PHILOSOPHY SHORT NOTES

Critique of Pure Reason
The chief work of Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, is the Critique of Pure Reason (published in 1781). The central problem of this book is the nature and limits of human knowledge. This problem seemed important to him because of David Hume's findings. Until Hume's time, almost everyone had taken for granted that we are justified in making generalizations based on a few cases. ‘All bodies have weight’ is an example of this kind of generalization. Hume asked how we can possibly know that all bodies have weight since we have seen and measured only a few of them. Hume had challenged other philosophers and scientists to produce evidence that would allow us to make assertions about things we have not actually experienced. Kant, on the other hand, believed that it is not possible to find such evidence as long as we continue to think of the mind and its objects as separate things. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he held instead that the mind is actively involved in the objects it experiences. That is, it organizes experience into definite patterns. Therefore, we can be sure that all things capable of being experienced are arranged in these patterns even though we may not yet have experienced them. We can have knowledge of things that have not been experienced as well as those we have already experienced. This answered Hume's challenge, but it meant having to abandon any claim to know things-in-themselves, things in which the mind is not involved. Kant’s the Critique of Pure Reason caused one of the great turns in western philosophy. It directed philosophy to a middle-way between empirical skepticism and critical dogmatism.

The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written by Karl Marx jointly with Engels on the eve of the German revolution of 1848. Its full title is the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The manifesto is a brief but forceful presentation of the authors' political and historical theories. It is the only work they produced that can be considered a systematic statement of the theories that became known as Marxism. The Communist Manifesto considers history to be a series of conflicts between classes. It predicts that the ruling middle class will be overthrown by the working class. The result of this revolution, according to Marx and Engels, will be a classless society in which the chief means of production are publicly owned.

Das Kapital
Das Kapital (Capital) was Marx's major work. He spent about 30 years writing it. The first volume appeared in 1867. Engels edited the second and third volumes from Marx's manuscripts. Both of these volumes were published after Marx's death. The fourth volume exists only as a mass of scattered notes. In Das Kapital, Marx described the free enterprise system as he saw it. He considered it the most efficient, dynamic economic system ever devised. But he also regarded it as afflicted with flaws that would destroy it through increasingly severe periods of inflation and depression. The most serious flaw in the free enterprise system, according to Marx, is that it accumulates more and more wealth but becomes less and less capable of using this wealth wisely. As a result, Marx saw the accumulation of riches being accompanied by the rapid spread of human misery.

Dialectic Materialism
A version of materialism known as dialectical materialism emerged in the late 1800's with the works of the German philosopher Karl Marx and the German social scientist Friedrich Engels. The German philosopher, Hegel had used the term dialectic to indicate a necessary transition from one phase of the world or society or thought to another. This transition occurs as a result of inadequacies or "contradictions" in the earlier phase. Hegel generally identified dialectical processes with the development of reason or spirit, but Marx and Engels combined the notion of dialectic with the view that the forces underlying historical development are always material. They particularly believed that economic factors determine social structure and change. Dialectical materialism provides the philosophical basis for Communism, a political and economic movement.

Phenomenology of Spirit
In his first published book, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel dealt with the development of "forms of consciousness." These forms of consciousness include a rich and bewildering variety of states of mind, views of the world, ethical positions, religious outlooks, types of physical activity, and forms of social organization. Hegel tried to demonstrate how they progressed in what he claimed was a necessary and historical sequence that moved through contradiction and resolution to ever greater levels of maturity.

Being and Nothingness
In his chief philosophical work, Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre investigated the nature and forms of existence or being. He claimed that human existence, which he called "being-for-itself," is radically different from the existence of such inanimate objects as tables, which he called "being-in-itself." Sartre said that only human existence is conscious of itself and of other things. He argued that inanimate objects simply are what they are; however, people are whatever they choose to be. Sartre said that a person is not a coward, for example, in the same simple way that a table is only a table. A person is a coward only by choice. Sartre said that a person, unlike a table, has no fixed character or "essence" that has been assigned. Primarily, people "exist" as beings who must choose their own character or "essence." Thus, he defined existentialism as the doctrine that, for humankind, "existence precedes essence."

