笔记：A Little History of Philosophy

A Little History of Philosophy, by Nigel Wurbuton (2011). Under progress.

Socrates (c. 469—399 BC)
Elenchus, contradicting questions; what’s ‘courage’, ‘immoral’? -> wisest man in Athens; taken to court for corrupting youth -> insisted on drinking hemlock.

Plato (c. 424—347 BC)
Socrates pupil; wrote Platonic Dialogues for Socrates; Plato’s cave -> Theory of Forms, reality beyond appearance, all learning is a recollection of what we already know -> philosophers know better -> The Republic, philosophers rule, 3 classes.

Aristotle (384—322 BC)
Plato’s pupil; ‘interested in everything’ in real world, rejecting Theory of Forms, believe in particular examples; tutor of Alexander the Great; set up school ‘Lyceum’; ‘why live?’: seek happiness (eudaimonia, flourishing), use power of reason to achieve long term happiness, ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer’ – The Nicomachean Ethics; to develop the right kind of character, virtue and behaviour, in a society, the Golden Mean; becomes long-time intellectual authority, prevented progress.

Pyrrho (c. 365—c. 270 BC)
Scepticism, or Pyrrhonism; doubt everything, no commit, no disappointment, to achieve happiness, senses mislead people; visited India; knowledge can’t be gained -> ignore all senses and instincts of even danger,

Epicurus (341—270 BC)
Fear of death was a waste of time and based on bad logic, because you won’t experience it; set up school known as ‘the Garden’; philosophy is to be practical, to make life better; we all seek pleasure, live simple, be kind and have friends around -> moderate but happy life; actually opposite of ‘epicurean‘ -> indulges luxury and sensual pleasure, this idea from false claim of what happened in the Garden; no after life, no worries.

Stoicism
Stoic (Stoa, a painted porch where philosophers met); first Zeno of Citium; we are responsible for what we feel and think, we should only worry about things we can change -> mental control, emotions don’t happen; then Epictetus (AD 55–135), was a slave, mind is free even body is enslaved; then Cicero (106–43 BC) and Seneca (1 BC–AD 65), ageing is inevitable, make best of short life; Cicero also lawyer and politician, On Old Age: not to be pessimistic about old age; Seneca also politician, playwright and businessman, make the most of the short life, tutor of Emperor Nero, but ordered to commit suicide for suspected murder.

Augustine (354—430) of Hippo
Christian philosopher, born in North Africa; wrote Confessions, The City of God, and a hundred others; focused on moral evil -> why god allows evil, not satisfied with god’s ‘mysterious ways’; was a Manichaean, didn’t believe in god’s supreme power, god-evil equal; later became Christian; Free Will Defence: god given us free will, we can decide to do evil, better god gave people choices; Adam and Eve’s Original Sin in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose to yield to temptation; Original Sin pass on with sexual reproduction, hence everyone is sinful.

Boethius (475–525)
One of the last Roman philosophers, consul at the empire; wrote Consolations of Philosophy in prison awaiting execution, book contains conversation between author and lady Philosophy, about luck and god; luck is easily changeable, happiness has to be based on something solid -> in God and goodness; if god is ‘all-knowing’, what about ‘free will’? why then is it fair to punish/reward people? how do god choose who to go to heaven if we don’t make own decisions? -> God is timeless, observes us at no particular time at all.

Anselm (c. 1033–1109) and Aquinas (1225–1274)
Anselm: Italian later Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote Proslogion, ontology: the idea of God we have proves God exists, like painter imagining scenes; Thomas Aquinas, wrote Summa Theologica, outlined Five Ways to demonstrate god exists, includes First Cause Argument, i.e. everything comes from something, everything has a cause, can’t be infinitely regressive, hence there is a uncaused cause, i.e. God.

Machiavelli (1469–1527)
Born and worked in Florence; realist, wrote The Prince to impress the Medicis, kings need to try everything to stay in power, better to tell lies, break promises and murder enemies, i.e. have virtu, ‘manliness’; luck is important, Borgia didn’t have luck; it’s better be feared than loved; fox and lion: brave also canning; ‘machiavellian’.

