Transcript
Page 1: Philosophers You Should Know

Philosophers You Should Know

Page 2: Philosophers You Should Know

Siddhartha Gautamac. 563 – 483 BCE India

• Founder of Buddhism• Four noble truths:

– Wake up to the reality of human suffering;– All suffering is a result of insatiable desire.– There is a cure for our suffering: reaching

“Nirvana” or the quenching of desire.– The course of treatment: looking inward to

realize that we are but an illusion; one does this through the eight-fold path.• Right seeing; right thinking; right

speaking; right acting; right lifestyle; right effort; right mind-set; and right meditating

The tongue like a sharp knife, Kills without drawing

blood.

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Socrates469 – 399 BCE Greece

• Predominantly interested in the moral questions that affect our lives.

• He taught through a system of questions and answers called a dialectic.

• Accepting one’s ignorance was the first step towards knowledge.

• Searched for the essential natures of concepts like love, courage, peace.

• Thought to be a radical and was condemned to death by drinking hemlock.

Ignorance is the only evil.

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Plato428 – 354 BC Greece

• The Republic• Student of Socrates• Believed in an unseen world

where perfect models of everything on Earth existed.

• Our world is merely a reflection of (shadows of) that perfection.

• Good leaders are not born, they just have the right education.

Is there a perfect world?

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Aristotle384 – 322 BCE Greece

• Student of Plato• Knowledge involves keen

observation of the world around you.

• Everything is striving towards its own unique form of perfection.

• Women were second-class citizens and only “unfinished men.”

• The “golden mean” or the idea of doing nothing to excess will lead to the greatest happiness.

• Taught Alexander the Great.

Those who can, do; those who understand,

teach.

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Lao Tzu6th century BCE China

• “Old Master”• Is said to have told Confucius to give

up his devotion to ritual and custom.• Dao De Jing is concerned with how

the individual should approach life.• Wu-Wei or “receptivity” means to

accept things as they come, go with the flow, and do not try to change the natural course of things.

• Created the Taoist worldview of yin and yang.

Thinking is the cause of all problems.

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St. Augustine of Hippo354 – 430 modern Algeria

• Confessions• Only our souls can experience

divine reality.• People have free will; in other

words, God gave us the right to decide what to do with ourselves.

• Evil is the pursuit of Earthly pleasure.

• We must have God’s guidance, or grace, to move beyond our nature.

I believe in order to

understand.

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Avicenna980 – 1037 Persia

• His Canon of Medicine was the primary medical textbook throughout medieval Europe.

• All human souls are immortal.• Allah is a necessary and

perfect being, cannot change, and so he is eternal.

• Through observation, inferred that Venus is closer to the sun than Earth is.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

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St. Thomas Aquinas1225 – 1274 Italy

Summa Theologiae• ALL living things have souls: plants’

ensure growth; animals’ are capable of feeling; people’s have the ability to reason.

• Tried to prove the existence of God through reason; however, we cannot grasp the true nature of God.

• Knowledge must come from our senses-experiences.

• God is the only being for whom the fact that He is and what He is are identical.

Without God there is no universe.

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Niccolò Machiavelli1469 - 1527 Italy

• The Prince• Build generalizations from

experience and historical fact.

• People do not have to love a leader, but should fear him.

• A ruler has the right, the requirement, to do whatever is necessary to maintain power and control.The end justifies

the means.

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Thomas Hobbes1588 – 1679 England

• The Leviathan• It is rational for people to

submit to a strong ruler to ensure order and peace.

• Nature is made of material matter; there is nothing spiritual about it.

• Reality is defined by our senses.

The condition of man is a condition of

war.

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René Descartes1596 – 1650 France

• Discourse on Method and Principles of Philosophy

• Trusted math because, “asleep or awake,” two plus three always equals five.

• Questioned the existence of everything, even himself.

• The idea of a perfect being cannot have been created by anything less than a perfect being; therefore, God must have planted the idea into our heads, so he must exist.

• Invented coordinate geometry, and the graph: the x and y axes.

I think; therefore,

I am.

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Baruch Spinoza1632 – 1677 Netherlands

• Ethics• God and all the natural universe are one

substance.• Used geometric formulae to find the

truth about the universe.• First to examine the Bible as an

historical document rather than a revealed truth. Also, said that the importance of the Bible lies in its moral message.

• Democracy is the most stable form of government and best promotes individual wellbeing.

There cannot be too much

joy.

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John Locke1632 – 1704 England

• Essay Concerning Human Nature• There is an implied contract

between subjects and rulers; the ruler’s authority is not absolute, but is answerable to the majority.

• If the ruler breaks the terms of the contract, the governed have the right to rebel.

• People have inalienable rights: life, freedom, property, and to revolt against the unjust.

The mind is a blank piece of

paper.

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Mary Wollstonecraft1759 – 1797 Great Britain

• Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

• The first feminist• Attacked monarchy and

hereditary privilege in support of the emerging middle class

• women are essential to the nation because they educate its children

• Women deserve the same basic rights as men

“The beginning is always today.”

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Soren Kierkegaard1813 – 1855 Denmark

• Either / Or: A Fragment of Life• Our relationship with God is a

private matter; we must make our own decisions and moral choices.

• Three stages of personal development: the aesthetic (artistic), the ethical (dutiful), and the religious stages (the only one of any permanent significance).

Life is not a problem to solve, but a

reality to experience.

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Friedrich Nietzsche1844 – 1900 Germany

• Thus Spoke Zarathustra• Life eternally repeats itself, so

each person lives the same life over and over again.

• Individuals should try to achieve their full potential.

• His sister edited his works to fit her own philosophical views – one was that Hitler was the prototype of the superman who combined strength, intellect, and creativity.

God is dead.

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Mohandas K. Gandhi1869 – 1948 India

• Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

• “The great soul in beggar’s rags”

• Nonviolence towards all living things.

• People should pursue political as well as spiritual freedom.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela both followed his teachings.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

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Jean-Paul Sartre1905 – 1980 France

• Being and Nothingness• People who live stereotypical

lives are not really living.• People (actors) are free to

write their own scripts and cannot blame anyone else for a bad performance.

• Demanded that we face up to the responsibility of what we do and who we become.

Hell is other people.

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Simone de Beauvoir1908 – 1996 France

• The Second Sex• Mother of Feminism• Refused the conventional

female role for herself.• Women are oppressed by

mundane chores. • Differences between men and

women stem from social influences, not biological ones.

One is not born, but

rather becomes, a

woman.

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Ayn Rand1905 – 1982 Russia/ United States

• Anthem; The Fountainhead; Atlas Shrugged

• Reality, reason, rights, and capitalism• Reality is absolute; things are what they

are regardless of our feelings or wishes. ( “A is A.” Aristotle)

• To understand reality and survive in it, man must use his reason.

• To live in society, man must be free to act by his own judgment.

• Everyman is a free-thinking and free-acting individual.

• Capitalism is the ideal system.

Man, every man, is an end in

himself; he must work for his rational self-

interest.

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Works Cited

• Law, Stephen. Eyewitness Companions: Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing. 2007

• Stevenson, Jay, Ph.D., The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy. New York: Alpha. 2005

• Weate, Jeremy. A Young Person’s Guide to Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing, Inc. 1998