The Social Contract
In his 1762 work The Social Contract, French writer and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau constructs a hypothetical state ruled by direct democracy in which citizens retain their inalienable rights to liberty. Rousseau believed that a government remains good only when sovereignty rests with the people. In an age in which monarchy held sway in much of Europe, he saw the communal will, which he called the general will, as a force more noble and moral than any individual will. In the following section, entitled “On Slavery,” Rousseau states that a person ruled by a king has no freedom, just as a slave has no freedom before his master.
Critique of Dialectical Reason
In his later philosophic work Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960; trans. 1976), Sartre's emphasis shifted from existentialist freedom and subjectivity to Marxist social determinism. Sartre argued that the influence of modern society over the individual is so great as to produce serialization, by which he meant loss of self. Individual power and freedom can only be regained through group revolutionary action. Despite this exhortation to revolutionary political activity, Sartre himself did not join the Communist Party, thus retaining the freedom to criticize the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics, branch of philosophy concerned with the essence and perception of beauty and ugliness. Aesthetics also deals with the question of whether such qualities are objectively present in the things they appear to qualify, or whether they exist only in the mind of the individual; hence, whether objects are perceived by a particular mode, the aesthetic mode, or whether instead the objects have, in themselves, special qualities—aesthetic qualities. Philosophy also asks if there is a difference between the beautiful and the sublime. The term aesthetics was introduced in 1753 by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, but the study of the nature of beauty had been pursued for centuries. In the past it was chiefly a subject for philosophers. Since the 19th century, artists also have contributed their views.

Pessimism
Pessimism, doctrine that reality, life, and the world are evil rather than good. Pessimism generally takes one of two forms: that of an entrenched negative state of mind, or a permanent expectation of the worst under all circumstances, and that of a philosophical system. The former instance may arise, depending on the temperament of the individual, from the reaction of a person to the difference between the world as it is and the world as it could be. The existence of evil and the link between suffering and sin have been dwelt upon since ancient times; one example is the ancient Hebrew Book of Job. In the 19th century, pessimism was elaborated into a system of philosophy by the German philosophers, especially by Arthur Schopenhauer. He saw life in this world as rooted in misery, pain, and endless struggle. An unqualified pessimism encompasses the idea that all the ends and aims of life are illusory. Schopenhauer's pessimism was based on his belief that the will can never really be satisfied. According to Schopenhauer, the will is either striving for something that it unhappily does not yet possess, or it quickly experiences the boredom that invariably follows the attainment of any goal. Given the impossibility of ever satisfying the strivings of the will, Schopenhauer advised us to dissociate ourselves as much as possible from these strivings. He suggested that one important way of achieving this withdrawal is through the quiet contemplation of natural and artistic beauty. The doctrine opposite pessimism is optimism, which approves the world as it is and embraces the feeling of hope.

