Life
Arthur Schopenhauer was born as the only son of the very wealthy banker in Danzig, one of the
most economically poerful Hanza Cities in the Middle Ages. His mother was greatly younger than
his father and the young Arthur was paranoid by the idea that his mother married his father for the
sole reason of his father's wealth, of which he later was not only firmly convinced, but he believed
that this conviction was confirmed by his own mother. His mother was extremely beautiful and
gifted with intellect and literary abilities, and even authored stories and travel-memoirs. When
Arthur was very young, he travelled with his parents to France and England. Exceptionally
successful in his business, his father wanted Arthur to become either a banker or a merchant.
Works
Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde
Schopenhauer's philosophy has recently become once again highly recognized as particularly very
important for the 20th century philosophy and its development, because Nietzsche's philosophy
which has been extremely highly considered in the second half of the 20th century presupposes
Schopenhauer's philosophical approach as its predecessor. Namely first of all, Schopenhauer
made the World Will or will as the principle of philosophy and reality. By so doing, Schopenhauer
completely shed the tradition of the European reason and opened the new vista for Nietzsche's
overhauling appraisal of the Western culture in its entirety, which no one before Nietzsche
attempted. Secondly, Schopenhauer's pessimism further made Nietzsche take the nihilism of the
European values, its culture and history.
4) Ethics
Life
Auguste Comte was born in Montpelier, France, on January 19, 1797 and moved to Paris in 1816
when he was 17 years old. There in 1818, Comte got acquainted with Pierre Saint-Simon, who
was a social reformer and was called a utopian socialist by Karl Marx in distinction from Marx
Engels' "scientific socialism". Comte became Saint-Simon's collaborator, though later he split
from him. Comte gave lectures on his own philosophical system in 1826. Then he became
mentally ill and hospitalized. In 1828 Comte resumed his lectures and became a lecturer at the
School of Polytechnics. However, after publishing his magnum opus, Cours de philosophie
positive, he lost the position. Comte finally got acquainted with Clotilde de Vaux, whom he
mystically admired. He died on September 5, 1857 in Paris.
Works
Cours de philosphie positive, 6 vol. (Lectures on the positive philosophy)1830-42
Philosophy
In his philosophy of history, Comte accepted the law of progress of humanity in three stages,
which had been developed by Saint-Simon and Turgot. Comte interprets in regards to the human
intellectual development such that humanity first remained in the theological stage, then moved to
the metaphysical stage, and finally developed into the stage of positive sciences. The job of
philosophy is to foster this development. At the first stage, the individual, just like humanity as a
whole, believes in gods, demon, etc. in one's own intellectual development, then in metaphysical
concepts. Finally, one exerts oneself to recognize the phenomena by means of observation and
experiment.
Life
Works
Philosophy
Induction in Logic
Utilitarianism in modification
This Bentham was able to rhyme as follows:
Thus, Bentham was able to generalize and said that:
On Liberty
The social reform through education and democracy
Life
Ludwig Feuerbach was born on July 28, 1804 in Landshut in Germany as a son of the criminal
prosecutor Anselm Ritter von Freuerbach, whose brother was the famous romantic painter called
Anselm Freuerbach. Ludwig Freuerbach studied theology at University of Heidelberg where
Professor Daub had him excited about Hegel's philosophy. Since 1824 He studied at University of
Berlin under Hegel and changed his major from theology to philosophy.
Works
De ratione una, universali, infinita (On the one, universal and infinite cause) 1828
Philosophy
Hegel's influences and Materialism of Love
The center of Feuerbach's philosophical thinking is the human-being that is a living, loving,
sensory being and is a social being (Gemeinschaftswesen). The conviction that all the philosophy
must start with the human-being constituted the core thought of Feuerbach's philosophical
investigation, whether it was in his critique of Christianity, his religious philosophy, or in his
ethics and his philosophy in general. Feuerbach declared, "my first thought is God, my second one
is reason and the third one is the human-beilng!" The human-being is according to Feuerbach the
"wahre Ens realissimus" (the "true, most real Being"). To Feuerbach's philosophy, the human
being was not only the most positive principle of reality, but also the human-being was made the
principle of all of his philosophy (The Essence of Christianity, Preface to the Second Edition).
Here we see a decisive impact of Feuerbach on Karl Marx particularly in his earlier thoughts.
However, Arthur Schopenhauer, after his father's death, went to Göttingen University to study
natural sciences, history and philosophy. His teacher was the famous skeptic, Gottlob Ernst
Schulze. Under his guidance, the young Schopenhauer studied Plato and Kant. Then Arthur
Schopenhauer transferred to Berlin to study under Fichte, but he was rather disappointed with
Fichte's lectures on his philosophy. Arthur Schopenhauer got his Ph.D. at University of Jena with
his dissertation, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde
After his promotion (Ph.D. degree), Arthur Schopenhauer went to Weimar to spend a year with his
mother. Arthur hated his mother both in her pretentious, superficial interest in the world of letters
and her pure calculation of marrying his father for his wealth. Soon it became intolerable to Arthur
Schopenhauer to live with her. Probably through his experiences with his own mother,
Schopenhauer generally despised the woman. Throughout his life, Schopenhauer entertained an
idea of marriage on several occasions, but after careful calculations of pro and con of the marriage,
Schopenhauer came to an indubitable conclusion that it is far better off to remain unmarried. On the
one hand, according to Arthur Schopenhauer, it is quite costly to be married. On the other,
Schopenhauer firmly believed, the woman wanted by marriage the fulfillment of her selfish desires
including wealth, status and luxury life, that Schopenhauer experienced through his own mother.
