1750 - 1850 CE Flashcards
Voltaire
1694 - 1778
Known for his wit and criticism of the Catholic church and of slavery.
Advocated for freedom of speech, freedom of religion and separation of church and state.
David Hume
1711 - 1776
Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiricist.
Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience the “constant conjunction” of events. This problem of induction means that to draw any causal inferences from past experience, it is necessary to presuppose that the future will resemble the past, a presupposition which cannot itself be grounded in prior experience.
Held that passions rather than reason govern human behaviours - in opposition to rationalists. Even saying that ethics was based on emotions.
The is–ought problem.
Hume denied that humans have an actual conception of the self, positing that we experience only a bundle of sensations, and that the self is nothing more than this bundle of causally-connected perceptions.
Hume influenced utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and many other fields and thinkers such as Kant.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712 - 1778
Genevan philosopher who influenced the progress of the age of enlightenment as well as the French revolution and modern thought.
His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought.
Adam Smith
1723 - 1790
Scottish economist who is “the father of economics”.
The Wealth of Nations - magnum opus.
Rejected explaining wealth in terms of God’s will and instead focuses on natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them.
Richard Price
1723 - 1791
“The greatest welsh thinker of all-time”.
Well connected with likes of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Was involved in radical, republican and liberal causes such as the American and French revolutions.
Immanuel Kant
1724 - 1804
German philosopher and one of the central thinkers of the enlightenment and even western philosophy in general.
Comprehensive systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics.
Transcendental idealism - space and time are mere “forms of intuition” that structure all experience and that they are just appearances.
The nature of things as they are is unknowable to us.
Critique of Pure Reason - theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori is possible which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry.
Reason is the source of morality.
Aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgement.
Perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation.
Scientific racism until the last decade of his life where he changed views.
Edmund Burke
Anglo-Irish statesmen and economist noted for his conservatism about manners and the role of religion in society.
Staunchly opposed to the French revolution.
Leading figure within the conservative faction of the whig party (dubbed the old whigs).
Cesare Beccaria
1738 - 1794
Italian philosopher who wrote a treaty called On Crimes and Punishments which condemned torture and the death penalty. A classic in criminology.
“The father of modern criminal law and justice”.
William Paley
1743 - 1805
English apologist and theologian best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God.
Made use of the watchmaker analogy.
Thomas Jefferson
1743 - 1826
Wrote the declaration of independence with the help of committee of five.
Considered the most intellectual of the founding fathers.
Passionate advocate for human rights including freedom of thought, speech and religion were a leading inspiration behind the American revolution.
Influential in and champion of the age of enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries).
Proponent of republicanism, democracy and decisions at state, national and international levels.
Head of the American philosophical society.
Wasn’t Christian and denied Christ’s divinity.
Wrote the most important book in America prior to 1800 - Notes of the State of Virginia.
Founded the University of Virginia.
Jeremy Bentham
1747 - 1832
Englishman who founded modern utilitarianism.
“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights.
William Godwin
1756- 1836
English journalist, political philosopher and novelist.
First modern proponent of anarchism.
One of the first exponents of utilitarianism.
Was part of radical circles on London.
Married to feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft.
His daughter Mary Shelley would go on to write Frankenstein.
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 - 1797
British feminist who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women. This argued that women weren’t inferior to men they just seemed it because they lacked education. She called for an equal society based on reason.
She died in childbirth and her daughter would become the author or Frankenstein.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1762 - 1814
German idealist and one of the fathers of German nationalism.
Insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness.
Originated thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
Motivated by the problem of subjectivity and consciousness.
Joseph de Maistre
1753 - 1821
A key figure in the counter-enlightenment and a forerunner of romanticism.
Maistre regarded monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government.
Henri de Saint-Simon
1760 - 1825
Saint-Simon created a political and economic ideology known as Saint-Simonianism that claimed that the needs of an industrial class, which he also referred to as the working class, needed to be recognized and fulfilled to have an effective society and an efficient economy.
Saint-Simon said the primary threat to the needs of the industrial class was another class he referred to as the idling class, that included able people who preferred to be parasitic and benefit from the work of others while seeking to avoid doing work.