Dialectic
Dialectic, in philosophy, is a method of investigating the nature of truth by critical analysis of concepts and hypotheses. One of the earliest examples of the dialectical method was the Dialogues of Greek philosopher Plato, in which the author sought to study truth through discussion in the form of questions and answers. Another noted Greek philosopher, Aristotle, thought of dialectic as the search for the philosophic basis of science, and he frequently used the term as a synonym for the science of logic. The German philosopher, Hegel, applied the term dialectic to his philosophic system. Hegel believed that the evolution of ideas occurs through a dialectical process—that is, a concept gives rise to its opposite, and as a result of this conflict, a third view, the synthesis, arises. The synthesis is at a higher level of truth than the first two views. Hegel's work is based on the idealistic concept of a universal mind that, through evolution, seeks to arrive at the highest level of self-awareness and freedom. German political philosopher Karl Marx applied the concept of dialectic to social and economic processes. Marx's so-called dialectical materialism, frequently considered to be a revision of the Hegelian system, asserts that ideas can arise only as a result of a material condition.
Nausea
Nausea is a novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1938 while he was a college professor. It is one of Sartre's best-known novels. The Kafka-influenced novel concerns a dejected historian, 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin, who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea. Fresh from several years of travel, Roquentin settles in the French seaport town of Bouville to finish his research on the life of an 18th-century political figure. But during the winter of 1932 a "sweetish sickness" he calls nausea increasingly impinges on almost everything he does or enjoys -- his research project, the company of "The Self-Taught Man" who is reading all the books in the library alphabetically, a pleasant physical relationship with a cafe owner named Francoise, his memories of Anny, an English girl he once loved, even his own hands and the beauty of nature. Over time, his disgust towards existence forces him into near-insanity, self-hatred, and finally a revelation into the nature of his being. Antoine is facing the troublesomely provisional and limited nature of existence itself; he embodies Sartre's theories of existential angst, and he searches anxiously for meaning in all the things that had filled and fulfilled his life up to that point. Nausea serves primarily as a vehicle for Sartre to explain his philosophy in simplified terms. Roquentin is the classic existentialist hero whose attempts to pierce the veil of perception lead him to a strange combination of disgust and wonder. For the first part of the novel, Roquentin has flashes of nausea that emanate from mundane objects. These flashes appear seemingly randomly, from staring at a crumpled piece of paper in the gutter to picking up a rock on the beach. The feeling he perceives is pure disgust: a contempt so refined that it almost shatters his mind each time it occurs. As the novel progresses, the nausea appears more and more frequently, though he is still unsure of what it actually signifies. However, at the base of a chestnut tree in a park, he receives a piercingly clear vision of what the nausea actually is. Existence itself, the property of existence to be something rather than nothing was what was slowly driving him mad. He no longer sees objects as having qualities such as color or shape. Instead, all words are separated from the thing itself, and he is confronted with pure being.
Materialism
Materialism is a philosophical position that states that everything is material, or a state of matter. The word comes from the Latin materia, meaning matter. Materialists particularly deny that the human self is a spiritual--or in any way nonmaterial--entity. They interpret beliefs, thoughts, desires, sensations, and other mental states as properties of material systems. Materialism is often considered a "scientific" philosophy because it is closely associated with the view that everything that occurs can be explained by scientific laws--perhaps even by the laws of physics alone. The Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus developed an early form of materialism called. The growth of Christianity, with its emphasis on spiritual concerns, led to a decline in materialism for many centuries. Materialism reemerged as a significant intellectual force during the rise of modern science in the 1600's. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes developed an uncompromisingly materialist philosophy. The enlightenment philosophy was also materialistic. A version of materialism known as dialectical materialism emerged in the late 1800's with the works of the German philosopher Karl Marx and the German social scientist Friedrich Engels. Marx and Engels combined the notion of dialectic with the view that the forces underlying historical development are always material. They particularly believed that economic factors determine social structure and change. Dialectical materialism provides the philosophical basis for Communism, a political and economic movement.


Phenomenology
Phenomenology is a philosophy that was developed by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl in the early 1900's. Husserl wanted to understand how consciousness works in order to better understand human experience. Consciousness refers to the power of the mind to be aware of acts, sensations, and emotions. Husserl believed that everything we know about reality derives from our consciousness.

For phenomenologists, experience has two parts. The first part consists of objects of consciousness (the things of which one is conscious). Objects of consciousness, which include material objects, ideas, and wishes, are called phenomena. The second part of experience consists of acts of consciousness, such as perceiving, believing, thinking, and desiring. Phenomenologists believe that all acts of consciousness are related to objects of consciousness and thus must also be considered phenomena. This relationship is called intentionality.

The phenomenological method starts with the theory that people normally make certain assumptions about their experiences. They consider the things they have been taught, and remember past experiences. Such presuppositions limit their experiencing of phenomena. Phenomenologists realize that it is impossible to entirely eliminate these presuppositions from the mind. Instead, they try to expand their experiencing of phenomena by dealing with the presuppositions critically. One critical method involves fantasy variations. The philosopher varies the presuppositions, imagining how the experience would be perceived under varying circumstances. The features of the experience that remain constant despite the variations are considered its essence.