From 1814 through 1818, he lived in Dresden and wrote Über das Sehen und die Farben
In 1820, Arthur Schopenhauer became an instructor (Privatdozent) at the University of Berlin and
taught there until 1830. Although he was active at the University of Berlin almost at the same time
as Hegel was teaching in Berlin (1819-1831), Schopenhauer never wanted to admit that Hegel's
popularity among students was due to the superiority of his philosophy. Furthermore,
Schopenhauer was perhaps overwhelmed by the great fame and popularity of Hegel who collected
hundreds of students in a huge lecture hall. Because of his conviction of the profundity of his own
philosophy and through his competitive spirit, Schopenhauer deliberately scheduled his lectures at
the same time as Hegel's. In consequence, he had only a few students in his classes, that deeply
depressed Schopenhauer every semester and had to take a long refuge to Italy every summer to
recuperate from his failure in teaching at the university and depression from his disappointment in
the blindness of the general populace not to be able to recognize Schopenhauer's philosophy.
In 1831, Cholera spread in Germany and Hegel died of it. Despite Schopenhauer was a confirmed
pessimist, he quickly resigned from the University (he had enough wealth inherited from his
parents) and moved to Italy as quickly as possible to avoid the catastrophe. When the epidemic was
over, he came back to Frankfurt am Main to live, with a french poodle, occasionally playing the
flute and smoking a pipe till 1860, when he finally died.
In his later years, Schopenhauer's magnum opus became well known and he gathered quite a few
admirers around him and seemed considerably content and happy. On several occasions, Arthur
Schopenhauer considered the possibility of marriage, but he decided not to, because he believed
that to be married is indeed a nuisance and not worth troubles.
Über das Sehen und die Farben‹On the sight and Colors‹(1816)
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung‹The World as Will and Representation‹(1819)
Über den Willen in der Natur‹On the Will in the nature‹(1836)
Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik‹Two fundamental problem of ethics‹
Über die Freiheit dew menschlichen Willens‹On the human freedom‹
Über das Fundament der Moral‹On the basis of moral‹(1841)
Parerga und Paralipomena‹Supplements and Appendices‹(1851)
Philosophy
Schopenhauer is often quoted as the best example of pessimist, while Leibniz is considered that of
optimist. Pessimism is an ontological doctrine which believes that the world in which we live is the
worst possible world ‹ mundo pessimum‹ (or the world created and selected by God as the
worst possible one). Since this doctrine implies the negative values of this world, it also have some
ethical implications as it often associated with fatalism. Optimism in contrast, is the ontological
theory which affirms that the world in which we live is the best possible world ‹ mundo optimum
‹ (or the world created and chosen by God as the best possible world among all possible worlds).
Schopenhauer was not quite consistent in his pessimism. For example, should this world be the
worst, why was he so afraid of dying (Schopenhauer quickly went to Italy, when cholera made an
outbreak in Berlin. The major source of his pessimistic traits was due to the influence of Indian
philosophy and in particular Buddhism. Schlegel's translations of Buddhistic scriptures from
Sanskrit were available for the first time in the West. According to Schopenhauer, although the
world is the worst possible world, the philosopher can get out of this lot. In this sense,
Schopenhauer's pessimism, while the pessimism per se often implies fatalism, allows us to liberate
ourselves from this miserable fate by pure philosophical contemplation. It is also of our interest to
point out that Schopenhauer denied the value of suicide despite this world's being the worst
possible world.
Schopenhauer contended that the human-beings are distinguished from the other animals due to
their possession of reason. Due to this reason we the humans are caught by the wonder of and
pressed by the desire to search for the meaning of their life and death. From this wonder
(thaumazén), according to Schopenhauer, the metaphysical needs arise. [Is this this reason used in
the same meaning as in its preceeding philosophies? The answer is perhaps "no." It is needed to
elaborate this point.] These needs are unique to the human-beings, so we may very well say that
the human-beings are "metaphysical animals." Philosophy arises from questioning the
phenomenon.
According to Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, philosophy may be divided
into four branches:
Philosophy
1) To know the world which appears to us ‹‹‹Epistemology
2) To recognize the nature of the world ‹‹‹‹‹Metaphysics
3) To know the particular way of liberating oneself‹‹‹Aesthetics
4) To know the universal way of liberating oneself‹‹‹‹Ethics (contemplatio)
1) Theory of Knowledge or Epistemology
In his "subjective idealism" in the sense of tanscendental philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer
acknowledges himself as a Kantian. Since long, of course, it is known that sensations are our
inner conditions. Kant made us known further that the forms of our knowledge, too, are not
products of our abstraction or generalization of what we obtained through senses, but they are of
the "subjective" origin and nature in the sense of the structure of our consciousness and not
products of our receptivity from the object.
According to Schopenhauer, we can only recognize how a thing appears.Through our
(transcendental) structure of our cognitive faculty called understanding and reason, we know how
we represent a thing, i.e., we only know the phenomenon and the phenomenal world. Therefore,
the world, i.e., the world we expereince, is nothing but what we represent.
Further, according to Schopenhauer, to understand the uniersal ontology (the ontology of nature as
the phenomenal world), we are able to simply follow the Kantian theory of knowledge. The forms
of our knowledge may be reduced ultimately to the principle of reason (= purpose or causa finalis
or der Satz vom Grunde= the principle of reason).
