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The Story of Philosophy - BRYAN MAGEE

      Great Rationalists
      Great Empiricists
      Revolutionary French Thinkers
      Golden Century German Philosophy
      The Utilitarians
      The American Pragmatists
      20th CENTURY Philosophy
         Existentialism
      Guide to Further Reading
      Great extravagance

Great Rationalists

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) Back to square one

• Descartes placed the question “What can I know?” and a very determined pursuit of certainty in the answer- at the center of Western philosophy for three hundred years.
• I think therefore I am.
• Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world for every man is convinced he is well supplied with it.

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) All is one, and the one is divine

• Although god is, and is in, everything, this totality is also to be understood in the same way as a system of mathematical physics.
• God is the cause of all things, which are in him
• Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order
• The true aim of government is liberty

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) The supreme polymath

• Logically, Leibniz divided all truths into two sorts, truths of reason and truths of fact. (The are two kinds of truths: truths of reasoning and truths of fact)
• The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe

Great Empiricists

John Locke (1632-1704) The supreme liberal

• Although not the first empiricist in the history of philosophy, Locke has ever since his day been regarded as the chief founding father of empiricism and all that flows from it.
• Nature never makes things for mean or no uses
• Knowledge of the external world
• No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience
• We have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit as we have of body

George Berkeley (1685-1753) The consistent empiricist

• Berkeley pointed out that all that can ever be experienced by conscious beings is the contents of their consciousness.. Nothing else can be known to exist.
• Truth is the cry of all but the game of few

David Hume (1711-76) A modified scepticism

• Apart from mathematics we know nothing for certain. But we still have to live: and to live is to act. All actions have to be based on assumptions about reality.
• Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them
• Custom, then, is the great guide to human life.
• Reason is the slave of the passions

Edmund Burke (1729-97) The supreme conservative

• Because in a developed society tradition embodies the accumulated wisdom and experience of many generations it is likely to be a more reliable guide to action than any one person's opinion.

Revolutionary French Thinkers

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778) The supreme popularizer

• Voltaire did more than any other revolutionary implications of the writer to propagate the new science and new the liberalism in Continental Europe.
• The superfluous is very necessary.

DENIS DIDEROT (1713-84) The encyclopedist

• All-around genius – philosopher, satirist, novelist, playwright, art, critic - Diderot was the leading
• Editor of the French Encyclopedia, whose impact was international.
• The word freedom has no meaning

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-78) Critic of civilization

• Rousseau was the first Western philosopher to insist that our judgments should be based on the requirements of feeling rather than reason.
• Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains
• Liberty equality fraternity

Golden Century German Philosophy

IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804) Rationalism and empiricism come together

• Our experience is in forms determined by our bodily apparatus, and only in those forms can
• The Fundamental we imagine anything’s specific existence.
• The term 'whole' is always only comparative
• It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy exists
• Plato the divine and the astounding Kant

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860) Western philosophy links up with eastern philosophy

• Schopenhauer believed he had corrected and completed the work of Kant, leaving not a Kantian philosophy and then, separately, a Schopenhauerian philosophy, but a single Kantian-Schopenhauerian philosophy.
• … So long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes ans fears … we never obtain lasting happiness or peace.
• Motives are causes experienced from within.
• The world is my representation

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE (1762-1814)  The out-and out idealist

• Far from human knowledge being derived from empirical reality, Fichte taught the opposite namely, that the empirical world is the creation of the knowing mind.
• What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is.

FRIEDRICH SCHELLING (1775-1854) Philosopher of nature

• Man is part of Nature. Therefore human creativity is part of Nature's productivity. In man, Nature has arrived at self-awareness.

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1851) Evangelist of the absolute

• Hegel regarded everything about the world and its history as the development of something non-material, a historical process that culminated in the self-awareness provided by his philosophy.
• 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.

