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Philosophy of Education
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Allied Material for Students of Philosophy
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By Dr Syed Asad Abbas Rizvi

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 Table of Contents
Section A.........................................................................................................................1
Philosophy of Education..................................................................................................1
Philosophy.......................................................................................................................1
Subdivisions of philosophy..............................................................................................1
Plato...................................................................................................................................15
1. Plato's central doctrines.............................................................................................16
2. Plato's puzzles............................................................................................................17
3. Dialogue, setting, character.......................................................................................18
4. Socrates......................................................................................................................19
5. Plato's indirectness.....................................................................................................20
6. Can we know Plato's mind?.......................................................................................21
7. Socrates as the dominant speaker..............................................................................24
8. Links between the dialogues......................................................................................25
9. Does Plato change his mind about forms?.................................................................27
10. Does Plato change his mind about politics?............................................................28
11. The historical Socrates: early, middle, and late dialogues.......................................30
12. Why dialogues?.......................................................................................................37
Bibliography..................................................................................................................39
Translations into English...........................................................................................39
General Overviews....................................................................................................39
On Socrates................................................................................................................40
Interpretive Strategies................................................................................................40
Chronology of the Dialogues.....................................................................................40
Biography.....................................................................................................................66
Personality................................................................................................................67
Philosophy....................................................................................................................73
[edit] Theory of perception.....................................................................................75
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding..........................................................77
Schema......................................................................................................................79
Moral philosophy.....................................................................................................79
Aesthetic philosophy................................................................................................84
Political philosophy..................................................................................................85
Anthropology................................................................................................................86
Influence.......................................................................................................................86
List of works.................................................................................................................90
Biography......................................................................................................................93
Works.............................................................................................................................94
Philosophy.................................................................................................................96
Astronomy.................................................................................................................96
Logic..........................................................................................................................97
Physics.......................................................................................................................97
Significance...................................................................................................................97

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 Biography....................................................................................................................100
Early life..................................................................................................................100
Later life and death..................................................................................................103
The Canon of Medicine................................................................................................104
Medicine and pharmacology....................................................................................105
Psychology...............................................................................................................112
Unani medicine........................................................................................................113
The Book of Healing....................................................................................................113
Earth sciences..........................................................................................................113
Philosophy of science..............................................................................................113
Physics.....................................................................................................................114
[edit] Psychology.....................................................................................................115
Avicennian philosophy................................................................................................115
Metaphysical doctrine..............................................................................................116
Natural philosophy...................................................................................................117
Theology..................................................................................................................117
Thought experiments...............................................................................................117
Other contributions......................................................................................................118
Astronomy and astrology.........................................................................................118
Chemistry.................................................................................................................118
Engineering..............................................................................................................119
Works...........................................................................................................................121
List of works............................................................................................................122
Persian Works..........................................................................................................123
-Ghazali’s Philosophies Concerning Women’s Education..............................................141
Philosophical usage.....................................................................................................144
History.........................................................................................................................144
Socrates (ca 470–399B.C.E.)...................................................................................144
René Descartes (1596–1650)...................................................................................145
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)................................................................................145
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)...................................................................................146
References....................................................................................................................146
Etymology....................................................................................................................149
Philosophical usage.....................................................................................................149
Scientific usage............................................................................................................150
History.........................................................................................................................150
1 Early empiricism...................................................................................................150
British empiricism...................................................................................................152
Integration of empiricism and rationalism...................................................................153
Footnotes......................................................................................................................155
Idealism.........................................................................................................................157
REALISM....................................................................................................................160

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 Section A
Philosophy of Education
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence,
knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind, and language Philosophy is
distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or
mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned
argument. The word philosophy is of Ancient Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía),
meaning "love of knowledge", "love of wisdom"

Subdivisions of philosophy
 Aesthetics - the study of beauty, judgments of sentiment, or taste. Aesthetics is
closely associated with the philosophy of art.

 Ethics or moral Philosophy is concerned with questions of how persons ought to

act or if such questions are answerable. The main branches of ethics are meta-
ethics (sometimes called "analytic ethics"), normative ethics and applied ethics.
Metaethics concerns the nature of ethical thought, comparison of various ethical
systems, whether there are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths could be
known. Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality. Plato's early dialogues
include a search for definitions of virtue- study of the right, the good, and the
valuable. Includes study of applied ethics. It may be subdvided into
Applied Ethics
Bio ethics
Business ethics
Environmental Ethics

Metaphysics investigates the nature of being and the world. Traditional branches
are cosmology and ontology.

3

Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether
knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the challenge posed
by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief and justification.

Political Philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of
individuals and communities to the state. It includes questions about law,
property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen.

Logic deals with patterns of thinking that lead from true premises to true
conclusions. Beginning in the late 19th century, mathematicians such as Frege
began a mathematical treatment of logic, and today the subject of logic has two
broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now
called philosophical logic.

Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications
of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional"
problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science. In addition
to these central problems for science as a whole, many philosophers of science
consider these problems as they apply to particular sciences

Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the
philosophical study of religion, including arguments over the nature and existence
of God, religious language, miracles, prayer, the problem of evil, and the
relationship between religion and other value-systems such as science and ethics,
amongst others. It is sometimes distinguished from religious philosophy, the
philosophical thinking that is inspired and directed by religion, such as Christian
philosophy and Islamic philosophy. Instead, philosophy of religion is the
philosophical thinking about religion, which can be carried out dispassionately by
a believer and non-believer alike.[1]

Metaphilosophy (from Greek meta + philosophy) is the study of the subject and
matter, methods and aims of philosophy. It is the "philosophy of philosophy". The
recursive study of philosophy is an integral part of the philosophical enterprise
because it is intertwined with all branches of philosophy as is logic or
epistemology. Most metaphilosophy is part of either the formation or the criticism

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 of a philosophical school, but some philosophers devote their time almost
exclusively to metaphilosophy

Philosophy of Mind deals with the nature of the mind and its relationship to the
body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism. In recent
years there is an increasing connection between this branch of philosophy and
cognitive science

Philosophy of language: is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and
usage of language.

Philosophy of religion study religion its origin and basic preaching
 Social Philosophy is the philosophical study of questions about social behavior
(typically, of humans). Social philosophy addresses a wide range of subjects, from
individual meanings to legitimacy of laws, from the social contract to criteria for
revolution, from the functions of everyday actions to the effects of science on
culture, from changes in human demographics to the collective order of a wasp's
nest.It is subdivided into
Ethnophilosophy
Philosophy of Education
Philosophy of history
Philosophy Of social sciences
Political philosophy (Includes Philosophy of law)

Some basic Philosophical Questions

 What is the meaning of life?
 Do we even exist?
 Does God exist?
 Do we have free will?
 Do we have a soul?
 How can we know when something is true?
 How is a priori knowledge possible?
 The problem of universals.

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  What is beauty?
 What is consciousness?
 What is freedom?
 What is good? What is evil?
 What is justice?
 What is real?
 What is valuable?
 What are time and space?
Educational Philosophy
Application of philosophical principles in education is called educational philosophy
The philosophy of education is the study of the purpose, process, nature and ideals of
education. This can be within the context of education as a societal institution or more
broadly as the process of human existential growth, i.e. how it is that our understanding
of the world is continually transformed via physical, emotional, cognitive and
transcendental experiences
Basic Issues of Educational Philosophy
 What is education itself?
 What should be the content of education?
 What are the aims of education?
 How we can get/transfer knowledge?
 What is the nature of knowledge?
 What should be the language of instruction?

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 Section B
Greek and Western Philosophers

ARISTOTLE
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/aristotle.html
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/plato.html
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/socrates.html
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/ kant.html

LIFE OF ARISTOTLE, 384-323 B.C.

1. FAMILY BACKGROUND. Artistotle, born in Stagire, Macedonia, in 384 B.C., was
the son of a physician at the court of Amyntas, king of Macedonia.
2. YOUTH. There are conflicting accounts of his early life. It is generally believed that
Aristotle came to Athens in 366 B.C., when he was eighteen years old, and became a
student in Plato's Academy. Plato regarded Aristotle as brilliant and referred to him as the
"nous" or "the mind."
3. MARRIAGE. About the year 344 B.C. Aristotle married Pythias, the sister of
Hernias, a student and friend of his. Hernias later became dictator of the city of Atarneus
4. TUTOR. King Philip of Macedon appointed Aristotle, then age forty-one, as official
tutor of his son Alexander. (This son later conquered the Persian empire and became
known as Alexander the Great.) Aristotle succeeded Lysimachus who had taught the boy
the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Philip hoped Aristotle would help his son
to avoid some of the evil excesses of life through the study of philosophy.
 
5. UNIFICATION OF GREECE. In 338 B.C. Philip of Macedon defeated the Athenian
army at the battle of Chaeronea. He thereby effected the unification of Greece under
Macedonian rule.
6. THE LYCEUM. Aristotle, now age fifty, moved to Athens once again. He purchased
a valuable group of buildings, land and gardens, and there established a school of higher
education in philosophy. The property had been dedicated to Appollo Lyceus and the

7
school took its name, the Lyceum, from that of the god. Aristotle's Lyceum won acclaim
for its distinguished work in the natural sciences.
7. GROWTH OF SCIENCE. When Alexander returned from his expeditions of
conquest, he brought back to his former tutor Aristotle samples of animal and vegetable
life from all over the conquered territories. Alexander also endowed Aristotle's school
with the equivalent of almost four million dollars. Thus Aristotle was able to establish the
first zoo and the first botanical garden in the world. Aristotle's scientific observations
became the world's chief source of scientific knowledge for the next thousand years.
8. TEACHING. Aristotle continued teaching in the Lyceum until 323 B.C. In the
morning, he strolled about the gardens with his regular students. The Greek descriptive
word for "walking about" came to be applied to the school itself. Thus the school was
"peripatetic," and its students and adherents were "peripatetics." Aristotle always took his
noon meal with his regular students. In the afternoon, he delivered lectures on politics,
literature, and philosophy to the populace in general.
a. The Lyceum. Two distinctive features among many at the Lyceum were:
 
 (1) Student Rule. Students at the Lyceum organized and ruled
themselves. Every ten days a different student would be elected to handle
the adminitrative duties.
 
(2) Student Research. All students were assigned tasks involving
historical or scientific research. Aristotle based many of his scientific
propositions upon this research.
9. LAST YEARS. Aristotle had publicly supported Macedonian policies which were
hateful to the subjugated Athenians. But he found continued support increasingly difficult
as Alexander, flushed with conquest, became more arrogant and more capricious in
cruelty. The political climate of Athens became dangerous for everyone, and especially
for an independent philosopher. Aristotle broke with Alexander after he, Alexander, had
Callisthenes, nephew of Aristotle, put to death for failing to reverence the ruler as a god.
Aristotle went into exile, moving to Chalcis in Euboea in 323 B.C. He died this same

8
year in Chalcis at age sixty-one.
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE
PHILOSOPHY. A full presentation of the philosophical thought of Aristotle would
require many volumes. However, some of the important points of that thought which
influence the Aristotelian educational theory can be summarized briefly. Those points
are:
 1. METAPHYSICS.
a. Reality. The universe is composed of two ultimate entities, spirit or form and
materiality or matter. All things are reducible to one or other of these basic
entities.
b. The Nature of Man. Man is a rational animal. He is animal in his possession
of a body With its physical needs and appetites. He is rational because he has a
soul. The active element of the soul is part of the universal principle of life. This
element is immortal. The passive element of the soul is the individual personality,
with memories and thoughts relating to the experiences of life. This passive
element ceases to exist with death. The soul and body form a necessary whole for
the existence of the organism. The implications of this theory are:
 
 (1) Destiny. Man has no eternal destiny. He ceases to exist as an
individual personality at death.
(2) Nature. The highest faculty in man is his spiritual nature. Man acts
according to his nature when he subordinates his physical appetites to
reason.
 
c. Teleology. There is purpose, order and intelligence in the universe, stemming
from the first being, the unmoved Mover, God.
2. EPISTEMOLOGY.
a. Source of Truth. The faculty of reason in every man can be trained, through
the principles of logic, to reason toward true conclusions.
 

9
  b. Nature of Truth. Truth is objective. For example, a true proposition does not
depend upon the mind of the individual man for its existence. Truths exist in
nature and are discoverable by the reason of man.
3. ETHICS.
a. Happiness. The highest good to which man may aspire is happiness. A truly
happy life can be assessed only upon its completion.
 b. Naturalism. A man lives happily when his actions are in accordance with his
nature. Man's spiritual nature is superior to his physical nature. The highest good
for any man is the activity of his soul.
 
c. Reason. The faculty of reason, resident in the soul of man, must guide his
every action. The physical appetites must be controlled by reason. Reason,
therefore, is the source of virtue.
d. Virtue. Man uses his reason to judge between the extremes of any given act.
The middle course constitutes virtue. For example, the mean between the two
extremes of the vice of rashness (excess of courage) and the vice of cowardice
(lack of courage) is the virtue of temperate courage.
 
 4. POLITICS.
a. Purpose. The purpose of the state is to produce human good.
b. Naturalism. Man is social by nature. He will naturally be political. The
difficulty in political philosophy is to determine how man may act reasonably and
virtuously to achieve the best political action.
c. Reason. The ideal state must be reasoned as a mean between two governmental
extremes.
 d. Constitutional Monarchy. The best form of government is a constitutional
monarchy, which is the mean between the extremes of despotism and democracy.
The constitution guarantees moderation between the demands of the wealthy and
the interests of the poor.
 e. Public Education. The state is perpetuated through the education of its
citizens. Therefore education is, of necessity, public in nature.

10
  
THE EDUCATIONALTHEORY OF ARISTOTLE
 
EDUCATION. The importance of education in the philosophy of Aristotle was great,
since the individual man could learn to use his reason to arrive at virtue, happiness, and
political harmony only through the process of education.
1. AIM OF EDUCATION. The purpose of education is to produce a good man. Man is
not good by nature. He must learn to control his animal activities through the use of
reason. Only when man behaves by habit and reason, according to his nature as a rational
being, is he capable of happiness. Education must aim at the development of the full
potentialities of each man. It must seek the development of man's intellectual capacities
to their fullest extent. It must aim also at developing each individual's body to its highest
level of health and strength.
2. EDUCATION OF WOMEN. Women were considered inferior to men. The nature of
women suggested that their proper function was fulfilled exclusively in the home.
Women would not be educated with men. They would receive training in gymnastics and
domestic arts to enable them to manage households, to bear and raise children, and to
please and be obedient to their husbands.
3. EDUCATION OF MEN. Since citizenship would extend only to the aristocracy,
which included rulers, soldiers, and priests, education would be given exclusively to this
group. The farmer, laborer, merchant, and slave would be trained in whatever specific
skills were required of them. Training in industrial arts or vocational skills is not
education. Education is that which liberates man, enabling him to live his leisured
existence according to his full potentialities. Education is therefore a practical means to
the end of achieving the acme of man's nature.
4. THE CONTENT OF EDUCATION. Education must not serve any mean or
vocational activity. These activities are the functions of slaves. The subject material must
train the future rulers in the use of reason. Future rulers must learn obedience and
responsibility before they rule. We may infer from the curriculum of the Academy that
the following subjects would be taught:

11
 a. Basics. These would include reading, writing and mathematics (not for
purposes of trade, but as a preparation for the intellectual abstractions of higher
mathematics).
b. Natural Sciences. Aristotle emphasized the natural sciences of astronomy,
biology, physiology, zoology, chemistry and physics.
 
c. Physical Education. The training of the body is important to the physical well-
being of every citizen.
d. Humanities. Rhetoric, grammar, poetry, politics and philosophy would be
important subjects. During the early education of the child, Aristotle would have
the state legislature censor the material which would be read by children.
5. THE METHOD OF EDUCATION. Aristotle placed habit high in the learning
process. Man learns by nature, by habit, and by reason. Consequently, the teacher would
organize materials according to the laws of reason. Repetitive drill would be used to
reinforce what was understood by reason.an elementary knowledge of reading and
writing. Arithmetic was never developed to a sophisticated extent because of the
awkward method of writing numerals.
. 
PLATO
 LIFE OF PLATO, 427-347 B.C.
1. FAMILY BACKGROUND. Plato was born into an aristocratic and wealthy Athenian
family. His father traced his ancestry in a direct line back to the early kings of Athens.
His mother was the niece of the wealthy nobleman, Critias and the sister of the rich and
famous Charmides. Both Critias and Charmides were students of Socrates.
2. YOUTH.
a. His Name. Plato's given name was Aristocles, meaning "the best" and
"renowned." He acquired the name of Plato in his youth because of his wide
shoulders.
b. Outstanding Accomplishments. He excelled in every area of youthful
achievement. He was outstanding in sports, in music and in academics.

12
 c. Military Hero. During the war with Sparta, Plato won the Athenian prize for
bravery.
d. Student of Socrates. In 407 B.C., at the age of twenty, Plato became a student
of Socrates.
4. DISILLUSIONMENT WITH DEMOCRACY. In 404 B.C. Plato witnessed the
death of his uncle, Critias, during the civil war between the aristocrats and the democrats.
Again, in 399 B.C., he witnessed the condemnation and execution of his beloved Socrates
by the democratic regime led by Anyutus.
 5. VOLUNTARY EXILE. Plato left his native city immediately following the
execution of Socrates. He visited Megara, Cyrene and Egypt. After a brief return to
Athens in 395 B.C., Plato continued his wanderings. In Syracuse he was sold into
slavery. Plato raised three thousand drachmas through his friends to buy back his
freedom. He returned to Athens in 387 B.C.
6.THE ACADEMY. In 386 B.C. Plato purchased a recreation grove dedicated to the god
Academus. This became the location of his school.
a. Tuition Free. The students of the Academy paid no set fee. It was expected that
wealthier students would give gifts. It is believed that Dionysius II gave as his gift
a sum equivalent to about a half-million dollars in American currency.
b. Coeducational. Both men and women were welcome to study at the Academy.
c. Entrance Requirements. The Academy accepted only advanced students who
possessed a knowledge of geometry.
d. Curriculum. The course of study included the following subjects:
 
(1) Higher Mathematics (2) Astronomy (3) Music (4) Literature (5) Law
(6) History (7) Philosophy.
 
e. Teaching Method. Plato lectured, utilizing his vast knowledge to present an
organized body of information to his students. He also made use of Socratic
discussion by dialogue as a method of scientific investigation and instruction. At
times problems would be assigned on an individual basis.
 

13
7. LAST YEARS. Plato died around the year 347 B.C. He continued to teach until the
end, winning the admiration and love of his students and fellow Athenians.
8. IMPORTANCE. Plato is considered to be one of the most important philosophers of
all time. His educational and philosophical theories continue to influence countless
thousands. Whitehead, commenting on Plato's contribution to philosophy, said that every
philosophy after Plato is but a footnote to Platonic thought.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO
 PHILOSOPHY. These are some important aspects of Platonic philosophy:
1. METAPHYSICS. Ultimate reality is spiritual in nature. Plato explains in the Timaeus
the necessity of postulating a prior idea or form for every material object. For example,
the idea of a house must exist before the material shape can take place. Where any house
exists, it conforms to the general idea of house.
a. The Nature and Destiny of Man. Man has an individual soul chained to a
material body. The soul is liberated at death. In the tenth book of The Republic,
Plato states that the Proper purpose of the soul is justice. The just soul will be
rewarded by God following death. Suffering in life is the result of the evil one did
in a prior existence. After man's death, the soul chooses its future body and
destiny. "The gods are blameless."
 
2. EPISTEMOLOGY. Platonic epistemology was affected by consideration of:
a. Source of Knowledge. Knowledge is a matter of recalling ideas that are innate
in the soul.
 
b. A Priori Truths. All ideas are eternal and true. Man does not know truth
through the senses. The senses mislead and deceive man. Ideas are within man's
soul. Man need not experience any outward events in order to know. He turns
inward, making his life more spiritual and God-like, so that, free of the limitations
of the senses, he approaches the spiritual source of knowledge.
 
c. Rationalism. Each man is able to arrive at innate truths through the use of his
reason.

14
  
d.Absolute Truth. All truths are eternal and absolute. What is true today will
always be true.
 
e. Test of Truth. Something is known as true when the proposition in the mind is
logically consistent with the eternal idea.
3. POLITICS AND ETHICS. Plato believed that justice is the most important virtue.
Justice can exist only in a just state. Features of Plato's ideal state are:
a. Rule by the Best. The ideal government would be ruled by the men or women
who demonstrate ability and aptitude for ruling.
b. Organization of The Just State -Plato's Utopia.
 
(1) The Guardians. The ruling group would be made up of philosopher-
kings especially trained for government administration. This group would
never marry nor own property.
 (2) The Warriors. A group of warriors would be trained from youth in
military skills in order to protect the state.
 (3) The Workers. This group would do all farming and other work
necessary to feed the people.
 
 c. Virtue. The proper virtues for each group would include:
 
(1) Wisdom. The ruling guardians would have wisdom.
(2) Courage. The warriors would have courage.
(3) Temperance. The workers would have temperance.
 
d. The Virtuous State. The state would be just when its citizens had wisdom,
courage, and temperance. Each citizen would serve the state to the best of his
ability. Man would be an organism in the body of the state. The individual would
be subordinated to the state.

15
 e. Eugenics. Although Plato would permit friendship between the sexes in his
utopia, the procreation of children would be controlled by the government.
Through the careful selection of mates, the race would be strengthened by
improved children. Only men above the age of thirty and below forty-five, and
women above the age of twenty and below forty, would be permitted to have
children. Any child born in violation of the state laws would be abandoned
outside the walls of the city.
 
THE EDUCATIONAL THEORY OF PLATO
EDUCATION. Major ideas in Platonic educational theory are:
1. EDUCATION FOR ALL. Plato would educate every boy and girl to the limits of
their abilities.
2. STATE EDUCATION. All children would be taken from the parents and educated by
the state.
3. AIM OF EDUCATION.
a. Civil Servants. To produce future servants of the state.
b. Rulers. To develop virtuous intellectuals among the future rulers.
c. Warriors. To glorify courage and military skill among the warriors.
d. Workers. To develop competent, obedient, and temperate workers.
e.Social Disposition. To develop a social disposition among all citizens.
 
f. Discipline. To train the character of each citizen so that he may control his
appetites, subordinating the senses to reason.
 
 4. ORGANIZATION AND CURRICULUM.
a. Elementary. All boys and girls would be educated together. They would study
mathematics, literature, poetry, and music until they were eighteen years of age.
 
b. Military Training. The next two years of the youth's life would be devoted to
physical education alone. Thereafter, the best youths would be selected for the
higher education given to future guardians of the state.

16
  
c. Higher Education. Between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, the future
guardian would receive a higher education to prepare him for ruling the state. His
studies would include mathematics, music, and literature. At the age of thirty he
would have enough maturity to begin his study of philosophy. At thirty-five, his
formal education would cease and he would enter upon a minor administrative
position, prior to undertaking more important governing positions.
 
 5. TEACHING METHOD. Plato recommended making learning as close to play as
possible on the elementary levels. Upon the higher levels of education, the student',s
reason would be trained in the processes of thinking and abstracting.
Plato
First published Sat 20 Mar, 2004
Plato (429-347 B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the
Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential
authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his
works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but
the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so
richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in
some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been
philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the
first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so
self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and
ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he
grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived — a rigorous and
systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues,
armed with a distinctive method — can be called his invention. Few other authors in the
history of philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who
studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.

17
1. Plato's central doctrines
Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his
writings: The world that appears to our senses is in some way defective and filled with
error, but there is a more real and perfect realm, populated by entities (called “forms” or
“ideas”) that are eternal, changeless, and in some sense paradigmatic for the structure and
character of our world. Among the most important of these abstract objects (as they are
now called, because they are not located in space or time) are goodness, beauty, equality,
bigness, likeness, unity, being, sameness, difference, change, and changelessness. (These
terms — “goodness”, “beauty”, and so on — are often capitalized by those who write
about Plato, in order to call attention to their exalted status; similarly for “Forms” and
“Ideas.”)
The most fundamental distinction in Plato's philosophy is between the many
observable objects that appear beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) and the one
object that is what beauty (goodness, justice, unity) really is, from which those many
beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) things receive their names and their
corresponding characteristics. Nearly every major work of Plato is, in some way, devoted
to or dependent on this distinction. Many of them explore the ethical and practical
consequences of conceiving of reality in this bifurcated way. We are urged to transform
our values by taking to heart the greater reality of the forms and the defectiveness of the
corporeal world. We must recognize that the soul is a different sort of object from the
body — so much so that it does not depend on the existence of the body for its
functioning, and can in fact grasp the nature of the forms far more easily when it is not
encumbered by its attachment to anything corporeal. In a few of Plato's works, we are
told that the soul always retains the ability to recollect what it once grasped of the forms,
when it was disembodied (see especially Meno), and that the lives we lead are to some
extent a punishment or reward for choices we made in a previous existence (see
especially the final pages of Republic). But in many of Plato's writings, it is asserted or
assumed that true philosophers — those who recognize how important it is to distinguish
the one (the one thing that goodness is, or virtue is, or courage is) from the many (the
many things that are called good or virtuous or courageous ) — are in a position to
become ethically superior to unenlightened human beings, because of the greater degree

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of insight they can acquire. To understand which things are good and why they are good
(and if we are not interested in such questions, how can we become good?), we must
investigate the form of good.
2. Plato's puzzles
Although these propositions are often identified by Plato's readers as forming a large part
of the core of his philosophy, many of his greatest admirers and most careful students
point out that few, if any, of his writings can accurately be described as mere advocacy of
a cut-and-dried group of propositions. Often Plato's works exhibit a certain degree of
dissatisfaction and puzzlement with even those doctrines that are being recommended for
our consideration. For example, the forms are sometimes described as hypotheses (see for
example Phaedo). The form of good in particular is described as something of a mystery
whose real nature is elusive and as yet unknown (Republic). Puzzles are raised — and not
overtly answered — about how any of the forms can be known and how we are to talk
about them without falling into contradiction (Parmenides), or about what it is to know
anything (Theaetetus) or to name anything (Cratylus). When one compares Plato with
some of the other philosophers who are often ranked with him — Aristotle, Aquinas, and
Kant, for example — he can be recognized to be far more exploratory, incompletely
systematic, elusive, and playful than they. That, along with his gifts as a writer and as a
creator of vivid character and dramatic setting, is one of the reasons why he is often
thought to be the ideal author from whom one should receive one's introduction to
philosophy. His readers are not presented with an elaborate system of doctrines held to be
so fully worked out that they are in no need of further exploration or development;
instead, what we often receive from Plato is a few key ideas together with a series of
suggestions and problems about how those ideas are to be interrogated and deployed.
Readers of a Platonic dialogue are drawn into thinking for themselves about the issues
raised, if they are to learn what the dialogue itself might be thought to say about them.
Many of his works therefore give their readers a strong sense of philosophy as a living
and unfinished subject (perhaps one that can never be completed) to which they
themselves will have to contribute. All of Plato's works are in some way meant to leave
further work for their readers, but among the ones that most conspicuously fall into this
category are: Euthyphro, Laches, Charmides, Euthydemus, Theaetetus, and Parmenides.

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3. Dialogue, setting, character
There is another feature of Plato's writings that makes him distinctive among the great
philosophers and colors our experience of him as an author. Nearly everything he wrote
takes the form of a dialogue. (There is one striking exception: his Apology, which
purports to be the speech that Socrates gave in his defense — the Greek word apologia
means “defense” — when, in 399, he was legally charged and convicted of the crime of
impiety. However, even there, Socrates is presented at one point addressing questions of
a philosophical character to his accuser, Meletus, and responding to them. In addition,
since antiquity, a collection of 13 letters has been included among his collected works,
but their authenticity as compositions of Plato is not universally accepted among
scholars, and many or most of them are almost certainly not his. Most of them purport to
be the outcome of his involvement in the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek
city located in Sicily and ruled by tyrants.)
We are of course familiar with the dialogue form through our acquaintance with the
literary genre of drama. But Plato's dialogues do not try to create a fictional world for the
purposes of telling a story, as many literary dramas do; nor do they invoke an earlier
mythical realm, like the creations of the great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides. Nor are they all presented in the form of a drama: in many of them, a
single speaker narrates events in which he participated. They are philosophical
discussions — “debates” would, in some cases, also be an appropriate word — among a
small number of interlocutors, many of whom can be identified as real historical figures;
and often they begin with a depiction of the setting of the discussion — a visit to a prison,
a wealthy man's house, a celebration over drinks, a religious festival, a visit to the
gymnasium, a stroll outside the city's wall, a long walk on a hot day. As a group, they
form vivid portraits of a social world, and are not purely intellectual exchanges between
characterless and socially unmarked speakers. (At any rate, that is true of a large number
of Plato's interlocutors. However, it must be added that in some of his works the speakers
display little or no character. See, for example, Sophist and Statesman — dialogues in
which a visitor from the town of Elea in Southern Italy leads the discussion; and Laws, a
discussion between an unnamed Athenian and two named fictional characters, one from
Crete and the other from Sparta.) In many of his dialogues (though not all), Plato is not

20
only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the
social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his
interlocutors. Some of the dialogues that most evidently fall into this category are
Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Euthydemus, and Symposium.
4. Socrates
There is one interlocutor who speaks in nearly all of Plato's dialogues, being completely
absent only in Laws, which ancient testimony tells us was one of his latest works: that
figure is Socrates. Like nearly everyone else who appears in Plato's works, he is not an
invention of Plato: there really was a Socrates. Plato was not the only author whose
personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more
dramatic works. Socrates is one of the principal characters of Aristophanes' comedy,
Clouds; and Xenophon, a historian and military leader, wrote, like Plato, both an Apology
of Socrates (an account of Socrates' trial) and other works in which Socrates appears as a
principal speaker. Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written
by other contemporaries of Socrates (Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo), and
these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others. So, when Plato wrote
dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre
that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about
the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which
he was involved. Aristophanes' comic portrayal of Socrates is at the same time a bitter
critique of him and other leading intellectual figures of the day (the 420s B.C.), but from
Plato, Xenophon, and the other composers (in the 390's and later) of “Socratic
discourses” (as Aristotle calls this body of writings) we receive a far more favorable
impression.
Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who
knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who
came under his influence to write about him. But the portraits composed by Aristophanes,
Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the
ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like.
Of these, Clouds has the least value as an indication of what was distinctive of Socrates'
mode of philosophizing: after all, it is not intended as a philosophical work, and although

21
it may contain a few lines that are characterizations of features unique to Socrates, for the
most part it is an attack on a philosophical type — the long-haired, unwashed, amoral
investigator into abstruse empirical phenomena — rather than a depiction of Socrates
himself. Xenophon's depiction of Socrates, whatever its value as historical testimony
(which may be considerable), is generally thought to lack the philosophical subtlety and
depth of Plato's. At any rate, no one (certainly not Xenophon himself) takes Xenophon to
be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not
encountering a great philosophical mind. But that is what we experience when we read
Plato. We may read Plato's Socratic dialogues because we are (as Plato evidently wanted
us to be) interested in who Socrates was and what he stood for, but even if we have little
or no desire to learn about the historical Socrates, we will want to read Plato because in
doing so we are encountering an author of the greatest philosophical significance. No
doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to
say where to draw the line between him and his teacher (more about this below in section
12). But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the
words of Socrates (any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses).
His use of a figure called “Socrates” in so many of his dialogues should not be taken to
mean that Plato is merely preserving for a reading public the lessons he learned from his
teacher.
5. Plato's indirectness
Socrates, it should be kept in mind, does not appear in all of Plato's works. He makes no
appearance in Laws, and there are several dialogues (Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus) in
which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the
conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias, presents a long and elaborate,
continuous discourse of their own. Plato's dialogues are not a static literary form; not only
do his topics vary, not only do his speakers vary, but the role played by questions and
answers is never the same from one dialogue to another. (Symposium, for example, is a
series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology, Menexenus,
Protagoras, Crito, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Critias; in fact, one might reasonably
question whether these works are properly called dialogues). But even though Plato
constantly adapted “the dialogue form” (a commonly used term, and convenient enough,

22
so long as we do not think of it as an unvarying unity) to suit his purposes, it is striking
that throughout his career as a writer he never engaged in a form of composition that was
widely used in his time and was soon to become the standard mode of philosophical
address: Plato never became a writer of philosophical treatises, even though the writing
of treatises (for example, on rhetoric, medicine, and geometry) was a common practice
among his predecessors and contemporaries. (The closest we come to an exception to this
generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which Plato commits
himself to several philosophical points — while insisting, at the same time, that no
philosopher will write about the deepest matters. But, as noted above, the authenticity of
Plato's letters is a matter of great controversy; and in any case, the author of the seventh
letter declares his opposition to the writing of philosophical books. Whether Plato wrote
it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to
be so regarded.) In all of his writings — except in the letters, if any of them are genuine
— Plato never speaks to his audience directly and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he
does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his
dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning,
arguing, and so on. Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly.
6. Can we know Plato's mind?
This feature of Plato's works raises important questions about how they are to be read,
and has led to considerable controversy among those who study his writings. Since he
does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure
ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him (as opposed to one of his
characters)? Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what
they were? Are we justified in speaking of “the philosophy of Plato”? Or, if we attribute
some view to Plato himself, are we violating the spirit in which he intended the dialogues
to be read? Is his whole point, in refraining from addressing his readers as an author of
treatises, to discourage them from asking what their author believes and to encourage
them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters
are saying? Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his
purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way? There are other
important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: for example, why does