This final cause or the principle of reason has four fundamental forms in accordance with the kinds
of representation:
i. pure intuition (space and time)‹ratio essendi or principium rationis sufficientis essendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for being)
ii. sensory intuition‹ratio fiendi or principium sufficientis fiendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for change)
iii. will‹ratio agendi or principium sufficientis agendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for action)
iv. abstract concept‹ration cogniscendi or principium sufficientis cogniscendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for cognition)
2) Metaphysics
Schopenhauer maintains that the objective knowledge is contained within the limit of our
representation, i.e., is related exclusively to the phenomenal world. Thus, everything recognizable
is a phenomenon. The phenomenon must be given through the so-called pure, formal intuition of
space and time and is governed by the categories, by the basic principles and eminenly by
causality. Therefore, following Schopenhauer, space, time and causality may be characterized as
the "screens" of the phenomenal world, which is to be distinguished from the world of the thing
itself. Among those three elements, space, time, and causality, however, one must be
distinguished form the other two as unique. For we recognize this principle alone beyond the
phenomenon. This is the pure form of time. This pure time distinguishes us, the human-beings,
from the thing itself in general. Schopenhauer further elaborates this time and identifies it as no
other than our own consciousness. Here, for example, we may be able to evidence in
Schopenhauer's philosophy the profound insight into the nature of time in relation to the human
consciousness. This insight of Schopenhauer into the pure time strangely anticipates the further
development into the central theme of Henri Bergon on the one hand and Husserl and Heidegger
on the other in the twentieth century philosophy.
On the one hand, in my pursuit of knowledge, I appear as phenomenon of my body, the object
among other objects of the material phenomenal world.
On the other hand, at the same time, I possess the immediate consciousness of my self, by means
of which I am able to grasp the genuine essence of my own self. Thereby I know myself as Will
that is not in the domain of the phenomenal world, but in the domain of the thing in itself.
Will is far more than a mere representation. Will is something primordial in my self, something
genuinely real. This reality appears to me in the phenomenal world as my body. Thus the relation
between will and intellect is the relation between the primary and the secondary, that between the
"substance" and the "accidence."
Further, the relation between will and intellect appears to be the relation between the internal and
the external, the relation of reality and phenomenon.
The act of will is followed by the action of the body, or we may say that they are one and the same
in the world of appearance. The same is given in two different ways, namely will is seen from the
inside, while the body is seen from the outside.
The body may called an objectified will.
While I am appearing as a body, I am will in reality. Through an analogy with this relationship,
we should know reality. The universe is a makranthropos and the knowledge of our own essence
is the key to the understanding of the universe.
As my body is the visibility or appearance of my will, the universe is the visibility or appearance of
the world will. The human will is an expression of the highest stage of the development of the
principle which works as "power" in nature. To name this power or principle "will" is denominatio
a potiori, i.e., a denomination by the superior. It is not possible to inquire into the depth of the
reality. Both that which reveals itself as will and that which remains after the denial of will cannot
be known to us at all.
The world in itself is Will. This primordial Will cannot be categorized by any of our predicates that
modify the things through our subjective determinations. For example, we cannot talk of this Will
such that it is determined by causality or motivation, that Will is singular or plural, or that Will is
under the forms of space and time.
This primordial Will is groundless (grundlos), i.e., it cannot be explained by or reduced to
anything else. this primordial will is a blind drive. It is an unconscious drive to existence. This
primordial Will is one and all (to hen kai pan). It reveals itself e.g. as gravity, as magnetism, as the
drive to live, and as the natural healing power. These all are nothing but the World Will (der
Weltwille). The singularity is retained in the purposefulness of corporeality of everything. The
hidden, unexplainable nature of thing is this world Will. For example, even among the unorganic
things, e.g. the essence of stone is the will to fall. The essence of the lung is the will to breathe.
The teeth, the throat and the intestines are the objectified hunger. the various characteristics which
the World Will produces itself materially constitute a series of stages of increasing perfection. They
constitute the World of Eternal Ideas. These Ideas stand between the primordial will and the infinite
individuals.
The most universal power of nature which is life force is the low bass in the symphony, while the
higher stages of the plants and the animals are middle sounds and that of the humans are
expressing leading, meaningful melodies. In the human brain as its organ, the World Will made a
torch to represent the world. In order to actualize its Will with consideration, the world Will lit the
torch in the human brain, whereby the Will created intellect as its implement. Schopenhauer even
contended that the brain and intellect are one and the same. The brain is no other than the will to
know just like the stomach's being the will to digest. Schopenhauer does not recognize mind as a
nonmaterial entity independent of matter.
3) Aesthetics
The essence of the aesthetic attitude consists in the pure contemplation that is liberated from the
control of the World Will. Intellect among a few philosophical and artistic geniuses succeeds in
liberating itself from the ultimate control of the Will. Intellect here can become purer and deepen
itself into the question of "what" i.e., the essence of thing rather than that of "why," "for what,"
"where" and "when." Intellect in the humans like in the other animals serves as a means to the
Will, while among the philosophical and artistic geniuses, intellect liberates itself from the
particulars, from all the sufferings of the human existence and contemplates the Ideas in their
purity. Thus, the person with such an intellect can elevate oneself above the control of the world
will.
Poetry is the higher than the plastic arts. The highest form of poetry is, according to
Schopenhauer, tragedy. However, among various genres of arts, the highest form of art is music.
While the other forms of art imitate Ideas, music imitates the Will itself. Therefore, Schopenhauer
called music the unconscious metaphysics.
