Elites Grid Weekly Track

Day : Modern Schools of Philosophy

Analytic Philosophy 3
British Empiricism 6
Continental Philosophy 8
Deconstructionism 9
Existentialism 10
German Idealism 12
Hegelianism 15
Humanism 17
Kantianism 19
Logicism 21
Logical Positivism 22
Marxism 24
Modernism 27
Ordinary Language 29
Phenomenology 31
Positivism 33
Post-Modernism 34
Post-Structuralism 36
Pragmatism 38
Rationalism 40
Romanticism 43
Structuralism 45
Transcendentalism 47
Utilitarianism 49
Analytic Philosophy
Analytic Philosophy (or sometimes Analytical Philosophy) is a 20th Century movement in
philosophy which holds that philosophy should apply logical techniques in order to
attain conceptual clarity, and that philosophy should be consistent with the success of
modern science. For many Analytic Philosophers, language is the principal (perhaps the
only) tool, and philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be used.
Analytic Philosophy is also used as a catch-all phrase to include all (mainly Anglophone)
branches of contemporary philosophy not included under the label ​Continental
Philosophy​, such as ​Logical Positivism​, ​Logicism and ​Ordinary Language Philosophy​. To
some extent, these various schools all derive from pioneering work at Cambridge
University in the early 20th Century and then at Oxford University after World War II,
although many contributors were in fact originally from Continental Europe.
Analytic Philosophy as a specific movement was led by ​Bertrand Russell​, ​Alfred North
Whitehead​, ​G. E. Moore and ​Ludwig Wittgenstein​. Turning away from then-dominant
forms of ​Hegelianism​, (particularly objecting to its ​Idealism and its almost deliberate
obscurity), they began to develop a new sort of conceptual analysis based on new
developments in ​Logic​, and succeeded in making substantial contributions to
philosophical ​Logic​ over the first half of the 20th Century.
The three main foundational planks of Analytical Philosophy are:
● that there are no specifically philosophical truths and that the object of
philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
● that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the
logical form of philosophical propositions, such as by using the formal grammar
and symbolism of a logical system.
● a rejection of sweeping philosophical systems and grand theories in favor of close
attention to detail, as well as a defense of common sense and ordinary language
against the pretensions of traditional ​Metaphysics​ and ​Ethics​.
Early developments in Analytic Philosophy arose out of the work of the German
mathematician and logician ​Gottlob Frege (widely regarded as the father of modern
philosophical logic), and his development of ​Predicate Logic​. ​Bertrand Russell and ​Alfred
North Whitehead​, particularly in their groundbreaking "Principia Mathematica"
(1910-1913) and their development of Symbolic Logic, attempted to show that
mathematics is reducible to fundamental logical principles.
From about 1910 to 1930, Analytic Philosophers like ​Russell and ​Wittgenstein focused
on creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis (known as Ideal Language
Analysis or Formalism), which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language
that, in their view, often got philosophers into trouble. In his "Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus" of 1921, ​Wittgenstein suggested that the world is merely the
existence of certain states of affairs which can be expressed in the language of
first-order predicate logic, so that a picture of the world can be built up by expressing
atomic facts in atomic propositions, and linking them using logical operators, a theory
sometimes referred to as Logical Atomism.
G. E. Moore​, who along with ​Bertrand Russell had been a pioneer in his opposition to
the dominant ​Hegelianism (and its belief in ​Hegel​'s Absolute Idealism) in the British
universities of the early 20th Century, developed his ​epistemological Commonsense
Philosophy, attempting to defend the "commonsense" view of the world against both
Skepticism​ and ​Idealism​.
In the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, ​Russell and ​Wittgenstein​'s Formalism was picked up
by the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle which developed into the ​Logical Positivism
movement, which focused on universal logical terms, supposedly separate from
contingent factors such as culture, language, historical conditions. In the late 1940s and
1950s, following ​Wittgenstein​'s later philosophy, Analytic Philosophy took a turn toward
Ordinary Language Philosophy​, which emphasized the use of ordinary language by
ordinary people.
