation of philosophers and their work. 88. Nationale Forschungs-und Gedenkstätten der klas- Neither Arcturus Publishing Limited nor any of its sischen deutschen Literatur, Weimar 146. National agents accept liability for any statements made which Portrait Gallery, London 114. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam are the author’s own and not expressly made as fact 14, 26. SMPK Kunstbibliothek, Berlin 90. AKG, on behalf of Arcturus Publishing Limited or one of its London/British Library: 108. AKG, London/Orsi agents. In no event shall Arcturus Publishing Limited Battaglini: Cappella San Antonio, Florence 50. AKG, or its employees, agents, suppliers, or contractors be London/Marion Kalter: 184; 188. AKG, London/Erich liable for any damages of any kind or character, Lessing: Collegium Maius, Cracow 56. Galleria degli including without limitation any compensatory, inci- Uffizi 66. Louvre, Paris 18; 20; 22; 24; 28; 38; 60; 72; dental, direct, indirect, special, punitive, or conse- 92. Museum Plantin-Moretus 36. Trinity College quential damages, loss of or damage to property, Cambridge 70. claims of third parties, or other losses of any kind or character, arising out of or in connection with the publication of this title.

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Glossary

Glossary

(Bold type within the text indicates a cross-reference)

The Absolute The opposite of relative, conditioned or dependent. The idea of the absolute dates back to pre-Socratic times. For Plato, the Ideal Forms were the absolute. For other philosophers the idea has been associated with that of the Godhead. Certain rationalist thinkers, such as Spinoza, held the absolute to be an all encompassing principle and the true source of all reality, as did the idealist philosophers (see Idealism), most notably Hegel.

A priori Something known to be true or false prior to experience. Its opposite would be a posteriori, which is knowledge derived from experience.

Aesthetics The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and expression of beauty, or in Kantian philosophy the branch of metaphysics concerned with the laws of perception.

Agent The self that acts, chooses, and decides as opposed to the self that knows.

Agnostic One who believes that God’s existence cannot be proven, but doesn’t deny the possibility that God might exist.

Agnosticism The belief that no proof can be given for the existence of God, since the concept of God, like those of soul, immortality, and first cause, lies beyond the reach of the human mind, which can only know the world of natural phenomena.

Analytic Philosophy The philosophical approach following from the empiricism of Locke and Hume, which emphasizes logic, attention to language and simplicity of argument, and seeks to clarify concepts, theories, ideas and methods. Many 20th century American and British philosophers have taken this approach, rather than pursuing the metaphysical speculation and system building of Continental Philosophy.

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Atheism The absolute disbelief in and denial of the existence of a God or gods.

Atomism The theory of Democritus and Epicurus, among others, which claims that the entire universe is composed of minute, indivisible and indestructible particles.

Behaviorism The branch of psychology, most radically developed and advocated by B.F. Skinner, that focuses exclusively on observable behavior, excluding all subjective phenomenon, such as emotions, memories and motives.

Category In philosophy, categories are the most basic group into which things can be classified. A category, then, would be an irreducible and fundamental concept that can be applied to other concepts and objects. Aristotle and Kant each attempted a definitive list of categories, which included substance, relation, place, time, passion, and action, among others.

Causality or causation The connection between cause and effect, or the relationship between two things when the first is perceived as the cause of the second. Ordinarily, the relationship between cause and effect seems inevitable. Nevertheless, philosophers have asked why we think in terms of causation, where the idea comes from, and when it is correct to apply it.

Cognition The forms of knowing and perceiving, such as attention, memory, reasoning, and perception (visual, aural, tactile), through which we synthesize information,

Concept In philosophy, concept can stand for an idea, a thought, the form of a thought or even the meaning of a term, though concept is largely used in its most general application. For example, to have a concept of table means that one might 1) distinguish table from every other thing and 2) reason about tables in some way.

Cosmogony The study of the origin and development of the universe.

Cosmology The study of the whole universe as a totality of phenomena in time and space.

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Cynic A member of a school of Ancient Greek philosophy, namely Cynicism, wherein virtue was seen as the only good and self-control as the only means of attaining virtue. Cynics not only showed a complete disregard for pleasure, but also expressed contempt for human affection, preferring to find fault with most individuals for their lack of virtue. Diogenes was perhaps the most renowned Cynic.

Deduction A form of argument in which the conclusion logically and necessarily follows from the premises, with the general leading to the particular. An example would be, “If all human beings are born, then Plato as a human being, must have been born.” It is an agreed upon fact that deduction is valid. Its opposite would be Induction.

Determinism The view that whatever happens has to happen, for every event is the inevitable, hence necessary, outcome of its specific, preceding causes, which themselves were the necessary result of yet previous causes. The chain of cause and effect might be seen as determined by God or the laws of nature. In science, an entirely mechanistic view is deterministic. In the Ancient World and in the Christian idea of predestination, the idea of fate is thoroughly deterministic. See Causality.