There is pessimism (the belief that the universe was created as the worst possible) in the basis of
Schopenhauer's ethics. Schopenhauer demonstrated the blindness and the irrationality of the world
ground or the World Will by portraying the undescribable sufferings and irremediable miseries of
life. The world contains more sufferings and pains than pleasures. The world is the worst possible
world. Will is the purposeless effort or conation (conatus in Latin = powerful dirve) among the
beings which are lower than the animals. The drives for pleasure among animals are unfulfilled and
the unsatiable desires for pleasures and the unchanging will for happiness among the humans are
unfulfilled or denied by trapping the humans in miseries and poverty . What we call the pursuit of
pleasure is, according to Schopenahuer, nothing but the avoidance of pain. In the face of
undescribable miseries in the world, it is utter stupidity and hopeless self-deception for the human
being to be optimistic. It is indeed true that it is better nonexistence than existence. Those
irremediable sufferings to the humans are the proper punishment for the original sinn. For the
individual creates onself her/his particular existence from its own free will. To save oneself from
such a primordial, profound sinn, from the total miseriy and unrescurable unhappiness of our
existence is only possible by the Second Act of the transcendental freedom, that is, the total
refurbishing of our own nature. Because it is supernatural in origin, it is correct that the church
calls it the born-again or the grace.
Therefore, according to Schopenhauer, the presupposition for morality is to clearly recognize 1)
that the world is fundamentally evil, 2) that all the individuals are not real and ultimately a mere
phenomenon or illusion (due to the influence from Buddhism).
Thus, the human-being can liberate oneself from such egoistic self assertion by the following two
knowledge, namely a) by realizing that all the normal human efforts to avoid sufferings and to
escape from the control of the will are totally meaningless while all pleasures are in reality utterly
unattainable, b) by explicitly comprehending that all the human individuals are mere phenomenal
expressions of the World Will.
It is indeed sympathy as the moral sentiment that is the only genuine moral drive in the humanity
and this morally sentiment called sympathy can counterweight against the individual's selfish
egoism and is the source of moral justice and genuine love for all. Only by means of sympathy, the
human-being is capable of discovering oneself in the other and is capable of feeling the other's
sufferings as one's own. The only higher virtue than this popular sympathy may be found in one's
Absolute Renunciation of Will, that can be found among Christian ascetics and Asian jogi. By
renouncing the Will, the wareness as the pure contemplation is not a motive but the means to quiet
the Will. Thus the human-being will be able to overcome and liberate oneself from the control of
the Will. Thus the genuine ecstacy is attained. By this pure contemplation, the human-being is able
to live in the Nirvana or the genuine reality.
Schopenhauer was the first in the West that accepted influences from Indian philosophies. The
greatest successor of Schopenhauer's philosophy is Nietzsche. Nietzsche succeeded
Schopenhauer's philosophy and totally new tradtion in the Western philosophy not only through
his not finding the principle of philosophy in reason, but in non-rational Will, but also in his
development of radical nihilism, in which Nietzsche asserts that nothing in this world (the Western
World and its metaphysics according to Nietzsche) is valuable and meaningful, insists that the
world and the Western Civilization is completely empty and has no hope for the future in itself.
Therefore, the Prophet Zarathustra announces the dawn of the new, creative Morality and Culture.
Not only Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche is decisive, but also Schopenhauer's attention to
and his analysis of the body reminds us of phenomenological approaches to the problem of the
body by Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. Schopenhauer has been underestimated for a long
time, but now his philosophy shall be rediscovered, shall be shed light on and shall be more
profoundly re-evaluated as Nietzsche has been re-evaluated (or over-evaluted by the French
postmodernists?).
Auguste Comte (January 19, 1798 - September 5, 1857)
Discours sur l'Ésprit positif (Discourse on the positive spirit)1844
Discours sur l'Ensemble du Positivisme (Discourse on the Totality of Positivism) 1848
Systéme de Politique positive, ou Traité de Sociologie instituant la Religion de L'Humanité, 4 vol.
(The System of positive politics or Treatise on Sociology concerning the religion of humanity)
1851-54
Catéchisme positiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de la Religion universelle (The Positive
Catechism or the general exposition of the universal religion) 1852
Appel au Conservateurs (An appeal to the conservertive) 1855
Synthèse subjective, ou Système universel des conceptions propre à l'Humanité (The subjective
synthesis or the universal system of the conceptions appropriate to humanity) 1856
Lettres (letters) 1877 and 1844
"Any intelligent heads recognizes today that the genuine research are found exclusively in the
analysis of the phenomena in order to discover the law of facts, the immutable causal or analogical
connections and are no longer able to inquire into the secret nature, the first and teleological cause
of nature, nor its absolute origin."
The sciences appears in a well established order, in which every knowledge contains its preceding
ones. Mathematics starts with the simplest and least complex phenomenon. Following mathematics
are respectively astronomy, physics chemistry, biology and sociology. Comte did not recognize
psychology as an independent science, but this belongs to biology.
Sociology, which Comte had an honor of naming this science, was divided by Comte into the
social static and the social dynamics. While the former deals with the universal laws of social
structure, the latter deals with the progress of the society. According to Comte, the three stages of
the intellectual development of humanity are at the same time the tree stages of the human society.
For a certain social condition belongs to every stage of intellectual stage: To the theological stage
belongs the order of warfare, to the stage of positive sciences, the social structure of the industrial
society. As the ultimate goal the original starting point of thought appears once again that consisted
in Sant-Simon's idea of unity of science and industry.
John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806-May 8, 1873)
John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806 in London as the eldest son of James Mill,
who was a close associate of Jeremy Bentham, who founded Utilitarianism as the theory of
political philosophy and the ideology for his political movement. (His political party was originally
called the Philosophical Radicals, which gained no popular appeal after all.) Thanks to John Stuart
Mill's effort, utilitarianism became a very significant ethical theory among the English speaking
philosophies.
James Mill had a clear idea of how to educate his prodigy son and experimented it on him.