Following heavy attacks on Analytic Philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s, both ​Logical
Positivism and ​Ordinary Language Philosophy rapidly fell out of fashion. However, many
philosophers in Britain and America after the 1970's still considered themselves to be
"analytic" philosophers, (generally characterized by precision and thoroughness about a
narrow topic), although less emphasis on linguistics and an increased eclecticism or
pluralism characteristic of ​Post-Modernism​ is also evident.
More contemporary Analytic Philosophy has also included extensive work in other areas
of philosophy, such as in ​Ethics by Phillipa Foot (1920 - ), R. M. Hare (1919 - 2002) and J.
L. Mackie (1917 - 1981); in ​Political Philosophy by John Rawls (1921 - 2002) and Robert
Nozick (1938 - 2002); in ​Aesthetics by Arthur Danto (1924 - 2013); and in ​Philosophy of
Mind​ by Daniel Dennett (1942 - ) and Paul Churchland (1942 - ).
British Empiricism
British Empiricism is a practical philosophical movement which grew up, largely in
Britain, during the ​Age of Reason and ​Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th
Century. The major figures in the movement were ​John Locke​, ​George Berkeley and
David Hume​.
Empiricism is the idea that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasizes
the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of
ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas, and argues that the only knowledge
humans can have is a posteriori (i.e. based on experience). It relies on induction or
inductive reasoning (making generalizations based on individual instances) in order to
build a more complex body of knowledge from these direct observations. Modern
science, and the scientific method, is considered to be methodologically empirical in
nature, relying as it does on an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry. See the
section on the ​doctrine of Empiricism​ for more details.
Empiricism is usually contrasted with ​Rationalism (which holds that the mind may
apprehend some truths directly, without requiring the medium of the senses), which
became established in Continental Europe at around the same time, with the work of
Descartes​, ​Leibniz and ​Spinoza​, among others. ​Locke​, ​Berkeley and ​Hume vigorously
defended Empiricism against these ​Rationalists​.
The concept of a "tabula rasa" (or "clean slate") had been developed as early as the 11th
Century by the Persian philosopher ​Avicenna​, who further argued that knowledge is
attained through empirical familiarity with objects in this world, from which one
abstracts universal concepts, which can then be further developed through a syllogistic
method of reasoning. ​Sir Francis Bacon can be considered an early British Empiricist,
through his popularization of an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, which has
since become known as the scientific method.
However, the first explicit formulation of Empiricism was by the British philosopher ​John
Locke in the late 17th Century. ​Locke argued in his "An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding" of 1690 that the mind is a tabula rasa on which experiences leave their
marks, and therefore denied that humans have innate ideas or that anything is
knowable without reference to experience. However, he also held that some knowledge
(e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning
alone.
The Irish philosopher ​Bishop George Berkeley​, concerned that ​Locke​'s view opened a
door that could lead to eventual ​Atheism​, put forth in his "Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge" of 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. He argued that the continued existence of
things results from the perception of God, regardless of whether there are humans
around or not, and any order humans may see in nature is effectively just the
handwriting of God.
The Scottish philosopher ​David Hume argued that all of human knowledge can be
divided into two categories: relations of ideas (e.g. mathematical and logical
propositions) and matters of fact (e.g. propositions involving some contingent
observation of the world, such as "the sun rises in the East"), and that ideas are derived
from our "impressions" or sensations. In the face of this, he argued that even the most
basic beliefs about the natural world, or even in the existence of the self, cannot be
conclusively established by reason, but we accept them anyway because of their basis in
instinct and custom. ​Hume​'s Empiricism therefore verges on ​Skepticism​. ​John Stuart Mill
took this reasoning a step further in the mid-19th Century in maintaining that inductive
reasoning is necessary for all meaningful knowledge (including mathematics), and that
matter is merely the "permanent possibility of sensation", as he put it.
In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, developments stemming from British
Empiricism also gave rise to several important movements including ​Pragmatism​,
Positivism​ and ​Logical Positivism​.
Continental Philosophy
Continental Philosophy refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th Century philosophy
in mainland Europe. It is a general term for those philosophical schools and movements
not included under the label ​Analytic Philosophy​, which was the other, largely
Anglophone, main philosophical tradition of the period.