Husserl has had many followers. They include the French psychologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Both men argued that phenomenology should not be limited to an analysis of consciousness. Instead, they used the phenomenological method to analyse human existence in general. The method has also been successfully applied to specific fields, such as anthropology, law psychiatry, psychology, religion, and sociology.


Capitalism
Capitalism is the political economic system based on private property and private profit. In this system, individuals and companies own and direct most of the resources used to produce goods and services. Such resources include land and other natural resources, labour, and capital. Capital includes factories, equipment, and money used in business activities. The term capitalism comes from capital.

Capitalism stresses private economic choices. People are free to decide how they will earn and spend their income. Companies may choose which goods and services to produce and how much to charge for them. They also compete with one another to sell products. Major economies which are based on capitalism include the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, and Japan.

The government controls some aspects of the economy in every nation. But capitalism's emphasis on private economic decisions makes it different from the two other major economic systems--Communism and mixed economies. In a Communist or centrally planned economy, the government owns or controls most of the resources used in production and develops national plans for their use. In a mixed economy, the government does some economic planning and controls some industries, but it also allows some individual choice.

Capitalism is sometimes called free enterprise or modified free enterprise because it permits people to engage in economic activities largely free from government control. Other names for capitalism include free market system, entrepreneurial system, and laissez faire.


Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophy that attempts to apply the methods of science to philosophy. Its central idea is that the meaning and truth of an idea are determined by the idea's effects in practice and on conduct.

Three American philosophers--Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey--developed pragmatism. Peirce originated the philosophy, James made it popular, and Dewey extended it to key areas of life. Each of these men interpreted pragmatism in his own way.

Peirce first presented the basic ideas of pragmatism in a series of essays called "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (1877-1878). He conceived of belief as something on which we are prepared to act, not just as a state of mind. He defined belief as a habit or rule of action. He called doubt (the opposite of belief) an unsatisfactory state from which we struggle to free ourselves. For Peirce, thinking, or inquiry, was the struggle to eliminate the irritation of doubt. Peirce thus regarded inquiry as a practical activity--not just something that goes on in our heads. Inquiry aims to eliminate doubt by arriving at a settled belief.

Peirce's writings were technical and attracted little attention when they were published. Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in 1898, when William James restated Peirce's ideas in more popular language. According to James's interpretation of Peirce, the concrete meaning of any abstract or general proposition can be traced to a particular concrete consequence in our future practical experience. Thus, supposedly different ideas that have identical consequences in practice are really the same idea expressed in different words.

James's interpretation of pragmatism stated that the meaning of an abstract idea is determined by the idea's effects on one who believes it. James wrote that a true idea is one that can be verified, that "works," and that satisfies. According to this concept, truth is changeable. Because a true idea is one that agrees with reality, James concluded that we can make ideas true by our actions and change the world in which we live.

John Dewey was greatly influenced by the English biologist Charles Darwin and Darwin's theory of evolution. Dewey conceived of thought and of the mind as instruments developed in the course of evolution to allow human beings to reshape their environment. Dewey's version of pragmatism, later called instrumentalism, stated that all ideas are instruments. Therefore, true ideas are those that work best for attaining human goals. Dewey urged that philosophy become a tool for dealing with the specific problems of all human beings rather than with the remote problems of philosophers. Dewey advocated that the method of science be used to reshape education, morals, politics, and society.

Pragmatism became the most important philosophical movement in the United States during the early 1900's, and it has had an enormous influence on American life. Pragmatism has been called a typically American philosophy because of its basic optimism, its emphasis on action, and its belief in a future that can be changed by human ideas and efforts.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832), was a German poet, novelist, and playwright. He ranks among the most important and influential writers of modern European literature. His masterpiece is the verse play Faust. Goethe completed Faust a few months before his death. Faust is a man who desires complete knowledge, unlimited experience of life, and self perfection. Guided by Mephistopheles, the devil, he moves from one realm of human experience to another without ever attaining full satisfaction. At the end of Part II, Faust is saved by God's grace in spite of his guilt and pride. Goethe was also a leading thinker and scientist. The scope and originality of his works and the diversity of his intellectual pursuits make him the central figure of German classical and romantic literature.