Namely James Mill, John's father, attempted to artificially mold this young, extra-ordinarily gifted
John as the given material (like a bonsai) by means of his own philosophy of education.To James
Mill, the educational ideal of humanitas conceived and perfected at the second half of the Ancient
Rome was the best model toward which he must cultivate (=educate) this child prodigy. At the age
of three, John started getting instruction in arithmetic and Greek, and at eight years of age, he
mastered Latin. By then, he had mastered arithmetics, geometry and Aristotelian logic.
Soon the young John was reading the Greek and the Roman classics in their original
languages. At that time, John's favorite was Homer's Iliad, then soon he was reading with great
fascination Odyssey, then the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the majority of
Plato's dialogues, and the great historian Thucydides writings, which left a deep impression on
him. He also read Virgil's Aeneid, Lucretius, the Orations by Cicero and many other less well
known works of the ancient cultures. During his early teens, John Stuart Mill was fascinated by
history and was writing ancient Roman history.
Then, his interest shifted from history to philosophy, logic, and economic theories. At the
age of twelve, John started studying Aristotle's syllogism by reading his Organon (Prior and
Posterior Logic, and Categories). He was deeply impressed the utilities of formal logic advocated
by the great minds of the past and was fascinated with its nature. When he was around thirteen
years of age, John intensively read such dialogues of Plato as Gorgias, Protagoras, and the
Republic. He thought nothing was surpassed than Socratic spirit in analysis and dialectic search for
truth. All the curriculum was developed by James Mill, John's father and James was not only
monitoring his son's progress of learning but also actively involved in tutoring him if necessary.
Every morning, John used to take a walk with his father and report to him what he read the day
before and discuss them with him during the walk.
James not only prevented the young John from associating himself with other children of
his age, but also John himself had little interest in it due to the lack of common interests with them.
It was James' attempt to revive the ancient educational endeavor (towards the paideia of humanitas)
to train the human mind by means of abstract, formal thinking. This notion of humanitas was
possessed not only by James Mill, but the majority of the European intellectuals thought that
humanitas was the universal ideal of humanity, when it comes to the question of the education of
humanity as such. Wilhelm von Humboldt, for example, established with the curriculum guided by
the same ideal of humanitas the University of Berlin with the commission by the Prussian
Government in the early 1800s. This was the model for the modern university curriculum in the
industrialized world (until in the United States, the professional education and the training of skills
became the center of the higher education).
John gradually taking over from his father his tutoring and monitoring responsibility for his
younger siblings and was far more fascinated with this task with many insights. He also
discovered that the major effort of the normal education was more directed to memorization and
mere parroting of knowledge as the substitute for the creative power of developing one's own
thought.
It was only nineteen years of age when Bentham asked John Stuart Mill to edit his
manuscripts on jurisprudence, which were three unfinished works. It was an easy task for the
young John and after the publication of the opus, Bentham started publishing Westminster Review
in charge of John as its chief editor. He also wrote articles and book reviews.
When he was twenty one, he suffered a deep emotional crisis. Till then, the meaning of
John's life was identified with those of the fellow laborers and he thought of himself as the world
reformer. Its objective being set on something durable and distant, seemed, however, never to find
its complete fulfillment. in Fall of 1826, John was awaken from this belief as if it were a bad
dream and felt that he had nothing living for at all. He felt that he had gained the fame at the too
early age and at the same time, he was not satisfied with pleasures that he could obtained so easily
and were not worthy for the name of pleasure whether it is selfish or unselfish pleasure.
In stead of philosophy, and scientific pursuits, John Stuart Mill discovered the emotional
fulfillment in music and poetry, particularly in Wordsworth's poems. Through this experience
John came to a realization that human growth was not only intellectual but must be also emotional
for a human-being to be complete. According to His Autobiography, John never suffered from the
irrational, sexual drive with such intensity as the other youngsters did, however.
Around this time in 1830, John got acquainted with Harriet Taylor, who would be a very
good friend and critic of his throughout his life and became his wife twenty years later! Harriet was
younger than John by three years. As John everywhere acknowledged, Harriet read and criticized
all his writings of these twenty five years. Needless to say, Harriet, therefore, exercised a decisive
influences on John Stuart Mill.
When John Stuart Mill was 16, he started working for the East India Company, where his
father also had worked for years. He held his job there for almost thirty years, although he did a lot
of writings and was politically active with Bentham and his followers. Although he held the second
highest post at that company when it was dissolved by the Parliament, he did not accept a seat of
the council supervising this affairs he had been offered.
Through his own experience, John Stuart Mill was convinced of the effectiveness of
training of human mind by formal and abstract thinking, namely logic. He worked thirteen years
on his first magnum opus, A System of Logic, and published it in 1843. After Arnoud's Port
Royal Logic, It became the standard book for logic. His contribution to inductive logic both in its
systematic treatment and theoretical justification was and still is extremely highly regarded. It was
considered of cardinal importance as a scientific method on the basis of observation and empirical
generalization.
His opus On Utilitarianism was his contribution to ethical theory, which in itself was of no
significant value as the ethical theory. However, he modified the fundamental assumption of
Bentham's principle of utility and had to reject the possibility of hedonistic calculus because John
Stuart Mill clearly admitted qualitative differences among pleasures while Bentham saw them as
merely quantitative.
Together with his two other books on political philosophy, Essays on Liberty and
Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill made an everlasting contribution
to the philosophical groundwork for the democratic society and government. In his Principles of
Political Economy, John applied more specifically the principle of utility to politics that is more
significant and influential than his explication of ethical imperatives by means of utilities.
In his Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism, John Stuart Mill advocated that the
religion consisted in human nature and had to be construed by means of human experience. He
found in Religion and Theism utilities to the meaning and happiness of human existence.