KARL MARX (1818-83) HISTORY TRIES TO BECOME A SCIENCE

• Marx believed that he had put the explanation of historical development on a scientific footing, thus enabling man kind to predict the future development of society with scientific accuracy.
• The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
• What the bourgeoisie produces...1s own gravediggers. its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
• The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) God is dead

• The morals and values of Western man derive from religious beliefs that be is ceasing to bold. He therefore needs to reevaluate his values.
• Art raises its head when religions relax their hold.
• The bite of conscience is indecent.
• Man is a rope, tied between beast and superman - A rope over an abyss.

The Utilitarians

The empiricists concentrate on morals and politics

Jeremy Bentham

• Everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one and The greatest good of the greatest number are adopted as guiding principles.

John Stuart Mill

• Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

The American Pragmatists

• Knowledge as a from of practical involvement
• Knowing is something we do, and is best seen as a practical activity, Questions of meaning and truth are also best understood in this context.

Charles Sanders Peirce

• The real, then, is that which sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in.
• Nothing is vital for science; nothing can be.

William James

• The power of belife: A superficial interpretation of James was encouraged by what
  he seemed to he saying about religions belief- that if a statement could not he disproved, then one was justified in believing it if Die benefited from it: for instance, a bereaved mother comforted by believing that her child is in heaven.

John Dewey

• The more... interactions we ascertain, the more we know the object in question.

20th CENTURY Philosophy

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) LOGIC MOVES TO CENTER STAGE

• There is nothing more objective than the laws of arithmetic.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Analytic philosophy

• Philosophy turns its spotlight on language
• Bertrand Russell used the new logic to analyze statements in ordinary language this inaugurated a whole new way of doing philosophy.
• The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible horrible horrible.
• Mathematics possesses not only truth but beauty a beauty cold and austere like that of sculpture
• The method consists in an attempt to build a bridge between the world of sense and the world of science.
• The sense of reality is vital in logic.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) linguistic philosophy

• A philosophy that does not go beyond language and logic.
• Wittgenstein produced two philosophies, both of them influential. In the later one linguistic analysis achieved its ultimate degree of refinement.
• Naming is something like attaching a label to to a thing.
• The meaning of a word is its use in language.
• If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Existentialism

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

• The individual finds his own identity a problem, and hopes to uncover meaning in life through investigating the mystery of his own existence.
• The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

• Man alone of all beings when addressed by the voice of being, experiences the marvel of all marvels: that what is-is.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

• I exist, and all that is not-I is mere phenomenon dissolving into phenomenal connections.
• We are ourselves the entities to be analyzed.

Philosophy as a branch of literature

In France, philosophy has developed in the 20th century as part of the general literary culture, without so much specialist interest in science, logic, and analysis.

Henri Bergson (1859-1941)

• The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.

 Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

• Hell other people.

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)

• How can we be sure we are not impostors.

From science to politics

Scientific knowledge has turned out to be conjectural, permanently open to revision in the light of experience.The same principle seems also to apply to politics.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein Revolution

• The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking .
• Only daring speculation can lead us further, and not accumulation of facts.

Karl Popper (1902-1994)

• Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, ... in time, corrected.
• All we can do is to search for the falsity content of our best theory.
• Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.

The future of philosophy increasing

• Voltaire: Superstition sets the whole world in flames: philosophy quenches them.