23
Socrates play such a prominent role in so many of them, and why, in some of these
works, does Socrates play a smaller role, or none at all?
Once these questions are raised and their difficulty acknowledged, it is tempting, in
reading Plato's works and reflecting upon them, to adopt a strategy of extreme caution.
Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to
his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine
oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae. One cannot be
faulted, for example, if one notes that, in Plato's Republic, Socrates argues that justice in
the soul consists in each part of the soul doing its own. It is equally correct to point out
that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments
that Socrates gives for that definition of justice. Perhaps there is no need for us to say
more — to say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be
defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this
definition. And we might adopt this same “minimalist” approach to all of Plato's works.
After all, is it of any importance to discover what went on inside his head as he wrote —
to find out whether he himself endorsed the ideas he put in the mouths of his characters,
whether they constitute “the philosophy of Plato”? Should we not read his works for their
intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of
their author? We know what Plato's characters say — and isn't that all that we need, for
the purpose of engaging with his works philosophically?
But the fact that we know what Plato's characters say does not show that by refusing to
entertain any hypotheses about what the author of these works is trying to communicate
to his readers we can understand what those characters mean by what say. We should not
lose sight of this obvious fact: it is Plato, not any of his dramatis personae, who is
reaching out to a readership and trying to influence their beliefs and actions by means of
his literary actions. When we ask whether an argument put forward by a character in
Plato's works should be read as an effort to persuade us of its conclusion, or is better read
as a revelation of how foolish that speaker is, we are asking about what Plato (not that
character) is trying to lead us to believe, through the writing that he is presenting to our
attention. We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is
saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best

24
understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker
who uses that word. We should not suppose that we can derive much philosophical value
from Plato's writings if we refuse to entertain any thoughts about what use he intends us
to make of the things his speakers say. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending
what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if
we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself
indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his
dialogues.
Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by
supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become
convinced (or more convinced than they already are) of certain propositions — for
example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be
acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on. Why, after all, did Plato write
so many works (for example: Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Phaedrus, Theaetetus,
Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Philebus, Laws) in which one character dominates the
conversation (often, but not always, Socrates) and convinces the other speakers (at times,
after encountering initial resistance) that they should accept or reject certain conclusions,
on the basis of the arguments presented? The only plausible way of answering that
question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he
might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the
arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor. (It is noteworthy that in
Laws, the principal speaker — an unnamed visitor from Athens — proposes that laws
should be accompanied by “preludes” in which their philosophical basis is given as full
an explanation as possible. The educative value of written texts is thus explicitly
acknowledged by Plato's dominant speaker. If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that
is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written texts —
for example, his own dialogues — can also serve an educative function.)
This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading
and studying his works. On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his
writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: in one of his works, he
has Socrates warn his readers against relying solely on books, or taking them to be

25
authoritative. They are, Socrates says, best used as devices that stimulate the readers'
memory of discussions they have had (Phaedrus 274e-276d). In those face-to-face
conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and
conclusions are drawn. Plato's writings, he implies in this passage from Phaedrus, will
work best when conversational seeds have already been sown for the arguments they
contain.
7. Socrates as the dominant speaker
If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the
conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors (or to persuade us of the refutations
of their opponents), we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the
dominant speaker in his dialogues. Presumably the contemporary audience for whom
Plato was writing included many of Socrates' admirers. They would be predisposed to
think that a character called “Socrates” would have all of the intellectual brilliance and
moral passion of the historical person after whom he is named (especially since Plato
often makes special efforts to give his “Socrates” a life-like reality, and has him refer to
his trial or to the characteristics by which he was best known); and the aura surrounding
the character called “Socrates” would give the words he speaks in the dialogue
considerable persuasive power. Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates
for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason
for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works. (More about this in section
12.)
Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so
often makes Socrates his principal speaker. For example, we could say that Plato was
trying to undermine the reputation of the historical Socrates by writing a series of works
in which a figure called “Socrates” manages to persuade a group of naïve and
sycophantic interlocutors to accept absurd conclusions on the basis of sophistries. But
anyone who has read some of Plato's works will quickly recognize the utter implausibility
of that alternative way of reading them. Plato could have written into his works clear
signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors
are foolish to accept them. But there are many signs in such works as Meno, Phaedo,
Republic, and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction. (And the great admiration

26
Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology.) The reader is given every
encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his
interlocutors (on those occasions when he does succeed) is that his arguments are
powerful ones. The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept
those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of
careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we
cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him,
their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each
other.
8. Links between the dialogues
There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and
believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people
his characters are and what they say to each other. When we undertake a serious study of
Plato, and go beyond reading just one of his works, we are inevitably confronted with the
question of how we are to link the work we are currently reading with the many others
that Plato composed. Admittedly, many of his dialogues make a fresh start in their setting
and their interlocutors: typically, Socrates encounters a group of people many of whom
do not appear in any other work of Plato, and so, as an author, he needs to give his
readers some indication of their character and social circumstances. But often Plato's
characters make statements that would be difficult for readers to understand unless they
had already read one or more of his other works. For example, in Phaedo (73a-b),
Socrates says that one argument for the immortality of the soul derives from the fact that
when people are asked certain kinds of questions, and are aided with diagrams, they
answer in a way that shows that they are not learning afresh from the diagrams or from
information provided in the questions, but are drawing their knowledge of the answers
from within themselves. That remark would be of little worth for an audience that had not
already read Meno. Several pages later, Socrates tells his interlocutors that his argument
about our prior knowledge of equality itself (the form of equality) applies no less to other
forms — to the beautiful, good, just, pious and to all the other things that are involved in
their asking and answering of questions (75d). This reference to asking and answering
questions would not be well understood by a reader who had not yet encountered a series

27
of dialogues in which Socrates asks his interlocutors questions of the form, “What is X?”
(Euthyphro: what is piety? Laches: what is courage? Charmides: What is moderation?
Hippias Major: what is beauty?). Evidently, Plato is assuming that readers of Phaedo
have already read several of his other works, and will bring to bear on the current
argument all of the lessons that they have learned from them. In some of his writings,
Plato's characters refer ahead to the continuation of their conversations on another day, or
refer back to conversations they had recently: thus Plato signals to us that we should read
Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman sequentially; and similarly, since the opening of
Timaeus refers us back to Republic, Plato is indicating to his readers that they must seek
some connection between these two works.
These features of the dialogues show Plato's awareness that he cannot entirely start from
scratch in every work that he writes. He will introduce new ideas and raise fresh
difficulties, but he will also expect his readers to have already familiarized themselves
with the conversations held by the interlocutors of other dialogues — even when there is
some alteration among those interlocutors. (Meno does not re-appear in Phaedo; Timaeus
was not among the interlocutors of Republic.) Why does Plato have his dominant
characters (Socrates, the Eleatic visitor) reaffirm some of the same points from one
dialogue to another, and build on ideas that were made in earlier works? If the dialogues
were merely meant as provocations to thought — mere exercises for the mind — there
would be no need for Plato to identify his leading characters with a consistent and ever-
developing doctrine. For example, Socrates continues to maintain, over a large number of
dialogues, that there are such things as forms— and there is no better explanation for this
continuity than to suppose that Plato is recommending that doctrine to his readers.
Furthermore, when Socrates is replaced as the principal investigator by the visitor from
Elea (in Sophist and Statesman), the existence of forms continues to be taken for granted,
and the visitor criticizes any conception of reality that excludes such incorporeal objects
as souls and forms. The Eleatic visitor, in other words, upholds a metaphysics that is, in
many respects, like the one that Socrates is made to defend. Again, the best explanation
for this continuity is that Plato is using both characters — Socrates and the Eleatic visitor
— as devices for the presentation and defense of a doctrine that he embraces and wants
his readers to embrace as well.

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9. Does Plato change his mind about forms?
This way of reading Plato's dialogues does not presuppose that he never changes his mind
about anything — that whatever any of his main interlocutors uphold in one dialogue will
continue to be presupposed or affirmed elsewhere without alteration. It is, in fact, a
difficult and delicate matter to determine, on the basis of our reading of the dialogues,
whether Plato means to modify or reject in one dialogue what he has his main
interlocutor affirm in some other. One of the most intriguing and controversial questions
about his treatment of the forms, for example, is whether he concedes that his conception
of those abstract entities is vulnerable to criticism; and, if so, whether he revises some of
the assumptions he had been making about them, or develops a more elaborate picture of
them that allows him to respond to that criticism. In Parmenides, the principal
interlocutor (not Socrates — he is here portrayed as a promising, young philosopher in
need of further training — but rather the pre-Socratic from Elea who gives the dialogue
its name: Parmenides) subjects the forms to withering criticism, and then consents to
conduct an inquiry into the nature of oneness that has no overt connection to his critique
of the forms. Does the discussion of oneness (a baffling series of contradictions — or at
any rate, propositions that seem, on the surface, to be contradictions) in some way help
address the problems raised about forms? That is one way of reading the dialogue. And if
we do read it in this way, does that show that Plato has changed his mind about some of
the ideas about forms he inserted into earlier dialogues? Can we find dialogues in which
we encounter a “new theory of forms” — that is, a way of thinking of forms that carefully
steers clear of the assumptions about forms that led to Parmenides' critique? It is not easy
to say. But we cannot even raise this as an issue worth pondering unless we presuppose
that behind the dialogues there stands a single mind that is using these writings as a way
of hitting upon the truth, and of bringing that truth to the attention of others. If we find
Timaeus (the principal interlocutor of the dialogue named after him) and the Eleatic
visitor of the Sophist and Statesman talking about forms in a way that is entirely
consistent with the way Socrates talks about forms in Phaedo and Republic, then there is
only one reasonable explanation for that consistency: Plato believes that their way of
talking about forms is correct, or is at least strongly supported by powerful
considerations. If, on the other hand, we find that Timaeus or the Eleatic visitor talks

29
about forms in a way that does not harmonize with the way Socrates conceives of those
abstract objects, in the dialogues that assign him a central role as director of the
conversation, then the most plausible explanation for these discrepancies is that Plato has
changed his mind about the nature of these entities. It would be implausible to suppose
that Plato himself had no convictions about forms, and merely wants to give his readers
mental exercise by composing dialogues in which different leading characters talk about
these objects in discordant ways.
10. Does Plato change his mind about politics?
The same point — that we must view the dialogues as the product of a single mind, a
single philosopher, though perhaps one that changes his mind — can be made in
connection with the politics of Plato's works.
It is noteworthy, to begin with, that Plato is, among other things, a political philosopher.
For he gives expression, in several of his writings (particular Phaedo), to a yearning to
escape from the tawdriness of ordinary human relations. (Similarly, he evinces a sense of
the ugliness of the sensible world, whose beauty pales in comparison with that of the
forms.) Because of this, it would have been all too easy for Plato to turn his back entirely
on practical reality, and to confine his speculations to theoretical questions. Some of his
works — Parmenides is a stellar example — do confine themselves to exploring
questions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on practical life. But it is remarkable
how few of his works fall into this category. Even the highly abstract questions raised in
Sophist about the nature of being and not-being are, after all, embedded in a search for
the definition of sophistry; and thus they call to mind the question whether Socrates
should be classified as a sophist — whether, in other words, sophists are to be despised
and avoided. In any case, despite the great sympathy Plato expresses for the desire to
shed one's body and live in an incorporeal world, he devotes an enormous amount of
energy to the task of understanding the world we live in, appreciating its limited beauty,
and improving it.
His tribute to the mixed beauty of the sensible world, in Timaeus, consists in his
depiction of it as the outcome of divine efforts to mold reality in the image of the forms,
using simple geometrical patterns and harmonious arithmetic relations as building blocks.
The desire to transform human relations is given expression in a far larger number of

30
works. Socrates presents himself, in Plato's Apology, as a man who does not have his
head in the clouds (that is part of Aristophanes' charge against him in Clouds). He does
not want to escape from the everyday world but to make it better. He presents himself, in
Gorgias, as the only Athenian who has tried his hand at the true art of politics.
Similarly, the Socrates of Republic devotes a considerable part of his discussion to the
critique of ordinary social institutions — the family, private property, and rule by the
many. The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to
transform (or, at any rate, to improve) political life, not to escape from it (although it is
acknowledged that the desire to escape is an honorable one: the best sort of rulers greatly
prefer the contemplation of divine reality to the governance of the city). And if we have
any further doubts that Plato does take an interest in the practical realm, we need only
turn to Laws. A work of such great detail and length about voting procedures,
punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials can only have
been produced by someone who wants to contribute something to the improvement of the
lives we lead in this sensible and imperfect realm. Further evidence of Plato's interest in
practical matters can be drawn from his letters, if they are genuine. In most of them, he
presents himself as having a deep interest in educating (with the help of his friend, Dion)
the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius II, and thus reforming that city's politics.
Just as any attempt to understand Plato's views about forms must confront the question
whether his thoughts about them developed or altered over time, so too our reading of
him as a political philosopher must be shaped by a willingness to consider the possibility
that he changed his mind. For example, on any plausible reading of Republic, Plato
evinces a deep antipathy to rule by the many. Socrates tells his interlocutors that the only
politics that should engage them are those of the anti-democratic regime he depicts as the
paradigm of a good constitution. And yet in Laws, the Athenian visitor proposes a
detailed legislative framework for a city in which non-philosophers (people who have
never heard of the forms, and have not been trained to understand them) are given
considerable powers as rulers. Plato would not have invested so much time in the creation
of this comprehensive and lengthy work, had he not believed that the creation of a
political community ruled by those who are philosophically unenlightened is a project
that deserves the support of his readers. Has Plato changed his mind, then? Has he re-

31
evaluated the highly negative opinion he once held of those who are innocent of
philosophy? Did he at first think that the reform of existing Greek cities, with all of their
imperfections, is a waste of time — but then decide that it is an endeavor of great value?
(And if so, what led him to change his mind?) Answers to these questions can be justified
only by careful attention to what he has his interlocutors say. But it would be utterly
implausible to suppose that these developmental questions need not be raised, on the
grounds that Republic and Laws each has its own cast of characters, and that the two
works therefore cannot come into contradiction with each other. According to this
hypothesis (one that must be rejected), because it is Socrates (not Plato) who is critical of
democracy in Republic, and because it is the Athenian visitor (not Plato) who recognizes
the merits of rule by the many in Laws, there is no possibility that the two dialogues are
in tension with each other. Against this hypothesis, we should say: Since both Republic
and Laws are works in which Plato is trying to move his readers towards certain
conclusions, by having them reflect on certain arguments — these dialogues are not
barred from having this feature by their use of interlocutors — it would be an evasion of
our responsibility as readers and students of Plato not to ask whether what one of them
advocates is compatible with what the other advocates. If we answer that question
negatively, we have some explaining to do: what led to this change? Alternatively, if we
conclude that the two works are compatible, we must say why the appearance of conflict
is illusory.
11. The historical Socrates: early, middle, and late dialogues
Many contemporary scholars find it plausible that when Plato embarked on his career as a
philosophical writer, he composed, in addition to his Apology of Socrates, a number of
short ethical dialogues that contain little or nothing in the way of positive philosophical
doctrine, but are mainly devoted to portraying the way in which Socrates punctured the
pretensions of his interlocutors and forced them to realize that they are unable to offer
satisfactory definitions of the ethical terms they used, or satisfactory arguments for their
moral beliefs. According to this way of placing the dialogues into a rough chronological
order — associated especially with Gregory Vlastos's name (see especially his Socrates
Ironist and Moral Philosopher, chapters 2 and 3) — Plato, at this point of his career, was
content to use his writings primarily for the purpose of preserving the memory of

32
Socrates and making plain the superiority of his hero, in intellectual skill and moral
seriousness, to all of his contemporaries — particularly those among them who claimed
to be experts on religious, political, or moral matters. Into this category of early dialogues
(they are also sometimes called “Socratic” dialogues) are placed: Charmides, Crito,
Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, and
Protagoras, (Some scholars hold that we can tell which of these come later during Plato's
early period. For example, it is sometimes said that Protagoras and Gorgias are later,
because of their greater length and philosophical complexity. Other dialogues — for
example, Charmides and Lysis -- are thought not to be among Plato's earliest within this
early group, because in them Socrates appears to be playing a more active role in shaping
the progress of the dialogue: that is, he has more ideas of his own.) In comparison with
many of Plato's other dialogues, these “Socratic” works contain little in the way of
metaphysical, epistemological, or methodological speculation, and they therefore fit well
with the way Socrates characterizes himself in Plato's Apology: as a man who leaves
investigations of high falutin’ matters (which are “in the sky and below the earth”) to
wiser heads, and confines all of his investigations to the question how one should live
one's life. Aristotle describes Socrates as someone whose interests were restricted to only
one branch of philosophy — the realm of the ethical; and he also says that he was in the
habit of asking definitional questions to which he himself lacked answers (Metaphysics
987b1, Sophistical Refutations 183b7). That testimony gives added weight to the widely
accepted hypothesis that there is a group of dialogues — the ones mentioned above as his
early works — in which Plato used the dialogue form as a way of portraying the
philosophical activities of the historical Socrates (although, of course, he might also have
used them in other ways as well — for example to suggest and begin to explore
philosophical difficulties raised by them).
But at a certain point — so says this hypothesis about the chronology of the dialogues —
Plato began to use his works to advance ideas that were his own creations rather than
those of Socrates, although he continued to use the name “Socrates” for the interlocutor
who presented and argued for these new ideas. The speaker called “Socrates” now begins
to move beyond and depart from the historical Socrates: he has views about the
methodology that should be used by philosophers (a methodology borrowed from

33
mathematics), and he argues for the immortality of the soul and the existence and
importance of the forms of beauty, justice, goodness, and the like. (By contrast, in
Apology Socrates says that no one knows what becomes of us after we die.) Phaedo is
often said to be the dialogue in which Plato first comes into his own as a philosopher who
is moving far beyond the ideas of his teacher (though it is also commonly said that we see
a new methodological sophistication and a greater interest in mathematical knowledge in
Meno). Having completed all of the dialogues that, according to this hypothesis, we
characterize as early, Plato widened the range of topics to be explored in his writings (no
longer confining himself to ethics), and placed the theory of forms (and related ideas
about language, knowledge, and love) at the center of his thinking. In these works of his
“middle” period — for example, in Phaedo, Cratylus, Symposium, Republic, and
Phaedrus — there is both a change of emphasis and of doctrine. The focus is no longer
on ridding ourselves of false ideas and self-deceit; rather, we are asked to accept
(however tentatively) a radical new conception of ourselves (now divided into three
parts), our world — or rather, our two worlds — and our need to negotiate between them.
Definitions of the most important virtue terms are finally proposed in Republic (the
search for them in some of the early dialogues having been unsuccessful): Book I of this
dialogue is a portrait of how the historical Socrates might have handled the search for a
definition of justice, and the rest of the dialogue shows how the new ideas and tools
discovered by Plato can complete the project that his teacher was unable to finish. Plato
continues to use a figure called “Socrates” as his principal interlocutor, and in this way he
creates a sense of continuity between the methods, insights, and ideals of the historical
Socrates and the new Socrates who has now become a vehicle for the articulation of his
own philosophical outlook. In doing so, he acknowledges his intellectual debt to his
teacher and appropriates for his own purposes the extraordinary prestige of the man who
was the wisest of his time.
This hypothesis about the chronology of Plato's writings has a third component: it does
not place his works into either of only two categories — the early or “Socratic”
dialogues, and all the rest — but works instead with a threefold division of early, middle,
and late. That is because, following ancient testimony, it has become a widely accepted
assumption that Laws is one of Plato's last works, and further that this dialogue shares a

34
great many stylistic affinities with a small group of others: Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus,
Critias, and Philebus. These five dialogues together with Laws are generally agreed to be
his late works, because they have much more in common with each other, when one
counts certain stylistic features apparent only to readers of Plato's Greek, than with any of
Plato's other works. (Computer counts have aided these stylometric studies, but the
isolation of a group of six dialogues by means of their stylistic commonalities was
recognized in the nineteenth century.)
It is not at all clear whether there are one or more philosophical affinities among this
group of six dialogues — that is, whether the philosophy they contain is sharply different
from that of all of the other dialogues. Plato does nothing to encourage the reader to view
these works as a distinctive and separate component of his thinking. On the contrary, he
links Sophist with Theaetetus (the conversations they present have a largely overlapping
cast of characters, and take place on successive days) no less than Sophist and Statesman.
Sophist contains, in its opening pages, a reference to the conversation of Parmenides —
and perhaps Plato is thus signaling to his readers that they should bring to bear on Sophist
the lessons that are to be drawn from Parmenides. Similarly, Timaeus opens with a
reminder of some of the principal doctrines of Republic. It could be argued, of course,
that when one looks beyond these stage-setting devices, one finds significant
philosophical changes in the six late dialogues, setting this group off from all that
preceded them. But there is no consensus that they should be read in this way. Resolving
this issue requires intensive study of the content of Plato's works. So, although it is
widely accepted that the six dialogues mentioned above belong to Plato's latest period,
there is, as yet, no agreement among students of Plato that these six form a distinctive
stage in his philosophical development.
In fact, it remains a matter of dispute whether the division of Plato's works into three
periods — early, middle, late — is a useful tool for the understanding of his thought. Of
course, it would be wildly implausible to suppose that Plato's writing career began with
such complex works as Laws, Parmenides, Phaedrus, or Republic. In light of widely
accepted assumptions about how most philosophical minds develop, it is likely that when
Plato started writing philosophical works some of the shorter and simpler dialogues were
the ones he composed: Laches, or Crito, or Ion (for example). (Similarly, Apology does

35
not advance a complex philosophical agenda or presuppose an earlier body of work; so
that too is likely to have been composed near the beginning of Plato's writing career.)
Even so, there is no good reason to eliminate the hypothesis that throughout much of his
life Plato devoted himself to writing two sorts of dialogues at the same time, moving back
and forth between them as he aged: on the one hand, introductory works whose primary
purpose is to show readers the difficulty of apparently simple philosophical problems,
and thereby to rid them of their pretensions and false beliefs; and on the other hand,
works filled with more substantive philosophical theories supported by elaborate
argumentation. Moreover, one could point to features of many of the “Socratic” dialogues
that would justify counting them in the latter category, even though the argumentation
does not concern metaphysics or methodology or invoke mathematics — Gorgias,
Protagoras, Lysis, Euthydemus, Hippias Major among them.
Plato makes it clear that both of these processes, one preceding the other, must be part of
one's philosophical education. One of his deepest methodological convictions (affirmed
in Meno, Theaetetus, and Sophist) is that in order to make intellectual progress we must
recognize that knowledge cannot be acquired by passively receiving it from others:
rather, we must work our way through problems and assess the merits of competing
theories with an independent mind. Accordingly, some of his dialogues are primarily
devices for breaking down the reader's complacency, and that is why it is essential that
they come to no positive conclusions; others are contributions to theory-construction, and
are therefore best absorbed by those who have already passed through the first stage of
philosophical development. We should not assume that Plato could have written the
preparatory dialogues only at the earliest stage of his career. Although he may well have
begun his writing career by taking up that sort of project, he may have continued writing
these “negative” works at later stages, at the same time that he was composing his theory-
constructing dialogues. For example although both Euthydemus and Charmides are
widely assumed to be early dialogues, they might have been written around the same time
as Symposium and Republic, which are generally assumed to be compositions of his
middle period — or even later.
No doubt, some of the works widely considered to be early really are such. But it is an
open question which and how many of them are. At any rate, it is clear that Plato

36
continued to write in a “Socratic” and “negative” vein even after he was well beyond the
earliest stages of his career: Theaetetus features a Socrates who is even more insistent
upon his ignorance than are the dramatic representations of Socrates in briefer and
philosophically less complex works that are reasonably assumed to be early; and like
many of those early works, Theaetetus seeks but does not find the answer to the “what is
it?” question that it relentlessly pursues — “What is knowledge?” Similarly, Parmenides,
though certainly not an early dialogue, is a work whose principal aim is to puzzle the
reader by the presentation of arguments for apparently contradictory conclusions; since it
does not tell us how it is possible to accept all of those conclusions, its principal effect on
the reader is similar to that of dialogues (many of them no doubt early) that reach only
negative conclusions. Plato uses this educational device — provoking the reader through
the presentation of opposed arguments, and leaving the contradiction unresolved — in
Protagoras (often considered an early dialogue) as well. So it is clear that even after he
was well beyond the earliest stages of his thinking, he continued to assign himself the
project of writing works whose principal aim is the presentation of unresolved
difficulties. (And, just as we should recognize that puzzling the reader continues to be his
aim even in later works, so too we should not overlook the fact that there is some
substantive theory-construction in the ethical works that are simple enough to have been
early compositions: Ion, for example, affirms a theory of poetic inspiration; and Crito
sets out the conditions under which a citizen acquires an obligation to obey civic
commands. Neither ends in failure.)
If we are justified in taking Socrates' speech in Plato's Apology to constitute reliable
evidence about what the historical Socrates was like, then whatever we find in Plato's
other works that is of a piece with that speech can also be safely attributed to Socrates. So
understood, Socrates was a moralist but (unlike Plato) not a metaphysician or
epistemologist or cosmologist. That fits with Aristotle's testimony, and Plato's way of
choosing the dominant speaker of his dialogues gives further support to this way of
distinguishing between him and Socrates. The number of dialogues that are dominated by
a Socrates who is spinning out elaborate philosophical doctrines is remarkably small:
Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, and Philebus. All of them are dominated by ethical issues:
whether to fear death, whether to be just, whom to love, the place of pleasure. Evidently,

37
Plato thinks that it is appropriate to make Socrates the major speaker in a dialogue that is
filled with positive content only when the topics explored in that work primarily have to
do with the ethical life of the individual. (The political aspects of Republic are explicitly
said to serve the larger question whether any individual, no matter what his
circumstances, should be just.) When the doctrines he wishes to present systematically
become primarily metaphysical, he turns to a visitor from Elea (Sophist, Statesman);
when they become cosmological, he turns to Timaeus; when they become constitutional,
he turns, in Laws, to a visitor from Athens (and he then eliminates Socrates entirely). In
effect, Plato is showing us: although he owes a great deal to the ethical insights of
Socrates, as well as to his method of puncturing the intellectual pretensions of his
interlocutors by leading them into contradiction, he thinks he should not put into the
mouth of his teacher too elaborate an exploration of ontological, or cosmological, or
political themes, because Socrates refrained from entering these domains. This may be
part of the explanation why he has Socrates put into the mouth of the personified Laws of
Athens the theory advanced in Crito, which reaches the conclusion that it would be unjust
for him to escape from prison. Perhaps Plato is indicating, at the point where these
speakers enter the dialogue, that none of what is said here is in any way derived from or
inspired by the conversation of Socrates.
Just as we should reject the idea that Plato must have made a decision, at a fairly early
point in his career, no longer to write one kind of dialogue (negative, destructive,
preparatory) and to write only works of elaborate theory-construction; so we should also
question whether he went through an early stage during which he refrained from
introducing into his works any of his own ideas (if he had any), but was content to play
the role of a faithful portraitist, representing to his readers the life and thought of
Socrates. It is unrealistic to suppose that someone as original and creative as Plato, who
probably began to write dialogues somewhere in his thirties (he was around 28 when
Socrates was killed), would have started his compositions with no ideas of his own, or,
having such ideas, would have decided to suppress them, for some period of time,
allowing himself to think for himself only later. (What would have led to such a
decision?) We should instead treat the moves made in the dialogues, even those that are
likely to be early, as Platonic inventions — derived, no doubt, by Plato's reflections on

38
and transformations of the key themes of Socrates that he attributes to Socrates in
Apology. That speech indicates, for example, that the kind of religiosity exhibited by
Socrates was unorthodox and likely to give offense or lead to misunderstanding. It would
be implausible to suppose that Plato simply concocted the idea that Socrates followed a
divine sign. But what of the various philosophical moves rehearsed in Euthyphro — the
dialogue in which Socrates searches, unsuccessfully, for an understanding of what piety
is? We have no good reason to think that in writing this work Plato adopted the role of a
mere recording device, or something close to it (changing a word here and there, but for
the most part simply recalling what he heard Socrates say, as he made his way to court).
It is more likely that Plato, having been inspired by the unorthodoxy of Socrates'
conception of piety, developed, on his own, a series of questions and answers designed to
show his readers how difficult it is to reach an understanding of the central concept that
Socrates' fellow citizens relied upon when they condemned him to death. The idea that it
is important to search for definitions may have been Socratic in origin. (After all,
Aristotle attributes this much to Socrates.) But the twists and turns of the arguments in
Euthyphro and other dialogues that search for definitions are more likely to be the
products of Plato's mind than the content of a conversation that really took place.
12. Why dialogues?
It is equally unrealistic to suppose that when Plato embarked on his career as a writer, he
made a conscious decision to put all of the compositions that he would henceforth
compose for a general reading public (with the exception of Apology) in the form of a
dialogue. If the question, “why did Plato write dialogues?”, which many of his readers
are tempted to ask, pre-supposes that there must have been some such once-and-for-all
decision, then it is poorly posed. It makes better sense to break that question apart into
many little ones: better to ask, “Why did Plato write this particular work (for example:
Protagoras, or Republic, or Symposium, or Laws) in the form of a dialogue — and that
one (Timaeus, say) mostly in the form of a long and rhetorically elaborate single
speech?” than to ask why he decided to adopt the dialogue form.
The best way to form a reasonable conjecture about why Plato wrote any given work in
the form of a dialogue is to ask: what would be lost, were one to attempt to re-write this
work in a way that eliminated the give-and-take of interchange, stripped the characters of

39
their personality and social markers, and transformed the result into something that
comes straight from the mouth of its author? This is often a question that will be easy to
answer, but the answer might vary greatly from one dialogue to another. In pursuing this
strategy, we must not rule out the possibility that some of Plato's reasons for writing this
or that work in the form of a dialogue will also be his reason for doing so in other cases
— perhaps some of his reasons, so far as we can guess at them, will be present in all
other cases. For example, the use of character and conversation allows an author to
enliven his work, to awaken the interest of his readership, and therefore to reach a wider
audience. The enormous appeal of Plato's writings is in part a result of their dramatic
composition. Even treatise-like compositions — Timaeus and Laws, for example —
improve in readability because of their conversational frame. Furthermore, the dialogue
form allows Plato's evident interest in pedagogical questions (how is it possible to learn?
what is the best way to learn? from what sort of person can we learn? what sort of person
is in a position to learn?) to be pursued not only in the content of his compositions but
also in their form. Even in Laws such questions are not far from Plato's mind, as he
demonstrates, through the dialogue form, how it is possible for the citizens of Athens,
Sparta, and Crete to learn from each other by adapting and improving upon each other's
social and political institutions.
In some of his works, it is evident that one of Plato's goals is to create a sense of
puzzlement among his readers, and that the dialogue form is being used for this purpose.
The Parmenides is perhaps the clearest example of such a work, because here Plato
relentlessly rubs his readers' faces in a baffling series of unresolved puzzles and apparent
contradictions. But several of his other works also have this character, though to a smaller
degree: for example, Protagoras (can virtue be taught?), Hippias Minor (is voluntary
wrongdoing better than involuntary wrongdoing?), and portions of Meno (are some
people virtuous because of divine inspiration?). Just as someone who encounters Socrates
in conversation should sometimes be puzzled about whether he means what he says (or
whether he is instead speaking ironically), so Plato sometimes uses the dialogue form to
create in his readers a similar sense of discomfort about what he means and what we
ought to infer from the arguments that have been presented to us. But Socrates does not
always speak ironically, and similarly Plato's dialogues do not always aim at creating a

40
sense of bafflement about what we are to think about the subject under discussion. There
is no mechanical rule for discovering how best to read a dialogue, no interpretive strategy
that applies equally well to all of his works. We will best understand Plato's works and
profit most from our reading of them if we recognize their great diversity of styles and
adapt our reading habits accordingly. Rather than impose on our reading of Plato a
uniform expectation of what he must be doing (because he has done such a thing
elsewhere), we should bring to each dialogue a receptivity to what is unique in each of
them. That would be the most fitting reaction to the artistry in his philosophy.
Bibliography
Translations into English
 Cooper, John M., ed. Plato: Complete Works. Hackett, 1997.
General Overviews
 Bobonich, Christopher. Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics.
Oxford University Press, 2002.
 Fine, Gail, ed. Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology. Oxford University Press.
1999.
 Fine, Gail, ed. Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul. Oxford University
Press. 1999.
 Guthrie, W.K.C.. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vols. 4 and 5. Cambridge
University Press, 1975, 1978.
 Irwin, Terence. Plato's Ethics. Oxford University Press, 1995.
 Kraut, Richard, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
 McCabe, Mary Margaret. Plato's Individuals. Princeton University Press, 1994.
 Nails, Debra. The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other
Socratics. Hackett, 2002. (An encyclopedia of information about the characters in
all of the dialogues.)
 Rowe, Christopher & Malcolm Schofield, eds. Greek and Roman Political
Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2000. (Contains 7 introductory essays by 7
hands on Socratic and Platonic political thought.)