As a politician (endorsed by a group of electors for election to Parliament), John Stuart Mill
declared to refuse to represent the local interest of his constituency (before election), and advocated
the women's suffrage. Having been elected to the House of Commons, John Stuart Mill served
three sessions which passed the Reform Bill of 1865. He proposed an amendment for the
women's suffrage to it, which was defeated, and yet this incident arouse an enormous interest in
this question and later developed into the founding of the National Society for Women's Suffrage.
John Mill died on May 8, 1873 in London.
A System of Logic 1843
Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy 1844
Principles of Political Economy 1848
Essays on Liberty 1859
Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical and Historical 1861
Considerations on Representative Government 1861
On Utilitarianism 1863
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy 1865
Auguste Comte and Positivism 1865
The Subjugation of Women 1869
Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism 1974
Autobiography 1873
Letters 1910
His greatest contribution to philosophy is generally agreed as his systematic organization of
and justification for induction. On the basis of our empirical observation of common characteristic
among a series of examples, we are lead to an conclusion that the object of the samples in general
possesses that characteristic. Although it is a powerful tool to an empirical generalization of an
hypothesis, the demonstration of an inductive argument does deserve the name of validity and
invalidity, but that of high provability and improvability. Since such a confirmation of an empirical
hypothesis possesses the power to predict a future event (which is essential function of a scientific
law) and could not exclude a possibility of being falsified by one incident which is contrary to the
law or the hypothesis.
Jeremy Bentham, who was a social reformer and the founder of the political party,
primarily called the Philosophical Radicals, was a political philosopher rather than a moral
philosopher. In order to provide political theory with an ethical basis, he naively believed in and
intended to develop a rarely simple-minded ethics which must be as exact and precise as the
physical sciences. For this end, to Bentham, it was self evident that hé hedoné or pleasure (and
pain as the absence of pleasure) is the basis of ethical deliberation. For Nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to
determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standards of right and wrong, on
the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern
us in all that we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to
throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. The principle
of utility recognizes this subjection and assumes tit for the foundation of that system
the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.
As long as the governance of pleasure and pain are the human motives for the consequence
of one's action, this was more radical a position than Epicurus held as his ethical doctrine.
Furthermore, Bentham's hedonism probably radically differs from the Ancient Hedonism in that
his notion of utility implies the consideration of an impact of its action on a given group or the
social environment.
Namely, according to Bentham,By utility is meant that property in an object whereby it tends to produce benefit,
advantage, pleasure, good or happiness (all this in the present case comes to the
same thing) or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness, tot
eh party whose interest is considered.
Thus, the criterion of the right action consists not in what one is compelled to do as an
inevitable moral duty, but in the consequence of an action which one would intend to accomplish.
For instance, I should not lie to the tax collector, not because I am obligated to tell the truth under
the moral imperative of "Thou shall not lie!", but I should not tell a lie because not telling a lie
would bring about a pleasure, advantages and benefit from my not cheating taxes in stead of pain,
embarrassment, evil and mischief resulted by cheating taxes.
In order to better understand what Bentham meant by utility, it may better look at his
definition of the principle of utility:The principle of utility is that principle which approves or disapproves of every
action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment
or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.
Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may also say either
that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that ought not to
be done.
One may also say that it is right that it should b e done, at least that it is not wrong
that it should not be done. When thus interpreted, the worlds ought, and right and
wrong, and others of that stamp, have a meaning: When used otherwise,they have
none.
In other words, according to Bentham, the criterion of the right action or the principle of
morality consists in the greatest pleasures for the greatest number of people, since Bentham never
recognized the qualitative differences among pleasures. Since pleasure is quantitatively measurable,
one is able to calculate the amount of and the extent of pleasures that a human action will produce.
This measurement of pleasures is called by Bentham the Hedonistic Calculus: The Hedonistic
Calculus consists of seven factors, namely
intensity of the pleasure or pains involved
duration
certainty or uncertainty
propinquity or remoteness
purity
extent, the number of persons whom they affect.
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure‹
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.\
Such pleasures seek if private te thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be they view.
If pains must come, let them extend to few.To take an exact account, then, of the general tendency of any act, sum up all the
values of all the pleasures on the one side, and then of all the pains o the other. The
balance, if it bears on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act, if
no the side of pain, it's bad tendency.
According to Bentham, to legislate a law is a choice of the lesser evil among the evils.
Therefore, it is of cardinal importance for him to appeal to this principle of the greatest pleasures
for the greatest number of people. This implies a certain altruism, though utilitarianism is an
explicit hedonism and thus it is egoistic in nature. Bentham believed that it was the function of law
to see that a man would consider the good of other as well as his own selfish good. Criminal laws,
for example, must make sure, according to Bentham, that the laws would make one suffer so much
pain when they disregard the welfare of other that this would outweigh any pleasure they might
derive from an criminal act.
John Stuart Mill attempted to assimilate his viewpoint as close to that of Bentham and his
own father as possible and he wrote in On Utilitarianism:The creed which accepts as the foundation f morals, utility or the Greatest
happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to
promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By
happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain, by unhappiness, pain and
the privation of pleasure. All desirable things (which are as numerous in the
utilitarian as in nay other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in
themselves, or as a means to promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
Against this utilitarianism proposed by Bentham, John Stuart Mill clearly and intuitively
rejected the egoism as human nature and the appeal to enlightened self interest, and he recognized
qualitative differences among pleasures, so that he rejected the fundamental tenet of utility which is
the hedonistic calculus. Although he held that pleasures are indeed values, John Stuart Mill
believed that the humans are basically empathetic to others and thus altruistic, and that justice is one
of the most fundamental human values.