A Priori
A Priori (Latin a, 'from,' and priori, 'that which comes before'), in philosophy, a term used to denote the kind of knowledge derived from intellect or reason as contrasted with that which comes from sense experience, called a posteriori. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant noted two distinguishing characteristics of a priori knowledge: universality and necessity. According to Kant, the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is universal, in the sense that it has no exceptions. The proposition is also necessary, in the sense that it must be true; we can see that 7 + 5 could not conceivably equal anything else but 12. Neither of these characteristics is present in knowledge that comes from sense experience. For example, our knowledge that snow is white is not an insight that snow could not be other than white, hence we can never be sure that an exception will not occur.
Empiricist logicians, who assert that all knowledge is based on experience (see Empiricism), have tried to explain a priori knowledge by saying that logical necessity is nothing but firm habit; in other words, we form a fixed association between attributes regularly found together. Proponents of positivism, on the other hand, grant the existence of a priori knowledge but hold that it is only a way of making explicit what we already mean (12 is only another way of saying 7 + 5) and that it provides no new knowledge. Rationalists, however, find in a priori insight the most revealing as well as the most certain form of knowledge.
Skepticism
Skepticism is the philosophical attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas. Skeptics have challenged the adequacy or reliability of these claims by asking what they are based upon or what they actually establish. They have raised the question whether such claims about the world are either indubitable or necessarily true, and they have challenged the alleged grounds of accepted assumptions. Practically everyone is skeptical about some knowledge claims; but the Skeptics have raised doubts about any knowledge beyond the contents of directly felt experience. The original Greek meaning of skeptikos was “an inquirer,” someone who was unsatisfied and still looking for truth.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism, philosophical movement that has had a major impact on American culture from the late 19th century to the present. Pragmatism calls for ideas and theories to be tested in practice, by assessing whether acting upon the idea or theory produces desirable or undesirable results. According to pragmatists, all claims about truth, knowledge, morality, and politics must be tested in this way. Pragmatism has been critical of traditional Western philosophy, especially the notion that there are absolute truths and absolute values. Although pragmatism was popular for a time in France, England, and Italy, most observers believe that it encapsulates an American faith in know-how and practicality and an equally American distrust of abstract theories and ideologies.

Alienation
Alienation, estrangement from other people, society, or work. The term is widely used in sometimes contradictory ways. Psychiatrists consider alienation a blocking or dissociation of a person's feelings, causing the individual to become less effective. The focus here is on the person's problems in adjusting to society. However, some philosophers believe that alienation is inevitably produced by a shallow and depersonalized society. In popular concern, alienation reached its peak with the “generation gap” of the 1960s and has been employed to account for activities from aggressive violence to total inactivity.
The concept of alienation is an ancient one. Saint Augustine wrote that due to its sinful nature, humanity was alienated from God. He believed that a reconciliation could be achieved through belief in Christ. Karl Marx gave an economic interpretation to alienation. People were alienated from their own labor; their work was appropriated by someone else and the work itself was compulsory, not creative; the cause was capitalism, and the cure was socialism. To Sigmund Freud, alienation was self-estrangement caused by the split between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. Sociology provided another viewpoint: Émile Durkheim's anomie, or rootlessness, stemmed from loss of societal and religious tradition. Later sociologists further expanded Durkheim's theme of alienation. The existentialists Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre saw some measure of self-estrangement and powerlessness over one's destiny as an inevitable part of the human condition.
Individualism
Individualism, in political and economic philosophy, the doctrine, promulgated by such theorists as English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and Scottish economist Adam Smith, that society is an artificial device, existing only for the sake of its members as individuals, and properly judged only according to criteria established by them as individuals. Individualists do not necessarily subscribe to the doctrine of egoism, which regards self-interest as the only logical human motivation. They may instead be guided in political and economic thinking by motives of altruism, holding that the end of social, political, and economic organization is the greatest good for the greatest number. What characterizes such individualist thinkers, however, is their conception of the “greatest number” as composed of independent units and an opposition to the interference of the state with the happiness or freedom of these units.