41
  Silverman, Allan. The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato's Metaphysics.
Princeton University Press, 2002.
 Vlastos, Gregory. Studies in Greek Philosophy, Vol. 2: Socrates, Plato, and Their
Tradition. Ed. by Daniel W. Graham. Princeton University Press, 1995.
 White, Nicholas P. Plato on Knowledge and Reality. Hackett, 1976.
On Socrates
 Brickhouse, Thomas C. & Nicholas D. Smith. Plato's Socrates. Oxford University
Press. 1994.
 Guthrie, W.K.C. Socrates. Cambridge University Press. 1971.
 Vander Waerdt, Paul. A. (ed.) The Socratic Movement. Cornell University Press,
1994.
 Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
Interpretive Strategies
 Blondell, Ruby. The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues. Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
 Frede, Michael. “Plato's Arguments and the Dialogue Form.” In Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy. Supplementary Volume 1992. Oxford University Press,
1992, pp. 201-220.
 Griswold, Charles L., ed.. Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings. Routledge, 1988.
 Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a
Literary Form. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
 Nails, Debra. Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy. Kluwer Academic
Publishers. 1995.
 Press, Gerald A., ed. Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
 Sayre, Kenneth. Plato's Literary Garden. University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.
Chronology of the Dialogues
 Brandwood, Leonard. The Chronology of Plato's Dialogues. Cambridge
University Press, 1990.

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  Ledger, Gerald R. Re-Counting Plato: A Computer Analysis of Plato's Style.
Oxford University Press, 1989.
 Thesleff, Holger. Studies in Platonic Chronology. Commentationes Humanarum
Litterarum 70. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. 1982.
 Young, Charles M. “Plato and Computer Dating.” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 12 (1994), pp. 227-250.

SOCRATES
SIGNIFICANCE OF SOCRATES. Socrates developed a philosophy which, through
his own teachings and the teachings of his immediate followers, especially Plato and
Aristotle, eventually won the attention and respect of thinking men everywhere. The three
great Socratic philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, were to be "rediscovered"
during the Renaissance and their rational, practical, and scientific ideas were to influence
the thinking and the governmental, religious, and educational institutions of the entire
western world.
LIFE OF SOCRATES, 469-399 B.C.
 1. THE YOUNG SOCRATES. Almost nothing is known of the childhood of Socrates
but it can be assumed from his later display of learning that he attended the schools of
Athens until he entered military service at age eighteen.
 a. Military Hero. Socrates served Athens in the warfare with Sparta, participating
in the battles of Petidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis. In the course of the battle of
Petidaea he saved the life of Alcibiades, the popular Athenian general.
 b. Stonecutter. Socrates worked from time to time as a stonecutter.

43
  c. Sculptor. He completed two works of sculpture, "Hermes," the god, and "The
Three Graces."
 d. Marriage. Socrates married Xanthippe. She is said to have resented the fact
that he charged no fees for his teaching. Later, in 415 B.C., Craco's Law
authorized polygamy for the purpose of increasing the male population of the
state. Socrates is believed to have taken a second wife at this time.
 
2. PHILOSOPHER AND TEACHER. Socrates devoted most of his adult life to the
development of a philosophy and to teaching those followers who attached themselves to
his dialogue discussion groups. Socrates was distinctive for:
a. Devotion to Ethics an attitude which influenced all later Greek philosophers.
b. Development of the Inductive Method of reasoning.
c. Linking Knowledge to Happiness. He believed that knowledge, or insight, was
the foundation of virtue and happiness.
d. Rationalism. Socrates believed that man was capable of arriving at truth
through the use of reason.
 
3. TRIAL AND DEATH.  Socrates, at age seventy, was brought to trial on charges that
he was an atheist and a corrupter of youth. He was found guilty and was sentenced to
death. On the order of his judges, Socrates drank poison hemlock and died. The trial and
the last days and death of Socrates are described by Plato in the dialogues Apology,
Crito, and Phaedo.
STUDENTS. Some of the famous men who studied with Socrates were:
 1. PLATO, considered one of the greatest philosophers in the history of
civilized man.
2. ALCIBIADES, a military genius.
3. ARISTIPPUS, founder of the Cyrenaic school of hedonism.
4. ANTISTHENES, founder of the Cynic school of philosophy.
5. XENOPHON, a military leader and historian.
6. CRITO, one of the wealthiest men in Athens.
 

44
SOCRATIC METHOD. Athens became the classroom of Socrates. He went about
asking questions of authorities and of the man in the street in order to arrive at political
and ethical truths. He questioned groups of his students as a means of instruction, to
compel them to think a problem through to a logical conclusion. His dialectic method, or
method of investigating problems through dialogue discussions, came to be known as the
Socratic method. It involved:
 1. SOCRATIC IRONY. Socrates pretended that he knew no answers. His
assumed ignorance or willingness to learn from others was the background for
adroit questioning to reveal the t truth or expose the error of the answers he
received.
 2. DEFINITION. The initial question usually required the definition of the
concept.
 3. ANALYSIS. Subsequent questions elicited an analysis of the definition in all
its implications.
 4. GENERALIZATIONS. After examining all of the particular applications and
consequences of the concept, Socrates reasoned, or persuaded his students to
reason, from the particular to the general, or by the process of induction, to reach
a general conclusion.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. Although Socrates wrote no books, his
philosophy is known through the writing of historians and of his students, and especially
through the writings of Plato. Major ideas in the Socratic philosophy were:
1. THE PROPER STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY IS MAN. Socrates was not
concerned with metaphysical questions as such. He believed that philosophy
should achieve practical results in the form of greater well-being for man the
individual and for mankind as a society. Hence, the proper study of philosophy is
man. In pursuit of this study, Socrates' interests were centered in ethics and
politics.
2. NATURAL ETHIC. Socrates attempted to establish an ethical system based
upon human reason rather than upon theological directives.

45
 3. KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM. Socrates asserted that the highest good for
any human being is happiness. Whatever action a man chooses is motivated by his
desire for happiness. Knowledge, virtue, and wisdom are all the same, since man
chooses an action according to what he thinks will bring him the greatest
happiness. Therefore the more a man knows, the greater his ability to reason out
the correct choice and to choose those actions which truly bring happiness to him.
4. SELF-KNOWLEDGE. The highest knowledge is possessed by that individual
who truly knows himself. This knowledge constitutes ultimate wisdom. It enables
man to act in a virtuous manner at all times, because he knows what will bring
him true happiness.
5. POLITICS. Socrates did not approve of tyranny or of democracy. He believed
that the best form of government was one ruled by an individual possessing the
greatest ability, knowledge, and virtue.
 
THE EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCRATIC THOUGHT. The
contributions of Socrates to education were:
1. TEACHING METHOD. The Socratic method offers the following advantages to
teaching act:
a. Problem Centered. The dialectic begins with a problem which must be
analyzed, e.g. "What is your opinion about the nature of justice?"
b. Based Upon Student Experience. The student responds on the basis of
his own knowledge and experience.
c. Critical Thinking. The student is held responsible for his statements.
The teacher analyzes some of the possible consequences of the student's
remarks. The emphasis is upon the thinking processes of the student, who
must think for himself and accept the consequences of his logic.
d. Teaching Is a Drawing Forth Rather Than a Telling. In the Socratic
method the teacher does not tell the student the proper answer. He draws
from the student the probable answer.

46
 e. Learning Is Discovery. The student learns when he discovers the true
generalization through his reasoning processes.
 
2. PURPOSE OF EDUCATION DEFINED. The aims of education as derived from
Socratic thought are:
a. Self-knowledge. The educated man is wise when he knows himself.
b. Individual Moral Good. The acquisition of knowledge is valuable for
man because it makes him virtuous and happy. Socrates repudiated any
ornamental theory of knowledge. In similar fashion Socrates would
deplore the use of knowledge merely for material success in life.
Knowledge is ethically and morally important for all men.
c. Skill in Thinking. Each man must develop his skill in critically
appraising propositions through the reasoning process.
 

SAINT AUGUSTINE
INTRODUCTION. Saint Augustine was the greatest of the Christian writers. He exerted
immense influence on the Church and his educational views were adopted and followed
for many centuries.
LIFE OF AUGUSTINE.
1. BOYHOOD.
a. Birth. He was born at Tagaste, in North Africa, on November 13, 354 A.D.
b. Family. His parents were comfortable middle-class people. His father,
Patricius, was a pagan and his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian.
c. Schooling., He was educated in the Latin grammar school of Madaura and the
school of rhetoric in Carthage.
d. Religion. He adopted the Manichaean faith.
 
2. TEACHER. Positions in Augustine's teaching career were:
a. Grammar. He taught in the Latin grammar school at Tagaste.
b. Rhetoric. He opened a school of rhetoric at Carthage in 374 A.D.

47
 c. Rome. He sailed for Rome and taught rhetoric there.
d. Milan. He accepted a professorship in rhetoric at Milan.
 
3. CONVERT. Augustine became converted to Christianity.
 
a. Baptism. Bishop Ambrose baptized Augustine and his son, Adeodatus, in 387
A.D.
b. Tagaste. Following the death of his mother, Augustine returned to Tagaste in
388 A.D.
c. Monastic Order. He established a small monastic order that subsequently
developed into the Augustine order.
d. Ordination. Augustine was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Hippo in 391
A.D.
 
4. BISHOP.
a. Consecration. Augustine became the Bishop of Hippo in 396 A.D.
b. His Great Works. He wrote the Confessions, the Trinity and The City of God.
These are his most important writings.
c. Other Writings. He engaged in polemical writings, wrote scriptural
commentaries and guided the Church in doctrinal matters.
d. Death. He died in August, 430 A.D., during the Vandal siege of Hippo.
 
THE EDUCATIONAL IMPORTANCE OF ST. AUGUSTINE
AIMS OF EDUCATION. Augustine continued the Christian emphasis upon the future
life of man, stressing that this life is merely a preparation for the life to come. A man is
educated when his moral character and understanding of his faith are developed to their
fullest potential.
PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION. The following concepts describe Augustinian
thought regarding education:
1. OPPOSES SENSE EXPERIENCE. Man, must realize that the senses deceive
him. Truth and goodness exist only in God. Man arrives at genuine knowledge

48
 and virtue after he controls his senses and frees his spirit to intuit God by reason
of the supernatural life. This life is given to man when he is baptized.
2. TRUTH IS ABSOLUTE. Truth is not discovered through experimentation. It is
found within the Catholic Church alone. This truth is eternal and unchanging.
3. AUTHORITARIAN. Truth is, defined by the Church. The individual must
accept obediently whatever the Church declares as truth. The individual is not free
to follow whatever direction his reason takes him.
4. DISCIPLINE. Although Augustine deplored cruelty, he asserted that
punishment is necessary for the child to learn. Because of original sin, the pupil is
inclined toward evil. He must be restrained and punished physically when it
becomes apparent that his evil inclinations are not subdued.
5. CURRICULUM. The content of the child's education should include the
secular learning of the pagans, in order to enrich the student's appreciation of
sacred scripture. The study of rhetoric, grammar, logic, mathematics, science and
philosophy provide a background for the student who intends to arrive at genuine
knowledge in the study of theology. Augustine was in favor of censoring strictly
the literary content of the child's reading, lest the child be turned away from
virtue.
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF AUGUSTINIAN EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT.
 
1. UNIVERSAL INFLUENCE. The writings of Augustine were accepted by the
Church and, through the Church, influenced subsequent educational theory for
over a thousand years.
2. MORAL STRENGTH. The moral education of a Europe over-run by
barbarians, demanded a rigorous ethical foundation in which a civilization could
grow and prosper. Augustine contributed to this moral improvement.
3. RETARDED SCIENTIFIC GROWTH. Passive acceptance of absolute truths
retarded the free inquiry necessary for scientific growth. Furthermore, the
subordination of secular sciences and philosophy to theology inhibited the
freedom of inquiry and exploration necessary to higher education.

49
I. The Life of Thomas Aquinas --1225-1274
Thomas Aquinas born of a noble family in Rocca Secca, near Aquino in 1225, was to
complete the magnificent synthesis of Scholasticism. As a very young boy, he went to
Monte Cassino, the celebrated Benedictine monastery which at the time was headed by
one of his uncles. He displayed such brilliance that the monks advised his father to send
him to the University of Naples, where he could receive a more advanced education.
While in Naples, he entered the Dominican Order. His mother, far from favorable to this
move, hastened to Naples; but the Dominicans, fearing her opposition, had already send
Thomas to Rome in the hope that he would eventually be able to reach Paris or Cologne.
In 1252, Thomas Aquinas was sent to Paris to further his studies and then to teach, which
he continued to do until 1260. In that year he returned to the Roman province of his
Order, where he was given various offices of administration and education in the
province.
In 1269 he was again in Paris, where he carried on the controversy against the Averroism
of Siger of Brabant. In 1272 he went to Naples to assume the chair of theology at the
university there. At the beginning of 1274 he set out with a companion for the Council of
Lyons, but died en route, at the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nuova near Terracina, on
March 7, at the early age of forty-nine. He was proclaimed a saint by the Church, and by
posterity has been acclaimed as the Angelic Doctor.
II. The Works of Thomas Aquinas
The works of Thomas Aquinas may be conveniently divided into four groups:
1. COMMENTARIES
 on the Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, and Ethics of Aristotle;
 on the Scriptures;
 on Dionysius the Areopagite;
 on the Four Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard.
2. SUMMAE
 The Summa contra Gentiles (A Summary Against the Gentiles), founded
substantially on rational demonstration;

50
  The Summa Theologica (A Summary of Theology), begun in 1265, and
remaining incomplete because of Thomas' early death.
3. QUESTIONS
 Quaestiones Disputatae (Disputed Questions): De Veritate (On Truth), De Anima
(On the Soul), De Potentia (On Power), De Malo (On Evil), etc.;
 Quaestiones Quodlibetales (Questions About Any Subject).
4. OPUSCULA (selected examples)
 De Ente et Essentia (On Being and Essence);
 De Unitate Intellectus (On the Unity of the Intellect), written against the
Averroists;
 De Regimine Principum (On the Rule of Princes).
III. An Introduction to His Doctrine
Thomas Aquinas was the first to recognize the fact that Aristotelian intellectualism would
be of great help for the study of philosophy as well as theology. But the introduction of
Aristotle's works involved the solution of the disputed question of the relationship
between philosophy and theology.
Problem of Double truth
At the time of Aquinas, besides the Averroist theory of the double truth, by
virtue of which philosophy and theology were not only separate but opposed, there was
also Augustinianism, which was largely accepted in the School and held that no real
distinction between philosophy and theology was possible. This confusion between
philosophy and theology was a necessary consequence of the theory of illumination,
according to which the human intellect was considered incapable of abstracting
intelligibles from the data of experience, but rather received them from the Divine
Teacher.
This Teacher communicated to the intellect the intelligible regarding the material
things of the surrounding world as well as those concerning the invisible and supernatural
world. Thus the human intellect was capable of understanding not only material things
but also the mysteries of religion. Hence no distinction between philosophy and theology
was possible.

51
For Aquinas, what reason shows to be true is absolutely true, so that the opposite is
absolutely false and impossible. If religion, therefore, teaches something that is opposed
to reason, as the Averroists maintained it does, it would teach what is absolutely false and
impossible.Two contradictory truths cannot be admitted; truth is one, either in the field of
reason or of religion. The two fields are separate but not opposed. There are religious
truths -- such as the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation -- which the human
intellect cannot penetrate; and these truths must accepted on the authority of revelation.
Parallel to them, there are natural truths concerning this visible world which are
intelligible to the human mind and are the object of philosophy and science. To the
question whether there also some truths which at the same time are revealed and open to
rational demonstration, Aquinas answers yes. Such truths are the existence of God and
the immortality of the human soul, which are demonstrable by reason. God revealed
them, however, in order to make these truths accessible to the minds of those who cannot
attain philosophical investigation. (2)
But Aquinas also opposed Augustinian illumination. Granting that the human soul is
intellectual by nature, he maintains that the human intellect by its natural power is able to
draw the intelligibles from material objects. Besides its own natural power, the human
intellect does not need any special divine assistance in abstracting the intelligibles from
the data of experience. 
IV. Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology)
To explain the process of knowledge, Thomas Aquinas has recourse neither to the innate
ideas of Platonism nor to the illumination of Augustine. Instead, he postulates a cognitive
faculty naturally capable of acquiring knowledge of the object, in proportion to that
faculty. Agreeing with Aristotle, he admits that knowledge is obtained through two stages
of operation, sensitive and intellective, which are intimately related to one another. The
proper object of the sensitive faculty is the particular thing, the individual; the proper
object of the intellect is the universal, the idea, the intelligible.
But the intellect does not attain any idea unless the material for that idea is presented to it
by the senses:." The two cognitive faculties, sense and intellect, are naturally capable of
acquiring knowledge of their proper object, since both are in potency -- the sense, toward
the individual form; and the intellect, toward the form of the universal.

52
The obtaining of the universal presupposes that the sensible knowledge of the object
which lies outside us comes through the impression of the form of the object upon the
sensitive faculty. This is likened to the impression of the seal upon wax.
Upon this material impression the soul reacts according to its nature, that is, psychically,
producing knowledge of that particular object whose form had been impressed upon the
senses. Thus the faculty which was in potency is actuated with relation to that
object, and knows and expresses within itself knowledge of that particular object.
But how is the passage made from sensitive cognition to that which is intellective? Or,
rather, how is the individual form which is now offered by sensible cognition condensed
into an idea and thus made the proportionate object of the intellect?
To understand the solution to the problem, it is necessary to recall the theory of Aristotle
which Aquinas makes his own; that is, that the individual form is universal in potentia. It
is the matter which makes the form individual. Hence if the form can be liberated from
the individualizing matter, or dematerialized, it assumes the character of universality.
According to Thomas Aquinas, this is just what happens through the action of a special
power of the intellect, i.e., the power by which the phantasm (sense image) is
illuminated. Under the influence of this illumination, the form loses its materiality; that
is, it becomes the essence or intelligible species (species intelligibilis). Thomas call this
faculty the intellectus agens (agent intellect), and it is to be noted that for Thomas the
"intellectus agens" is not, as the Averroists held, a separate intellect which is common to
all men.
For Aquinas, the agent intellect is a special activity of the cognitive soul, and it is
individual and immanent in every intellective soul. The "species intelligibilis" is then
received by the intellect, which is called passive since it receives its proper object, and
become intelligible in act.
Note that according to Aquinas the form, both intelligible and individual, is not that
which the mind grasps or understands (this would reduce knowledge to mere
phenomenalism), but is the means through which the mind understands the object
(individual form) and the essence of the object ("forma intelligibilis").
Knowledge thus has its foundation in reality, in the metaphysical.

53
Furthermore, since the cognitive faculty is in potency, when it becomes actuated, it
becomes one with the form which actuates. Thus it may be said, in a certain sense, that
the intellect is identified with the determined form which it knows.
For Aquinas all the data of sense knowledge and all intelligible things are essentially true.
Truth consists in the equality of the intellect with its object, and such concordance is
always found, both in sensitive cognition and in the idea. Error may exist in the
judgment, since it can happen that a predicate may be attributed to a subject to which it
does not really belong.
Besides the faculty of judgment, Aquinas also admits the faculty of discursive reasoning,
which consists in the derivation of the knowledge of particulars from the universal.
Deductive, syllogistic demonstration must be carried out according to the logical
relationships which exist between two judgments. In this process consists the science
which the human intellect can construct by itself, without recourse either to innate ideas
or to any particular illumination.
V. The Existence of God (Theodicy)
The Five Ways
There are five ways in which the human intellect can prove the existence of God. All
have a common point of resemblance. The starting point is a consideration of the sensible
world known by immediate experience. Such a consideration of the sensible world would
remain incomprehensible unless it was related to God as author of the world.
So each argument might be reduced to a syllogism whose major premise is a fact of
experience, and whose minor premise is a principle of reason, which brings to light the
intelligibility of the major premise.
Aquinas formulates this principle in three different ways according to the three aspects of
reality taken into consideration. For the first way the formulation is: What is moved, is
moved by another; for the second way: It is impossible for something to be the
efficient cause of itself; for the third way: What is not, cannot begin to be, unless by
force of something which is.
The fourth way takes into consideration many aspects of reality, which, when compared
with one another, show that they are more or less perfect. The principle of intelligibility

54
is the following: What is said to be the greatest in any order of perfection is also the
cause of all that exists in that order.
The fifth way takes into consideration the order of nature: Where there is a tendency of
many to the same end, there must be an intellectual being causing such an order.
Let us set forth the schematic structure of the five ways:
 (1) Our senses attest to the existence of movement or motion. But every motion
presupposes a mover which produces that movement. To have recourse to an
infinite series of motions is not possible, for such an infinite series does not and
cannot solve the question of the origin of the movement. Hence there exists a first
mover that moves and is not itself moved. This is God.
 (2) Some new thing is produced. But every new production includes the concept
of cause. Thus there exists a first cause which is itself not caused. This is God.
 (3) Everything in the world is contingent; that is, it may or may not exist. We
know from experience that all things change in one way or another. But that
which is contingent does not have the reason of its existence in itself, but in
another, that is, in something which is not contingent. Hence there exists the
necessary being, God.
 (4) The fourth way takes into consideration the transcendental qualities of reality,
"the good, the true, the noble," and so forth, which we find in things to a greater
or lesser degree. But transcendental qualities are nothing other than being,
expressed through one of its attributes; hence things under our experience are
beings to a greater or lesser degree. But the greater and lesser are not intelligible
unless they are related to that which is the highest in that order; and what is the
highest is also the cause of all that exists in that order. Therefore there exists the
highest degree of being and it is the cause of all limited being. This is God.
 (5) Order exists in the world about us. Hence there must exist an intelligence
responsible for the order of the universe. This is God.
Thus, in brief, we have Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God; proofs from the
notion of motion, cause, contingency, perfection, and order.

55
The proofs for the existence of God are also means of knowing something of God's
essence. This knowledge, however, remains always essentially inadequate and
incomplete.
One way of knowing God is the way of negative theology, that is, by removing from the
concept of God all that implies imperfection, potentiality, materiality. In other words, by
this method we arrive at a knowledge of God through considering what He is not.
A second method is that of analogy. God is the cause of the world. Now every object
reflects some perfection of the cause from which it proceeds. Hence it is possible for the
human mind to rise to the perfections of God from the consideration of the perfection it
finds in creatures. This it does, naturally, by removing all imperfection and potentiality
from the creatures considered. The resultant idea of the nature of God is thus had through
analogy with the perfections of the created universe.
VII. The World (Cosmology)
In determining or defining the relationship of God with the world, Aquinas departs not
only from the doctrine of the Averroist Aristotelians, but also from the teaching of
Aristotle himself. For Aristotle matter was uncreated and co-eternal with God, limiting
the divinity itself (Greek dualism). Aquinas denies this dualism. The world was produced
by God through His creative act, i.e., the world was produced from nothing.
Besides, all becoming in matter is connected with God, since He is the uncaused Cause
and the immovable Mover of all that takes place in created nature. God has created the
world from nothingness through a free act of His will; hence any necessity in the nature
of God is excluded. Again, we know that Aristotle did not admit providence: the world
was in motion toward God, as toward a point of attraction; but God did not know of this
process of change, nor was He its ordinator. For Aquinas, on the contrary, God is
providence: creation was a knowing act of His will; God, the cause and mover of all the
perfections of beings, is also the intelligent ordinator of them" all that happens in the
world finds its counterpart in the wisdom of God. Now, how the providence and the
wisdom of God are to be reconciled with the liberty of man is a problem which surpasses
our understanding. It is not an absurdity, however, if we keep in mind that the action of
Divine Providence is absolutely distinct and can be reconciled with the liberty of man
without diminishing or minimizing this latter.

56
VIII Ethics and Politics
In opposition to the voluntarism of Augustinian thought, Aquinas holds the primacy of
the intellect over the will. Reason precedes volition. Aquinas extends this law even to
God. Creation is founded upon the essence of God in so far as this essence is known by
God's intellect and can be produced through the creative act. The divine will freely
selects from among the possibilities in the divine essence. Thus even in God this present
order of creation has been willed because it was reasonable, and not vice versa,
reasonable because willed.
Analogously, in man the act of understanding precedes the movement of the will.
Nevertheless the will is free and hence is not constrained to select necessarily what the
intellect presents to it as reasonable.
In order to demonstrate the freedom of our will, Aquinas goes to the very root of the will.
The will is determined by good as is the intellect by truth. Thus if the will were presented
with an object which is essentially good -- good under every aspect (God) -- the will in
this case would not be free, because it would find itself confronted with the adequate
object of its nature.
But our will is dependent on the intellect, and the intellect, as we know, is dependent
upon sensations, i.e., upon particular goods, which may be good from one standpoint and
evil from another. In this case the will is free to select from among the various objects
presented to it by the intellect.
But all of this is not yet sufficient to form the moral act in its entirety. Freedom of the
will and the free volitional act are the subjective part of morality. To complete the moral
act, it is necessary to have also the objective part, or the conformity of volition to the
supreme norm of morality. This supreme norm is called by Aquinas the eternal law; it
resides in God and is the norm of the order established by God in the creature. The
eternal law, in so far as it is manifested and recognized by the intelligence, constitutes the
natural law. This latter, then, is none other than the eternal law in so far as it is
manifested to our conscience.The morality of an act depends upon its conformity to
the law of conscience and hence to the eternal law; nonconformity brings about
moral evil, sin.

57
The more regularly moral law is observed, the easier such observance becomes; hence,
virtue consists in the habitual and conscious conformity of action to the moral law. The
natural virtues, for Aquinas as for Aristotle, are four: prudence, temperance, fortitude,
and justice.
In opposition to Augustinian teaching, which affirmed that society is not natural but is the
consequence of original sin, and in conformity with Aristotle, Aquinas discovers the
necessity of society by analyzing human nature.
Society is necessary for the perfection to which man by his nature has been destined. Man
is hence a political animal. The first form of society is the family, an imperfect society
because it is destined by nature solely for the propagation of the species. Society has for
its end the common good, and man does not exist for society, but society exists for man.
The duties of society are of a positive and a negative nature; i.e., the state not only must
provide for the defense of its citizens and for their free exercise (negative duties), but
must also provide educative and formative measures for the elevation of the members of
society.
Since the end of the state is the common good of material nature, the state must recognize
another society, the Church, to which has been entrusted the spiritual good of the same
citizens; and since the material must be coordinated with the spiritual, the state, although
complete in itself, must recognize the rights of the Church in matters of morality and
religion.
 
http://www.radicalacademy.com/aquinas1,2,3.htm

Western Thinkers

JOHN DEWEY
INTRODUCTION. John Dewey is recognized as one of the great figures in educational

58
history. His influence upon American education has been prodigious. The following are
the chief events of his life:
1. EARLY YOUTH. John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, October
20,1859. Re was educated in Vermont, graduating in 1879 from the University of
Vermont. He taught school in Pennsylvania for two years. An article in the
Journal of Speculative Philosophy in April, 1882, entitled "The Metaphysical
Assumptions of Materialism" won favorable response. He entered Johns Hopkins
University in 1882 as a graduate philosophy student. He emerged two years later
as a doctor of philosophy.
 2. TEACHING CAREER. One of Dewey's philosophy professors at Johns
Hopkins University was appointed Chairman of Philosophy at the University of
Michigan. Upon graduation Dewey was offered a position as Instructor of
Philosophy there. Dewey taught at Michigan between 1884 and 1888. He taught
for one year at the University of Minnesota. The Chairman of Philosophy died at
the University of Michigan. John Dewey returned to Michigan as Professor and
Chairman of the Department of Philosophy. In 1894 Dewey moved to the
University of Chicago as Professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy. He began a
Laboratory School at Chicago for the education of future teachers. This school
applied the latest psychological findings, the newest methods and educational
theory in the classroom Future teachers could observe and become experienced in
applying the best teaching techniques to the pupils of the Laboratory School.
Between 1902 and 1904 Dewey was the Director of the School of Education and
organizer of the Laboratory School at the University, of Chicago. During this
period he was associated with Hull House as well. In 1904 Dewey moved to
Columbia University. He remained at Columbia as a professor of philosophy and
professor at Teachers' College until his retirement in 1931.
3. RETIREMENT. Dewey was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in Residence
at Columbia between 1930 and 1939. Although retired, Dewey was continually
active in the social affairs of the day. He lectured for two years in China to future
teachers. In 1937 he was the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into the
charges against Leon Trotsky brought by the Russian government. Dewey helped

59
 establish the New School of Social Research in New York City. He was active in
beginning a teachers' union. John Dewey added to his many writings additional
works until his death on June 1, 1952, at the age of ninety-two.
 
THE MAJOR WRITINGS OF JOHN DEWEY. The following list includes many
important works written by John Dewey:
 1. My pedagogic creed. New york, e. K. Kellog and co., 1897.
2. Interpretation of the culture-epoch theory. National herbart society yearbook, 1896.
3. Psychology and philosophic method. Berkeley, university of cal. Press, 1899.
4. The school and society. Univ. Of chicago press, 1900 (revised 1915).
5. Studies in logical theory. Univ. Of chicago press, 1903.
6. Logical conditions of a scientific treatment of morality. Univ. Of chicago press, 1903.
7. Ethics. New york, henry holt and co., 1908.
8. The influence of darwin on philosophy and other essays in contemporary thought. New
york, henry holt and co., 1910.
9. How we think. New york, heath and co., 1910.
10. Democracy and education. New york, macmillan, 1916.
11. Essays in experimental logic, univ. Of chicago press, 1916.
12. Reconstruction in philosophy. New york, holt and co., 1920.
13. Human nature and conduct. New york, holt and co., 1922.
14. Experience and nature. Chicago, open court, 1925.
15. The public and its problems. New york, holt and co., 1927.
16. The quest for certainty. New york, minton, balch and co., 1929.
17. Philosophy and civilization. New york, minton, balch and co., 1931.
18. Art as experience. New york, minton, balch and co., 1934.
19. A common faith. Yale univ. Press, 1934.
20. Liberalism and social action. New york, putnam, 1935.
21. Experience and education. New york, macmillan, 1938.
22. Freedom and culture. New york, putnam, 1939.
23. Problems of men. New york, philosophical library, 1946.
24. Logic, the theory of inquiry. New york, holt and co., 1938.

60
 
PHILOSOPHICAL AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY. Some important concepts in
the philosophy of John Dewey are the following:
 
1. INSTRUMENTALISM. Dewey was influenced by the theory of evolution. He
affirmed that the mind as well as the body evolved. Ideas arise from experience
and are nothing more than plans of action by which the organism adjusts
satisfactorily to his environment. Thinking is the process by which man adjusts.
Thinking begins as a result of the felt need of the individual. All thinking is
problem centered. The product of human thought is the instrument of action.
Human thinking is social in that it occurs in a social milieu. Social utility is the
test by which truth is established.
2. METHOD OF SCIENCE. The truths of philosophy are not privileged. If the
scientist must subject his hypothesis to the careful scrutiny of controlled
observations and verification, so must the philosopher. Through inquiry,
collecting facts, experimentation and verification will the philosopher provide
new truths. The philosophical area of metaphysics is consequently meaningless
because the problems do not lend themselves to this kind of scrutiny.
3. DEMOCRACY. The best form of government is democratic government. The
cornerstone of Dewey's thought is growth. What contributes to individual and
social growth is good. In fact, the value of education exists to the extent it creates
a desire for continued growth. A man is good to the extent that he is growing or
becoming more good. Now, in a democracy the free interchange between men
permits modification, change and growth. It is therefore the best form of
government.
 4. THE SCHOOL. problemThe school is a miniature community. It provides
for social and individual growth. He rejected the teaching of subjects for their
own sake. Any subject is merely a means and not a end in itself. It is the means by
which the individual reconstructs his experience, extracts its meaning and thereby
prepares himself for the future. Even freedom is itself a means. The only freedom
with enduring importance is the intellectual freedom of observation and judgment

61
 exercised for an intrinsically worthy end or purpose. Education is a reorganization
of experience which adds meaning and ability in the directing of subsequent
experience. The subject matter of the school should consist of facts which are
observed, remembered, read, discussed and suggested for the purpose of solving
some felt problem. Interest and motivation are essential elements in the learning
process.
5. THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE. Activity by itself never constitutes
experience. The concept of experience involves the aspects of doing and
undergoing. When the individual experiences something, he both acts upon it and
enjoys or undergoes the consequences of it. The connection between these active
and passive elements in experience is the measure of the experiential value.
6. INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE. Dewey deplored the rigid, passive
and unquestioning methods of the traditional schools. Lectures merely provide the
individual with information. The pupil must act upon the information through
experience prior to the acquisition of knowledge.
7. DISCIPLINE. Discipline is internal and positive. A pupil must be trained to
consider his actions so that he will undertake them with deliberation. A pupil is
disciplined when he understands what he must do and is moved to undertake the
action quickly, using the requisite means necessary. When the pupil possesses the
power to endure in an intelligently induced course of action in the face of
obstacles, he is disciplined.
8. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. Children must never be treated exactly alike. Each
child has needs and experiences which are uniquely his own. The child should be
interested in and disciplined toward the development and maintenance of intelligence on
an individual basis. Since society changes, the individual pupil must learn how to think in
order to cope with a changing environment. When a school achieves this with every
child, the school no longer merely perpetuates society. It becomes an essential force in
the reconstruction of society.
 