Thus what John Stuart Mill did was to emphasize qualitative differences of value among
pleasures and admitted that indeed some values of certain pleasures are much higher and therefore
desirable than those of the others. Mill argues:It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as
well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on
quantity alone.
Indeed he contended:It is better to be a human-being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied: better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different
opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other
party to the comparison knows both sides.
This echoes Anatole France, a great nineteenth century French playwright, who said:The joy of understanding is a sad joy yet those who have once tasted it would not
exchange it for all the frivolous gaieties and empty hopes of the vulgar herd.
Not only Mill attempted to overcome one of the most fundamental shortcomings of the
traditional Hedonism by clearly recognizing qualitative differences among pleasures on the one
hand, and on the other he exerted himself to defy the egoistic tenet of Hedonism by pointing out
the altruistic aspect of the human nature such that we are capable of pursuing the greatest amount of
happiness all concerned in stead of pleasures of the enlightened self interest of many.
Mill maintained that one is demanded by Utilitarianism to be disinterested and benevolent.
He was convinced that he saw in the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth the perfect spirit of ethics of
utility.
John Stuart Mill contended that, although the humans were natured to have equally
concerned about the others as with oneself, it was necessary to promote this fecundity further by
education, religion and by the laws of the state. Thus the humans are to be civilized.
It is the firm foundation of Utilitarianism that "lies in the social feelings of humankind: the
desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human
nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger from the influences of advancing
civilization."
The concept of liberty started becoming a central philosophical theme since the challenge of
Newtonian mechanics which presupposes the universal validity of causal necessary connection
among natural phenomena. Since then, Hume attempted to undermine the a priori necessity of
causal connections by reducing them to the psychological association. Kant's effort to rehabilitate
the objective validity of the causality by construing it as one of the twelve categories, the subjective
concepts of understanding which has the transcendental validity of the phenomenal world.
John Stuart Mill was not interested in the metaphysical foundation of freedom of will, but
he was more concerned about the practical utilities of freedom in the actual human life. He held that
liberty was the foundation for the social happiness as well as for the happiness of the individual
such that the greatest good of the society as a whole is achieved by allowing each individual to
exercise his/her own freedom unrestrained, so long as he/she does not harm others. Particularly the
freedom of opinion and speech was more strongly advocated by Mill.
John Stuart Mill was furthermore firmly convinced with the ability of human reason. And
human reason alone will be able to make improvements through the freedom of speech.
John Mill contended that any social reform including the women's suffrage and equality
could be accomplished by educating and enlightening the people. Our basic attitudes, convictions
and moral ideals will be bettered through our educational, reformatory endeavor.
His notion of education lead him to his conviction that liberal economic conditions in which
everyone has the right to cultivate oneself, better enlightened, better informed and becoming better
civilized. Therefore, he believed that the true democracy would be the sole foundation for the better
moral and social capacities, although democracy would demand more intelligence, more reason,
more self control of all the citizens, which could be accomplished by popular education.
Ludwig Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 - September 13, 1872)
In 1828 Feuerbach completed his requirement for Habilitation (the qualification for instructorship)
with his habilitation's thesis on De ratione una, univerali, infinita (On the one, universal and
infinite cause).
In 1830, Ludwig Feuerbach had his book, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, (Thoughts on
death and immortality) published anonymously, because Feuerbach was well aware that his a
theistic contention of the book would get him into a trouble with the authority and the society in
general. Soon his authorship become known, and unfortunately his a-theistic thought he disclosed
in the book made it impossible for him to get a teaching position at any German university. As a
result, in 1832, therefore, he gave up seeking a teaching job at the university and exclusively lived
as a private author and scholar in Frankfurt am Main, Ansbach, Erlangen and Nürnberg. After his
marriage to Berta Löw Ludwig, Feuerbach moved back to his home village between Ansbach and
Bayreuth. Responsing to many devoted students' request, Ludwig Feuerbach held a series of
public lectures on the nature of religion in Fall semester of 1848/49 at the University of
Heidelberg. In 1860, Feuerbach was forced to move to Rechenberg near Nürnberg due to his
financial difficulties caused by the loss of his properties, where he died on September 13, 1872.
Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Thoughts on death and immortality) 1833
Geschichte der neueren Philosophie von Bacon von Verulam bis Spinoza (The History of
Contemporary Philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza) 1833
Geschichte der neueren Philosophie: Darstellung, Entwicklung und Kritik der Leibnizschen
Philosophie (The History of Contemporary Philosophy, its description, development and critique
of Leibniz' Philosophy) 1837
Pierre Bayle, nach seinen für die Geschichte der Philosophie und Menschheit interesantesten
Momenten (Pierre Bayle according to his Most Interesting Elements for the History of Philosophy
and Humanity) 1838
Über Philosophie und Christentum, in Beziehung auf den der Hegelschen Philosophie gemachten
Vorwurf der Unchristlichkeit (On Philosophy and Christianity in relation to the objection of the
Unchristianity of Hegel's Philosophy) 1839
Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) 1841
Vorläufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie (Tentative Theses for the Reformation of
Philosophy) 1842
Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of Future) 1843
Das Wesen des Galubens im Sinne Luthers (The Essence of Faith in Luther's Sense) 1844
Das Wesen der Religion (The essence of Religion) 1845
Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion (Lectures on the Essence of Religion) 1851
Theogonie nach den Quelle des klassischen, hebräischen und christlichen Altertums (Theogony
according to the Sources of classical, hebrew and christian Ancient Periods) 1857
Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit vom Standpunkte der Anthropologie (Divinity, Freedom and
Immortality from the Anthropological Standpoint) 1866
Spiritualismus und Materialismus (Spiritualism and Materialism) 1866
Aus dem Nachlaß: Der Eudäimonismus,‹Moralphilosophie, ‹Briefwechsel hrsg. von A. Kapp
(The Posthumous Manuscripts: Eudaimonism, Moral Philosophy and Letters ed. by A. Kapp)
1879
Ludwig Feuerbach received the decisive influences from Hegel's philosophy. His vocabulary is
Hegelian and how to manipulate a certain idea is also very Hegelian. Take for example, the notion
of "self-alianation of the human-being from itself" (Die Selbstentfremdung des Menschens von
sich selbst) is a literary transformation of Hegelian conception into the nature of the human
condition. And yet Feuerbach was able to develop his own thought (which is ontologically
materialistic and epistemologically empiristic, in this sense Feuerbach was diametrically opposed to
Hegel) on the basis of his critical confrontation with Hegel's philosophy. In order to even attempt
to overcome Hegel's philosophy, Feuerbach could not be a naive materialist or an empiricist
(although he was naive comparing to Hegel's philosophy), but needed a certain kind of
sophistication in his philosophical thinking. To a great extent, therefore, Feuerbach indebted to
Hegel in this respect. However, it is rather very strange indeed to discover that Hegel's dialectical
method had no trace in Feuerbach's philosophical thinking. It is obvious that Feuerbach had a
basically different philosophical attitude towards reality, philosophy and religion from Hegel.