Dialectic A Greek term originally used to describe the Socratic method, according to which argument and reasoning took the form of dialogue. For Hegel and Marx, dialectic is an interpretive method whereby the contradiction between a thesis and its antithesis is resolved into a synthesis that includes elements from each of the opposing positions.

Dualism The view that reality is made up of two fundamental and fundamentally different elements, as opposed to monism, which perceives reality to be made up of only one substance. The dualism of Descartes, perhaps the most famous, advances the view that material substance and the mind’s activity (thinking, reflecting, etc.) bear upon each other but are separate, unlike and essentially distinct.

Empiricism The view that sense experience is the only basis for true knowledge. An Empiricist would doubt any statement claiming truth regardless of experience.

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Epicureanism Named after the Greek philosopher Epicurus, this strain of moral philosophy advances the claim that pleasure, mainly understood as the avoidance of pain by opting for intellectual pleasure, needs to be understood as the basis for leading an ethical life.

Epistemology The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge – with what and how we know and the limits of human understanding.

Essence The fundamental qualities that make something what it is and not something else are what constitute its essence. In other words, the essence of a dog is what makes it a dog and not a cat or a horse. See also Universal.

Ethics or Moral Philosophy The branch of philosophy that examines human values, beginning with questions about how we should live and act. Hence its focus on questions of conduct, duty, responsibility, good and bad, right and wrong.

Existentialism The modern philosophical view which takes the individual human being, possessing free will and standing in an absurd and meaningless world, as its starting point. Existentialists argue for human responsibility and judgement in ethical matters, seeing the individual as the sole judge of his/her own actions, with human freedom understood precisely as the freedom to choose.

Free Will The doctrine that human beings are free to control their own actions, which are not determined by cause and effect, God or fate. Its opposite is Determinism.

Hypothesis A theory that is held to be true and seems like it might be true until confirmed or proven wrong by empirical testing or experience. An element belonging to the scientific method.

Idealism The philosophical view that the empirical world does not exist independently of the human mind and hence can only be known according to our conceptions of it. Its opposite is Materialism.

Induction The opposite of deduction, induction moves from

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individual instances to general principle. Unlike deduction, induction does not lead to necessarily true results.

Instrumentalism A pragmatic theory in which ideas, such as scientific theories, are instruments that function as guides to action, and serve to deal with problems in the real world. As such, ideas do not give a true account of reality. Rather, their validity and value are determined by their success in enabling us to act, problem-solve, and predict outcomes.

Intuition A form of direct, conceptual knowing that does not rely on reason or derive directly from the senses. For example, as human beings, we might be said to have an intuitive or innate idea of God, the beautiful, or justice.

Logic The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of rational argument, focusing on the principles of reasoning, the structure of propositions, and the methods and validity of deductive reasoning.

Logical Positivism The view that philosophy should be based on observation and testing and that propositions are only meaningful to the extent that they can be verified empirically. It is opposed to any type of metaphysical speculation.

Materialism The view that only matter or material things actually exist. In other words, there is nothing in existence other than matter, one of the consequences of which is the nullification of the possible existence of a God or gods. Materialism is opposed to idealism, which holds the mind to be generative of objective reality.

Metaphysics The branch of philosophy concerned with first principles, particularly being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology), as well as with the ultimate nature of what exists. Central to metaphysical speculation are all the traditional questions of philosophy, such as: the origin of life, the nature of mind and of reality, and the meaning of concepts such as time, space, causation and free will, among others.

Methodology The system of principles, practices and procedures that are employed within a specific branch of knowledge. For instance, while historical, philosophical and scientific

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methodologies might converge, they largely differ from one another.

Monism The view that reality is a unified whole and that all existing things follow from or can be described by a single concept or system. As regards human beings and the relationship between mind and body, in this view both would be seen as like entities, formed from the same substance. Its opposite is dualism.

Mysticism A belief in the existence of realities beyond intellectual or perceptual apprehension that are germane to “being” and directly accessibly through subjective experience. The “One” of Plotinus would be an example of such a reality.

Natural Law Laws considered “natural” in the sense of being derived from nature and therefore seen as providing universal moral standards that are binding. Natural law is often associated with divine law, with reason as arbiter. It’s opposite is positive law, namely, the laws established by particular societies. A good example of the concept of natural law is given by the opening of “The Declaration of Independence” of the United States of America: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Naturalism The view that reality can be understood without resorting to anything outside of or beyond nature to serve as an explanatory principle.

Nominalism The theory that universals are not real and existing in the world, but rather are words and names for phenomena.

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Ontology The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of being.

Open Society This term was first proposed by French philosopher Henri Bergson and further developed by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper. Philosophically speaking, the concept of an open society is based on the recognition that people act on imperfect knowledge and that no one possesses the ultimate truth. Consequently, the best form of social organization and government, as advanced by Popper, is a pluralistic democracy characterized by the rule of law, a diversity of opinion, a division of power and a market economy.