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JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
THE LIFE OF ROUSSEAU. Jean Jacques Rousseau's life and work are described here
in six parts:
1. EARLY YOUTH. Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland on June 28,
1712. His family were pious Calvinists, refugees from France. A few days after
his birth, his mother died. His father was a poor watchmaker and dancing-master.
When Rousseau was ten, his father lost a legal battle with a rival. Sentenced to
prison, his father fled Geneva leaving Jean Jacques to be raised by his wife's
sister. Rousseau left school at the age of twelve. He was apprenticed to different
trades with no success. Finally, in 1728, he ran away from Geneva.
2. YEARS OF TRAVEL. Shortly after leaving Geneva, Rousseau represented
himself as a potential convert to a Catholic priest. After becoming a Catholic
convert, he left Turin richer by twenty francs. He took service as a footman to a
noblewoman, Madame de Vercelli. He revealed in his Confessions that he
accused falsely a servant girl of giving him a stolen ribbon in order to escape
punishment for stealing the ribbon. Madame de Warens, a wealthy widow, took
him into her household. He lived with her as her kept lover for over nine years.
She provided the means for him to receive a rudimentary classical education and a
knowledge of music. In 1738 he left upon a journey to Montpellier to improve his
health. He took a Madame de Larnage along with him. Upon his return to the
country house of Madame de Warens outside of Chambery, he discovered that a
man named Vintzenried had replaced him in the role of "amant en titre .
3. LITERARY YEARS. After an abortive attempt at teaching (a profession he
thoroughly disliked), failure to obtain recognition for his system of musical
notation and unsatisfactory service as secretary to the French Ambassador in
Venice, he returned to Paris in 1745. He took Therese le Vasseur, a servant in his
hotel, as his mistress. She is described as ugly, ignorant and illiterate. Yet they
had five children, each of which was carried by Rousseau to the Foundling
Hospital to be raised as orphans. In 1749 Rousseau won the literary prize offered
by the Academy of Dijon for an essay entitled, "Discours sur les arts et sciences."

63
 This essay won him great literary fame. Upon a visit to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau
rejoined the Protestant Church and regained his citizenship rights.
4. MAJOR WRITINGS. In 1756 Rousseau moved into a cottage near
Montmorency (famous as the "Hermitage"), established for him by Madame
d'Epinay. In 1761 his novel "La' Nouvelle Heloise," which celebrated his love for
Madame d'Houdetot, was published. He quarreled with Madame d'Epinay, with
Diderot and the philosophy circle, and finally with Voltaire. Although in years to
come he had many patrons, he fought with each one of them. In 1762 the political
work "The Social Contract" and the novel "Emile" were published.
5. EXILE. The Social Contract, which favored the democratic city-state, and
Emile, which recommended a natural religion, rejecting revelation and dogma,
brought upon Rousseau the condemnation of the French Monarchy and the
admiration of literary and philosophical circles in Europe. Forced to leave France,
Rousseau was befriended by Hume in England. However, the growing mental
illness of Rousseau reasserted itself and, thinking himself persecuted, he returned
to France.
6. LAST YEARS. Rousseau returned to Paris in 1770. The next eight years were
relatively peaceful. He wrote the "Confessions," "Dialogues" and "Reveries du
promeneur Solitaire." An opera which he wrote, "Les Muses galantes," had been
performed at the Paris Opera years earlier in 1747. In the closing years of his life,
he wrote the fragments of another opera, "Daphnis et Chloe." This opera was
published in 1780, following his death. A wealthy financier offered Rousseau the
use of his cottage at Ermenonville in 1778. Suffering from his psychological
feelings of persecution, Rousseau accepted. The alcoholism and inclination for
stable boys of his mistress, Therese, heightened his problems. Rousseau had a
stroke and died on July 2, 1778.
 
EDUCATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS
EMILE. The greatest work produced by Rousseau is Emile. This work is more a tract
upon education under the guise of a story than it is a novel in the true sense of the word
novel. The book describes the ideal education which prepares Emile and Sophie for their

64
eventual marriage. The following represents an outline of the vital educational principles
found in Emile:
1. BOOK ONE. This book deals with the infancy of the child. The underlying
thesis of all Rousseau's writings stresses the natural goodness of man. It is society
that corrupts and makes a man evil. Rousseau states that the tutor can only stand
by at this period of the child's development, ensuring that the child does not
acquire any bad habits. Rousseau condemned the practice of some mothers who
sent their infants to a wet nurse. He believed it was essential for mothers to nurse
their own children. This practice is consistent with natural law.
2. BOOK TWO. Rousseau describes the education of the child when the tutor has
full responsibility. Some of the major points of this section of the book are:
 
a. Purpose of Education. The tutor prepares the child for no particular
social institution. Rather it is necessary to preserve the child from the
baleful influence of society. Education must be child-centered. The tutor
permits the child to develop his natural capacities. The aim of education is
never social. It is always individualistic.
b. The School. Emile is educated away from city or town. Living in the
country close to nature he should develop into the benevolent, good adult
intended by nature. This school does not confine the youth to a classroom.
No textbooks are utilized. The child learns by using his senses in direct
experience.
c. Problem Centered. The tutor could employ no force in his teaching.
When the child felt the need to know something, he would be moved to
learn. Thus, Emile desired to know reading and writing in order to
communicate with Sophie.
d. Character Education. The child learns morality by experiencing the
consequences of his actions. Children are morally bad only after learning
reprehensible behavior from adults. Punishment is never resorted to by the
tutor.

65
 e. Physical Education. Rousseau stresses the importance of physical
activities in order to build a strong body. Emile is given opportunity to
engage in swimming, running and athletic sports. His diet and living
conditions are rigidly controlled. He lives in Spartan simplicity. (Rousseau
was impressed and influenced by reading Plutarch's description of the life
of the Spartan king, Lycurgus).
 
3. BOOK THREE. This section describes the intellectual education of Emile.
Again, this education is based upon Emile's own nature. When he is ready to learn
and is interested in language, geography, history and science, he will possess the
inner direction necessary to learn. This learning would grow out of the child's
activities. He will learn languages naturally through the normal conversational
activity. Geography begins with the immediate surroundings of the youth and
extends to the world through Emile's increased interest. The sense experience by
which he observes the motion of the sun leads him to knowledge of astronomy. A
knowledge of natural science is achieved through his interest in his own garden.
Rousseau assumes that Emile's motivation leads to the purposive self-discipline
necessary to acquire knowledge. Finally Emile is taught the trade of carpentry in
order to prepare him for an occupation in life.
4. BOOK FOUR. This section describes the social education and the religious
education of Emile. The education of Sophie is considered and the book
concludes with the marriage of Emile and Sophie. The following represents some
of the major points:
 
a. Social Attitudes. Emile is permitted to mingle with people in society at
the age of sixteen. He is guided toward the desirable attitudes that lead to
self-respect. Emile's earlier education protects him from the corrupting
influence of society.
b. Natural Religion. The revelation and dogma of organized religion are
unnecessary for man. The fundamental tenets of any religion affirm the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul. These are known

66
 through the heart only. It is not only unnecessary, but impossible to reason
to these truths. The Savoyard Vicar explains this natural religion, as Emile
experiences the sensitive emotion derived from his view of the valley of
the Po. Religion, therefore, is a matter of personal feeling and emotion.
c. Education of Women. Having completed the explanation of Emile's
ideal education, Rousseau turns his attention to the education of Sophie.
Women are not educated as are men. The natural purpose of a woman is to
please a man. She is expected to have and care for children, and to please,
advise and console her husband whenever necessary. Her education does
not extend beyond this purpose

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (German pronunciation:  (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an
18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg. Kant was the
last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of
knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George
Berkeley, and David Hume.
Kant created a new perspective in philosophy which had widespread influences on
philosophy continuing through to the 21st century. He published important works on
epistemology, as well as works relevant to religion, law, and history. One of his most
prominent works is the Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and
structure of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and
epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main
works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics,
and the Critique of Judgment, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.
Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed through epistemology. [2] He suggested
that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful
metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties
prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects about which the mind

67
can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in
terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to
experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect.
However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such nature
which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be
applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world
always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics
cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of
the mind. Research on the structure and development of the brain in animals supports
Kant's theory, at least for the perception of space; that is, spatial representation of the
environment includes an innate component that predates any actual perception of the
environment itself.
Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the
rationalists . The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience
alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and
that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason
without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be
purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason.
Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy
beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. The philosophers Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer each saw themselves as correcting and expanding the
Kantian system, thus bringing about various forms of German idealism. Kant continues to
be a major influence on philosophy, influencing both analytic and continental philosophy.

Biography
Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, the capital of Prussia at that time, today
the city of Kaliningrad in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. He was the fourth of
eleven children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his
name to 'Immanuel'[7] after learning Hebrew. In his entire life, he never traveled more
than a hundred miles from Königsberg.[8] His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746),
was a German harnessmaker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city

68
(now Klaipėda, Lithuania). His mother, Regina Dorothea Reuter (1697–1737), was born
in Nuremberg.[9] Kant's grandfather had emigrated from Scotland to East Prussia, and his
father still spelled their family name "Cant."[10] In his youth, Kant was a solid, albeit
unspectacular, student. He was reared in a Pietist household that stressed intense religious
devotion, personal humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. Consequently, Kant
received a stern education – strict, punitive, and disciplinary – that preferred Latin and
religious instruction over mathematics and science.[11]
Personality
Many of the common myths concerning Kant's personal mannerisms are enumerated,
explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on
the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.[12] It is often held that Kant lived a very strict
and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks
by his daily walks. He never married, but didn't seem to lack a rewarding social life - he
was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major
philosophical works.
The young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude to study at an early age. He was first sent to Collegium
Fredericianum and then enrolled at the University of Königsberg (where he would spend
his entire career) in 1740, at the age of 16. [13] He studied the philosophy of Leibniz and
Wolff under Martin Knutzen, a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in
British philosophy and science and who introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics
of Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which
he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded the young scholar from
idealism, which was negatively regarded by most philosophers in the 18th century (The
theory of transcendental idealism that Kant developed in the "Critique of Pure Reason" is
not traditional idealism, i.e. the idea that reality is purely mental. In fact, Kant produced
arguments against traditional idealism in the second part of the "Critique of Pure
Reason"). His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant
became a private tutor in the smaller towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his
scholarly research. 1749 saw the publication of his first philosophical work, Thoughts on
the True Estimation of Living Forces.

69
Kant is best known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not
materially real but merely the ideal a priori condition of our internal intuition. Also, he
made an important astronomical discovery, namely the discovery of the retardation of the
rotation of the Earth, for which he won the Berlin Academy Prize in 1754. Even more
importantly, from this Kant concluded that time is not a thing in itself determined from
experience, objects, motion, and change, but rather an unavoidable framework of the
human mind that preconditions possible experience.[citation needed]
According to Lord Kelvin:
Kant pointed out in the middle of last century, what had not previously been discovered
by mathematicians or physical astronomers, that the frictional resistance against tidal
currents on the earth's surface must cause a diminution of the earth's rotational speed.
This immense discovery in Natural Philosophy seems to have attracted little attention,--
indeed to have passed quite unnoticed, --among mathematicians, and astronomers, and
naturalists, until about 1840, when the doctrine of energy began to be taken to heart.
—Lord Kelvin, physicist, 1897
He became a university lecturer in 1755. The subject on which he lectured was
"Metaphysics"; the course textbook was written by A.G. Baumgarten.
According to Thomas Huxley:
"The sort of geological speculation to which I am now referring (geological aetiology, in
short) was created as a science by that famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant, when, in
1775 he wrote his General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies; or, an
Attempt to Account for the Constitutional and Mechanical Origin of the Universe, upon
Newtonian Principles." --
—Thomas H. Huxley, 1869
In the General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine
Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels) (1755), Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis,
in which he deduced that the Solar System formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. He
thus attempted to explain the order of the solar system, seen previously by Newton as
being imposed from the beginning by God. Kant also correctly deduced that the Milky
Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized also formed from a (much larger)
spinning cloud of gas. He further suggested the possibility that other nebulae might also

70
be similarly large and distant disks of stars. These postulations opened new horizons for
astronomy: for the first time extending astronomy beyond the solar system to galactic and
extragalactic realms.[14]
From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he
continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced
a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic
Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following
year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The
Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764,
Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and then was
second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry
Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often
referred to as "the Prize Essay"). In 1770, at the age of 45, Kant was finally appointed
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Kant wrote his
Inaugural Dissertation in defence of this appointment. This work saw the emergence of
several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties
of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. Not to observe this distinction would
mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the
dissertation, only in avoidance of this error will metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what twentieth century scholars termed "the
philosophy of mind." The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of
how data reaches the brain. Sunlight may fall upon a distant object, whereupon light is
reflected from various parts of the object in a way that maps the surface features (color,
texture, etc.) of the object. The light reaches the eye of a human observer, passes through
the cornea, is focused by the lens upon the retina where it forms an image similar to that
formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells next
send impulses through the optic nerve and thereafter they form a mapping in the brain of
the visual features of the distant object. The interior mapping is not the exterior thing
being mapped, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the exterior
object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully

71
grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, the uncertainties raised by
optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data
from the outside. Something had to be giving order to the incoming data. Images of
external objects have to be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This
ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to
the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile
signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
Early work
It is often held that Kant was a late bloomer, that he only became an important
philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant
wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the
value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these
"pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.[15]
The silent decade
At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential
philosopher. Much was expected of him. In response to a letter from his student, Markus
Herz, Kant came to recognize that in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account
for the relation and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties, i.e., he
needed to explain both how humans acquire data and how they process data—related but
very different processes. He also credited David Hume with awakening him from
"dogmatic slumber" (circa 1771).[16] Kant did not publish any work in philosophy for the
next eleven years.

Immanuel Kant
Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to the problem mentioned above.
Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself. He
resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. In 1778, in response to one of
these offers by a former pupil, Kant wrote
"Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving
my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if

72
I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any
length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to
undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my
current condition from any disturbance."
When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason.
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of
philosophy, this Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The book was
long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in what some considered
a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted no significance to the
work. Its density made it, as Johann Gottfried Herder put it in a letter to Johann Georg
Hamann, a "tough nut to crack," obscured by "…all this heavy gossamer." [18] Its reception
stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works such as his "Prize
Essay" and other shorter works that precede the first Critique. These well-received and
readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon which was so popular that it was
sold by the page.[19] Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his
books sold well, and by the time he published Observations On the Feeling of the
Beautiful and the Sublime in 1764 he had become a popular author of some note. [20] Kant
was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the
original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a
summary of its main views. He also encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a
brief commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series of important
works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785s
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and,
from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately
arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series of
public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's
philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the Pantheism
Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased G. E. Lessing (a
distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge,
tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn,

73
and a bitter public dispute arose among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated
into a general debate over the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason itself.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this
dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely
read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Mature work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft) in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent
work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral
philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second
Critique) and 1797’s Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third
Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. He also wrote a number
of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were
well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in eighteenth
century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and
criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success, philosophical trends were
moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples (including
Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical
forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the
emergence of German Idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly
denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a
stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant, named Gottlob Benjamin
Jäsche, published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at
the request of Kant. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a text book in logic by
Georg Freidrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written
copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered to be of fundamental
importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. For, the great nineteenth
century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas
Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to the Logik, that "Kant's whole
philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang
Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik,

74
"Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the
second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its
position within the whole of Kant's work." [23] Kant's health, long poor, took a turn for the
worse and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804 uttering "Genug" [enough] before
expiring.[24] His unfinished final work, the fragmentary Opus Postumum, was (as its title
suggests) published posthumously.
Kant never concluded that one could form a coherent account of the universe and of
human experience without grounding such an account in the "thing in itself". Many of
those who followed him argued that since the "thing in itself" was unknowable its
existence could not simply be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account
that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real," as did the German Idealists,
another group arose to ask how our (presumedly reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-
abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as
Phenomenology, and its preeminent spokesman was Edmund Husserl.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", Kant defined the
Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to Know"). Kant
maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external
authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and
empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and
German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point
for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of
irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or
not. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted, people are reasonably justified in
believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or
not. He explained:
“ All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are
in reality directed to those three problems only [God, the soul, and freedom]. However,
these three elements in themselves still hold independent, proportional, objective weight
individually. Moreover, in a collective relational context; namely, to know what ought to

75
be done: if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this
concerns our actions with reference to the highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate
intention of nature in her wise provision was really, in the constitution of our reason,
directed to moral interests only. ”
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot
prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither
(as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of
the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence
the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing,
or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former
alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real."[26] The presupposition of
God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for "Morality, by itself, constitutes
a system, but happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact proportion to morality.
This, however, is possible in an intelligible world only under a wise author and ruler.
Reason compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a world, which we
must consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as idle
dreams… ."
The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy"
that created the "Copernican revolution" that he claimed to have wrought in philosophy
were his epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the
autonomy of practical reason. These teachings placed the active, rational human subject
at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued
that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for
merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of
the rule-based activity of "synthesis." This activity consisted of conceptual unification
and integration carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the
understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time, which are
not concepts but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any
possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that
operates within it are dependent upon the mind. There is wide disagreement among Kant
scholars on the correct interpretation of this train of thought. The 'two-world'

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interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we
are never able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access
the "thing-in-itself". Kant, however, also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental
object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in
abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some
interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological
domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone –
this is known as the two-aspect view. With regard to morality, Kant argued that the
source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or
given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from
duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely
gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity – understood as rational agency, and
represented through oneself as well as others – as an end in itself rather than (merely) as
means to other ends the individual might hold.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion
and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting
controversy. Nevertheless, his theses – that the mind itself necessarily makes a
constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather
than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted
in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral
principles – have all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
[edit] Theory of perception
Main article: The Critique of Pure Reason
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work The Critique of Pure
Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and
epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that our understanding of the
external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a
priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which
is what he and others referred to as his "Copernican revolution".[29]
Before discussing his theory, it is necessary to explain Kant's distinction between analytic
and synthetic propositions.

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 1. Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its
subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up
space."
2. Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in
its subject concept ; e.g., "All bachelors are happy," or, "All bodies have weight."
Analytic propositions are true by nature of the meaning of the words involved in the
sentence—we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand
this proposition. On the other hand, synthetic statements are those that tell us something
about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something
outside of their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of
the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight.
In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before
Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all
synthetic statements required experience in order to be known.
For more details on this topic, see Analytic-synthetic distinction.
Kant, however, contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is
synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge, but knowledge that is
not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for
transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on
certain necessary conditions—which he calls a priori forms—and that these conditions
structure and hold true of the world of experience. In so doing, his main claims in the
"Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and in
addition, that Space and Time are not derived from experience but rather are its
preconditions.
.
Once we have grasped the concepts of addition, subtraction or the functions of basic
arithmetic, we do not need any empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and
in this way it would appear that arithmetic is in fact analytic. However, that it is analytic
can be disproved thus: if the numbers five and seven in the calculation 5 + 7 = 12 are
examined, there is nothing to be found in them by which the number 12 can be inferred.
Such it is that "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their

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reference is the same but their sense is not—that the mathematic judgment "5 + 7 = 12"
tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at
the same time it is synthetic. And so Kant proves a proposition can be synthetic and
known a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a
priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things which we sense. It
is our mind, though, that processes this information about the world and gives it order,
allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to
experienced objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the
concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner
information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without
the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless
—thus the famous quotation, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without
concepts are blind."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
In studying the work of Kant one must realize that there is a distinction between
"understanding" as the general concept (in German, das Verstehen) and the
"understanding" as a faculty of the human mind (in German, der Verstand). In much
English language scholarship, the word "understanding" is used in both senses.
Immanuel Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world,
such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of
nature, like causality and substance. The problem, then, is how this is possible. Kant’s
solution was to reason that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects
possible, and that these laws are the synthetic, a priori laws of nature which we can know
all objects are subject to prior to experiencing them. So to deduce all these laws, Kant
examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what
is supplied by the given intuitions. This which has just been explicated is commonly
called a transcendental reduction.
To begin with, Kant’s distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular
knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in
mind. For if we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the

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knowledge will always be subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is
desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the
object and hold good of it necessarily universally for anyone at anytime, not just the
perceiving subject in its current condition. Now what else is equivalent to objective
knowledge besides the a priori, that is to say, universal and necessary knowledge?
Nothing else, and hence before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated
under an a priori category of the understanding.
For example, say a subject says, “The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm”,
which is all he perceives in perception. His judgment is contingent and holds no
necessity. But if he says, “The sunshine causes the stone to warm”, he subsumes the
perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and
necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a
necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of
objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category
of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the
sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most
abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori
cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so,
Kant formulates another transcendental reduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so
all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put
aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is
engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments,
in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these
moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce
from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the
possible propositions within Aristotle’s syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible
judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the
moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle’s system in four

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groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative,
infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic,
assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant’s categories is obvious: quantity (unity,
plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause,
community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in
place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there
is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume
them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject’s current
state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing
universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so
any intuition thought within a category in one mind will necessarily be subsumed and
understood identically in any mind. In other words we filter what we see and hear.[32]
Schema
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective
knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact?
Kant’s solution is the schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination
connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound,
for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times.
Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the
cause must always be prior to the effect.[34][35]
Moral philosophy

Immanuel Kant
Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of
Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797) .
In the Groundwork, Kant's method involves trying to convert our everyday, obvious,
rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works
followed a method of using "practical reason", which is based only upon things about
which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach

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conclusions which are able to be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of
The Metaphysic of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the
"Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the
demands of the moral law as "categorical imperatives." Categorical imperatives are
principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be
obeyed in all, and by all, situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the
moral law. It is from the Categorical Imperative that all other moral obligations are
generated, and by which all moral obligations can be tested. Kant also stated that the
moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings
can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means." Ends that are based on physical
needs or wants will always give for merely hypothetical imperatives. The categorical
imperative, however, may be based only on something that is an "end in itself". That is,
an end that is a means only to itself and not to some other need, desire, or purpose. [38] He
believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent
facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act upon the moral law
which has no other motive than "worthiness of being happy". [39] Accordingly, he believed
that moral obligation applies to all, but only, rational agents.[40]
A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it has the force of an
obligation regardless of our will or desires (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative)[41]

In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three

formulations of the categorical imperative which he believed to be roughly equivalent:
Kant believed that if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without
moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise
it was meaningless. He did not necessarily believe that the final result was the most
important aspect of an action, but that how the person felt while carrying out the action
was the time at which value was set to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-
utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values and that

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considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept
that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by
something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and
therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition
under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth,
i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his
moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus, ("Let justice be done, though the world
perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the
world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen
Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf.).
The first formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that
the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature" (436). This
formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that
maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only
condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test".An
agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is,
what the agent believes is his reason to act.[49] The universalisability test has five steps:
1. Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take for
example the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit." Lying is the action; the
motivation is to fulfil some sort of desire. Paired together, they form the maxim.
2. Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world
agent followed that maxim. With no exception of one's self. This is in order for
you to hold people to the same principle, that is required of yourself.
3. Decide whether any contradictions or irrationalities arise in the possible world as
a result of following the maxim.
4. If a contradiction or irrationality arises, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the
real world.

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 5. If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and in some
instances required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
The second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as
by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the
condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends."[42] The principle dictates that
you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is
an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all
maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme
limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time."[50]
The third formulation
The third formulation (Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the
basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It says "that all maxims which stem
from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a
realm of nature." In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as
the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may
think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal
laws through our maxims (that is, a code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends." [51]
(See also Kingdom of Ends) None may elevate themselves above the universal law,
therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Idea of God
Kant stated the practical necessity for a belief in God in his Critique of Practical Reason.
As an idea of pure reason, "we do not have the slightest ground to assume in an absolute
manner… the object of this idea…", but adds that the idea of God cannot be separated
from the relation of happiness with morality as the "ideal of the supreme good." The
foundation of this connection is an intelligible moral world, and "is necessary from the
practical point of view"; compare Voltaire: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to
invent him." In the Jäsche Logic (1800) he wrote "One cannot provide objective reality
for any theoretical idea, or prove it, except for the idea of freedom, because this is the
condition of the moral law, whose reality is an axiom. The reality of the idea of God can

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only be proved by means of this idea, and hence only with a practical purpose, i.e., to act
as though (als ob) there is a God, and hence only for this purpose" (9:93, trans. J. Michael
Young, Lectures on Logic, p. 590-91).
Along with this idea over reason and God, Kant places thought over religion and nature,
i.e. the idea of religion being natural or naturalistic. Kant saw reason as natural, and as
some part of Christianity is based on reason and morality, as Kant points out this is major
in the scriptures, it is inevitable that Christianity is 'natural'. However, it is not
'naturalistic' in the sense that the religion does include supernatural or transcendent belief.
Aside from this, a key point is that Kant saw that the Bible should be seen as a source of
natural morality no matter whether there is/was any truth behind the supernatural factor.
Meaning that it is not necessary to know whether the supernatural part of Christianity has
any truth to abide by and use the core Christian moral code.
Kant articulates in Book Four some of his strongest criticisms of the organization and
practices of Christianity that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to
God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a
hierarchical church order. He sees all of these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God
in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in the
choice of one's actions. The severity of Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his
rejection of the possibility of theoretical proofs for the existence of God and his
philosophical re-interpretation of some basic Christian doctrines, have provided the basis
for interpretations that see Kant as thoroughly hostile to religion in general and
Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967).
] Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of
freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "the
question whether we must admit a power of spontaneously beginning a series of
successive things or states" as a real ground of necessity in regard to causality, [57] and the
practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or
"necessitation through sensuous impulses." Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the
practical concept of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, [58] but for
the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of… its

85
transcendental meaning", which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third
Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy
"a real stumbling-block" that has "embarrassed speculative reason".[57]
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical
laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the
universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of
free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori[59] dictate
"what ought to be done".
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, (1764). Kant's contribution to
aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates
the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term
"aesthetic" in a manner that is, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, its modern sense.
[62]
Prior to this, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had, in order to note the essential
differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments,
abandoned the use of the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting
that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori".[63] After A. G.
Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58),[64] Kant was one of the first philosophers
to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical
system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" of the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that
beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a
consciousness of the pleasure which attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the
understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide that which is
beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment,[66] "and is consequently not logical,
but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is in fact subjective insofar as it refers to
the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object
itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste, i.e.
judgements of beauty, lay claim to universal validity (§§20–22). It is important to note

86
that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from
common sense. Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics
engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime"
Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality which, like beauty, is
subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties
of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use
of reason. The feeling of the sublime, itself divided into two distinct modes (the
mathematical sublime and the dynamical sublime), describe two subjective moments both
of which concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. The
mathematical sublime is situated in the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural
objects which appear boundless and formless, or which appear "absolutely great" (§ 23–
25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's
assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself
superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the
sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast
might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such
sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral
vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to
develop moral character.
Kant had developed the distinction between an object of art as a material value
subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of
taste as a "refined" value in the propositions of his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In
the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of
unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society",[67] and in the Seventh Thesis
asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal
of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the
mind of man "belongs to culture".[68]

Political philosophy

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In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch Kant listed several conditions that he thought
necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of
constitutional republics His classical republican theory was extended in the first part of
Metaphysics of Morals - published separately earlier in 1790 as Science of Right.[71]
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that
majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "…democracy is, properly
speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all'
decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all,
decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." [72] As
most writers at the time he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy,
aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.

Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology for over 25 years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's doctoral
dissertation.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997
in German. The former was translated into English and published by the Cambridge
Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.[73]
Influence
The vastness of Kant's influence on Western thought is immeasurable. [74] Over and above
his specific influence on specific thinkers, Kant changed the framework within which
philosophical inquiry has been carried out from his day through the present in ways that
have been irreversible. In other words, he accomplished a paradigm shift: very little
philosophy since Kant has been carried out as an extension of pre-Kantian philosophy or
in the mode of thought and discourse of pre-Kantian philosophy. This shift consists in
several closely related innovations that have become axiomatic to post-Kantian thought,
both in philosophy itself and in the social sciences and humanities generally:
 Kant's "Copernican revolution", that placed the role of the human subject or
knower at the center of inquiry into our knowledge, such that it is impossible to
philosophize about things as they are independently of us or of how they are for
us;[75]

88
  his invention of critical philosophy, that is of the notion of being able to discover
and systematically explore possible inherent limits to our ability to know through
philosophical reasoning;
 his creation of the concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the
conditions of possible experience" – that is that things, knowledge, and forms of
consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that to
understand or know them we have to first understand these conditions;
 his theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the
functioning of the human mind;
 his notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
 his assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather
than as means.
Some or all of these Kantian ideas can be seen in schools of thought as different from one
another as German Idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism,
critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and
deconstructionism[citation needed] [dubious – discuss]. Kant's influence also has extended to the social
and behavioral sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean
Piaget, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Because of the thoroughness of the
Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends even to thinkers who do not specifically
refer to his work or use his terminology.
During his own life, there was a considerable amount of attention paid to his
thought, much of it critical, though he did have a positive influence on Reinhold, Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel, and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The philosophical movement
known as German Idealism developed from Kant's theoretical and practical writings. The
German Idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, attempted to bring traditionally
"metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute," "God," or "Being" into the scope of
Kant's critical philosophy. In so doing, the German Idealists attempted to reverse Kant's
establishment of the unknowableness of unexperiencable ideas.
Hegel was one of the first major critics of Kant's philosophy. Hegel thought Kant's moral
philosophy was too formal, abstract and ahistorical. In response to Kant's abstract and
formal account of morality, Hegel developed an ethics that considered the "ethical life" of

89
the community. But Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than
replace, Kantian "morality." And Hegel's philosophical work as a whole can be
understood as attempting to defend Kant's conception of freedom as going beyond finite
"inclinations," by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Friedrich
Nietzsche or Bertrand Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's most basic concerns.
Many British Roman Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc,
seized on Kant and promoted his work, with a view to restoring the philosophical
legitimacy of a belief in God. Reaction against this, and an attack on Kant's use of
language, is found in Ronald Englefield's article, Kant as Defender of the Faith in
Nineteenth-century England[79], reprinted in Critique of Pure Verbiage, Essays on Abuses
of Language in Literary, Religious, and Philosophical Writings. [80] These criticisms of
Kant were common in the anti-idealistic arguments of the logical positivism school and
its admirers.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers
whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy.[84] They both, regardless
of recent relativist trends in philosophy, have argued that universality is essential to any
viable moral philosophy.

With his Perpetual Peace, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the
ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies
in political science.
Kant's notion of "Critique" or criticism has been quite influential. The Early German
Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's
self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. [85] Also in
Aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian
criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of
Abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—
that makes up the medium of painting.[86] French philosopher Michel Foucault was also
greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a
re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to
classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".[87]

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Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which
means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. [88] Kant’s often
brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as
intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert’s formalism,
and the logicism of Frege and Bertrand Russell.
Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by
theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development.
Post-Kantian philosophy has yet to return to the style of thinking and arguing that
characterized much of philosophy and metaphysics before Kant, although many British
and American philosophers have preferred to trace their intellectual origins to Hume, [91]
thus bypassing Kant. The British philosopher P. F. Strawson is a notable exception,[92] as
is the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars.
Due in part to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a
renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of
psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.[94]
The Emmanuel Kants, a drinking society at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, take their
name from this eminent figure in Western philosophy In a Monty Python sketch,
Immanuel Kant is featured as part of the starting lineup of a German soccer team
composed entirely of Philosophers.
Kant’s Tomb
Kant's tomb is today in a mausoleum adjoining the northeast corner of Königsberg
Cathedral in what is now known as Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed
by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of
Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains
were moved outside and placed in a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of
the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated before it was demolished to
make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same spot, where it is today.
The tomb and its mausoleum are some of the few artifacts of German times preserved by
the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring
flowers to the mausoleum.

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A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University
of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in
the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War
II, the historical University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the
Russian-speaking "Kaliningrad State University", which took up the campus and
surviving buildings of the historic German university. In 2005, that Russian-speaking
university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia in honour of Kant.
The change of name was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin
of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university further
formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism.