In his article on "Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie" (Critique of Hegel's Philosophy) in 1839,
Feuerbach dissociated himself from Hegel's "rational mysticism." Feuerbach's magnum opus, Das
Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) in 1841, was through and through
determined by his attitude of anti-speculative thinking of Hegel's core approach, and this opus was
devoted to the clarification of the religious problems from the new understanding of human-being
and to philosophical explanations of the dogmas of the speculative theology. His book on
Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of Future) in 1843 declared
his final divorce from the speculative philosophy.
Ludwig Feuerbach valued as the true philosophy only the knowledge of that which really is (i.e.,
what is knowlable by sense experinece)‹Der Mensch ist, was er ißt (The human-being is what he
eats).‹, whereby Feuerbach presupposed that , freed from speculative thinking, such knowledge
of reality only can be given to us by experience, namely by our senses: I do object the absolute, the immaterial, the self-contented speculation‹the
speculation which creates its own material out of itself. I am far apart like between
heaven and earth from the philosophers who believe that the more abstract their
philosophy is, the better it becomes: I need my sense to philosophical thinking,
particularly my eyes! (The Essence of Christianity, Preface to the Second Edition).
Epistemologically, Feuerbach took the so-called representational theory of knowledge.
The distinction of philosophy from religion is based on the image (das Bild) (The Essence of
Christianity, Preface to the First Edition). Feuerbach thought that he was never bound to any
dogmatic standpoint. According to Ziegenfuß, "Feuerbach is neither an idealist, nor a materialist.
To Feuerbach, God, Spirit, Soul and I are mere abstractions as much as quantity, matter, body are
mere abstractions. To him, truth, essence and reality are sensitivity."
Non-the-less, Feuerbach understood sensitivity in a quite wider sense as if he would characterize
all vital and living as sensory. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that, in his ontology,
Feuerbach was materialistic in that what is real is concrete, particular, entity and its qualities.
However, it must be emphasized that his ethical hope for the future was idealistic: I am an idealist in the sole hope for the field of practical philosophy.
In short, the idea is the faith in the historical future to me, the faith in the victory of
truth and virtue, and has only the political and moral significance.
Philosophy must become Philosophical Anthropology, and so does religion.
To the question of what the essence of the human-being is, Feuerbach answered: Reason, will and heart! To the perfect human-being belongs the power of thinking,
the power of will and the power of heart! (The Essence of Christianity, Introduction
to Chapt. 1)
The true being is thinking, loving and willing being!
Just as in philosophy, in religion the human-being constitutes its center: Religion is the reflection, the mirroring of the human nature into itself. (The
Essence of Christianity, Book I, Chapt. 6) ‹ The essence of the human-being in
distinction from the animal is not only the reason for (the existence of), but also the
object of religion. (The Essence of Christianity, Introduction, Chapt. 1) ‹ The
human-being is the beginning, the center and the end of religion. (Book I, Chapt.
19)
In other words, the object and the content of religion must be re-interpreted from the new
philosophical anthropology. Instead of God, the human-being is to be placed as the center of the
universe and God is to be construed from the nature of the human-being. Therefore, sometimes
Feuerbach's philosophy is called "anthropologism." Feuerbach never took the concept of religion
in Hegel's sense, but "in an infinitely higher and more universal sense." (Preface to the Second
Edition) Not only religion is anthropology, but also the philosophy of religion, the theology,
Christianity and the Christian theology which are all ultimately one and the same. This Feuerbach
intended to demonstrate in The Essence of Christianity, and to "elevate the anthropology to a
theology" and not lower the theology to an anthropology (if you believe that theology is indeed
higher than anthropology!). The old wisdom that religion has something to do with God, and
Feuerbach's declaration that religion must have something to do with the human-being, and they
do not contradict each other according to Feuerbach. For the human-being and God (because He is
the self-alienation of the human-being itself) are ultimately one and the same, and the Divine
Essence and the Human Essence are identical, and there is no distinction between the predicates of
God and thoses of the human predicates. "God is the revealed Inner, expressed Self of the human
being." (The Essence of Christianity, Introduction, Chapt. 2) ‹ "God is no other than the essence
of the human-being." (Book I, Chapt 19) ‹ "The consciousness of God is the self consciousness
of the human-being, the cognition of God is the self cognition of the human-being."