Immanuel Kant (German, 1724-1804)

: central figure in modern philosophy

: synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism

: “critical philosophy” : fundamental idea is human autonomy

Crisis in Enlightenment

: Kant writing during transitional per. btw. Enlightenment & Romanticism : Human understanding source of general laws of nature that structure all our experience

:Human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality

: Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious beliefs are mutually consistent and secure

Noumenon/Phenomenon

: Noumenon – object or event known w/out senses : ding an sich (“thing in itself”)

: Phenomenon – object or event known by senses

“Copernican Revolution in Philosophy”

: The correct method in philosophy, according to Kant, is not to speculate on the nature of the world around us but to perform a critique of our mental faculties, investigating what we can know, defining the limits of knowledge, and determining how the mental processes by which we make sense of the world affect what we know.

: Just as Copernicus turned astronomy on its head in the sixteenth century by arguing that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system, Kant turns philosophy on its head by arguing that we will find the answers to our philosophical problems in an examination of our mental faculties rather than in metaphysical speculation about the universe around us.

Transcendental Idealism: We can never transcend the limitations and the contextualization provided by our minds, so that the only reality we will ever know is the reality of phenomena.

Critique of Pure Reason (1781) : achieves a synthesis between the competing traditions of rationalism and empiricism.

Critique of Practical Reason (1788) : Morality applies to all rational beings, and a moral action is defined as one that is determined by reason. : Consequentialism vs. Deontology (see attachment!) : “categorical imperative” : an action is moral only if it embodies a maxim that we could will to be a universal law.

“Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.”

“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”

“By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (German, 1788-1860)

: key focus - investigation of individual motivation: Humans motivated by their own basic desires : Wille zum Leben ("Will to Live")

The World as Will and Representation (“Idea”) : our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction : Kant was right: time, space, material objects have no being outside empirical world

The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason : nothing is without a ground or reason : everything must have a reason or cause : Becoming, Knowing, Being, WillingBecoming - Only with the combination of time and space does perceptual actuality become possible for a subject, allowing for ideas of perception, and this provides the ground of becoming to judgments. This is the law of causality, which is, when considered subjectively, intellectual and a priori understanding. All possible judgments that are inferences of a cause from an effect—a physical state a subject infers as caused by another physical state or vice versa—take this as the ground of the possibility of such judgments. The natural sciences operate within this aspect of the principle

Knowing - This class of objects subsumes all judgments, or abstract concepts, which a subject knows through conceptual, discursive reason rooted in the ground of knowing. The other three classes of objects are immediate representations, while this class is always and already composed of representations of representations. Therefore, the truth-value of concepts abstracted from any of the other three classes of objects is grounded in referring to something outside the concept. Concepts are abstract judgments grounded in intuitions of time and space, ideas of perception (causality apparent in the outer world), or acts of will (causality experienced from within). This class makes language (in the form of abstract judgments that are then communicable) possible, and as a consequence, all the sciences become possible.

Being - Time and space comprise separate grounds of being. These a priori (prior to experience) forms respectively allow for an “inner,” temporal sense and an “outer,” spatial sense for the subject; subjectively, these are the forms of pure sensibility—they make sensations possible for a subject. The first makes arithmetic possible, and is presupposed for all other forms of the principle of sufficient reason; the other makes geometry

possible. Time is one dimensional and purely successive; each moment determines the following moment; in space, any position is determined only in its relations to all other positions in a finite, hence, closed system. Thus, intuitions of time and space provide the grounds of being that make arithmetical and geometrical judgments possible, which are also valid for experience.Willing - It is possible for a subject of knowing to know himself directly as ‘will.’ A subject knows his acts of will only after the fact, in time. Action then, finds its root in the law of motivation, the ground of acting, which is causality, but seen from the inside. In other words, not only does a subject know his body as an object of outer sense, in space, but also in an inner sense, in time alone; a subject has self-consciousness in addition to knowing his body as an idea of perception. Why does a subject act the way he does? Where a sufficient motive appears in the form either of an intuition, perception, or abstract conception, the subject will act according to his character, or ‘will.’ E.g., despite all plans to the contrary, when the actual moment comes to act, we do so within the constituents of the rhetorical situation (the various representations present in a subject’s experience) and are often surprised by what we actually say and do. The human sciences find their ground in this aspect of the principle