Hobbes (1588–1679)
English political thinker and fitness fanatic, lived till 91; wrote Leviathan, low view on human beings, everyone is selfish -> ‘a state of nature’, everyone against everyone, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ society; need to put some powerful individual or parliament (‘sovereign‘) in charge via ‘social contract’, people gave up some freedoms for safety, sovereign have unlimited power over individuals; authoritarian society; also thought human body is physical mechanisms, refusing exists of soul.

René Descartes (1596–1650)
French, mathematician (Cartesian co-ordinates, fly-on-a-window), astronomer and biologist; wrote Meditations and Discourse on Method; Method of Cartesian Doubt: if tiniest room for doubt for anything, reject it; senses mislead; evil demon thought experiment -> to find one thing that can be sure about -> one’s own thoughts -> I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), Pyrrhonic Sceptics are wrong; Cartesian Dualism: mind and body are separated; agrees with Anselm’s Ontological Argument, Trademark Argument: God left us the idea of God implanted, God is good -> wouldn’t deceive humanity -> world is pretty much as we experience it.

Blaise Pascal (1623–62)
French Catholic, joined Jansenism, scientist (vacuums and barometers) and mathematician (probability); bleak view on humanity; wrote Pensées (‘Thoughts’), belief in God is about heart and faith, not physically or reason; Pascal’s Wager: ‘if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing’ -> should bet on believing in God; non-believers should join church rituals to convince oneself to believing.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–77)
Born in Amsterdam to Portuguese Jews, brought up in Jewish religion, taught at Heidelberg University, dicussed with Leibniz, lens grinder; wrote Ethics, wrote philosophy as if it were geometry (Rationalism), God is infinite, everything must be God, we all parts of God, ‘God or Nature’: God is the world; determinist, everything has its causes, free will is illusion; make emotions come from inner choices rather than external events.

John Locke (1632–1704)
English, friends of Boyle and Newton; wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding; absurd to force people to change their religion, everyone has God-given right to life, freedom, happiness and property; continuous identity: patched socks and oak trees, same ‘man’, different ‘person’, prince with cobbler’s memory -> identity related to moral responsibility, if not remembered, then not a different person, then shouldn’t be punished; God knows who deserves what; Thomas Reid old soldier theory, A=B, B=C,  but A≠C, hence inconsistent. Empiricism, all knowledge gain from after-born experience; primary qualities (size and shape) vs. secondary qualities (colour, smell, texture) -> primary qualities resemble real things, secondary ones mislead.

George Berkeley (1658–1753)
Irish; anything that stopped being observed ceases to exist; rejected the whole notion of an outside world; idealist, or immaterialist; world consists solely of ideas -> Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived); God guaranteed the continuing existence of our ideas; promoted tar water; UC Berkley named after.

Voltaire (1694–1778)
French, playwright, novelist, satirist; attacked Pope and Leibniz’s optimism: ‘whatever is, is right’, no design would have produced more goodness using less evil; supposedly said ‘I hate what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it’; should improve the world, wrote Candide, satire story with Dr Pangloss always confirming the world they live is the best of all possible worlds; end: ‘we must cultivate our garden’.