Guide to Further Reading

• Journey Through Western Philosophy (Random House);
• The Great Philosophers: an Introduction to Western Philosophy and The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford University Press).
• Past Masters (book series)
•  
• On the pre-Socratics Early Greek Philosophy edited by Jonathan Barnes (Penguin USA).
• On Socrates The Last Days of Socrates, four dialogues by Plato(Penguin USA).
• By Plato The Symposium and The Republic (Penguin USA).
• By Aristotle A New Aristotle Reader (Princeton University Press),The Nicomachean Ethics and Politics (Oxford University Press).
• - On Epicureanism
• On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius(Penguin USA).
• On Stoicism Letters from a Stoic by Seneca and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Viking Press).
• On Neo-Platonism Enneads by Plotinus (Penguin USA).
• - Christianity and philosophy
• By St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford University Press), The City of God (Penguin).
• By Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (Penguin Books).
• By Abelard and Heloise Letters (Penguin).
• By Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed (Dover Publications). The beginnings of modern science The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler (Arkana).
• By Machiavelli The Portable Machiavelli (Penguin Books).
• By Francis Bacon Novum Organum; with Other Parts of the Great Instauration (Open Court Publishing Company),Advancement of Learning (Kessinger Publishing Company),Essays (Penguin Books).
• By Hobbes Leviathan (Penguin Books).
  The great rationalists
• By Descartes Selected Philosophical Writings (Cambridge University Press).
• By Spinoza On the Improvement of the Understanding, TheEthics, and Correspondence (Dover Publications).
• By Leibniz Philosophical Writings (Everyman Paperback Classics).
• - The great empiricists
• By Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding(Prometheus Books), Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge University Press).
• By Berkeley The Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues (Oxford University Press).
• By Hume A Treatise of Human Nature and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Penguin USA).
• By Burke A Philosophical Enquiry (Oxford LJniversity Press),Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin Books).
• - Revolutionary french thinkers
• By Voltaire Candide (Penguin USA), Philosophical Dictionary(Penguin Books).
• By Rousseau The Social Contract (Penguin USA). A GOLDEN CENTURY OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
• By Kant Prolegomena (Open Court Publishing Company),Critique of Pure Reason (Prometheus Books), The Moral Law(Routledge).
• By Schopenhauer On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Open Court Publishing Company),The World as Will and Representation (Dover Publications).
• On comparisons of East with West Presuppositions of Lndia 's Philosophies by Karl Potter (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers), WTyat the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula(Grove Press), The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra (Shambhala Publications).
• By Fichte The Vocation of Man (Hackett Publishing Company).
• By Schelling Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (CambridgeUniversity Press).
  On Hegel Hegel by Peter Singer (Oxford University Press),Hegel: an Introduction by Raymond Plant (CambridgeUniversity Press).
• By Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press).
  On Marxism To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson(Buccaneer Books).
• By Marx Capital (Das Kapital) (Penguin USA).
• By Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto(Bantam Books).
• By Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil and Ecce Homo (PenguinUSA), Twilight of the Idols and Anti-Christ (Viking Press).Democracy AND philosophy
• By Jeremy Bentham Introduction to the Principles of Moralsand Legislation (Prometheus Books).
• By John Stuart Mill On Liberty (Viking Press).
• On the American Pragmatists America's PhilosophicalVision by John E. Smith (University of Chicago Press).
• By William James The Varieties of Religions Experience(Macmillan Publishing Company).20th-century philosophy
• On Frege The Lnterpretation of Frege's Philosophy by MichaelDummett (Harvard University Press).
• By Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy (PrometheusBooks), Our Knowledge of the External World (Routledge),My Philosophical Development (Unwin Hyman).
• By Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (RoutledgeKegan and Paul), Philosophical Investigations (Prentice Hall).
  On Heidegger Heidegger by George Steiner (University ofChicago Press).
• By Heidegger Being and Time (State University of New York Press).
• By Bergson Creative Evolution (Dover Publications), Matter and Memory (Zone Publications).
• By Sartre Being and Nothingness (Washington Square Press), Essays in Existentialism (Citadel Press), No Exit and Threeother Plays (Vintage Books).
• By Camus The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel (Vintage Books).
• By Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge).
• By Althusser For Marx (Verso Books).
• By Lacan The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis(WW. Norton and Company).
• By Foucault Madness and Civilization: a History of Insanityin the Age of Reason (Vintage Books).
• By Popper The Open Society and Its Enemies (five vols..Princeton University Press), Conjectures and Refutations: TheGrowth of Scientific Knowledge; In Search of a Better World;Lectures and Essays frotn Thirty Years (Routledge).
• On Relativity Theory ^« Equation That Changed the World:Newton, Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity by HaraldFritzsch (The University of Chicago Press).
• On Quantum Theory In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by JohnGribbin (Bantam Doubleday Dell).
• By Werner Heisenberg Encounters with Einstein (PrincetonUniversity Press).
• By Erwin Schrodinger What is Life? and Mind and Matter(Cambridge University Press).

Great extravagance

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