Schopenhauer’s Ethics: only compassion can drive moral acts : Mankind only guided egoism or malice : egotistic acts are those guided by self-interest, desire for pleasure or happiness : acts of malice aim to cause damage to others, independently of personal gains

Quotations“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

“The world is a mirror in which the will becomes aware of itself”

“Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.”

“Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex: for it is with this drive that all its beauty is bound up.”Georg Wilhelm Hegel (German, 1770-1831)

: “Evangelist of the Absolute” (i.e., absolute idealism): freedom or self-determination both as real and as having important ontological implications, for soul or mind or divinity

Hegelian Dialectic

1. Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

2. Everything is composed of contradictions (opposing forces).

3. Gradual changes lead to crises, turning points when one force overcomes its opponent force (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).

4. Change is helical (spiral), not circular (negation of the negation).

: Abstract > Negative > Concrete (Thesis > Antithesis > Synthesis)

:E.g., The French Revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the Reign of Terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. the constitutional state of free citizens). : change comes about through historical forces— the individual is powerless to resist

Hegel Quotations“The Finite has no genuine Being.”“Man owes his entire existence to the State.”“The real is the rational, and the rational is the real.”“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.”

Karl Marx (German/British, 1818-1883)

: strongly influenced by Hegel: economics laid the basis for the current understanding of labor and its relation to capital, and has influenced much of subsequent economic thoughtDialectical materialism : synthesizing Hegel's dialectics: proposes that every economic order grows to a state of maximum efficiency, while simultaneously developing internal contradictions and weaknesses that contribute to its systemic decay

: history is the product of class struggles: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”Communist Manifesto (1848)w/ Friedrich Engels : publication coincided with revolutionary wave that swept Europe in same year : lays out program of Communist League : history a series of class struggles : Bourgeoisie (owners of means of production) vs. Proletariat (working class) : “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

Communist League’s Demands 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and

rebels.5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by

means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form and combination of education with industrial production.

Das Kapital (1867) : complex analysis of economics : means of production analyzed thru history : “production for use”

Legacy : Marx is typically cited (along with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber) as one of the three principal architects of modern social science

Friedrich Nietzsche (Prussian/German, 1844-1900)

: Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy : fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttriebe" ("artistic impulses") form dramatic arts : modern world needs fusion of Dionysian ecstasy and Apollonian order/logic : Perspectivism : all ideations take place from particular perspectives : no way of seeing the world : “In so far as the word "knowledge" has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings”

: The Will to Power : fundamental drive is for power as realized in independence and dominance : stronger than will to survive (martyrs)

: “Death of God” “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

: the Übermensch : from Also Sprach Zarathustra : one willing to risk all for enhancement of humanity

: Eternal Recurrence. : universe recurring, will continue to recur, in self-similar form infinite number of times across infinite time or space.

Some Famous Books by Nietzsche Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”), The Gay Science, Human, All Too Human, Götzen-Dämmerung (“Twilight of the Idols”)

Composed mainly of aphorisms

Nietzsche Quotations“God is Dead.”“That which does not destroy me makes me stronger.”“Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of 'equal' rights."“It is easy to give the recipe for what the masses call a great man. For the rest, let him have all the characteristics of the masses: the less they are ashamed before him, the more popular he is.  So, let him be violent, envious, exploitative, scheming, fawning, groveling, puffed up, or, according to the circumstances, all of the above."“Modern democracy is the historical form of the decline of the state."“In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.”

Legacy : challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality : distrusted democracy : Santayana wrote that Nietzsche's work was "an emendation of that of Schopenhauer. The will to live would become the will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection would become optimism founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the place of pity and asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles of morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong. These points of difference from Schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy of Nietzsche"(wiki).