Advocated for hierarchies based on merit.
Saint-Simon strongly criticized any expansion of government intervention into the economy beyond ensuring no hindrances to productive work and reducing idleness in society, regarding intervention beyond these as too intrusive.
Friedrich Schleiermacher
1768 - 1834
A leader of German romanticism.
Reformed theologian.
Tried to reconcile the criticisms of the enlightenment with traditional protestant christianity.
Hermeneutics - the theory and methodology of interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts.
Friedrich Holderlin
1770 - 1843
“The most German of Germans”.
Key figure in German Romanticism.
Childhood of bereavement and adulthood of schizophrenia.
His novel was called Hyperion. The guy who read it ended up letting him stay with him for 36 years when he was unwell.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1770 - 1831
German idealist and a founding thinker of modern western philosophy.
Metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy or art, philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy.
Born during the transitional period between the enlightenment and the romantic movement (in Germany).
Lived through and was influenced by the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
The phenomenology of spirit.
The science of logic.
Throughout his work he strove to address and correct the problematic dualisms of modern philosophy (Kantian and otherwise) typically by drawing upon the resources of ancient philosophy such as Aristotle.
Reason and freedom are historical achievements, not natural givens.
The principle of immanence - assessing claims always according to their own internal criteria.
Taking skepticism seriously, he contends that we cannot presume any truths that have not passed the test of experience; even the a priori categories of the Logic must attain their “verification” in the natural world and the historical accomplishments of humankind.
Free self-determination is the essence of humankind.
Arthur Schopenhauer
1788 - 1860
Philosophical pessimist best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (which characterises the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will).
Builds on Kant’s transcendental idealism.
He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance.
Auguste Comte
1798 - 1857
Formulated the doctrine of positivism - in response to the flux after the french revolution.
First philosopher of science in the modern sense.
Coined the term sociology and treated it as the crowning achievement of the sciences.
Influenced John Stuart Mill and George Eliot.
Religion of Humanity - presaged the development of non-theistic religious humanist and secular humanist organisations in the 19th century.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 - 1882
Led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.
A lynchpin of the American romantic movement that greatly influenced all those after him.
Abolitionist.
Champion of individualism.
Prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.
He gave a speech entitled “The American Scholar” in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America’s “intellectual Declaration of Independence.
“Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.”
“I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.”
Ludwig Feuerbach
1804 - 1872
Wrote the book “The Essence of Christianity” which critiqued it and influencd later thinkers such as Darwin, Marx, Freud, Engels, Wagner and Nietzsche.
Advocated atheism and anthropological materialism.
The bridge between Hegel and Marx.
John Stuart Mill
1806 - 1873
Influential thinker of classical liberalism, contributing widely to social theory, political theory and political economy.
“The most influential English-speaking philosopher of the 19th century”.
Utilitarianist and early feminist.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
1809 - 1865
The father of anarchism.
“The synthesis of community and property”.
“Property is theft”.
Associated with Karl Marx but then they broke it off and couldn’t see eye-to-eye.
Charles Darwin
1809 - 1882
Came up with the theory of evolution.
Asserted that humans were animals too and all were of the same species.
Søren Kierkegaard
1813 - 1855
The first existentialist philosopher.
Much of his work deals with the issues of how one lives as a “single individual”, giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment.
His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices.
“Science and scholarship want to teach that becoming objective is the way. Christianity teaches that the way is to become subjective, to become a subject”.
While scientists learn about the world by observation, Kierkegaard emphatically denied that observation alone could reveal the inner workings of the world of the spirit.
Subjective and objective truths.
The knight of faith.
In his lifetime he was mostly influential in Scandinavia but by the the turn of the 20th century it was translated and released to the world having a substantial impact on philosophy, theology and western culture in general.
Henry David Thoreau
1817 - 1862
A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden - a reflection on simple living in natural surroundings.
Also for his essay “Civil Disobedience” - an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
In “Civil Disobedience”, Thoreau wrote: “I heartily accept the motto,—’That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—’That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. … But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.”
He was deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay.
He advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life’s true essential needs.
He influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