David Hume (1711–76)
Scottish; attacked the Design Argument (Divine Watchmaker/Architect); empirist, wrote Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding attacking God’s existence and believability of miracles, later published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; it may look designed doesn’t mean it is, we have no way to know the exact quality of designer even if it is designed; miracles: always have more plausible explanations; never declared an atheist.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78)
Swiss; affected the French Revolution greatly; wrote The Social Contract: ‘man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains’; man are naturally good in forests, corrupted by competitive approach and money in cities; man should be as free as they were outside but also obey the laws of the state, because they ought to submit to the Gerneral Will, for the best for the whole community and whole state, if not agree, should be ‘forced to be free’ -> ironic, less freedom than Mill’s freedom.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
German, great metaphysician; wrote The Critique of Pure Reason (difficult to read), argues that we only know phenomenal world, can’t get any information on noumenal world, which is behind our experiences (rose-tinted glasses); we can achieve greater understanding by rigorous thought than scientific approach; ‘how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?’, analytic statements are just about definition, synthetic knowledge requires experience or observation and it gives new information; combined empiricist (no innate knowledge, Locke) and rationalists (innate knowledge, Descartes), introduced synthetic a priori knowledge (i.e. 5+7=12); we could by reason discover features of minds that tinted experience, before experiencing it.

Emotions shouldn’t come into morality, acts only moral by reason and duty, not feeling and compassion; good intentions not enough to make action moral -> Categorical Imperatives, i.e. never lie, to be applied in any circumstances and any one, despite intentions; universalizable ‘maxims’: the answer to why people do things, only legitimate if anyone is sensible to do such things, no exceptions -> should recognise other people’s autonomy, capacity of self reasoning and deciding -> core of modern human rights theory; different from feeling-focused morality theory by Aristotle.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
English, auto-icon stored in UCL; utilitarianism (the Great Happiness Principle): man live to produce most happiness least pain; pleasure to be quantified using the Felicific Calculus: pleasure – pain = utility; rightness/wrongness of what one do comes down to results, even lying; focused on equality, everyone can be happy equally, even animals -> modern animal rights movement; Nozick proposed virtual reality machine, attacks Bentham’s argument about ‘all ways of bringing happiness have equal value’.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)
German, influenced by the French Revolution where social stages changed; history would unfold in a particular way, inspired Marx; influenced by Kant’s metaphysics, rejected noumenal world, mind shaping reality is reality; everything is changing by growing self-awareness; history has an end target, is the gradual and inevitable coming to self-awareness of Spirit (single mind of all humanity) through the march of reason; making progress by clashing opposite ideas ->dialetics, wrote The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Arthor Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
German; life is depressing, life is painful and it would be better not to have been born, it’s a hopeless cycle of wanting things, getting them, and then wanting more things; message close to Buddha’s; wrote The World as Will and Representation, taught along with Kant, Will: blinding driving force, Representation: the world as we experience it -> phenomenal world; can experience the Will (noumenon) through art; art makes life bearable, esp. music, as it is reality itself; harming others is self-injury; himself lived a bitter life, hypocrite?

John Stuart Mill (1806–73)
English, has an experimental childhood, father believed in Locke’s view on blank slate of a child’s mind, astonishing education; early feminist, politician, journalist; utilitarian, think Bentham’s too crude, contented pig vs. sad human being; pleasures have types where some are better than others, e.g. joy of thinking; wrote On Liberty, men are like tress, should given space and freedom to develop, paternalism for adults in unacceptable; Harm Principle: every adult should be free to live as he pleases as long no one is harmed, prevent ‘tyranny of the majority’; increase individual freedom produce more happiness; free speech; wrote the Subjection of Womenfor feminism, co-authored two books with wife Harriet Taylor.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55)
Danish; wrote Fear and Trembling, not to doubt God’s word; too gloomy and too religious to marry anyone; wrote Either/Or, either a life of pleasure, beauty chasing or based on conventional moral rules -> aesthetic vs. ethical; ordinary social duties are not highest value there can be, obeying god is higher, human ethics are not relevant in these cases;

Karl Marx (1818–1883)
German, writing amidst  grim conditions of the Industrial Revolution, wrote Das Kapital; an egalitarian, history is a class struggle between rich capitalist (the bourgeoisie) and the working class (proletariat); had friend Friedrich Engles helped him; identified with workers, capitalists extracting more profit, i.e. surplus value created by the worker’s labour; capitalism would in the end destroy itself, needed a violent revolution, a better world will emerge from all the bloodshed; to create a society ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’, i.e. communism; wrote Communist Manifesto, all workers unite and overthrow capitalism; progress occur because of the underlying economic forces, no need for religion and morality; religion is ‘the opium of the people’; Marxist states proved oppressive, inefficient and corrupt.