List of works
 (1746) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Vital Forces (Gedanken von der
wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
 (1755) A New Explanation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge
(Neue Erhellung der ersten Grundsätze metaphysischer Erkenntnisse; Doctoral
Thesis: Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio)
 (1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (Allgemeine
Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
 (1756) Monadologia Physica
 (1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche
Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
 (1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the
Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des
Daseins Gottes)
 (1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy
(Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
 (1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen
über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)

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 (1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
 (1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology
and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der
Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
 (1766) Dreams of a Spirit Seer (On Emmanuel Swedenborg) (Träume eines
Geistersehers)
 (1770) Inaugural Dissertation (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et
principiis)
 (1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der
Menschen)
 (1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason [96] (Kritik der reinen Vernunft
[97]
)
 (1783) "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics"[98] (Prolegomena zu einer jeden
künftigen Metaphysik)
 (1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (Beantwortung der
Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? [99])
 (1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (Idee zu einer
allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht)
 (1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik
der Sitten)
 (1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische
Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
 (1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History
[100]
 (1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft [101])
 (1788) Critique of Practical Reason[102] (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [103])
 (1790) Critique of Judgement (Kritik der Urteilskraft [104])
 (1790) The Science of Right[105]
 (1793) Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Die Religion innerhalb der
Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft) [106]

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  (1793) On the Old Saw: That may be right in theory, but it won`t work in practice
(Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht
für die Praxis)
 (1795) Perpetual Peace [107] (Zum ewigen Frieden [108])
 (1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten)
 (1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in
pragmatischer Hinsicht)
 (1798) The Contest of Faculties [109] (Der Streit der Fakultäten [110])
 (1800) Logic (Logik)
 (1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)[111]
 (1804) Opus Postumum
 (More German works at Wikisource)
 (More German works at Project Gutenberg)
 (More English works at The University of Adelaide Library)

Adopted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

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 Section C
Muslim Philosophers

Ibn-Rushd
Ibn-Rushd , known as Averroes (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian-Arab
philosopher, physician, and polymath: a master of philosophy, theology, Maliki law and
jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, mathematics, medicine, physics, psychology and
science. He was born in Córdoba, modern day Spain, and died in Marrakech, modern day
Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. He has been described as the
founding father of secular thought in Western Europe.
Biography
Ibn Rushd came from a family of Maliki legal scholars; his grandfather Abu Al-Walid
Muhammad (d. 1126) was chief judge of Cordoba under the Almoravid dynasty. His
father, Abu Al-Qasim Ahmad, held the same position until the coming of the Almohad
dynasty in 1146. It was Ibn Tufail ("Abubacer" to the West), the philosophic vizier of

95
Almohad Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf, who introduced Averroes (Ibn Rushd) to the court
and to Ibn Zuhr ("Avenzoar" in the West), the great Muslim physician; both men became
friends. Averroes later reported how it was Ibn Tufail that inspired him to write his
famous Aristotelian commentaries:
Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl summoned me one day and told me that he had heard the
Commander of the Faithful complaining about the disjointedness of Aristotle's mode of
expression — or that of the translators — and the resultant obscurity of his intentions. He
said that if someone took on these books who could summarize them and clarify their
aims after first thoroughly understanding them himself, people would have an easier time
comprehending them. “If you have the energy,” Ibn Tufayl told me, “you do it. I'm
confident you can, because I know what a good mind and devoted character you have,
and how dedicated you are to the art. You understand that only my great age, the cares of
my office — and my commitment to another task that I think even more vital — keep me
from doing it myself.”
In 1160 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was made Qazi of Seville and he served in many court
appointments in Seville and Cordoba, and in Morocco during his career. At the end of the
12th century, following the Almohads conquest of Al-Andalus, his political career was
ended. Averroes' strictly rationalist views which collided with the more orthodox Islamic
views of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur led to him banishing Averroes though he had
previously appointed him as his personal physician. Averroes was not rehabilitated until
shortly before his death. He devoted the rest of his life to his philosophical writings.
Works
1. He wrote commentaries on most of the surviving works of Aristotle. On each
work, he wrote the Jami, the Talkhis and the Tafsir which are, respectively, a
simplified overview, an intermediate commentary with more critical material, and
an advanced study of Aristotelian thought in a Muslim context. The terms are
taken from the names of different types of commentary on the Qur'an.
2. His most important original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the
Incoherence (Tahafut al-tahafut), in which he defended Aristotelian philosophy
against al-Ghazali's claims in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-
falasifa). Al-Ghazali argued that Aristotelianism, especially as presented in the

96
 writings of Avicenna, was self-contradictory and an affront to the teachings of
Islam. Averroes' rebuttal was two-pronged
3. He contended both that al-Ghazali's arguments were mistaken and that, in any
case, the system of Avicenna was a distortion of genuine Aristotelianism so that
al-Ghazali was aiming at the wrong target.
4. Other works were the Fasl al-Maqal, which argued for the legality of
philosophical investigation under Islamic law, and the Kitab al-Kashf, which
argued against the proofs of Islam advanced by the Ash'arite school and discussed
what proofs, on the popular level, should be used instead.
5. Averroes is also a highly-regarded legal scholar of the Maliki school. Perhaps his
best-known work in this field is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ( a
textbook of Maliki doctrine in a comparative framework. He is also the author of
al-Bayān wa’l-Tīl, wa’l-Shar wa’l-Tawjīh wa’l-Ta`līl fi Masā’il al-Mustakhraja, a
long and detailed commentary based on the Mustakhraja of Muḥammad al-`Utbī
al-Qurtubī.
Medicine
1. In medicine, Averroes wrote a medical encyclopedia called Kulliyat
("Generalities", i.e. general medicine), known in its Latin translation as Colliget.
He also made a compilation of the works of Galen (129-200) and wrote a
commentary on The Canon of Medicine (Qanun fi 't-tibb) of Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
(980-1037).
2. In neurology and neuroscience, Averroes suggested the existence of Parkinson's
disease.
3. Ophthalmology and optics, he was the first to attribute photoreceptor properties to
the retina.
4. In his Coliget, he was also the first to suggest that the principal organ of sight
might be the arachnoid membrane (aranea).
5. His work led to much discussion in 16th century Europe over whether the
principal organ of sight is the traditional Galenic crystalline humour or the
Averroist aranea, which in turn led to the discovery that the retina is the principal
organ of sight.

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 6. He discussed the topic of human dissection and autopsy. Although he never
undertook human dissection, he was aware of it being carried out by some of his
contemporaries, such as Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), and appears to have supported the
practice. Averroes stated that the "practice of dissection strengthens the faithdue
to his view of the human body as "the remarkable handiwork of God in his
creation
Philosophy
. His main ideas are
1. Eternity of Universe
2. Soul is divided into two parts individual and divine. Divine is same for all and
individual is not eternal
3. There are two kinds of Knowledge of Truth. The first being his knowledge of
truth of religion being based in faith and thus could not be tested, nor did it
require training to understand. The second knowledge of truth is philosophy,
which was reserved for an elite few who had the intellectual capacity to undertake
this study.
4. Averroes has the concept of "existence precedes essence", a key foundational
concept of existentialism, can also be found in the works of Averroes, as a
reaction to Avicenna's concept of "essence precedes existence". "Existence
precedes essence", is a philosophic concept based on the idea of existence
without essence. For humanity, it means that humanity may exist, but humanity's
existence does not mean anything at least at the beginning. This concept can be
applied at the individual level as well. The value and meaning of this existence—
or essence—is created only later. It directly and strongly rejects many traditional
beliefs including religious beliefs that humankind is given a knowable purpose by
its creator or other deity. The idea of "existence precedes essence" is a key
foundational concept of existentialism.
5. According to him, there is no conflict between religion and philosophy, rather that
they are different ways of reaching the same truth
Astronomy

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In astronomy, Averroes rejected the eccentric deferent’s introduced by Ptolemy. He
rejected the Ptolemaic model and instead argued for a strictly concentric model of the
universe. He wrote the following criticism on the Ptolemaic model of planetary motion:[7]
"To assert the existence of an eccentric sphere or an epicyclic sphere is contrary to
nature. [...] The astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the
calculations and not with what exists."
Averroes also argued that the Moon is opaque and obscure, and has some parts which are
thicker than others, with the thicker parts receiving more light from the Sun than the
thinner parts of the Moon.[8] He also gave one of the first descriptions on sunspots.[9]
Logic
Averroes was the last major Muslim logician from al-Andalus. He is known for writing
the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic.[10]
Physics
In Averroes' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, he commented on the theory of motion
proposed by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) in Text 71, and also made his own contributions to
physics and mechanics.
Averroes was the first to define and measure force as "the rate at which work is done in
changing the kinetic condition of a material body"[16] and the first to correctly argue "that
the effect and measure of force is change in the kinetic condition of a materially resistant
mass."[17]
Significance
1. Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle's
works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West. Before 1150, only a few
translated works of Aristotle existed in Latin Europe, and they were not studied
much or given much credence by monastic scholars. It was through the Latin
translations of Averroes's work beginning in the 12th century that the legacy of
Aristotle became more widely known in the medieval West.
2. Averroes' argument in The Decisive Treatise provided a justification for the
emancipation of science and philosophy from official Ash'ari theology, thus
Averroism is considered by some writers as a precursor to modern secularism,[18]

99
 [19]
or even as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. George
Sarton, the father of the history of science, writes:
"Averroes was great because of the tremendous stir he made in the minds of men
for centuries. A history of Averroism would include up to the end of the
sixteenth-century, a period of four centuries which would perhaps deserve as
much as any other to be called the Middle Ages, for it was the real transition
between ancient and modern methods."
3. Averroes's work on Aristotle spans almost three decades, and he wrote
commentaries on almost all of Aristotle's work except for Aristotle's Politics, to
which he did not have access. Averroes greatly influenced philosophy in the
Islamic world. His death coincides with a change in the culture of Al-Andalus. In
his work Fasl al-Maqāl (translated a. o. as The Decisive Treatise), he stresses the
importance of analytical thinking as a prerequisite to interpret the Qur'an; this is
in contrast to orthodox Muslim theology, where the emphasis is less on analytical
thinking but on extensive knowledge of sources other than the Qur'an, i.e. the
hadith.
4. Hebrew translations of his work also had a lasting impact on Jewish philosophy.
His ideas were assimilated by Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas and others
(especially in the University of Paris) within the Christian scholastic tradition
which valued Aristotelian logic.
5. Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed him to be so important they did not
refer to him by name, simply calling him "The Commentator" and calling
Aristotle "The Philosopher." Averroes's treatise on Plato's Republic has played a
major role in both the transmission and the adaptation of the Platonic tradition in
the West. It has been a primary source in medieval political philosophy. On the
other hand he was feared by many Christian theologians, who accused him of
advocating a "double truth" and denying orthodox doctrines such as individual
immortality, and an underground mythology grew up stigmatising him as the
ultimate unbeliever; these accusations were largely based on misunderstandings
of his work
Translation of His Works

100
Jacob Anatoli translated several of the works of Averroes from Arabic into Hebrew in the
1200s. Many of them were later translated from Hebrew into Latin by Jacob Mantino and
Abraham de Balmes. Other works were translated directly from Arabic into Latin by
Michael Scot. Many of his works in logic and metaphysics have been permanently lost,
while others, including some of the longer Aristotelian commentaries, have only survived
in Latin or Hebrew translation, not in the original Arabic. The fullest version of his works
is in Latin, and forms part of the multi-volume Juntine edition of Aristotle published in
Venice 1562-1574.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes

Avicena

Abū ‘Alī al-usayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā', known as Abū Alī Sīnā or, more commonly,
Ibn Sīnā , but most commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna
(Greek: Aβιτζιανός, Avitzianós),(c. 980 - 1037) was a polymath of Persian origin and the
foremost physician and philosopher of his time He was also an astronomer, chemist,
geologist, Hafiz, Islamic psychologist, Islamic Scholar , Islamic theologian, logician
mathematician, teacher, physicist, poet, and scientist
Ibn Sīnā studied medicine under a physician named Koushyar. He wrote almost 450
treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular,
150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on
medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and
scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text
at many medieval universities.[10] The Canon of Medicine was used as a text-book in the
universities of Montpellier and Louvain as late as 1650.
Ibn Sīnā's Canon of Medicine provides a complete system of medicine according to the
principles of Galen (and Hippocrates).
George Sarton, an early author of the history of science, wrote in the Introduction to the
History of Science:

101
 One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an
eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as
Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original
renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history. His
most important medical works are the Qanun (Canon) and a treatise on
Cardiac drugs. The 'Qanun fi-l-Tibb' is an immense encyclopedia of
medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to
distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy; contagious nature of phthisis;
distribution of diseases by water and soil; careful description of skin
troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions; of nervous ailments.
Avicenna created an extensive corpus of works during what is commonly known as
Islam's Golden Age, in which the translations of Graeco-Roman, Persian and Indian texts
were studied extensively. Graeco-Roman (Mid- and Neo-Platonic, and Aristotelian) texts
by the Kindi school were commented, redacted and developed substantially by Islamic
intellectuals, who also built upon Persian and Indian mathematical systems, astronomy,
algebra, trigonometry and medicine.[15] The Samanid dynasty in Greater Khorasan and
central Asia as well as Buwayhid in the western part of Persia and Iraq could provide a
thriving atmosphere for scholarly and cultural development. Under the Samanids,
Bukhara rivalled Baghdad as a cultural capital of Islam.[16]
The study of Quran and Hadith thrived in such a scholarly atmosphere. Philosophy, Fiqh
and theology (kalam) were further developed, most noticeably by Avicenna and his
opponents. Al-Razi and Al-Farabi had provided methodology and knowledge in medicine
and philosophy. Avicenna could use the great libraries of Balkh, Khwarezm, Gorgan,
Rey, Isfahan and Hamedan. As various texts, such as the 'Ahd with Bahmanyar show, he
debated philosophical points with the greatest scholars of the time. As Aruzi Samarqandi
describes in his four articles before Avicenna left Khwarezm he had met Abu Rayhan
Biruni (a famous scientist and astronomer), Abu Nasr Iraqi (a renowned mathematician),
Abu Sahl Masihi (a respected philosopher) and Abu al-Khayr Khammar (a great
physician).
Biography
Early life

102
His full name was Hussain ibn Abdullah ibn Hassan ibn Ali ibn Sina. He was born
around 980 in Afshana, near Bukhara, which was his mother's hometown, in Greater
Khorasan, to a Persian[17] family. His father, Abdullah, was a respected Ismaili scholar
from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Emirate, in what is today Balkh Province,
Afghanistan. Prominent theologian Henry Corbin believed that Ibn Sina himself was a
good ismaili. His mother was named Setarah. His father was at the time of his son's birth
the governor in one of the Samanid Nuh ibn Mansur's estates. He had his son very
carefully educated at Bukhara. Ibn Sina's independent thought was served by an
extraordinary intelligence and memory, which allowed him to overtake his teachers at the
age of fourteen. As he said in his autobiography, there was nothing that he had not
learned when he reached eighteen.
Ibn Sīnā was put under the charge of a tutor, and his precocity soon made him the marvel
of his neighbours; he displayed exceptional intellectual behaviour and was a child
prodigy who had memorized the Qur'an by the age of 10 and a great deal of Persian
poetry as well.[1] He learned Indian arithmetic from an Indian greengrocer, and he began
to learn more from a wandering scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and
teaching the young. He also studied Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) under the Hanafi
scholar Ismail al-Zahid.
As a teenager, he was greatly troubled by the Metaphysics of Aristotle, which he could
not understand until he read al-Farabi's commentary on the work.[21] For the next year and
a half, he studied philosophy, in which he encountered greater obstacles. In such
moments of baffled inquiry, he would leave his books, perform the requisite ablutions
(wudu), then go to the mosque, and continue in prayer (salah) till light broke on his
difficulties. Deep into the night he would continue his studies, and even in his dreams
problems would pursue him and work out their solution. Forty times, it is said, he read
through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but
their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination, from the
little commentary by Farabi, which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three
dirhams. So great was his joy at the discovery, thus made by help of a work from which
he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed
alms upon the poor.

103
He turned to medicine at 16, and not only learned medical theory, but also by gratuitous
attendance of the sick had, according to his own account, discovered new methods of
treatment. The teenager achieved full status as a qualified physician at age 18, and found
that "Medicine is no hard and thorny science, like mathematics and metaphysics, so I
soon made great progress; I became an excellent doctor and began to treat patients, using
approved remedies." The youthful physician's fame spread quickly, and he treated many
patients without asking for payment.
Adulthood

His first appointment was that of physician to the emir, who owed him his recovery from
a dangerous illness (997). Ibn Sina's chief reward for this service was access to the royal
library of the Samanids, well-known patrons of scholarship and scholars. When the
library was destroyed by fire not long after, the enemies of Ibn Sina accused him of
burning it, in order for ever to conceal the sources of his knowledge. Meanwhile, he
assisted his father in his financial labours, but still found time to write some of his earliest
works.
When Ibn Sina was 22 years old, he lost his father. The Samanid dynasty came to its end
in December 1004. Ibn Sina seems to have declined the offers of Mahmud of Ghazni, and
proceeded westwards to Urgench in the modern Uzbekistan, where the vizier, regarded as
a friend of scholars, gave him a small monthly stipend. The pay was small, however, so
Ibn Sina wandered from place to place through the districts of Nishapur and Merv to the
borders of Khorasan, seeking an opening for his talents. Qabus, the generous ruler of
Dailam and central Persia, himself a poet and a scholar, with whom Ibn Sina had
expected to find an asylum, was about that date (1012) starved to death by his troops who
had revolted. Ibn Sina himself was at this season stricken down by a severe illness.
Finally, at Gorgan, near the Caspian Sea, Ibn Sina met with a friend, who bought a
dwelling near his own house in which Ibn Sina lectured on logic and astronomy. Several
of Ibn Sina's treatises were written for this patron; and the commencement of his Canon
of Medicine also dates from his stay in Hyrcania.
Ibn Sina subsequently settled at Rai, in the vicinity of modern Tehran, (present day
capital of Iran), the home town of Rhazes; where Majd Addaula, a son of the last

104
Buwayhid emir, was nominal ruler under the regency of his mother (Seyyedeh Khatun).
About thirty of Ibn Sina's shorter works are said to have been composed in Rai. Constant
feuds which raged between the regent and her second son, Shams al-Daula, however,
compelled the scholar to quit the place. After a brief sojourn at Qazvin he passed
southwards to Hamadãn where Shams al-Daula, another Buwayhid emir, had established
himself. At first, Ibn Sina entered into the service of a high-born lady; but the emir,
hearing of his arrival, called him in as medical attendant, and sent him back with presents
to his dwelling. Ibn Sina was even raised to the office of vizier. The emir consented that
he should be banished from the country. Ibn Sina, however, remained hidden for forty
days in a sheikh Ahmed Fadhel's house, until a fresh attack of illness induced the emir to
restore him to his post. Even during this perturbed time, Ibn Sina persevered with his
studies and teaching. Every evening, extracts from his great works, the Canon and the
Sanatio, were dictated and explained to his pupils. On the death of the emir, Ibn Sina
ceased to be vizier and hid himself in the house of an apothecary, where, with intense
assiduity, he continued the composition of his works.
Meanwhile, he had written to Abu Ya'far, the prefect of the dynamic city of Isfahan,
offering his services. The new emir of Hamadan, hearing of this correspondence and
discovering where Ibn Sina was hidden, incarcerated him in a fortress. War meanwhile
continued between the rulers of Isfahan and Hamadãn; in 1024 the former captured
Hamadan and its towns, expelling the Tajik mercenaries. When the storm had passed, Ibn
Sina returned with the emir to Hamadan, and carried on his literary labors. Later,
however, accompanied by his brother, a favorite pupil, and two slaves, Ibn Sina escaped
out of the city in the dress of a Sufi ascetic. After a perilous journey, they reached
Isfahan, receiving an honorable welcome from the prince.
Later life and death

105
Avicenna's tomb in Hamedan, Iran.
The remaining ten or twelve years of Ibn Sīnā's life were spent in the service of Abu
Ja'far 'Ala Addaula, whom he accompanied as physician and general literary and
scientific adviser, even in his numerous campaigns.
During these years he began to study literary matters and philology, instigated, it is
asserted, by criticisms on his style. A severe colic, which seized him on the march of the
army against Hamadan, was checked by remedies so violent that Ibn Sina could scarcely
stand. On a similar occasion the disease returned; with difficulty he reached Hamadan,
where, finding the disease gaining ground, he refused to keep up the regimen imposed,
and resigned himself to his fate.
His friends advised him to slow down and take life moderately. He refused, however,
stating that: "I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length". On his
deathbed remorse seized him; he bestowed his goods on the poor, restored unjust gains,
freed his slaves, and read through the Qur'an every three days until his death. He died in
June 1037, in his fifty-eighth year, in the month of Ramadan and was buried in Hamedan,
Iran.[22]
The Canon of Medicine
Main article: The Canon of Medicine

A Latin copy of the Canon of Medicine, dated 1484, located at the P.I. Nixon Medical
Historical Library of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio,
USA.

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An Arabic copy of the Canon of Medicine, dated 1593

Medical staff training college dedicated to Avicenna at his birthplace, Afshona

About 100 treatises were ascribed to Ibn Sina. Some of them are tracts of a few pages,
others are works extending through several volumes. The best-known amongst them, and
that to which Ibn Sina owed his European reputation, is his 14-volume The Canon of
Medicine, which was a standard medical text in Europe and the Islamic world up until the
18th century.[23]
Medicine and pharmacology
The book is known for the discovery of contagious diseases and sexually transmitted
diseases,[14] the introduction of quarantine to limit the spread of infectious diseases, the
introduction of experimental medicine, clinical trials,[24] neuropsychiatry,[25] risk factor
analysis, and the idea of a syndrome in the diagnosis of specific diseases,[26] and

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hypothesized the existence of microrganisms. [27] Ibn Sīnā adopted, from the Greeks, the
theory that epidemics are caused by pollution in the air (miasma).[28] It classifies and
describes diseases, and outlines their assumed causes. Hygiene, simple and complex
medicines, and functions of parts of the body are also covered. In this, Ibn Sīnā is
credited as being the first to correctly document the anatomy of the human eye, along
with descriptions of eye afflictions such as cataracts. It asserts that tuberculosis was
contagious, which was later disputed by Europeans, but turned out to be true. It also
describes the symptoms and complications of diabetes. Both forms of facial paralysis
were described in-depth. In addition, the workings of the heart as a valve are described.
[citation needed]

The Canon of Medicine was the first book dealing with experimental medicine, evidence-
based medicine, randomized controlled trials,[29][30] and efficacy tests,[31][32] and it laid out
the following rules and principles for testing the effectiveness of new drugs and
medications, which still form the basis of clinical pharmacology[32] and modern clinical
trials:
 The drug must be free from any extraneous accidental quality.
 It must be used on a simple, not a composite, disease.
 The drug must be tested with two contrary types of diseases, because sometimes a
drug cures one disease by Its essential qualities and another by its accidental ones.
 The quality of the drug must correspond to the strength of the disease. For
example, there are some drugs whose heat is less than the coldness of certain
diseases, so that they would have no effect on them.
 The time of action must be observed, so that essence and accident are not
confused.
 The effect of the drug must be seen to occur constantly or in many cases, for if
this did not happen, it was an accidental effect.
 The experimentation must be done with the human body, for testing a drug on a
lion or a horse might not prove anything about its effect on man.
An Arabic edition of the Canon appeared at Rome in 1593, and a Hebrew version at
Naples in 1491. Of the Latin version there were about thirty editions, founded on the
original translation by Gerard de Sabloneta. In the 15th century a commentary on the text

108
of the Canon was composed. Other medical works translated into Latin are the
Medicamenta Cordialia, Canticum de Medicina, and the Tractatus de Syrupo Acetoso.
It was mainly accident which determined that from the 12th to the 18th century, Ibn Sīnā
should be the guide of medical study in European universities, and eclipse the names of
Rhazes, Ali ibn al-Abbas and Averroes. His work is not essentially different from that of
his predecessor Rhazes, because he presented the doctrine of Galen, and through Galen
the doctrine of Hippocrates, modified by the system of Aristotle, as well as the Indian
doctrines of Sushruta and Charaka.[33] But the Canon of Ibn Sīnā is distinguished from the
Al-Hawi (Continens) or Summary of Rhazes by its greater method, due perhaps to the
logical studies of the former.
The work has been variously appreciated in subsequent ages, some regarding it as a
treasury of wisdom, and others, like Averroes, holding it useful only as waste paper. In
modern times it has been mainly of historic interest as most of its tenets have been
disproved or expanded upon by scientific medicine. The vice of the book is excessive
classification of bodily faculties, and over-subtlety in the discrimination of diseases. It
includes five books; of which the first and second discuss physiology, pathology and
hygiene, the third and fourth deal with the methods of treating disease, and the fifth
describes the composition and preparation of remedies. This last part contains some
personal observations.
He is ample in the enumeration of symptoms, and is said to be inferior in practical
medicine and surgery. He introduced into medical theory the four causes of the
Peripatetic system. Of natural history and botany he pretended to no special knowledge.
Up to the year 1650, or thereabouts, the Canon was still used as a textbook in the
universities of Leuven and Montpellier.
In the museum at Bukhara, there are displays showing many of his writings, surgical
instruments from the period and paintings of patients undergoing treatment. Ibn Sīnā was
interested in the effect of the mind on the body, and wrote a great deal on psychology,
likely influencing Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajjah. He also introduced medical herbs.
Theory of Tempraments
Avicenna extended the theory of temperaments in The Canon of Medicine to encompass
"emotional aspects, mental capacity, moral attitudes, self-awareness, movements and

109
dreams." He summarized his version of the four humours and temperaments in a table as
follows:
Avicenna's four humours and temperaments
Evidence Hot Cold Moist Dry
fevers related to
Morbid inflammations
serious humour, lassitude loss of vigour
states become febrile
rheumatism
Functional deficient
deficient energy difficult digestion
power digestive power
bitter taste,
Subjective Lack of desire for mucoid salivation, insomnia,
excessive thirst,
sensations fluids sleepiness wakefulness
burning at cardia
diarrhea, swollen
Physical high pulse rate, eyelids, rough rough skin,
flaccid joints
signs lassitude skin, acquired acquired habit
habit
calefacients infrigidants dry regimen
Foods & harmful, harmful, moist articles harmful,
medicines infrigidants calefacients harmful humectants
beneficial beneficial beneficial
Relation to
worse in summer worse in winter bad in autumn
weather
[edit] Physical Exercise: the Key to Health
The Canon of Medicine: Volume 1 of 5; Part 4 of 5: The Preservation of Health
Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine which is written in 5 volumes, only the first volume has
appeared in the English Language. In the first volume, Ibn Sina divides medicine into two
parts as he explains it throughout the first book: the theoretical and the practical. The
theoretical part consists of; but is not excluded to such things as: the causes of health and
disease, the temperaments, the humours, the anatomy, general physiology, the breath,
psychology, discussion of causes diseases and symptoms, the causes of illness, the
classification of diseases, the pulse, the urine etc.
As he himself says in the book on pg 353 "In the first part of this book it
was stated that medicine comprises two parts, one theoretical, and one

110
 practical, though both are really speculative science." (Avicenna 1999,
p. 353)
Theoretical and Practical Medicine
Ibn Sina goes on to say that you do not get any benefit from just knowing how your body
works, but rather the true benefit of medicine itself is in its practical aspect, since
medicine is for the preservation of health.
"That which is speculative named theory relates to the formation of
opinions and the showing of the evidence upon which they are based,
without reference to the mode of acting upon them. Thus this part deals
with the temperaments, the humors, the drives, and with the forms, the
symptoms, and the causes of disease. That which is specially named
practical relates to the mode of acting upon this knowledge, and the
prescription of a regimen." (Avicenna 1999, p. 353)
The Benefits of Exercise
Once the purpose of medicine has been set forth, then from pages 377-455, Ibn Sina
divides the way of achieving health as:
"Since the regimen of maintaining health consists essentially in the
regulation of: (1) exercise (2) food and (3) sleep, we may begin our
discourse with the subject of exercise". (Avicenna 1999, p. 377)
Exercise itself is divided into three main parts: The Massage (which is equivalent to
massaging your muscles before you start to exercise); The Exercise itself; and lastly the
Cold Bath.
Giving one of the greatest benefits of the regimen of exercise, and then explaining the
extremely important and necessary need for physical exercise; Ibn Sina states:
The value of exercise includes the following (1) it hardens the organs and
renders them fit for their functions (2) it results in a better absorption of
food, aids assimilation, and, by increasing the innate heat, improves
nutrition (3) it clears the pores of the skin (4) it removes effete substances
through the lungs (5) it strengthens the physique. Vigorous exercise
invigorates the muscular and nervous system." (Avicenna 1999, p. 379)

111
In what manner does Ibn Sina uses the word temperament? In saying that exercise
cures diseases of temperamant
We shall not mention everything Ibn Sina has said on this topic, but of extreme
importance is the division Ibn Sina shows of a person whose temperament is harmonious
and the other whose temperament is non-uniform. Ibn Sina says on pg 276-277
"In addition to the signs of the normal temperament already given, there
are: Mental faculties include: vigor of imagination, intellectual power, and
memory." (Avicenna 1999, p. 276)
"In brief, there is non-uniformity of temperament among the members; or,
perchance, the principal members depart from equability and come to be
of contrary temperament, one deviating towards one, amother to its
contrary. If the components of the body are out of proportion, it is
unfortunate both for talent and reasoning power." (Avicenna 1999, p. 277)
To forsake exercise would often incur the risk of "hectic", because the
instinctive drives of the members are impaired, inasmuch as the
deprivation of movement prevents the access to them of the innate breath.
And this last is the real instrument of life for every one of the members."
(Avicenna 1999, pp. 378–9)
Exercises
The exercises themselves are divided into 'strenuous, mild, vigorous and brisk'. On pages
379-381; Ibn Sina states the types of exercises under each type:
"Strenuous exercises include: wrestling contests, boxing, quick marching,
running, jumping over an object higher than one foot, throwing the javelin,
fencing, horsemanship, swimming. Mild exercises include: fishing,
sailing, being carried on camels, swinging to and fro. Vigorous exercises
include: those performed by soldiers in camp, in military sports; field
running, long jumping, high jumping, polo, stone throwing, lifting heavy
stones or weights, various forms of wrestling. Brisk exercises include:
involves interchanging places with a partner as swiftly as possible, each
jumping to and fro, either in time [to music] or irregularly." (Avicenna
1999, pp. 379–81)

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There are certain important things to note once you start exercising, one is the amount,
the other consistency; Ibn Sina states about the amount:
"(1) the color - as long as the skin goes on becoming florid, the exercise
may be continued. After it ceases to do so, the exercise must be
discontinued." (Avicenna 1999, p. 384)
On being consistent with exercise Ibn Sina states (on the importance of having a
regimen):
"At the conclusion of the first day's exercise, you will know the degree of
exercise allowable and when you know the amount of nourishment the
person can bear, do not make any change in either on the second day.
Arrange that the measure of aliment, and the amount of exercise shall not
exceed that limit ascertained on the first day." (Avicenna 1999, p. 385)
Bathing in Cold Water
Once you have finished exercising; it is often that the person will feel tired and fatigued;
to combat this problem Ibn Sina says on page 388:
"The beneficial Effects of Baths: The benefits are (1) induction of sleep
(2) dilation of pores (3) cleansing of skin (4) dispersal of the undesirable
waste matters (5) maturation of abscesses (6) drawing of nutriment
towards the surface of the body (7) assistance to the physiological
dispersion and excretion of poisonous matters (8) prevention of diarrhea
and (9) removal of fatigue effects." (Avicenna 1999, p. 388)
Diet
Once Ibn Sina has laid the foundation of exercise being central to health, he names many
exercises as running, swimming, weight lifting, polo, fencing, boxing, wrestling, long
jumping, high jumping, etc. on page 380. To relate everything written in this book would
take too much space, so after choosing a vigorous exercise regimen for yourself daily,
which you can do daily, consistently as Ibn Sina states, he also gives a Diet to go along
with this. Ibn Sina states:
"The meal should include: (1) meat especially kid of goats; veal, and year-
old lambs [this means white meat in today`s terms] (2) wheat, which is
cleaned of extraneous matter and gathered during a healthy harvest

113
 without ever being exposed to injurious influences (3) sweets (fruits) of
appropriate temperament." (Avicenna 1999, p. 390)
Lastly, the third thing mentioned is sleep; to make sure that you do not sleep during the
days, and do not stay awake during the nights. From the above reading, it is clear that Ibn
Sina gave advice in his book which is still the same advice medical doctors give to their
patients. Daily Physical Exercise; and to defeat diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high
blood pressure, the prescription of a diet which contains high amounts of Whole Grains
and little to no amounts of Refined Carbohydrates.
Psychology
See also: Avicennian epistemology and psychology
In Muslim psychology and the neurosciences, Avicenna was a pioneer of
neuropsychiatry. He first described numerous neuropsychiatric conditions, including
hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis,
stroke, vertigo and tremor.[25]
Avicenna was also a pioneer in psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine. He
recognized 'physiological psychology' in the treatment of illnesses involving emotions,
and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings,
which is seen as an anticipation of the word association test attributed to Carl Jung.
Avicenna is reported to have treated a very ill patient by "feeling the patient's pulse and
reciting aloud to him the names of provinces, districts, towns, streets, and people." He
noticed how the patient's pulse increased when certain names were mentioned, from
which Avicenna deduced that the patient was in love with a girl whose home Avicenna
was "able to locate by the digital examination." Avicenna advised the patient to marry the
girl he is in love with, and the patient soon recovered from his illness after his marriage
In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna dealt with neuropsychiatry and described a number
of neuropsychiatric conditions, including melancholia.[36] He described melancholia as a
depressive type of mood disorder in which the person may become suspicious and
develop certain types of phobias.[37]
Unani medicine
Main article: Unani