Pantheism The doctrine that identifies God or gods with the forces and workings of nature.

Phenomenology The philosophical view introduced by Edmund Husserl according to which objects are objects of experience rather than independently existing entities. This approach aims to explore the ways in which people conceive of and interpret the world as they experience it. In this view, reality is relative and subjective.

Phenomena For Plato, things as perceived by the senses (versus noumena, which are things as reflected upon by thought). For Kant, the distinction between phenomena and noumena was that between things as objects of experience and things as they are in themselves, a state of being not accessible to human reason.

Philosophy Literally, “the love of wisdom.” Traditionally, philosophy was comprised of Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Logic. Modern philosophy also encompasses political theory, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophies of religion, science and law. Most generally, philosophy might be described as the rigorous, systematic analysis and critical examination of such topics as reality, nature, time, causation, free will, human beingness, reason, moral judgements, and perception, among others.

Positivism The theory introduced by Auguste Comte that limits knowledge to what can be derived from observation and comprehended within the bounds of science.

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Pragmatism A strain of empiricism, this view, founded by CS Pierce, interprets truth in terms of its practical effects, and as such might be seen as a theory of truth. When applied to science, this view holds that the “truth” of a theory depends on whether or not it works. William James took this approach to ethical judgements and religious beliefs, measuring “truth” in terms of the usefulness or benefit of a belief or judgement to a person’s life.

Rationalism The theory that reason is the fundamental source of knowledge and spiritual truth and that the exercise of reason, rather than empiricism (sense-perception), authority or revelation, provides the only valid basis for action and belief.

Realism Philosophically, the theory that universals exist independently of the human mind and that the essences of things are objectively given in nature.

Skepticism The view that it is impossible to know anything with certainty. Hence, absolute knowledge is unattainable and doubt is central to human knowledge and experience.

Scholasticism The theological and philosophical methods and systems of Medieval Europe (12-14th centuries), which aimed to reconcile Christian thought with Aristotelianism.

Scientism The theory that the investigative methods used in the natural sciences should be applied in all fields of inquiry.

Semiotics The study of signs and symbols.

Solipsism The view that only the self can be known to exist.

Stoicism The Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium around 308 BC. The Stoics believed that happiness lay in accepting the law of the universe and advised equanimity in the face of good and bad fortune alike. They held that human beings would be happiest if they freed themselves from passion and calmly accepted all occurrences as the result of divine will.

Structuralism The 20th century philosophical movement that has had a

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Glossary

great influence on anthropology, linguistics and literary criticism. Following Ferdinand de Saussure’s work in linguistics, structuralists hold the view that objects should not be investigated as independent entities, but rather as systems of relations.

Tautology A necessarily true statement, such as “red is red.”

Teleology The study of final ends, from the perspective that there is a purpose to life and the universe, and hence also some sort of blueprint or overall design that makes all development purposive and meaningful.

Theism Most specifically the belief that a single personal God is present in the world as well as transcendent.

Theology The study of God and the nature of religious truth. Though philosophy does not posit the existence of God, its arguments and methods have nevertheless had a significant influence on both natural and revealed theologies over the centuries.

Transcendental Something outside the world of sense experience. Neither empiricists, nor pragmatists, nor existentialists believe in anything transcendental, such as God or a separate sphere of moral ideas.

Universal A property belonging to each individual of a specific class or a general concept that can be applied to all the members of a group: for example, since all cold things instantiate “coldness,” “coldness” would be the universal property of all cold things. In the Middle Ages, philosophers who believed that “coldness” existed in and of itself were called “realists” (see Realism). Those who argued that such a property did not actually exists were called “nominalists” (see Nominalism).

Utilitarianism The ethical theory sketched out by Bentham and elaborated by J.S. Mill, which argues for a morality based on actions that lead to happiness. In this framework, an action that leads to unhappiness would be morally wrong. What follows from this is the view that society should aim for the happiness of the greatest number.

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Validity A property of arguments. An argument is valid if its conclusion is the necessary outcome of its premises, even if the conclusion is false on account of a false premise. In other words, an argument may be logically valid even if its conclusion is wrong.

Verifiability The property of a statement or proposition that allows us to test, using empirical evidence, whether it is true or false. In the 20th century, many Logical Positivists and Empiricists made verification a requirement of knowledge. However, since few statements or even scientific laws are verifiable, there were others who argued against verifiability as a theory of proof and meaning.

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100 Essential Thinkers introduces one hundred of the world’s greatest philosophers and locates them within the school to which their work belongs.

Refreshingly accessible, this accomplished book presents a lucid exposition of the thought of the great philosophers of the Western tradition. As such, it is invaluable both to readers seeking a clear introduction to the work of individual philosophers and to those coming to the subject for the first time.

ISBN 0-572-02935-7 90100

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