C.S. Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910)
American pragmatist. Peirce: focused on the ‘cash value’ of thought—why you want to know and what difference it actually makes, what works and have beneficial effects on our lives. James: Religion proved having practical results for us, works for us: believing in god is a useful belief to have, wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience, Russell made fun of it by comparing it to believing in ‘Santa Claus exists’ -> there is a difference between it would be nice if it were true and what is actually true.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
German. ‘God is dead‘, wrote Joyful Wisdom, God’s absence left us no foundation for morality -> he is ‘immoralist’. Life becomes both terrifying and exhilarating, individuals could now create their own values for themselves. Wrote The Genealogy of Morality, ancients merited honour and heroism rather than kindess and generosity; slaves and the week created new values that honoured  generosity and care: the slave morality, it treats everyone the same, serious mistake and holding back humanity. Wrote Thus Spake Zaruthustra, wrote about Übermensch (super-man) which is the next step of humanity’s development. Used by Nazi for their Third Reich.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
Austrian, neurologist and psychiatrist, invented psychoanalysis. Unconscious mind controls everything we do, some of them are sexual. You believe in god because you feel like a small child still. Popper attacked his view as ‘unfalsifiable’.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
British, political activist, mathematician, logician, god son of Mill, wrote Marriage and Morals. Religion comforts people. Russell’s Paradox. Language was far less precise than logic. Started philosophical ‘linguistic turn’.

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989)
British, in Vienna Circle. Wrote Language, Truth and Logic, part of logical positivism, celebrated science as the greatest human achievement. Metaphysics is nonsense. Verification Principle: is it true by definition, or is it empirically verifiable? If neither then meaningless -> moral judgements were literally nonsense -> Boo!/Hooray! Theory; talking of God is meaningless -> ‘igthesim’. Attacks focus on whether the theory itself is meaningful or not.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) and Albert Camus (1913–1960)
French existentialist. Sartre: War time, difficult time for the French, start new life after the War, asked what’s the point of living. Wrote Being and Nothingness, human beings are free, God has no purpose for us. Human being don’t have an essence, not here for a reason, we can choose what to do and what to become. One itself is ultimately responsible for oneself’s future. Stuck with freedom whether like it or not. Life is full of anguish. We find ourselves first of all existing in the world, existence before essence. De Beauvoir: Wrote The Second Sex: women are free. Camus: life is absurd and meaningless. But we don’t have to be despair, it is still preferable. Became an cult.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Austrian and British, wrote Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations: the most important questions about ethics and religion lie beyond the limits of our understanding and that if we can’t talk meaningfully about them, we should stay silent. Language games -> no single common feature that explains uses of language. Wanted to show fly the way out of fly bottle by stating the limits of language. Pictures theory.

Karl Popper (1902–1994) and Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996)
Austrian. Science may not telling the reality, scientists try to prove theories false (refuted) -> black swan, science shouldn’t rely on induction. Kuhn: ‘normal science’ goes on until change of ‘paradigm shift‘, with Popper attacked each other.

John Rawls (1921–2002)
American moralist, wrote A Theory of Justice, affected by nuclear threats. Introduced ‘the original position’ -> ‘veil of ignorance‘, design the society without knowing what position in society you will occupy. Liberty Principle: freedoms should be protected; Difference Principle: give more equal wealth and opportunities to the most disadvantaged. Nozick think those gifted should earn more.

Alan Turing (1912–1954) and John Searle (1932)
Searle: ‘The Chinese Room‘, Turing: ‘Turing Test‘: tester can’ tell whether there is a person or human being responding, then computer passes Turing Test.

Peter Singer (1946)
American; Consistent morality: we should care more about those we can save all over the world than we do now. Supports euthanasia; support animal rights, should all be vegetarian.