114
Though the threads which comprise Unani healing can be traced all the way back to
Claudius Galenus of Pergamum, who lived in the second century of the Christian Era, the
basic knowledge of Unani medicine as a healing system was developed by Hakim Ibn
Sina in his medical encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine. The time of origin is thus dated
at circa 1025 AD, when Avicenna wrote The Canon of Medicine in Persia. While he was
primarily influenced by Greek and Islamic medicine, he was also influenced by the
Indian medical teachings of Sushruta and Charaka.[33]
The Book of Healing
Main article: The Book of Healing
Earth sciences
Ibn Sīnā wrote on Earth sciences such as geology in The Book of Healing, in which he
developed the concept of uniformitarianism and law of superposition in geology.[38][39]
While discussing the formation of mountains, he explained:
Either they are the effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as
might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water,
which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being
of different kinds, some soft, some hard... It would require a long period of
time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains
themselves might be somewhat diminished in size.
Due to his fundamental contributions to the development of geology, particularly
regarding the origins of mountains, Avicenna has been called the 'Father of Geology'.[40]
Philosophy of science
In the Al-Burhan (On Demonstration) section of The Book of Healing, Avicenna
discussed the philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry.
He discusses Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several
points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper methodology for scientific inquiry and
the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a science?" He asked how a
scientist would arrive at "the initial axioms or hypotheses of a deductive science without
inferring them from some more basic premises?" He explains that the ideal situation is
when one grasps that a "relation holds between the terms, which would allow for
absolute, universal certainty." Avicenna then adds two further methods for arriving at the

115
first principles: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (istiqra), and the method of
examination and experimentation (tajriba). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction,
arguing that "it does not lead to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it
purports to provide." In its place, he develops a "method of experimentation as a means
Physics
See also: Avicennian physics and Theory of impetus
In mechanics, Ibn Sīnā, in The Book of Healing, developed an elaborate theory of motion,
in which he made a distinction between the inclination (tendency to motion) and force of
a projectile, and concluded that motion was a result of an inclination (mayl) transferred to
the projectile by the thrower, and that projectile motion in a vacuum would not cease.[42]
He viewed inclination as a permanent force whose effect is dissipated by external forces
such as air resistance.[43]
His theory of motion is thus reminiscent of the theory of inertia, now known as Newton's
first law of motion.[44][42] His theory of mayl also attempted to provide a quantitive
relation between the weight and velocity of a moving body, resembling the concept of
momentum, a precursor to the concept of momentum in Newton's second law of motion.
[45]
Ibn Sīnā's theory of mayl was further developed by Jean Buridan in his theory of
impetus.[45][46]
In optics, Ibn Sina "observed that if the perception of light is due to the emission of some
sort of particles by a luminous source, the speed of light must be finite."[47] He also
provided a wrong explanation of the rainbow phenomenon. Carl Benjamin Boyer
described Avicenna's ("Ibn Sīnā") theory on the rainbow as follows:
Independent observation had demonstrated to him that the bow is not
formed in the dark cloud but rather in the very thin mist lying between the
cloud and the sun or observer. The cloud, he thought, serves simply as the
background of this thin substance, much as a quicksilver lining is placed
upon the rear surface of the glass in a mirror. Ibn Sīnā would change the
place not only of the bow, but also of the color formation, holding the
iridescence to be merely a subjective sensation in the eye.
—[48]

116
In 1253, a Latin text entitled Speculum Tripartitum stated the following regarding
Avicenna's theory on heat:
Avicenna says in his book of heaven and earth, that heat is generated from
motion in external things.[49]
[edit] Psychology
See also: Avicennian epistemology and psychology
Avicenna's legacy in classical psychology is primarily embodied in the Kitab al-nafs
parts of his Kitab al-shifa' (The Book of Healing) and Kitab al-najat (The Book of
Deliverance). These were known in Latin under the title De Anima (treatises "on the
soul"). The main thesis of these tracts is represented in his so-called "flying man"
argument, which resonates with what was centuries later entailed by Descartes's cogito
argument (or what phenomenology designates as a form of an "epoche")
Avicennian philosophy
Main article: Avicennism
Ibn Sīnā wrote extensively on early Islamic philosophy, especially the subjects logic,
ethics, and metaphysics, including treatises named Logic and Metaphysics. Most of his
works were written in Arabic - which was the de facto scientific language of that time,
and some were written in the Persian language. Of linguistic significance even to this day
are a few books that he wrote in nearly pure Persian language (particularly the
Danishnamah-yi 'Ala', Philosophy for Ala' ad-Dawla'). Ibn Sīnā's commentaries on
Aristotle often corrected the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of
ijtihad.
In the medieval Islamic world, due to Avicenna's successful reconciliation between
Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism along with Kalam, Avicennism eventually became the
leading school of Islamic philosophy by the 12th century, with Avicenna becoming a
central authority on philosophy.
Avicennism was also influential in medieval Europe, particular his doctrines on the
nature of the soul and his existence-essence distinction, along with the debates and
censure that they raised in scholastic Europe. This was particularly the case in Paris,
where Avicennism was later proscribed in 1210. Nevertheless, his psychology and theory

117
of knowledge influenced William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus, while his
metaphysics had an impact on the thought of Thomas Aquinas.[53]
Metaphysical doctrine
Early Islamic philosophy and Islamic metaphysics, imbued as it is with Islamic theology,
distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism the difference between essence and
existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence
endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy of Ibn Sīnā, particularly
that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to al-Farabi. The search for a truly definitive
Islamic philosophy can be seen in what is left to us of his work.
Following al-Farabi's lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of
being, in which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud). He
argued that the fact of existence can not be inferred from or accounted for by the essence
of existing things and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate
the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things.
Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or
adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist
with its effect.[54]
Avicenna’s consideration of the essence-attributes question may be elucidated in terms of
his ontological analysis of the modalities of being; namely impossibility, contingency,
and necessity. Avicenna argued that the impossible being is that which cannot exist,
while the contingent in itself (mumkin bi-dhatihi) has the potentiality to be or not to be
without entailing a contradiction. When actualized, the contingent becomes a ‘necessary
existent due to what is other than itself’ (wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi). Thus, contingency-
in-itself is potential beingness that could eventually be actualized by an external cause
other than itself. The metaphysical structures of necessity and contingency are different.
Necessary being due to itself (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi) is true in itself, while the
contingent being is ‘false in itself’ and ‘true due to something else other than itself’. The
necessary is the source of its own being without borrowed existence. It is what always
exists. The Necessary exists ‘due-to-Its-Self’, and has no quiddity/essence (mahiyya)
other than existence (wujud). Furthermore, It is ‘One’ (wahid ahad) since there cannot be
more than one ‘Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself’ without differentia (fasl) to distinguish

118
them from each other. Yet, to require differentia entails that they exist ‘due-to-
themselves’ as well as ‘due to what is other than themselves’; and this is contradictory.
However, if no differentia distinguishes them from each other, then there is no sense in
which these ‘Existents’ are not one and the same. [58] Avicenna adds that the ‘Necessary-
Existent-due-to-Itself’ has no genus (jins), nor a definition (hadd), nor a counterpart
(nadd), nor an opposite (did), and is detached (bari’) from matter (madda), quality (kayf),
quantity (kam), place (ayn), situation (wad’), and time (waqt).[59][60][61]
Natural philosophy
Ibn Sina and Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī engaged in a written debate, with Abu Rayhan Biruni
mostly criticizing Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Peripatetic school, while
Avicenna and his student Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Ma'sumi respond to Biruni's criticisms in
writing. Abu Rayhan began by asking Avicenna eighteen questions, ten of which were
criticisms of Aristotle's On the Heavens.
Theology
Ibn Sīnā was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic
theology. His aim was to prove the existence of God and his creation of the world
scientifically and through reason and logic.[63] Avicenna wrote a number of treatises
dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the Islamic prophets, whom he
viewed as "inspired philosophers", and on various scientific and philosophical
interpretations of the Qur'an, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his own
philosophical system.
Ibn Sīnā memorized the Qur'an by the age of seven, and as an adult, he wrote five
treatises commenting on suras from the Qur'an. One of these texts included the Proof of
Prophecies, in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Qur'an in
high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than
philosophers.[65]
Thought experiments
While he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his
famous "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the
substantiality of the soul. He referred to the living human intelligence, particularly the
active intellect, which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth

119
to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature. His "Floating Man"
thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated
from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He
argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes
that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul
should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance.
Other contributions
Astronomy and astrology
The study of astrology was refuted by Avicenna. His reasons were both due to the
methods used by astrologers being conjectural rather than empirical and also due to the
views of astrologers conflicting with orthodox Islam. He also cited passages from the
Qur'an in order to justify his refutation of astrology on both scientific and religious
grounds.[67]
In astronomy, he criticized Aristotle's view of the stars receiving their light from the Sun.
Ibn Sīnā stated that the stars are self-luminous, and believed that the planets are also self-
luminous.[68] He claimed to have observed the transit of Venus across the Sun on May 24,
1032.[69] However, modern scholars have questioned whether he could have observed the
transit from his location at that time. He used his transit observation to demonstrate that
Venus was, at least sometimes, below the Sun in the Ptolemaic cosmology.
Soon after, he wrote the Compendium of the Almagest, a commentary on Ptolemy's
Almagest. Avicenna concluded that Venus is closer to the Earth than the Sun. In 1070,
Abu Ubayd al-Juzjani, a pupil of Ibn Sīnā, claimed that his teacher Ibn Sīnā had solved
the equant problem in the Ptolemaic model.[72]
Chemistry
In chemistry, the chemical process of steam distillation was first described by Ibn Sīnā.
The technique was used to produce alcohol and essential oils; the latter was fundamental
to aromatherapy.[73] He also invented the refrigerated coil, which condenses the aromatic
vapours. This was a breakthrough in distillation technology and he made use of it in his
steam distillation process, which requires refrigerated tubing, to produce essential oils.[73]
As a chemist, Avicenna was one of the first to write refutations on alchemy, after al-
Kindi. Four of his works on the refutation of alchemy were translated into Latin as:

120
  Liber Aboali Abincine de Anima in arte Alchemiae
 Declaratio Lapis physici Avicennae filio sui Aboali
 Avicennae de congelatione et conglutinatione lapifum
 Avicennae ad Hasan Regem epistola de Re recta
In one of these works, Ibn Sīnā discredited the theory of the transmutation of substances
commonly believed by alchemists:
Those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in
the different species of substances, though they can produce the
appearance of such change.
—[77]
Among his works refuting alchemy, Liber Aboali Abincine de Anima in arte Alchemiae
was the most influential, having influenced later medieval chemists and alchemists such
as Vincent of Beauvais.[76]
In another work, translated into Latin as De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum, Ibn
Sina proposed a four-part classification of inorganic bodies, which was a significant
improvement over the two-part classification of Aristotle (into orycta and metals) and
three-part classification of Galen (into terrae, lapides and metals). The four parts of Ibn
Sina's classification were: lapides, sulfur, salts and metals.[78][verification needed]
Engineering
In the chapters on mechanics and engineering in his encyclopedia Mi'yar al-'aql (The
Measure of the Mind), Avicenna writes an analysis on the ilm al-hiyal (science of
ingenious devices) and makes the first successful attempt to classify simple machines and
their combinations. He first describes and illustrates the five constituent simple machines:
the lever, pulley, screw, wedge, and windlass. He then analyzes all the combinations of
these simple machines, such as the windlass-screw, windlass-pulley and windlass-lever
for example. He is also the first to describe a mechanism which is essentially a
combination of all of these simple machines (except for the wedge)

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The inside view of Avicenna's tomb in Hamedan, Iran.
As early as the 1300s when Dante Alighieri showed him experiencing a perfect eternity
with some of the greatest men in history in his Divine Comedy such as Virgil, Averroes,
Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Socrates, Plato, and Saladin, Avicenna has been recognized
by both East and West, as one of history's great figures.
George Sarton, the author of The History of Science, described Ibn Sīnā as "one of the
greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history"[14] and called him "the most famous
scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places, and times." He was one
of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine. He was influenced by the
approach of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as Sushruta and Charaka. Along with Rhazes,
Abulcasis, Ibn al-Nafis, and al-Ibadi, Ibn Sīnā is considered an important compiler of
early Muslim medicine. He is remembered in Western history of medicine as a major
historical figure who made important contributions to medicine and the European
Renaissance. Ibn Sīnā is also considered the father of the fundamental concept of
momentum in physics.[83]
In Iran, he is considered a national icon, and is often regarded as one of the greatest
Persians to have ever lived. Many portraits and statues remain in Iran today. An
impressive monument to the life and works of the man who is known as the 'doctor of
doctors' still stands outside the Bukhara museum and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the
Avicenna Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris. There is also a crater on the
Moon named Avicenna. Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamedan (Iran), the ibn Sīnā Tajik

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State Medical University in Dushanbe (The capital of the Republic of Tajikistan),
Avicenna School in Karachi, Pakistan Ibne Sina Balkh Medical School in his native
province of Balkh in Afghanistan, and Ibn Siena Integrated School in Marawi City
(Philippines) are all named in his honour.
In 1980, the former Soviet Union, which then ruled his birthplace Bukhara, celebrated the
thousandth anniversary of Avicenna's birth by circulating various commemorative stamps
with artistic illustrations, and by erecting a bust of Avicenna based on anthropological
research by Soviet scholars.[84] Near his birthplace in Qishlak Afshona, some 25 km
(16 mi). north of Bukhara, a training college for medical staff has been named for him.
On the grounds is a museum dedicated to his life, times and work. GoogleEarth: SEE.
In March 2008, it was announced[85] that Avicenna’s name would be used for new
Directories of education institutions for health care professionals, worldwide. The
Avicenna Directories will list universities and schools where doctors, public health
practitioners, pharmacists and others, are educated. The project team stated “Why
Avicenna? Avicenna ... was ... noted for his synthesis of knowledge from both east and
west. He has had a lasting influence on the development of medicine and health sciences.
The use of Avicenna’s name symbolises the worldwide partnership that is needed for the
promotion of health services of high quality.”
Works
Scarcely any member of the Muslim circle of the sciences, including theology, philology,
mathematics, astronomy, physics, and music, was left untouched by the treatises of Ibn
Sīnā. This vast quantity of works - be they full-blown treatises or opuscula - vary so
much in style and content (if one were to compare between the 'ahd made with his
disciple Bahmanyar to uphold philosophical integrity with the Provenance and Direction,
for example) that Yahya (formerly Jean) Michot has accused him of "neurological
bipolarity".
Ibn Sīnā's works numbered almost 450 volumes on a wide range of subjects, of which
around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 volumes of his surviving works concentrate
on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. [9] His most famous works are The
Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of
Medicine,[1]

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Ibn Sīnā wrote at least one treatise on alchemy, but several others have been falsely
attributed to him. His book on animals was translated by Michael Scot. His Logic,
Metaphysics, Physics, and De Caelo, are treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian
doctrine, though the Metaphysics demonstrates a significant departure from the brand of
Neoplatonism known as Aristotelianism in Ibn Sīnā's world; Arabic philosophers have
hinted at the idea that Ibn Sīnā was attempting to "re-Aristotelianise" Muslim philosophy
in its entirety, unlike his predecessors, who accepted the conflation of Platonic,
Aristotelian, Neo- and Middle-Platonic works transmitted into the Muslim world.
The Logic and Metaphysics have been printed more than once, the latter, e.g., at Venice
in 1493, 1495, and 1546. Some of his shorter essays on medicine, logic, etc., take a
poetical form (the poem on logic was published by Schmoelders in 1836). Two
encyclopaedic treatises, dealing with philosophy, are often mentioned. The larger, Al-
Shifa' (Sanatio), exists nearly complete in manuscript in the Bodleian Library and
elsewhere; part of it on the De Anima appeared at Pavia (1490) as the Liber Sextus
Naturalium, and the long account of Ibn Sina's philosophy given by Muhammad al-
Shahrastani seems to be mainly an analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-
Shifa'. A shorter form of the work is known as the An-najat (Liberatio). The Latin
editions of part of these works have been modified by the corrections which the monastic
editors confess that they applied. There is also a ‫( حكمت مشرقيه‬hikmat-al-mashriqqiyya, in
Latin Philosophia Orientalis), mentioned by Roger Bacon, the majority of which is lost
in antiquity, which according to Averroes was pantheistic in tone.
List of works
This is the list of some of Avicenna's well-known works:
 Sirat al-shaykh al-ra’is (The Life of Ibn Sina), ed. and trans. WE. Gohlman,
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1974. (The only critical edition
of Ibn Sina’s autobiography, supplemented with material from a biography by his
student Abu ‘Ubayd al-Juzjani. A more recent translation of the Autobiography
appears in D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to
Reading Avicenna’s Philosophical Works, Leiden: Brill, 1988.)[86]
 Al-Isharat wa-‘l-tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions), ed. S. Dunya, Cairo, 1960;
parts translated by S.C. Inati, Remarks and Admonitions, Part One: Logic,

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 Toronto, Ont.: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1984, and Ibn Sina and
Mysticism, Remarks and Admonitions: Part 4, London: Kegan Paul International,
1996.[86]
 Al-Qanun fi’l-tibb (The Canon of Medicine), ed. I. a-Qashsh, Cairo, 1987.
(Encyclopedia of medicine.)[86]
 Risalah fi sirr al-qadar (Essay on the Secret of Destiny), trans. G. Hourani in
Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985.[86]
 Danishnama-i ‘ala’i (The Book of Scientific Knowledge), ed. and trans. P
Morewedge, The Metaphysics of Avicenna, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1973.[86]
 Kitab al-Shifa’ (The Book of Healing). (Ibn Sina’s major work on philosophy. He
probably began to compose al-Shifa’ in 1014, and completed it in 1020.) Critical
editions of the Arabic text have been published in Cairo, 1952–83, originally
under the supervision of I. Madkour[86]
 Kitab al-Najat (The Book of Salvation), trans. F. Rahman, Avicenna’s
Psychology: An English Translation of Kitab al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with
Historical-philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. (The psychology of al-Shifa’.)
 Hayy ibn Yaqdhan a Persian myth. A novel called Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, based on
Avicenna's story, was later written by Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) in the 12th century
and translated into Latin and English as Philosophus Autodidactus in the 17th and
18th centuries respectively. In the 13th century, Ibn al-Nafis wrote his own novel
Fadil ibn Natiq, known as Theologus Autodidactus in the West, as a critical
response to Hayy ibn Yaqdhan.[87]
Persian Works
Danishnama-i ‘Alai
Danishnama-i ‘Alai is called "the Book of Knowledge for [Prince] 'Ala ad-Daulah". One
of Avicenna's important Persian work is the Daaneshnaame (literally: the book of
knowledge) for Prince 'Ala ad-Daulah (the local Buyid ruler). The linguist aspects of the
Dāneš-nāma and the originality of their Persian vocabulary are of great interest to Iranian

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philologists. Avicenna created new scientific vocabulary that had not existed before in
the modern Persian language. The Dāneš-nāma covers such topics as logic, metaphysics,
music theory and other sciences of his time. This book has translated to English by
Parwiz Mowewedge.[88]
Andar Danesh-e-Rag
Andar Danesh-e-Rag is called "On the science of the pulse". This book contains nine
chapters on the science of the pulse and is condensed synopsis

AL-GHAZALI, ABU HAMID (1058-1111)

al-Ghazali is one of the greatest Islamic Jurists, theologians and mystical thinkers. He
learned various branches of traditional Islamic religious sciences in his home town of
Tus, Gurgan and Nishapur in the northern part of Iran. He was also involved in Sufi
practices from an early age. Being recognized by Nizam al-Mulk, the vizir of the Seljuq
sultans, he was appointed head of the Nizamiyyah College at Baghdad in AH 484/AD
1091. As the intellectual head of the Islamic community, he was busy lecturing on Islamic
jurisprudence at the College, and also refuting heresies and responding to questions
from all segments of the community. Four years later, however, al-Ghazali fell into a
serious spiritual crisis and finally left Baghdad, renouncing his career and the world
After wandering in Syria and Palestine for about two years and finishing the pilgrimage
to Mecca, he returned to Tus, where he was engaged in writing, Sufi practices and
teaching his disciples until his death. In the meantime he resumed teaching for a few
years at the Nizamiyyah College in Nishapur
Al-Ghazali explained in his autobiography why he renounced his brilliant career and
turned to Sufism. It was, he says, due to his realization that there was no way to certain
knowledge or the conviction of revelatory truth except through Sufism. (This means that
the traditional form of Islamic faith was in a very critical condition at the time.) This
realization is possibly related to his criticism of Islamic philosophy. In fact, his refutation
of philosophy is not a mere criticism from a certain (orthodox) theological viewpoint.

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First of all, his attitude towards philosophy was ambivalent; it was both an object and
criticism and an object of learning (for example, logic and the natural sciences). He
mastered philosophy and then criticized it in order to Islamicize it. The importance of his
criticism lies in his philosophical demonstration that the philosophers’ metaphysical
arguments cannot stand the test of reason. However, he was also forced to admit that the
certainty, of revelatory truth, for which he was so desperately searching, cannot be
obtained by reason. It was only later that he finally attained to that truth in the ecstatic
state (fana’) of the Sufi. Through his own religious experience, he worked to revive the
faith of Islam by reconstructing the religious sciences upon the basis of Sufsm, and to
give a theoretical foundation to the latter under the influence of philosophy. Thus Sufism
came to be generally recognized in the Islamic community. Though Islamic philosophy
did not long survive al-Ghazali’s criticism, he contributed greatly to the subsequent
philosophization of Islamic theology and Sufism.
1 Life
2 Theological conceptions
3 Refutation of philosophy
4 Relation to philosophy
5 List of   works
6 REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
1 Life
The eventful life of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (or al-Ghazzali)
can be divided into three major periods. The first is the period of learning, first in his
home town of Tus in Persia, then in Gurgan and finally in Nishapur. After the death of
his teacher, Imam al-Haramayn AL-JUWAYNI, Ghazali moved to the court of Nizam al-
Mulk, the powerful vizir of the Seljuq Sultans, who eventually appointed him head of the
Nizamiyyah College at Baghdad in AH 484/AD 1091.
The second period of al-Ghazali’s life was his brilliant career as the highest-ranking
orthodox ‘doctor’ of the Islamic community in Baghdad (AH 484-8/AD 1091-5). This
period was short but significant. During this time, as well as lecturing on Islamic
jurisprudence at the College, he was also busy refuting heresies and responding to
questions from all segments of the community. In the political confusion following the

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assassination of Nizam al-Mulk and the subsequent violent death of Sultan Malikshah, al-
Ghazali himself fell into a serious spiritual crisis and finally left Baghdad, renouncing his
career and the world.
This event marks the beginning of the third period of his life, that of retirement (AH 488-
505/AD 1095-1111), but which also included a short period of teaching at the
Nizamiyyah College in Nishapur. After leaving Baghdad, he wandered as a Sufi in Syria
and Palestine before returning to Tus, where he was engaged in writing, Sufi practices
and teaching his disciples until his death.
The inner development leading to his conversion is explained in his autobiography, al-
Munqidh min al-dalal (The Deliverer from Error), written late in his life. It was his habit
from an early age, he says, to search for the true reality of things. In the process he came
to doubt the senses and even reason itself as the means to ‘certain knowledge’, and fell
into a deep scepticism. However, he was eventually delivered from this with the aid of
the divine light, and thus recovered his trust in reason. Using reason, he then set out to
examine the teachings of ‘the seekers after truth’: the theologians, philosophers, Isma‘ilis
and Sufis. As a result of these studies, he came to the realization that there was no way to
certain knowledge except through Sufism. In order to reach this ultimate truth of the
Sufis, however, it is first necessary to renounce the world and to devote oneself to
mystical practice. Al-Ghazali came to this realization through an agonising process of
decision, which led to a nervous breakdown and finally to his departure from Baghdad.
The schematic presentation of al-Munqidh has allowed various interpretations, but it is
irrelevant to question the main line of the story. Though certain knowledge is explained
in al-Munqidh as something logically necessary, it is also religious conviction (yaqin) as
mentioned in the Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences). Thus when
he says that the traditional teachings did not grip him in his adolescence, he means to say
that he lost his conviction of their truth, which he only later regained through his Sufi
mystical experiences. He worked to generalize this experience to cure `the disease' of his
time.
The life of al-Ghazali has been thus far examined mostly as the development of his
individual personality. However, since the 1950s there have appeared some new attempts
to understand his life in its wider political and historical context (Watt 1963). If we

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accept his religious confession as sincere, then we should be careful not to reduce his
thought and work entirely to non-religious factors. It may well be that al-Ghazali’s
conversion from the life of an orthodox doctor to Sufism was not merely the outcome of
his personal development but also a manifestation of a new stage in the understanding of
faith in the historical development of Islam, from the traditional form of faith expressed
in the effort to establish the kingdom of God on Earth through the shari‘a to a faith
expressed as direct communion with God in Sufi mystical experience. This may be a
reflection of a development in which the former type of faith had lost its relevance and
become a mere formality due to the political and social confusion of the community. Al-
Ghazali experienced this change during his life, and tried to revive the entire structure of
the religious sciences on the basis of Sufism, while at the same time arguing for the
official recognition of the latter and providing it with solid philosophical foundations.
2 Theological conceptions
Al-Ghazali wrote at least two works on theology, al-Iqtisad fi'I-i`tiqad (The Middle Path
in Theology) and al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle). The former was
composed towards the end of his stay in Baghdad and after his critique of philosophy, the
latter soon afterwards in Jerusalem. The theological position expressed in both works is
Ash'arite, and there is no fundamental difference between al-Ghazali and the Ash‘arite
school (see ASH‘ARIYYA AND MU‘TAZILA). However, some changes can be seen in
the theological thought of his later works, written under the influence of philosophy and
Sufism (see §4).
As Ash‘arite theology came into being out of criticism of Mu‘tazilite rationalistic
theology, the two schools have much in common but they are also not without their
differences. There is no essential difference between them as to God's essence (dhat
Allah); al-Ghazali proves the existence of God (the Creator) from the createdness
(hadath) of the world according to the traditional Ash‘arite proof.
An atomistic ontology is presupposed here, and yet there are also philosophical
arguments to refute the criticism of the philosophers. As for God's attributes (sifat Allah),
however, al-Ghazali regards them as `something different from, yet added to, God's
essence' (al-Iqtisad: 65), while the Mu‘tazilites deny the existence of the attributes and
reduce them to God's essence and acts.

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According to al-Ghazali, God has attributes such as knowledge, life, will, hearing, seeing
and speech, which are included in God's essence and coeternal with it. Concerning the
relationship between God's essence and his attributes, both are said to be ‘not identical,
but not different’ (al-Iqtisad: 65). The creation of the world and its subsequent changes
are produced by God's eternal knowledge, will and power, but this does not necessarily
mean any change in God's attributes in accordance with these changes in the empirical
world.
One of the main issues of theological debate was the relationship between God's
power and human acts. The Mu‘tazilites, admitting the continuation of an accident (arad)
of human power, asserted that human acts were decided and produced (or even created)
by people themselves; thus they justified human responsibility for acts and maintained
divine justice. In contrast, assuming that all the events in the world and human acts are
caused by God's knowledge, will and power, al-Ghazali admits two powers in human
acts, God’s power and human power. Human power and act are both created by God, and
so human action is God’s creation (khalq), but it is also human acquisition (kasb) of
God's action, which is reflected in human volition. Thus al-Ghazali tries to harmonize
God’s omnipotence and our own responsibility for our actions (see OMNIPOTENCE).
As for God’s acts, the Mu‘tazilites, emphasizing divine justice, assert that God cannot
place any obligation on people that is beyond their ability; God must do what is best for
humans and must give rewards and punishments according to their obedience and
disobedience. They also assert that it is obligatory for people to know God through
reason even before revelation. Al-Ghazali denies these views. God, he says, can place
any obligations he wishes upon us; it is not incumbent on him to do what is best for us,
nor to give rewards and punishments according to our obedience and disobedience. All
this is unimaginable for God, since he is absolutely free and is under no obligation at all.
Obligation (wujub), says al-Ghazali, means something that produces serious harm unless
performed, but nothing does harm to God. Furthermore, good (hasan) and evil (qabih)
mean respectively congruity and incongruity with a purpose, but God has no purpose at
all. Therefore, God's acts are beyond human ethical judgment. Besides, says al-Ghazali,
injustice (zulm) means an encroachment on others' rights, but all creatures belong to God;
therefore, whatever he may do to his creatures, he cannot be considered unjust.

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 The Mu‘tazilites, inferring the hereafter from the nature of this world, deny the
punishment of unbelievers in the grave from their death until the resurrection, and also
the reality of the various eschatological events such as the passing of the narrow bridge
and the weighing on the balance of human deeds (see ESCHATOLOGY). Al-Ghazali, on
the other hand, rejecting the principle of analogy between the two worlds, approves the
reality of all these events as transmitted traditionally, since it cannot be proven that they
are rationally or logically impossible. Another important eschatological event is the
seeing of God (ru’ya Allah). While the Mu‘tazilites deny its reality, asserting that God
cannot be the object of human vision, al-Ghazali approves it as a kind of knowledge
which is beyond corporeality; in fact, he later gives the vision of God deep mystical and
philosophical meaning. In short, the Mu‘tazilites discuss the unity of God and his acts
from the viewpoint of human reason, but al-Ghazali does so on the presupposition that
God is personal and an absolute reality beyond human reason.
3 Refutation of philosophy
Al-Ghazali’s relationship with philosophy is subtle and complicated. The philosophy
represented by AL-FARABI and IBN SINA (Avicenna) is, for al-Ghazali, not simply an
object of criticism but also an important component of his own learning. He studied
philosophy intensively while in Baghdad, composing Maqasid al falasifa (The Intentions
of the Philosophers), and then criticizing it in his Tahafut al falasifa (The Incoherence of
the Philosophers). The Maqasid is a precise summary of philosophy (it is said to be an
Arabic version of Ibn Sina’s Persian Danashnamah-yi ala'i (Book of Scientific
Knowledge) though a close comparative study of the two works has yet to be made). In
the medieval Latin world, however, the content of the Maqasid was believed to be al-
Ghazali’s own thought, due to textual defects in the Latin manuscripts. As a result, the
image of the ‘Philosopher Algazel’ was created. It was only in the middle of the
nineteenth century that Munk corrected this mistake by making use of the complete
manuscripts of the Hebrew translation. More works by al-Ghazali began to be published
thereafter, but some contained philosophical ideas he himself had once rejected. This
made al-Ghazali’s relation to philosophy once again obscure. Did he turn back to
philosophy late in life? Was he a secret philosopher? From the middle of the twentieth
century there were several attempts to verify al-Ghazali’s authentic works through textual

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criticism, and as a result of these works the image of al-Ghazali as an orthodox Ash‘arite
theologian began to prevail. The new trend in the study of al-Ghazali is to re-examine his
relation to philosophy and to traditional Ash‘arism while at the same time recognizing his
basic distance from philosophy.
Al-Ghazali composed three works on Aristotelian logic, Mi‘yar al-‘ilm (The Standard
Measure of Knowledge), Mihakk al-nazar f'l-mantiq (The Touchstone of Proof in Logic)
and al-Qistas al-mustaqim (The Just Balance). The first two were written immediately
after the Tahafut `in order to help understanding of the latter', and the third was
composed after his retirement. He also gave a detailed account of logic in the long
introduction of his writing on legal theory, al-Mustasfa min ‘ilm al-usul (The Essentials
of Islamic Legal Theory). Al-Ghazali's great interest in logic is unusual, particularly
when most Muslim theologians were antagonistic to it, and can be attributed not only to
the usefulness of logic in refuting heretical views (al-Qistas is also a work of refutation
of the Isma‘ilis), but also to his being fascinated by the exactness of logic and its
effectiveness for reconstructing the religious sciences on a solid basis.
There is a fundamental disparity between al-Ghazali’s theological view and the
Neoplatonic Aristotelian philosophy of emanationism. Al-Ghazali epitomizes this view in
twenty points, three of which are especially prominent:
 (1) the philosophers’ belief in the eternity of the world,
 (2) their doctrine that God does not know particulars, and
 (3) their denial of the resurrection of bodies.
These theses are ultimately reducible to differing conceptions of God and ontology.
Interestingly, al-Ghazali’s criticism of philosophy is philosophical rather than
theological, and is undertaken from the viewpoint of reason.
First, as for the eternity of the world, the philosophers claim that the emanation of the
First Intellect and other beings is the result of the necessary causality of God's essence,
and therefore the world as a whole is concomitant and coeternal with his existence (see
CREATION AND CONSERVATION, RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE OF). Suppose, say the
philosophers, that God created the world at a certain moment in time; that would
presuppose a change in God, which is impossible. Further, since each moment of time is
perfectly similar, it is impossible, even for God, to choose a particular moment in time for

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creation. Al-Ghazali retorts that God's creation of the world was decided in the eternal
past, and therefore it does not mean any change in God; indeed, time itself is God's
creation (this is also an argument based on the Aristotelian concept of time as a function
of change). Even though the current of time is similar in every part, it is the nature of
God's will to choose a particular out of similar ones.
Second, the philosophers deny God's knowledge of particulars or confine it to his self-
knowledge, since they suppose that to connect God's knowledge with particulars means a
change and plurality in God's essence. Al-Ghazali denies this. If God has complete
knowledge of a person from birth to death, there will be no change in God's eternal
knowledge, even though the person's life changes from moment to moment.
Third, the philosophers deny bodily resurrection, asserting that 'the resurrection' means in
reality the separation of the soul from the body after death. Al-Ghazali criticizes this
argument, and also attacks the theory of causality presupposed in the philosophers’
arguments (see CAUSALITY AND NECESSITY IN ISLAMIC THOUGHT). The so-
called necessity of causality is, says al-Ghazali, simply based on the mere fact that an
event A has so far occurred concomitantly with an event B. There is no guarantee of the
continuation of that relationship in the future, since the connection of A and B lacks
logical necessity. In fact, according to Ash‘arite atomistic occasionalism, the direct cause
of both A and B is God; God simply creates A when he creates B. Thus theoretically he
can change his custom (sunna, ‘ada) at any moment, and resurrect the dead: in fact, this
is 'a second creation'.
Al-Ghazali thus claims that the philosophers' arguments cannot survive philosophical
criticism, and Aristotelian logic served as a powerful weapon for this purpose. However,
if the conclusions of philosophy cannot be proved by reason, is not the same true of
theological principles or the teachings of revelation? How then can the truth of the latter
be demonstrated? Herein lies the force of al-Ghazali’s critique of reason.
4 Relation to philosophy
Philosophy declined in the Sunni world after al-Ghazali, and his criticism of philosophy
certainly accelerated this decline. Nearly a century later, IBN RUSHD (Averroes) made
desperate efforts to resist the trend by refuting al-Ghazali’s Tahafut in his Tahafut al-

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tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) and Fasl al-maqal (The Decisive Treatise),
but he could not stop it. Philosophy was gradually absorbed into
Sufism and was further developed in the form of mystical philosophy, particularly in the
Shi'ite world (see MYSTICAL PHILOSOPHY IN ISLAM). In the Sunni world also,
Aristotelian logic was incorporated into theology and Sufism was partially represented
philosophically. In all this, al-Ghazali’s influence was significant.
Ghazali committed himself seriously to Sufism in his later life, during which time he
produced a series of unique works on Sufism and ethics including Mizan al-‘amal (The
Balance of Action), composed just before retirement, Ihy’ ‘ulum al-din, his magnum opus
written after retirement, Kitab al-arba‘in fi usul al-din (The Forty Chapters on the
Principles of Religion), Kimiya’-yi sa‘adat (The Alchemy of Happiness), Mishkat al-
anwar (The Niche of the Lights) and others. The ultimate goal of humankind according to
Islam is salvation in paradise, which is depicted in the Qur’an and Traditions as various
sensuous pleasures and joy at the vision of God. The greatest joy for al-Ghazali, however,
is the seeing of God in the intellectual or spiritual sense of the beatific vision. In
comparison with this, sensuous pleasures are nothing. However, they remain necessary
for the masses who cannot reach such a vision.
Resurrection for IBN SINA means each person's death - the separation of the soul
from the body - and the rewards and punishments after the `resurrection' mean the
pleasures and pains which the soul tastes after death. The soul, which is in contact with
the active intellect through intellectual and ethical training during life, is liberated from
the body by death and comes to enjoy the bliss of complete unity with the active intellect.
On the other hand, the soul that has become accustomed to sensual pleasures while alive
suffers from the pains of unfulfilled desires, since the instrumental organs for that
purpose are now lost. Al-Ghazali calls death `the small resurrection' and accepts the state
of the soul after death as Ibn Sina describes. On the other hand, the beatific vision of God
by the elite after the quickening of the bodies, or 'the great resurrection', is intellectual as
in the view of the philosophers. The mystical experience (fans) of the Sufi is a foretaste
of the real vision of God in the hereafter.
A similar influence of philosophy is also apparent in al-Ghazali’s view of human
beings. Human beings consist of soul and body, but their essence is the soul. The human

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soul is a spiritual substance totally different from the body. It is something divine (amr
ilahi), which makes possible human knowledge of God. If the soul according to al-
Ghazali is an incorporeal substance occupying no space (as Ibn Sina implies, though he
carefully avoids making a direct statement to that effect), then al-Ghazali’s concept of the
soul is quite different from the soul as 'a subtle body' as conceived by theologians at
large. According to al-Ghazali, the body is a vehicle or an instrument of the soul on the
way to the hereafter and has various faculties to maintain the bodily activities. When the
main faculties of appetite, anger and intellect are moderate, harmonious and well-
balanced, then we find the virtues of temperance, courage, wisdom and justice. In reality,
however, there is excess or deficiency in each faculty, and so we find various vicious
characteristics. The fundamental cause for all this is love of the world (see SOUL IN
ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY).
The purpose of religious exercises is to rectify these evil dispositions, and to come
near to God by `transforming them in imitation of God's characteristics' (Iakhalluq bi-
akhlaq Allah). This means transforming the evil traits of the soul through bodily exercises
by utilizing the inner relationship between the soul and the body. Al-Ghazali here makes
full use of the Aristotelian theory of the golden mean, which he took mainly from IBN
MISKAWAYH. In order to maintain the earthly existence of the body as a vehicle or an
instrument of the soul, the mundane order and society are necessary. In this framework,
the traditional system of Islamic law, community and society are reconsidered and
reconstructed.
The same is also true of al-Ghazali’s cosmology. He divides the cosmos into three
realms: the world of mulk (the phenomenal world), the world of malakut (the invisible
world) and the world of jabarut (the intermediate world). He takes this division from the
Sufi theorist Abu Talib al-Makki, although he reverses the meanings of malakut and
jabarut. The world of malakut is that of God’s determination, a world of angels free from
change, increase and decrease, as created once spontaneously by God. This is the world
of the Preserved Tablet in heaven where God's decree is inscribed. The phenomenal
world is the incomplete replica of the world of malakut, which is the world of reality, of
the essence of things. The latter is in some respects similar to the Platonic world of Ideas,
or Ibn Sina's world of inteiligibles. The only difference is that the world of malakut is

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created once and for all by God, who thereafter continues to create moment by moment
the phenomenal world according to his determination. This is a major difference from the
emanationist deterministic world of philosophy. Once the divine determination is freely
made, however, the phenomenal world changes and evolves according to a determined
sequence of causes and effects. The difference between this relationship and the
philosophers' causality lies in whether or not the relation of cause and effect is necessary.
This emphasis on causal relationship by al-Ghazali differs from the traditional Ash‘arite
occasionalism.
The Sufis in their mystical experience, and ordinary people in their dreams, are
allowed to glimpse the world of the Preserved Tablet in heaven, when the veil between
that world and the soul is lifted momentarily. Thus they are given foreknowledge and
other forms of supernatural knowledge. The revelation transmitted by the angel to the
prophets is essentially the same; the only difference is that the prophets do not need any
special preparation. From the viewpoint of those given such special knowledge of the
invisible world, says al-Ghazali, the world is the most perfect and best possible world.
This optimism gave rise to arguments and criticism even in his lifetime, alleging that he
was proposing a Mu‘tazilite or philosophical teaching against orthodox Ash‘arism. He
certainly says in his theological works that it is not incumbent upon God to do the best
for humans; however, this does not mean that God will not in fact do the best of his own
free will. Even so, behind al-Ghazali’s saying that God does so in actuality, we can see
the influence of philosophy and Sufism.

Al-Ghazali's criticism of philosophy and his mystical thought are often compared to the
philosophical and theological thought of Thomas AQUINAS, NICHOLAS OF
AUTRECOURT, and even DESCARTES and PASCAL. In the medieval world, where he
was widely believed to be a philosopher, he had an influence through the Latin and
Hebrew translations of his writings and through such thinkers as Yehuda HALEVI,
Moses MAIMONIDES and Raymond Martin of Spain.
5 LIST OF WORKS:

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1. Al-Ghazali (1094) Maqasid al falasifa (The Intentions of the Philosophers), ed. S.
Dunya, Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1961. (A precise summary of Islamic philosophy as
represented by Ibn Sina.)
2. Tahafut al falasifa(1095) (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), ed. M. Bouyges,
Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1927; trans, S.A. Kamah, Al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-
Falasifah, Lahore: Pakistan Philosophical Congress, 1963. (Al-Ghazali’s refutation of
Islamic philosophy.)
3 Mi‘yar al-‘ilm- (1095) (The Standard Measure of Knowledge), ed. S. Dunya, Cairo:
Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1961. (A summary account of Aristotelian logic.)
4. Mihakk al-nazar fi’l-mantiq(1095) (The Touchstone of Proof in Logic), ed. M. al-
Nu‘mani, Beirut: Dar al-Nahdah al-Hadithah, 1966. (A summary of Aristotelian logic.)
5. al-Iqtisad fi’l-‘tiqa(1095) d (The Middle Path in Theology), ed. I.A. Qubukçu and H.
Atay, Ankara: Nur Matbaasi, 1962; partial trans. A.-R. Abu Zayd, Al-Ghazali on Divine
Predicates and Their Properties, Lahore: Shaykh Muhammad Ashraf, 1970; trans. M.
Asin Palacios, El justo medio en la creencia, Madrid, 1929. (An exposition of al-
Ghazali’s Ash‘arite theological system.)
6 Mizan al-‘amal(1095) (The Balance of Action), ed. S. Dunya, Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif,
1964; trans. H. Hachem, Ghazali: Critere de l’action, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1945. (An
exposition of al-Ghazali’s ethical theory.)

7 al-Qistas al-mustaqim(1095-6) (The Just Balance), ed. V. Chelhot, Beirut: Imprimerie

Catholique, 1959; trans, V Chelhot, ‘Al-Qistas al-Mustaqim et la connaissance
rationnelle chez Ghazali’, Bulletin d'Etudes Orientales 15, 1955-7: 7-98; trans. D.P.
Brewster, Al-Ghazali: The Just Balance, Lahore: Shaykh Muhammad Ashraf, 1978. (An
attempt to deduce logical rules from the Qur’an and to refute the Isma‘ilis.)
8Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din(1096-7) (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), Cairo: Matba‘ah
Lajnah Nashr al-Thaqafah al-Islamiyyah, 1937-8, 5 vols; partial translations can be found
in E.E. Calverley, Worship in Islam: al-Ghazali’s Book of the Ihya’ on the Worship,
London: Luzac, 1957; N.A. Faris,

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9 al-Risala al-Qudsiyya(1097) (The Jerusalem Epistle), ed. and trans. A.L. Tibawi, ‘Al-
Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology’, The Islamic Quarterly 9 (3/4), 1965: 62-122. (A
summary of al-Ghazali’s theological system, later incorporated into the Ihya’.)
10 Mishkat al-anwar(1106-7) (The Niche of the Lights), ed. A. Afifi, Cairo, 1964; trans.
WH.T Gairdner, Al-Ghazzali's Mishkat al-Anwar, London: The Royal Asiatic Society,
1924; repr. Lahore: Shaykh Muhammad Ashraf, 1952; R. Deladriere, Le Tabernacle des
lumieres, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1981; A.-E. Elschazli, Die Nische der Lichter,
Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1987. (An exposition of al-Ghazali’s mystical philosophy in its
last phase.)
- (1109) al-Mustafa min ‘ilm al-usul (The Essentials of the Islamic Legal Theory), Cairo:
al-Matba'ah al-Amiriyyah, 1322-4 AH. (An exposition and standard work of the Islamic
legal theory of the Shaffite school.)
- (c. 1108) al-Munqidh min al-dalal (The Deliverer from Error), ed. J. Saliba and K.
Ayyad, Damascus: Maktab al-Nashr al-‘Arabi, 1934; trans. W M. Watt, The Faith and
Practice of al-Ghazali, London: Allen & Unwin, 1953; trans. R.J. McCarthy, Freedom
and Fulfillment: An Annotated Translation of al-Ghazali’s al-Munqidh min al-Dalal and
Other Relevant Works of al-Ghazali, Boston, MA: Twayne, 1980. (Al-Ghazali’s spiritual
autobiography.)
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:
Abu Ridah, M. (1952) Al-Ghazali and seine Widerlegung der griechischen Philosophie
(Al-Ghazali and His Refutation of Greek Philosophy), Madrid: S.A. Blass. (An analysis
of al-Ghazali’s refutation of philosophy in the framework of his religious thought.)
Campanini, M. (1996) ‘Al-Ghazzali’, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of
Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 19, 258-74. (The life and thought of al-
Ghazali is discussed in detail, with a conspectus of his thought through his very varied
career.)
Frank, R. (1992) Creation and the Cosmic System: al-Ghazali and Avicenna, Heidelberg:
Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. (One of the recent works clarifying the philosophical
influence upon al-Ghazali, representing a new trend in the study of al-Ghazali.)

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 (1994) Al-Ghazali and the Ash‘arite School, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
(A new attempt to prove al-Ghazali’s commitment to philosophy and his
alienation from traditional Ash‘arism.)
Ibn Rushd (c.1180) Tahafut al-tahafut (The Incoherence of Incoherence), trans, S. Van
den Bergh, Averroes' Tahafut al-Tahafut, 2 vols, London: Luzac, 1969. (A translation
with detailed annotations of Ibn Rushd's refutation of al-Ghazali’s criticism of
philosophy.)
Jabre, F. (1958a) La notion de certitude selon Ghazali dans ses origines psychologiques
et historiques (The Notion of Certitude According to al-Ghazali and Its Psychological
and Historical Origins), Paris: Vrin. (A comprehensive analysis of al-Ghazali’s important
concept of certitude.)
(1958b), La notion de la ma'rifa chez Ghazali (The Notion of Gnosis in al-Ghazali),
Beirut: Librairie Orientale. (An analysis of the various aspects of the notion of mystical
knowledge.)
Laoust, H. (1970) La politique de Gazali (The Political Thought of al-Ghazali), Paris:
Paul Geuthner. (An exposition of al-Ghazali’s political thought, showing him as an
orthodox jurist.)
Lazarus-Yafeh, H. (1975) Studies in al-Ghazali, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. (Literary
stylistic analyses applied to al-Ghazali’s works.)
Leaman, O. (1985) An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. (A good introduction to al-Ghazali’s philosophical
arguments against the historical background of medieval Islamic philosophy.)
(1996) ‘Ghazali and the Ash‘arites’, Asian Philosophy 6 (1): 17-27. (Argues that the
thesis of al-Ghazali’s distance from Ash‘arism has been overdone.)
Macdonald, D.B. (1899) ‘The Life of al-Ghazzali, with Especial Reference to His
Religious Experiences and Opinions’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 20: 71-
132. (A classic biography, dated but still somewhat useful.)
Marmura, M.E. (1995) ‘Ghazalian Causes and Intermediaries’, Journal of the American
Oriental Society 115: 89-100. (Admitting the great influence of philosophy on al-Ghazali,
the author tries to demonstrate al-Ghazali’s commitment to Sufism.)

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Nakamura Kojiro (1985) ‘An Approach to Ghazali’s Conversion’, Orient 21: 46-59. (An
attempt to clarify what Watt (1963) calls ‘a crisis of civilization’ as the background of al-
Ghazali’s conversion.)
(1993) ‘Was Ghazali an Ash‘arite?’, Memoirs of Research Department of the Toyo
Bunko 51: 1-24. (Al-Ghazali was still an Ash‘arite, but his Ash‘arism was quite different
from the traditional form.)
Ormsby, E. L. (1984) Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute over al-Ghazali’s ‘Best
of All Possible Worlds’, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (A study of the
controversies over al-Ghazali’s ‘optimistic’ remarks in his later works.)
Shehadi, F (1964) Ghazali's Unique Unknowable God: A Philosophical Critical Analysis
of Some of the Problems Raised by Ghazali's View of God as Utterly Unique and
Unknowable, Leiden: Brill. (A careful philosophical analysis of al-Ghazali’s religious
thought.)
Sherif, M. (1975) Ghazali's Theory of Virtue, Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press. (A careful analysis of al-Ghazali’s ethical theory in his Mizan and the
philosophical influence on it.)
Smith, M. (1944) Al-Ghazali the Mystic, London: Luzac. (A little dated, but still a useful
comprehensive study of al-Ghazali as a mystic and his influence in both the Islamic and
Christian worlds.)
Watt, W M. (1963) Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. (An analysis of al-Ghazali’s life and thought in the historical and social
context from the viewpoint of sociology of knowledge.)
Zakzouk, M. (1992) Al-Ghazali’s Philosophie im Vergleich mit Descartes (Al-Ghazali’s
Philosophy Compared with Descartes), Frankfurt: Peter Lang. (A philosophical analysis
of al-Ghazali’s thought in comparison with Descartes with reference to philosophical
doubt.)
 
 
 
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Imam Al-Ghazali’s views on children's education

Al-Ghazali, known in Europe as Algazel, is one of the most illustrious Muslim scholars,
who wrote many works, and became renowned for his learning. In his thirties, he became
the principal teacher at Madrasah Nizamiyyah of Baghdad, the most renowned institution
of learning in eastern Islam (Cordova in the West). His ideas on education dominated
Islamic educational thought for centuries after his death. Here, the focus is how he saw
the education of the child and the role of the master. The sources for this brief account,
other than the original source itself, are C. Bouamrane-L. Gardet; A. Tritton, and A.
Tibawi.
According to Al-Ghazali, "knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the
seed in the soil; by learning the potential becomes actual."
The child, Al-Ghazali also wrote, "is a trust (placed by God) in the hands of his parents,
and his innocent heart is a precious element capable of taking impressions".
If the parents, and later the teachers, brought him up in righteousness he would
live happily in this world and the next and they would be rewarded by God for their good
deed. If they neglected the child’s upbringing and education he would lead a life of
unhappiness in both worlds and they would bear the burden of the sin of neglect.

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 One of the elements Al-Ghazali insists upon is that a child should be taught the
words of the Creed in his earliest days and be taught the meaning gradually as he grew
older; corresponding to the three stages of memorizing, understanding and conviction.
The way the child relates to the world at large occupies a large concern in Al-Ghazali’s
mind. In concert with Ibn Al-Hajj, he stresses amongst others that a child must not boast
about his father’s wealth, and must be polite and attentive to all. He should be taught not
to love money for love of it is a deadly poison. He must not spit nor clean his nose in
public. He must learn to respect and obey his parents, teachers and elders. As he grows
older, he must observe the rules of cleanliness, fast a few days in Ramadhan, avoid the
wearing of silk, gold and silver, learn the prescriptions of the scared law, fear thieving,
wealth from unclean sources, lying, treachery, vice and violent language. The pupil must
not be excessively proud, or jealous. He should not tell off others. He must avoid the
company of the great of this world, or to receive gifts from them. He must act towards
God as he would wish his servant acted towards him. He should treat every human as he
would like to be treated himself.
The perspective of Al-Ghazali is centered upon personal effort in the search for
truth; and this presupposes, he insists, a received education and the direction of a master.
Education (tarbiya), Al-Ghazali states in Ayyuha l-walad is like "the labour of the farmer,
who uproots the weeds, trims wheat so as it grows better and gives a better harvest."
Every man needs a teacher to guide him in the right direction. To try and do without leads
to worst illusions. In Ayyuha l-walad the pupil’s outward respect for his teacher is
evidence of esteem for such in one's heart.
He who undertakes the instructions of the young, points Al-Ghazali, "undertakes great
responsibility". He must therefore be as tender to his pupils as if they were his own
children. He must correct moral lapses through hinting… above all he himself must set an
example so that his action accords with his precepts. The teacher should never criticise
the subject taught by another. He must adapt his teaching to the pupil's capacity and
ability, and not to overburden the pupil's capacity, nor give him fright. He must respect
the less gifted pupil, who might if lost, leave safe foundations for standards he would
never reach. And after school, Al-Ghazali insists, the pupil must be allowed to have
recreation. To prevent play and insist on continuous study leads to dullness in the heart,

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diminution in intelligence and unhappiness. Even more on this matter, in ‘Ihya ulum al-
din’, the teacher, Al-Ghazali holds, carries eight duties. First and foremost he is a father
for his pupils. He must teach for the sake of God. He would advise the student with
prudence, fight the excessive urge to learn too quickly, and to overtake his peers. He
would reprimand with moderation, in private, discreetly, not in public. To blame too
much is to make the pupil too stubborn in his way of seeing and doing things. And one
other duty of the teacher is to make sure that what he teaches he pursues in his life, and
that his own acts do not contradict what he is trying to inculcate.
-Ghazali’s Philosophies Concerning Women’s Education

In medieval Muslim society – and in other cultures during the same time period – the
majority of the literature concerning raising children refers to males as authority
figures. Gil’adi (1992) reports that there was explicit discrimination against females.
Al-Ghazali’s concept of knowledge and ideas on methods of teaching, like those of
many Western philosophers in the 18th century (e.g., Rousseau), was concerned more
with boys’ education than with girls’ education. Even though the Islamic religion
encourages females to educate themselves, Al-Ghazali proposed that education for
women be very limited, maintaining that females should be educated only by their
parents or husbands. Interestingly, while Al-Ghazali (1997) acknowledged that
teaching and learning is the highest level of worship, he asserted that women need only
religious education.
To understand this in the context of his era, Al-Ghazali perceived that women needed to
learn only the fundamentals of religion in order to fulfill their duties as wives and
mothers. In Ihya’, Al-Ghazali (in Holland, 1998) reports his opinion that women
should not endeavor to acquire any loftier forms of knowledge other than religious
education. Al-Ghazali noted that the woman’s father – and her husband, after she
marries – are responsible for educating her about the rules of ritual prayer.
A man who is getting married should learn about menstruation and its rules, so as to
observe the necessary restraints. He should teach his wife the rules of ritual prayer, and
about when prayers must or need not be made up by women after menstruation. For he

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 is commanded to preserve her from the Fire, in the words of Allah (Exalted is He):
Guard yourselves and your families against the Fire…(66:6).
He should instruct her in the beliefs of those who follow the Prophetic model, and
should remove from her heart any innovation she may have heard of. He should instill
the fear of Allah in her if she is lax in the matter of religion.
In her anthropological study, Dahl (1997) found that some of Al-Ghazali’s arguments
concerning women’s duties and rights have been, in many circumstances, taken quite
literally to this very day (pp. 157, 179). Thus, even though Al-Ghazali proposed that
only males be well educated – which was not unusual in his era – it is not a foundation
of Islam that women have fewer educational opportunities. Safi (2001, p. 34)
emphasizes that “while Islamic sources differentiate men’s and women’s
responsibilities within the family, all limitations imposed by classical scholars on
women’s rights in the public sphere were based on faulty interpretation of Islamic texts,
or practical limitations associated with the social and political structures of historical
society.” This supports the re-examination of Islamic texts to ensure that today’s
interpretation is both accurate and applicable to contemporary societal needs
References:
Panorama de la pensee Islamique by: C. Bouamrane, L. Gardet
Sindbad; 1-3 Rue Feutrier; Paris 18 (1984) , principally chapter 10, by Louis Gardet
(Notion et principe de l'education en Islam: pp 205-226)
Ihya ul’Ulum by: Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali, Ihya ul’Ulum, part I, book 2, section 2.
Ayyuha l’walad by: Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali, Ayyuha l’walad: UNESCO, Beyrouth 1951 (Arabic text).
Islamic Education by: A.Tibawi
A.Tibawi: Islamic Education, Luzac and Company Ltd, London, 1972
Materials on Muslim Education in the Middle Ages by: A.S. Tritton
Materials on Muslim Education in the Middle Ages; Luzac and Company, London, 1957.
http://www.themodernreligion.com/misc/edu/ghazali-edu.html

http://www.geocities.com/ta3leqa1/algatheory.html

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 Section D
Famous Educational Philosophies
1. Rationalism
2. Empiricism
3. Idealism
4. Realism
5. Naturalism

Rationalism (knowledge is gained by mind)

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as
a source of knowledge or justification" (Lacey 286). In more technical terms it is a
method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and
deductive" (Bourke 263). Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to
a range of rationalist standpoints, from the moderate position "that reason has precedence
over other ways of acquiring knowledge" to the more extreme position that reason is "the
unique path to knowledge" (Audi 771). Given a pre-modern understanding of reason,
"rationalism" is identical to philosophy, the Socratic life of inquiry, or the zetetic
interpretation of authority (open to the underlying or essential cause of things as they
appear to our sense of certainty).
Background
Since the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of
mathematical methods into philosophy, as in Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza (Bourke
263). This is commonly called continental rationalism, because it was predominant in
the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain empiricism dominated.
Rationalism is often contrasted with empiricism. Taken very broadly these views are not
mutually exclusive, since a philosopher can be both rationalist and empiricist (Lacey
286–287). Taken to extremes the empiricist view holds that all ideas come to us through
experience, either through the five external senses or through such inner sensations as
pain and pleasure, and thus that knowledge is essentially based on or derived from

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experience. At issue is the fundamental source of human knowledge, and the proper
techniques for verifying what we think we know.
Proponents of some varieties of rationalism argue that, starting with foundational basic
principles, like the axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive the rest of all
possible knowledge. The philosophers who held this view most clearly were Baruc
Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, whose attempts to grapple with the epistemological and
metaphysical problems raised by Descartes led to a development of the fundamental
approach of rationalism. Both Spinoza and Leibniz asserted that, in principle, all
knowledge, including scientific knowledge, could be gained through the use of reason
alone, though they both observed that this was not possible in practice for human beings
except in specific areas such as mathematics. On the other hand, Leibniz admitted that
"we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions" (Monadology § 28, cited in
Audi 772). Rationalism is predicting and explaining behavior based on logics.
Philosophical usage
The distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period, and
would not have been recognized by the philosophers involved. Also, the distinction was
not as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested; for example, the three main rationalists were
all committed to the importance of empirical science, and in many respects the
empiricists were closer to Descartes in their methods and metaphysical theories than were
Spinoza and Leibniz.
History
Socrates (ca 470–399B.C.E.)
Socrates firmly believed that, before humans can understand the world, they first need to
understand themselves; the only way to accomplish that is with rational thought. To
understand what this means, one must first appreciate the Greek understanding of the
world. Man is composed of two parts, a body and a soul. The soul itself has two principal
parts, an Irrational part, which is the emotions and desires, and a Rational part, which is
our true self. In our everyday experience, the irrational soul is drawn down into the
physical body by its desires and merged with it, so that our perception of the world is
limited to that delivered by the physical senses. The rational soul is beyond our conscious
knowledge, but sometimes communicates via images, dreams, and other means.

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True rationalism is not simply an intellectual process, but a shift in perception and a shift
in the qualitative nature of the person. The rational soul perceives the world in a spiritual
manner - it sees the Platonic Forms - the essence of what things are. To know the world
in this way requires that one first know oneself as a soul, hence the requirement to 'know
thyself', i.e. to know who you truly are.
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths – including the truths of
mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences –
could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required
experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He also argued that although
dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons with
knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then
sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational
pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in
such works as discourse on method Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of
Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing
that cannot be recognized by the intellect (or reason) can be classified as knowledge.
These truths are gained "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes. Truths
that are attained by reason are broken down into elements that intuition can grasp, which,
through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.Descartes
argued, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done
independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, is a
conclusion reached a priori and not through an inference from experience .
.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
Leibniz was the last of the great Rationalists, who contributed heavily to other fields such
as mathematics. His system however was not developed independently of these advances.
Leibniz rejected Cartesian dualism, and denied the existence of a material world. In
Leibniz's view there are infinitely many simple substances, which he called "monads"
(possibly taking the term from the work of Anne Conway).

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Leibniz developed his theory of monads in response to both Descartes and Spinoza. In
rejecting this response he was forced to arrive at his own solution. Monads are the
fundamental unit of reality, according to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and
animate things. These units of reality represent the universe, though they are not subject
to the laws of causality or space (which he called "well-founded phenomena"). Leibniz,
therefore, introduced his principle of pre-established harmony to account for apparent
causality in the world.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Immanuel Kant started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz
and Wolff, but after studying David Hume's works, which "awoke [him] from [his]
dogmatic slumbers", he developed a distinctive and very influential rationalism of his
own, which attempted to synthesise the traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.
Kant named his branch of epistemology Transcendental Idealism, and he first laid out
these views in his famous work The Critique of Pure Reason. In it he argued that there
were fundamental problems with both rationalist and empiricist dogma. To the
rationalists he argued, broadly, that pure reason is flawed when it goes beyond its limits
and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the realm of all possible
experience: the existence of God, free will, and the immortality of the human soul. Kant
referred to these objects as "The Thing in Itself" and goes on to argue that their status as
objects beyond all possible experience by definition means we cannot know them. To the
empiricist he argued that while it is correct that experience is fundamentally necessary for
human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent
thought. He therefore concludes that both reason and experience are necessary for human
knowledge.
References
1. Lisa Montanarelli (book reviewer) (January 8, 2006). "Spinoza stymies 'God's
attorney' -- Stewart argues the secular world was at stake in Leibniz face off". San
Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/c/a/2006/01/08/RVGO9GEOKH1.DTL. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
2. Kelley L. Ross (1999). "Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)". History of Philosophy As
I See It. http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm. Retrieved 2009-12-07. "While for

148
 Spinoza all is God and all is Nature, the active/passive dualism enables us to
restore, if we wish, something more like the traditional terms. Natura Naturans is
the most God-like side of God, eternal, unchanging, and invisible, while Natura
Naturata is the most Nature-like side of God, transient, changing, and visible."
3. Anthony Gottlieb (July 18, 1999). "God Exists, Philosophically". The New York
Times: Books.
http://www.times.com/books/99/07/18/reviews/990718.18gottlit.html. Retrieved
2009-12-07. "Spinoza, a Dutch Jewish thinker of the 17th century, not only
preached a philosophy of tolerance and benevolence but actually succeeded in
living it. He was reviled in his own day and long afterward for his supposed
atheism, yet even his enemies were forced to admit that he lived a saintly life."
4. Anthony Gottlieb (2009-09-07). "God Exists, Philosophically (review of
"Spinoza: A Life" by Steven Nadler)". The New York Times -- Books.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/18/reviews/990718.18gottlit.html.
Retrieved 2009-09-07.
5. Michael LeBuffe (book reviewer) (2006-11-05). "Spinoza's Ethics: An
Introduction, by Steven Nadler". University of Notre Dame.
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=8004. Retrieved 2009-12-07. "Spinoza's Ethics
is a recent addition to Cambridge's Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts, a
series developed for the purpose of helping readers with no specific background
knowledge to begin the study of important works of Western philosophy..."
6. "EINSTEIN BELIEVES IN "SPINOZA'S GOD"; Scientist Defines His Faith in
Reply, to Cablegram From Rabbi Here. SEES A DIVINE ORDER But Says Its
Ruler Is Not Concerned "Wit Fates and Actions of Human Beings."". The New
York Times. April 25, 1929. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F10B1EFC3E54167A93C7AB178FD85F4D8285F9. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
7. Spinoza, "God-Intoxicated Man"; Three Books Which Mark the Three Hundredth
Anniversary of the Philosopher's Birth BLESSED SPINOZA. A Biography. By
Lewis Browne. 319 pp. New York: The Macmillan Com- pany. $4. SPINOZA.
Liberator of God and Man. By Benjamin De Casseres, 145pp. New York:
E.Wickham Sweetland. $2. SPINOZA THE BIOSOPHER. By Frederick Kettner.

149
 Introduc- tion by Nicholas Roerich, New Era Library. 255 pp. New York: Roerich
Museum Press. $2.50. Spinoza". The New York Times. November 20, 1932.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F40A14F83A5513738DDDA90A94D9415B828FF1D3. Retrieved 2009-09-
08.
8. Spinoza's First Biography Is Recovered; THE OLDEST BIOGRAPHY OF
SPINOZA. Edited with Translations, Introduction, Annotations, &c., by A. Wolf.
196 pp. New York: Lincoln Macveagh. The Dial Press.". The New York Times.
December 11, 1927. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F60D1EFF395C147A93C3A81789D95F438285F9. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
9. IRWIN EDMAN (July 22, 1934). "The Unique and Powerful Vision of Baruch
Spinoza; Professor Wolfson's Long-Awaited Book Is a Work of Illuminating
Scholarship. (Book review) THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA. By Henry
Austryn Wolfson". The New York Times.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=FB0610FC395D13728DDDAB0A94DF405B848FF1D3. Retrieved 2009-09-
08.
10. ROTH EVALUATES SPINOZ". Los Angeles Times. Sep 8, 1929.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/370934682.html?
dids=370934682:370934682&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date
=Sep+08%2C+1929&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=ROTH+EVAL
UATES+SPINOZA&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
11. SOCIAL NEWS BOOKS (November 25, 1932). "TRIBUTE TO SPINOZA PAID
BY EDUCATORS; Dr. Robinson Extols Character of Philosopher, 'True to the
Eternal Light Within Him.' HAILED AS 'GREAT REBEL'; De Casseres Stresses
Individualism of Man Whose Tercentenary Is Celebrated at Meeting"The New
York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F30D13F6355516738DDDAC0A94D9415B828FF1D3. Retrieved 2009-09-
08.
12. "Rationalism Definition". http://www.yourdictionary.com/rationalism. Retrieved
2009-05-01.

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 Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge arises
from evidence gathered via sense experience. Empiricism is one of several competing
views that predominate in the study of human knowledge, known as epistemology.
Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensor perception,
in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or tradition.
In a related sense, empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes those aspects of
scientific knowledge that are closely related to evidence, especially as discovered in
experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and
theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting
solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be
methodologically empirical in nature
Etymology
The term "empiricism" has a dual etymology. It comes from the Greek word which
translates to the Latin experientia, from which we derive the word experience. It also
derives from a more specific classical Greek and Roman usage of empiric, referring to a
physician whose skill derives from practical experience as opposed to instruction in
theory
Philosophical usage
The term "empirical" was originally used to refer to certain ancient Greek practitioners of
medicine (Empiric school) who rejected adherence to the dogmatic doctrines of the day
(Dogmatic school), preferring instead to rely on the observation of phenomena as
perceived in experience. The notion of tabula rasa ("clean slate" or "blank tablet") dates
back to Aristotle, and was developed into an elaborate theory by Avicenna and
demonstrated as a thought experiment by Ibn Tufal The doctrine of empiricism was later
explicitly formulated by John Locke in the 17th century. He argued that the mind is a
tabula rasa (Locke used the words "white paper") on which experiences leave their
marks. Such empiricism denies that humans have innate ideas or that anything is
knowable without reference to experience.

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According to the empiricist view, for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced,
it is to be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience. As a historical matter,
philosophical empiricism is commonly contrasted with the philosophical school of
thought known as "rationalism" which, in very broad terms, asserts that much knowledge
is attributable to reason independently of the senses. However, this contrast is today
considered to be an extreme oversimplification of the issues involved, because the main
continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz) were also advocates of the
empirical "scientific method" of their day. Furthermore, Locke, for his part, held that
some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through
intuition and reasoning alone.

Scientific usage
A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be
empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence that is observable by the
senses. It is differentiated from the philosophic usage of empiricism by the use of the
adjective "empirical" or the adverb "empirically". Empirical is used in conjunction with
both the natural and social sciences, and refers to the use of working hypotheses that are
testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements
are subject to and derived from our experiences or observations.
In a second sense "empirical" in science and statistics may be synonymous with
"experimental". In this sense, an empirical result is an experimental observation. The
term semi-empirical is sometimes used to describe theoretical methods that make use of
basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental results in order to
engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry.
History
1 Early empiricism
Aristotle writes of the unscribed tablet, or tabula rasa, in his treatise (De Anima or On
the Soul). What the mind thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet
(grammateion) which bears no actual writing (grammenon); this is just what happens in
the case of the mind. (Aristotle, On the Soul, 3.4.430a1).

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 During the 11th century, the theory of tabula rasa was developed more clearly by
the Persian Islamic philosopher and physician, Ibn Sina (known as "Avicenna" in the
Western world). He argued that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a
pure potentiality that is actualized through education, and that knowledge is attained
through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts
universal concepts" which is developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning;
observations lead to propositional statements, which when compounded lead to further
abstract concepts." He further argued that the intellect itself "possesses levels of
development from the material intellect (al-‘aql al-hayulani), that potentiality that can
acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘il), the state of the human intellect
in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge."
During the 12th century, the Andalusian Arab philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail
(known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) demonstrated the theory of tabula
rasa as a thought experiment through his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzhan,
in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to
that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through
experience alone.
The decidedly anti-Aristotelian and anti-clerical music theorist Vincenzo Galilei,
father of Galileo, inventor of monody, made use of the method in successfully solving
musical problems, firstly, of tuning such as the relationship of pitch to string tension and
mass in stringed instruments, and to volume of air in wind instruments; and secondly to
composition, by his various suggestions to composers in his Dialogo della musica antica
e moderna (Florence, 1581). The Italian word he used in place of 'experiment' was
'esperienza'. It is known that he was the essential pedagogical influence upon the young
Galileo, his eldest son (cf. Coelho, ed. Music and Science in the Age of Galileo Galilei),
who, may be considered one of the most influential empiricists in history. Vincenzo,
through his tuning research, found the underlying truth at the heart of the misunderstood
myth of 'Pythagoras' hammers' (it was the square of the numbers concerned that yielded
those musical intervals, not the actual numbers, as believed), and through this and other
discoveries that demonstrated fallibility of traditional authorities, a radically empirical

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attitude developed, passed on to Galileo, which regarded 'experience and demonstration'
to be the sine qua non of valid rational enquiry.
British empiricism
Earlier concepts of the existence of "innate ideas" were the subject of debate between the
Continental rationalists and the British empiricists in the 17th century through the late
18th century. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hue were the primary exponents
of empiricism.
Responding to the continental "rationalism" most prominently defended by René
Descartes (a philosophical approach that should not be confused with rationalism
generally), John Locke (1632–1704), writing in the late 17th century, in his An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1689), proposed a very influential view wherein the
only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori, i.e., based upon experience. Locke is
famously attributed with holding the proposition that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a
"blank tablet," in Locke's words "white paper," on which the experiences derived from
sense impressions as a person's life proceeds are written. There are two sources of our
ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and
complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and
secondary qualities. Complex ideas combine simple ones, and divide into substances,
modes, and relations. According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of
ideas that are in accordance or discordance with each other, which is very different from
the quest for certainty of Descartes.

Bishop George Berkeley

A generation later, the Irish Anglican bishop, George Berkeley (1685–1753), determined
that Locke's view immediately opened a door that would lead to eventual atheism. In
response to Locke, he put forth in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge (1710) a different, very extreme form of empiricism in which things only
exist either as a result of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an
entity doing the perceiving. (For Berkeley, God fills in for humans by doing the
perceiving whenever humans are not around to do it). In his text Alciphron, Berkeley

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maintained that any order humans may see in nature is the language or handwriting of
God. Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called subjective
idealism.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) added to the empiricist viewpoint an
extreme skepticism that he brought to bear against the accumulated arguments and
counterarguments of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley, among others. Hume argued in
keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from sense experience. In
particular, he divided all of human knowledge into two categories: relations of ideas and
matters of fact. Mathematical and logical propositions (e.g. "that the square of the
hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides") are examples of the first,
while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world (e.g. "the sun
rises in the East") are examples of the second. All of people's "ideas", in turn, are derived
from their "impressions". For Hume, an "impression" corresponds roughly with what we
call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an "idea". Ideas
are therefore the faint copies of sensations.

Integration of empiricism and rationalism

In the late 19th and early 20th century several forms of pragmatic philosophy arose. The
ideas of pragmatism, in its various forms, developed mainly from discussions that took
place while Charles Sanders Peirce and William James were both at Harvard in the
1870s. James popularized the term "pragmatism", giving Peirce full credit for its
patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the movement was taking,
and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of "pragmaticism".
Along with its pragmatic theory of truth, this perspective integrates the basic insights of
empirical (experience-based) and rational (concept-based) thinking.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Peirce (1839–1914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's
empirical scientific method. Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of

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Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he
concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most importantly the idea that rational
concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily go beyond the
data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-
driven side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in
part to counterbalance the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism
under the "data-driven" strict-empiricist view. Among Peirce's major contributions was to
place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a complementary rather than
competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the educated
since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive
reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual
foundation for the empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach
"presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge are real things, (2) the characters
(properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and (3) everyone
who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According
to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The
rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions,
but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can
detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
William James: Radical Empiricism
Around the beginning of the 20th century, William James (1842–1910) coined the term
"radical empiricism" to describe an offshoot of his form of pragmatism, which he argued
could be dealt with separately from his pragmatism - though in fact the two concepts are
intertwined in James's published lectures. James maintained that the empirically observed
"directly apprehended universe, requires no extraneous trans-empirical connective
support", by which he meant to rule out the perception that there can be any value added
by seeking supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. James's "radical empricism"
is thus not radical in the context of the term "empiricism", but is instead fairly consistent
with the modern use of the term "empirical". (His method of argument in arriving at this
view, however, still readily encounters debate within philosophy even today.)

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John Dewey (1859–1952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as
instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw
experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated.
Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism was that reality is determined by
past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform
experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such
experience is measured by scientific instruments, and the results of such measurements
generate ideas that serve as instruments for future experimentation. Thus, ideas in
Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavour in that they are only known a posteriori.
Footnotes
1. Baird, Forrest E.; Walter Kaufmann (2008). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-158591-6.
2. Sini, Carlo (2004), "Empirismo", in Gianni Vattimo et al. (eds.), Enciclopedia
Garzanti della Filosofia.
3. Sajjad H. Rizvi (2006), Avicenna/Ibn Sina (CA. 980-1037), Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. G. A. Russell (1994), The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in
Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 224-62, Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004094598
5. Markie, P. (2004), "Rationalism vs. Empiricism" in Edward D. Zalta (ed.),
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Eprint.
6. Dr. Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), "Ibn Al-Nafis as a philosopher", Symposium on
Ibn al-Nafis, Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine: Islamic
Medical Organization, Kuwait (cf. Ibn al-Nafis As a Philosopher, Encyclopedia
of Islamic World)
7. (Polish) Portalwiedzy.onet.pl, Praktyk i mistyk, Andrzej Datko, Wiedza i życie
2008-04-28
8. Thornton, Stephen (1987) "Berkeley's Theory of Reality" in The Journal of the
Limerick Philosophical Society, UL.ie
9. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "George Berkeley", vol. 1, p. 297.
10. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "Empiricism", vol. 2, p. 503.

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11. Hume, D. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", in Enquiries
Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals,
2nd edition, L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1902.
(Orig. 1748).
12. Morick, H. (1980), Challenges to Empiricism, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis,
IN.
13. Marconi, D (2004), "Fenomenismo"', in Gianni Vattimo and Gaetano Chiurazzi
(eds.), L'Enciclopedia Garzanti di Filosofia, 3rd edition, Garzanti, Milan, Italy.
14. Mill, J.S., "An Examination of Sir William Rowan Hamilton's Philosophy", in
A.J. Ayer and Ramond Winch (eds.), British Empirical Philosophers, Simon and
Schuster, New York, NY, 1968.
15. Wilson, Fred (2005), "John Stuart Mill", in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
16. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "Phenomenalism", vol. 6, p. 131.
17. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "Axiomatic Method", vol. 5,
p.188-189, 191ff.
18. ^ Bolender, John (1998), "Factual Phenomenalism: A Supervenience Theory"',
Sorites, no. 9, pp. 16–31.
19. Berlin, Isaiah (2004), The Refutation of Phenomenalism, Isaiah Berlin Virtual
Library.
20. Chisolm, R. (1948), "The Problem of Empiricism", Journal of Philosophy 45,
512–517.
21. Achinstein, Peter, and Barker, Stephen F. (1969), The Legacy of Logical
Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, MD.
22. Barone, Francesco (1986), Il neopositivismo logico, Laterza, Roma Bari.
23. Rescher, Nicholas (1985), The Heritage of Logical Positivism, University Press of
America, Lanham, MD.
24. Ward, Teddy (n.d.), "Empiricism", Eprint.
25. Rock, Irvin (1983), The Logic of Perception, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
26. Rock, Irvin, (1997) Indirect Perception, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

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 27. James, William (1911), The Meaning of Truth.
28. Dewey, John (1906), Studies in Logical Theory.
Idealism

Idealism

Idealism is the oldest system of philosophy known to man. Its origins go back to ancient
India in the East, and to Plato in the West. Its basic viewpoint stresses the human spirit as
the most important element in life. The universe is viewed as essentially nonmaterial in
its ultimate nature. Although Idealist philosophers vary enormously on many specifics,
they agree on the following two points:

▬   The human spirit is the most important element in life; and
▬   The universe is essentially nonmaterial in its ultimate nature.

Idealism should not be confused with the notion of high aspirations - that is not what
philosophers mean when they speak of Idealism. In the philosophic sense, Idealism is a
system that emphasizes the pre-eminent importance of mind, soul, or spirit. It is possible
to separate Idealism into different schools, but for our purposes we shall be content to
identify only the most general assumptions of the Idealists in metaphysics, epistemology,
and value theory, without regard to the idiosyncrasies of the various schools.

BASIC METAPHYSICS OF IDEALISM

In Idealism, all of reality is reducible to one fundamental substance: spirit. (You may
better understand the nature of spirit in this context if you think of it as the total absence
of materiality.) Matter is not real; it is rather a notion, an abstraction of the mind. It is
only the mind that is real. Therefore, all material things that seem to be real are reducible
to mind or spirit. The chair you are sitting on is not material; it only seems material. Its
essential nature is spirit. On the universal level, finite minds live in a purposeful world
produced by an infinite mind. It is as though the entire universe is made up of an infinite
mind or spirit; which is, in effect, everything, and we are small bits and pieces of that

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mind. Because man is a part of this purposeful universe, he is an intelligent and
purposeful being.

EPISTEMOLOGY OF IDEALISM

Idealists believe that all knowledge is independent of sense experience. The act of
knowing takes place within the mind. The mind is active and contains innate capacities
for organizing and synthesizing the data derived through sensations. Man can know
intuitively; that is to say, he can apprehend immediately some truth without utilizing any
of his senses. Man can also know truth through the acts of reason by which an individual
examines the logical consistency of his ideas. Some Idealists believe that all knowledge is
a matter of recall. Plato was one who held this notion. He based this conclusion upon the
assumption that the spirit of man is eternal. Whatever he knows is already contained
within his spirit. Objective Idealists, such as Plato, think that ideas are essences, which
have an independent existence. Subjective Idealists, such as George Berkeley, reason that
man is able to know only what he perceives. His only knowledge is of his mental states.
Existence depends upon mind. Every stimulus received by the mind is derived ultimately
from God. God is the Infinite Spirit.

IDEALISTIC VALUE THEORY

Idealists generally root all values either in a personal God or in a personal spiritual force
of nature. They all agree that values are eternal. Theistic Idealists assert that eternal
values exist in God. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness are known to the extent that the
idea of good and the idea of beauty are consistent with the absolute good and the absolute
beauty found in God. Pantheistic Idealists identify God with nature. Values are absolute
and unchanging because they are a part of the determined order of nature.

EDUCATIONAL THEORY OF MODERN IDEALISM

Aims of Education

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The purpose of education is to contribute to the development of the mind and self of the
learner. The education-imparting institute should emphasize intellectual activities, moral
judgments, aesthetic judgments, self-realization, individual freedom, individual
responsibility, and self-control in order to achieve this development. 

Curriculum

The curriculum is based upon the idea or assumption of the spiritual nature of man. This
idea in turn leads to an idea of the nature of the larger units of family, community, state,
earth; the universe, and infinity. In preserving the subject matter content, which is
essential for the development of the individual mind, the curriculum must include those
subjects essential for the realization of mental and moral development. These subjects
provide one with culture, and they should be mandated for all pupils. Moreover, the
subject matter should be kept constant for all. 

The Teaching-Learning Process

Idealists have high expectations of the teacher. The teacher must be excellent, in order to
serve as an example for the student, both intellectually and morally. No other single
element in the school system is more important than the teacher. The teacher must excel
in knowledge and in human insight into the needs and capacities of the learners; and must
demonstrate moral excellence in personal conduct and convictions. The teacher must also
exercise great creative skill in providing opportunities for the learners' minds to discover,
analyze, unify, synthesize and create applications of knowledge to life and behavior. 

Methods of Teaching

The classroom structure and atmosphere should

provide the learners with opportunities to think,
and to apply the criteria of moral evaluation to
concrete within the context of the subjects. The
teaching methods must encourage the acquisition of

161
facts, as well as skill in reflecting on these
facts. It is not sufficient to teach pupils how to
think. It is very important that what pupils think
about be factual; otherwise, they will simply
compound their ignorance. Teaching methods should
encourage learners to enlarge their horizons;
stimulate reflective thinking; encourage personal
moral choices; provide skills in logical thinking;
provide opportunities to apply knowledge to moral
and social problems; stimulate interest in the
subject content; and encourage learners to accept
the values of human civilization.

http://www.parvez-video.com/idealism_theory.asp

REALISM
BACKGROUND AND MEANING OF REALISM :
Just as Naturalism comes on the Educational scene as a protest against systems of
education that have become artificial. Realism appears to be a reaction against curricula
consisting of studies that have become bookish, sophisticated and a abstruse. As we have
a slogan in Naturalism- ‘ Back to Nature ‘ – in Realism we have a slogan-‘ Things rather
than words ’.
Idealism deals with ‘mind and  Self ,’ Naturalism emphasizes ‘Matter and Physical
world’, and pragmatism ‘Refuses to speculate and transcend beyond experience ‘. And
according to Realism the external world of objects is not imaginary. It really exists, “Our
experience is not independent but determines reaction to the external objects. Experiences
are influenced by the external world which has real existence.” (Dr. Pandey Ram Shakal :
An Introduction to Major philosophies of Education, pp. 149-50 ). It is a new outlook.
and this new outlook is termed as Realism.

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The realistic movement in education started from the 16th century. The 16th and 17th
centuries witnessed great inventions and epochal discoveries which greatly increased the
store of human knowledge. They extended the horizon of human knowledge. The rise of
scientific inquiry opened new vistas before human mind. ( Bacon’s formulation and
statement of the new scientific method. ) All these lead to a new spirit of inquiry into the
realities of nature. Man started to believe more in himself. He thought that he would
conquer the entire world with his supreme gift of rationality. The interest in language and
literature began to wane and people became more and more interested in man and his
environment.
Consequently, there arose a demand of/for a new type of education in which truth rather
than beauty, realities of life of the day rather than the beauties of the old days were aims
of education as there was a great premium on Man and human endeavour combined with
science  and common sense. This new conception was marked by an awakened interest in
the natural phenomena and social institutions. This new outlook came to be termed as 
‘Realism in Education ’.  “ The realist enters his emphatic protest against a cleavage
between the work of the school and the life of the world outside it. “ ( Rose, James S. :
Ground work of Educational Theory, p. 214 ).
“Education is that which makes a man happy by getting acquaintance with real
circumstances of life, create capacity for struggling with adverse situation in life.
Realistic education is connected with the needs of life. ”  ( Dr. Chaube, S.P. and Akilesh :
philosophical and Sociological; Foundation of Education , P. 171 ).
FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATES AND MAIN TENETS :
1)      External world is a solid Reality, whether known or unknown to man. Reality is
already in existence and in the invention of man. It exists independently of being known
to perceived by, or related to mind. Man can only comprehend it, through senses. One
should dip below the surface to know the reality.
2)      Realism places great premium on Man and human endeavor, which it says, should
be combined with science and common-sense. It, however, asserts that ‘Man is finite’ and
learning is necessary for a finite man, Education is the process by which he lifts himself
up to the external. “ The Realists wish man to be a man of affairs, practical and always
seeker of deeper and deeper truth and reality,”

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( Taneja, V.R. : Socio-philosophical Approach to Education, p. 241 ).
3)      The realist say that ‘Mind’ like any other material thing has mechanical
functioning. They discount its creating ability. “Just as any object of universe can be
‘true’ or ‘false’ similarly mind is also ‘true’ or ‘false’. The development of  mind is the
part of the process of development of  the world.” (Dr. Chaube, S.P. and Akilesh :
Philosophical and Sociological foundation of Education, p.171 )
‘Mind is what it studies’. (Herbert). If this concept of the realists is accepted in    
education then we are forced to believe that children’s mind are ‘mere cameras to register
the reality of the universe. ’Philosophers say that mind has lot of scope for enrichment
elevation and creativity.
4)      Realism tries to build up a body of systematized knowledge, which is certain and
objective and agrees with the standpoint of physical sciences. It says that every reality
can be proved by observation, experience, experiment and scientific reasoning, For them,
experience is the touchstone of what is real. Whenever  the simple and direct experience
can’t determine the objective truth, the common sense puts its truth in scientific research.
In the present world of falling idols and falling ideals, the realists emphasize the role of
intelligence as great significant, as it formulates the concepts and develops general and
abstract ideas.
5)      The realists of all brands aver that values are permanent and objective and say that
although institutions and practices very a great deal, the fundamental values of society
should not change. The children should be taught those values, which have proved
enduring throughout history. They should be taught the nature of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and
what is objectively good and beautiful.
In brief, Realism believes in the usefulness of the world and the material existence in its
field of action . It believes that whatever is real is independent. Whatever is, is and exists.
Its presence of existence does not depend upon the knower. (Compare with idealist’s
standpoint. ) The individual doesn’t make reality, he only discovers it.
Main tenets :
i)                    Realism believes in the world which we see of perceive to be real.
According to them it is wrong to say  ²ÖÎÉ ÃÖŸµÖÓ •Ö?ÖŸÖ ×´Ö£Ö˵ÖÖ I
ii)                   Realists believe in the present life.

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iii)                 They believe that the truth of life and aim of life are in the development
from the present unsystematic life.
iv)                 Knowledge is real and can be assimilated by the human beings.
v)                  The realists distinguish between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’.
vi)                 Realism believes that there is an objective reality apart from that which is
presented to the consciousness.
The developing realism has adopted four points in education :
i)                    Humanistic Realism,
ii)                   Social Realism,
iii)                 Sense Realism, and
iv)                 Neo-Realism.
i) Humanistic Realism in education
Humanistic realism is the reaction against the emphasise on form and style of the old
classical literature. It has great regard for the ancient literature but it emphasizes the study
of content and ideas in the ancient classical literature to understand one’s present social
life and environment. The aim is not to study the form and style of old literature to have
mastery over it. The study of old literature is a means to understand the practical life.
History, Geography, Kautilyas Arthashastra are the subjects and books should be studied
for this purpose. Erasmus (1446-1537 ), Rabelais (1483-1553), John Milston (1608-1674)
were the supporters of this faculty.
ii)                   Social Realism in education
Social Realism in education is the reaction against a type of education that produces
scholars and professional men to the neglect of the man of affairs i.e. practice. Education
should not produce men who are unfit in social life. The purpose of education, according
to social realists, is to prepare the practical man of the world. Michael de Montaigue
(1533-1592) was the main supporter of this faculty.
iii) The sense Realism in education
The sense realism in education emphasizes the training of the senses. Senses are the
gateways of knowledge and learning takes place the operation of the senses. According to
sense-realists nature is the treasure house of all knowledge and this knowledge can be
obtained through the training of the senses.

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The sense-realists emphasized the three things :
a)      Application of inductive method formulated by Bacon in order to organize and
simplify the instructional process.
b)     To replace instruction in Latin by the instruction in Vernacular, and
c)      To substitute new scientific and social studies in place of the studies in language
and literature. Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Ratke (1571
to 1635) and Comenius  (1592-1670) were the supporters of this faculty.
iv) Neo-Realism in education
Neo-Realism is really a philosophical thought. It appears the methods and results of
modern development in physics. They do not consider the scientific principles everlasting
while they express the changeability in them. They support the education of art with the
science and analytical system of education with the humananistic feelings. They consider
living and un living all objective to be organs and the development of organs is the main
objective and all round development of the objects is the main characteristic of education.
Bertrand Russel and whitehead were the supporters of this faculty.
REALISM AND AIMS OF EDUCATION :
“Realists do not believe in general and common aims of education. According to them
aims are specific to each individual and his perspectives.” (Seetharamu, A.S. :
philosophies of Education, p.74). And each one has different  perspectives. The aim of
education should be to teach truth rather than beauty, to understand the present practical
life.
The purpose of education, according to social realists, is to prepare the practical man of
the world.
The science realists expressed that the education should be conducted on universal basis.
Greater stress should be laid upon the observation of nature and the education of science.
Neo-realists aim at developing all round development of the objects with the
development of their organs.
REALISM AND CURRICULA :
According to humanistic realism classical literature should be studied but not for studying
its form and style but for its content and ideas it contained. Milton, one of the supporters
of humanistic realism, has drafted a curricula of education as follows :

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1st year – Latin, grammar, arithmetic and geometry. Reading of simple Latin and
Greek.
2nd year – Greek, agriculture, geography Natural philosophy, mathematics,
engineering and architecture.
In the next 5th year – chief writings of the ancients in prose and poetry on these            
subjects.
Remaining years – Ethical instruction, Bible, Hebrew, Greek, Roman and Saxon Law,
economics, politics, history, logic, rhetoric, poetry-all by reading select writhers.
Social realism was generally recommended for the people of the upper social class/strata.
It combined literary elements with ideals of chivalric education. Naturally it included the
study of literature, heraldry ( the science dealing with coats of arms and the persons who
have right to wear them ), genealogy ( science of the development of plants and animals
from earlier forms ),riding, fencing, gymnastics, study of modern languages and the
customs and institutions of neighboring countries.
Sense-realism attached more importance to the study of natural sciences and
contemporary social life. Study of languages is not so significant as the study of natural
sciences and contemporary life.
Neo-realism gives stress on the subject physics and on humanistic feelings, physics and
psychology, sociology, economics, Ethics, Politics, history, Geography, agriculture
varied arts, languages and so on, are the main subjects to be studied according to the Neo-
realists.
REALISM AND METHODS OF TEACHING :
1. Education should proceed from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract.
2. Things before rules and words.
3. Students to be taught to analyze rather than  to construct.
4. Vernacular to be the medium of instruction.
5. The order of nature to be sought and followed.
( The child can rule over the nature if the natural laws are followed. )
1. Repetition is necessary for retention.
2. Individual’s experience and spirit of inquiry is more important than authority.
3. No unintelligent cramming. More emphasis on questioning and understanding.

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 4. Methods of scientific thinking formulated by sir Thomas Bacon.
( Inductive method of education ).
“(There are and can be only two ways for investigation and discovery of truth. One flies
from senses and particulars, to the most general axioms and from these principles and
infallible truth determines and discovers intermediate axioms….the other constructs
axioms from the senses and particulars by ascending continually and gradually, so as to
teach most general axioms last of all.)” – Bacon.
10.  Social realists follow the method of travel of journey method, which will give real
experience of varied aspects of life  improve knowledge and mental faculties.
REALISM AND THE TEACHER :
1)      A teacher should be such that he himself be educated and well versed with the
customs of belief and rights and duties of people, and the trends of all ages and places.
3)      He must have full mastery of the knowledge of present life.
4)      He must guide the student towards the hard realities of life. He is neither pessimist,
nor optimist.
5)      He must be able to expose children to the problems of life and the world around.
( To master one’s own environing life natural, social through a knowledge of the broader
life of the ancients.)
A teacher should always keep in mind-
1. Re-capitulation is necessary to make the knowledge permanent.
2. One subject  should be taught at one time.
3. No pressure or coercion be brought upon the child.
4. The practice of cramming should be given up.
5. The uniformity should be the basic principle in all things.
6. Things should be introduced first and then the words.
7. The entire knowledge should be gained after experience.
8. The knowledge should be imparted on the basis of organs.
9. Straight forward method should be adopted for teaching.
10.  There should be a co-relation between utility in daily life and education.
11.  The child should be told the utility of whatever is taught.
12.  The simple rules should be defined.

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13.  All the subjects should be taught in proper order.
14.  Various organs of education should be taught in chronological order.
15.  The topic should not be given up unless the boys understand it well.
16.  To find out the interest of the child and to teach accordingly.
REALISM AND THE CHILD :
1)      “Realism in education recognizes the importance of the child. The child is a real
unit which has real existence. He has some feelings, some desires and some powers. All
these cannot be overlooked. These powers of the child shall have to be given due regard
at the time of planning education. ”  1
2)      “ Child can reach near reality through learning by reason.” 1
3)      “ Child has to be given as much freedom as possible.” 1
4)      “The child is to be enabled to proceed on the basis of facts,” 1
5)      The child can learn only when he follows the laws of learning.”1
(When only one response is repeated for one stimulus, it conditioned by that stimulus.
Now wherever that situation comes, response will be the same; this is the fact.)
6)      “ The child is to be understood a creature of the real world there is no sense in
making him a  God . He has to be trained to become a man only.”  1( Dr. Pandey Ram
Shakal : An introduction to Major philosophies of Education, pp.160. 161 ).
REALISM AND SCHOOL ORGANIZATION :
1) School organization would be based on the real needs of society. It is not proper that a
college should be established due to political pressure at a place when it is not needed.
2) The opening of science classes in every school is must. Only academic and literary
subjects are not sufficient to fulfill the needs of the society.
3) Realism doesn’t oppose co-education. Sex-drive is a real feeling. It is a natural
happening so it can not be rejected.
4) School is the mirror of the society. It is a miniature form of society and it presents the
real picture of the society
REALISM AND DISCIPLINE :
Discipline is adjustment to objectivity. It is necessary in order to enable the child to
adjust himself to his environment and concentrate on his work. Bringing out change in

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the real world is  impossible. The student himself is a part of this world. He has to admit
this fact and adjust himself to the world.
A disciplined student is one who does not withdraw from the cruelties, tyrannies,
hardships and shortcomings pervading the world. Realism has vehemently opposed
withdrawal from life. One has to adjust oneself to this material world.
Thus, the realism has brought great effect in various fields of education. The aims, the
curriculum, the methods of teaching the outlook towards the child, the teachers, the
discipline and the system of education all were given new blood. Realism in education
dragged the education from the old traditions, idealism and the high and low tides to the
real surface.
DARK SIDE OF REALISM :
1)      “ Realism recognizes the real existence of the material world. This recognition
remains un objected to unless he says that only material world really exists. The question
arises- Is there no power behind this material world ? Does it have its own existence ?
What is the limit of the universe ? The realist does give reply to these questions but these
replies are not found to be satisfactory. The real existence of material world may be
admitted but how can the existence come to an end in the world itself ?  ” 1
2)      “ The realist claims to be objective. Objectivity in knowledge is nothing but the
partnership of personal knowledge. Knowledge is always subjective.” 1
3)      “ The realist recognizes the origin of knowledge from the datum achieved by senses
and asserts that only objects are main and it is through their contact that knowledge is
acquired. Then how does our illusion arise ? How does knowledge become fallacious ?
Where does the external object go in dream ? The realist is unable to answer these
questions satisfactorily. ” 1
4)      “ The realist does not accept the existence of transcendental ( not based on
experience or reason ) being. How could be know the non-existence of that which does
not exist ? Has non-existence got  no existence ?  void ness and non-existence also are the
parts of existence. Here the realist is dumb completely. ” 1
5)      “ Realism admits real feelings and needs of life on the one hand, gives no place to
imagination and sentiment, on the other. What a contradiction ? Are imaginations,

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emotions and sentiments not real needs of human life ? Is emotionless life not almost
dead life ?  Can life be lead on the basis of facts only ? ” 1
6)      “ No inspiration to remove the defects of modern education can be achieved unless
the impressiveness of pure and high thought is admitted and attitude is not confined to
present facts only;  because the realist is satisfied simply by the fulfillment of the needs
of daily life and be does not care to make life sublime.” 1
7)      “ Today the effect of realism has given rise  to the wave of science. It is right, but
there should be no indifference towards art and literature. The realist supports this
negligence. ” 1
8. “ Realism enthuses disappointment in students and teachers. No progress can be made
by having faith in the facts of daily life and shattering faith in ideals. Life is but full of
miseries and struggles. Sorrow  is more predominant than joy in the world. A person
becomes disappointed by this feeling. That is why realists often appear to be skeptics
( person who doubts the truth of a particular claim, theory etc. ).Pessimists and
objectionists, ”1      ( Dr. Pande, Ram Shakal : An Introduction to Major philosophies of
Education, pp. 170-171.)
CONCLUSION :
Some of the points raised against realism may be true but some are raised under
ignorance of the study of realism in the true sense. Its contributions to modern education
should not be ignored. Today attention is being paid towards technical and vocational
education in all corners of the world. There are many Engineering Colleges in India, too.
Everywhere there is an arrangement of higher education of Medicine and Law. 
Increasing interest towards empirical education is the application of the realistic attitude.
There are two main contributions of the education based upon the realism. Firstly, it tried
to remove the gulf-between the life and education.  Secondly, it propounded the principle
of experimentation and observation in education. It was realism that first introduced the
thought that the organs are the door way to knowledge and the knowledge can be gained
through the inductive method. The wordy education and bookish knowledge are not
sufficient. Real education is that which brings about union between nature and society
based upon one’s own experience.
REFERENCES

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1.Dr. Pande, Ram Shakal : An Introduction to Major philosophies of Education, 1982 :
Agra, Vinod Pustak Mandir, Section Six- Chapters 25 to 30, pp. 149 to 173.
2.Rose, James S. : Grouondwoek of Educational Theory, 1969 : London, George G.
Harrap and Co. Ltd. , 182, High Holborn, London, W.C.I. , Chapter-X, pp. 211 to 236.
3.Dr. Chaube, S. P. Akhilesh : Philosophical and Sociological Foundation of Education,
1981 : Agra Vinod Pustak Mandir , Agra – 2. Chapter 12, pp.171 to 174.
4.: Socio-Philosophical Approach to Education, 1987 : New Delhi , Atlantic publishers
and Distributors, B-2 , Vishal Enclave, Najafgarh Road, New Delhi – 110 027. Chapter –
Twenty, pp. 239 to 251.
5.Seetharamu, A. S. : Philosophies of Education, 1989 : New Delhi, S. B. Nangia, for
Ashish Publishing House, 8/81 , Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi – 110026 . Chapter – 6 , pp.
72 to 77.
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