As a movement, Continental Philosophy lacks clear definition, and may mark merely a
family resemblance across disparate philosophical views, its main purpose being to
distinguish itself from ​Analytic Philosophy​, although the term was used as early as 1840
by ​John Stuart Mill to distinguish European ​Kant​-influenced thought from the more
British-based movements such as ​British Empiricism​ and ​Utilitarianism​.
Continental Philosophy, then, is a catch-all label incorporating such Continental
European-based schools as ​German Idealism​, ​Kantianism​, ​Hegelianism​, ​Romanticism​,
Phenomenology​, ​Existentialism​, ​Marxism​, ​Deconstructionism​, ​Structuralism​,
Post-Structuralism​, Hermeneutics, French Feminism, and the Critical Theory of the
Frankfurt School.
Although many consider that the distinction between Continental and ​Analytic
Philosophy is misleading or even worthless, some common "Continental" themes can be
identified:
● It generally rejects ​Scientism (the view that the natural sciences are the best or
most accurate way of understanding all phenomena).
● It tends towards ​Historicism in its view of possible experience as variable, and
determined at least partly by factors such as context, space and time, language,
culture and history.
● It typically holds that conscious human agency can change these conditions of
possible experience, and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely
related to personal, moral, or political transformation.
● It tends to emphasize metaphilosophy (the study of the subject and matter,
methods and aims of philosophy itself, or the "philosophy of philosophy").
Deconstructionism
Deconstructionism (or sometimes just Deconstruction) is a 20th Century school in
philosophy initiated by ​Jacques Derrida in the 1960s. It is a theory of literary criticism
that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that
words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements
about any text subvert their own meanings.
Although ​Derrida himself denied that it was a method or school or doctrine of
philosophy (or indeed anything outside of reading the text itself), the term has been
used by others to describe ​Derrida​'s particular methods of textual criticism, which
involved discovering, recognizing and understanding the underlying assumptions
(unspoken and implicit), ideas and frameworks that form the basis for thought and
belief.
Deconstructionism is notoriously difficult to define or summarize, and many attempts to
explain it in a straight-forward, understandable way have been academically criticized
for being too removed from the original texts, and even contradictory to the concepts of
Deconstructionism. Some critics have gone so far as to claim that Deconstruction is a
dangerous form of ​Nihilism​, leading to the destruction of Western scientific and ethical
values, and it has been seized upon by some conservative and libertarian writers as a
central example of what is wrong with modern academia. Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007)
has attempted to define Deconstruction as the way in which the "accidental" (or
incidental) features of a text can be seen as betraying or subverting its essential
message.
Major influences on ​Derrida​'s thinking were the ​Phenomenologists ​Edmund Husserl and
Martin Heidegger​, although mainly in a negative sense (​Derrida​'s early work was mainly
an elaborate critique of the limitations of ​Phenomenology​). He also claimed that
Friedrich Nietzsche​ was a forerunner of Deconstruction in form and substance.
The development of Deconstructionism mainly took place at Yale University between
the 1960s and 1980s, in a climate heavily influenced by the contemporaneous
development of ​Structuralism​ and ​Post-Structuralism​.
Existentialism
Existentialism is a movement in philosophy and literature that emphasizes individual
existence, freedom and choice. It began in the mid-to-late 19th Century, but reached its
peak in mid-20th Century France. It is based on the view that humans define their own
meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational
universe. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling that there is no
purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any
other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to find
meaning in life) is by embracing existence.
Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal
responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound
anguish or dread), and emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental in
rising above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized by
suffering and inevitable death). For more details, see the section on the ​doctrine of
Existentialism​.
Existentialists refuse to belong to any school of thought, repudiating of the adequacy of
any body of beliefs or systems, claiming them to be superficial, academic and remote
from life. It is a reaction against traditional schools of philosophy, such as ​Rationalism​,
British Empiricism and ​Positivism​, that seek to discover an ultimate order and universal
meaning in metaphysical principles or in the structure of the observed world.
Existentialism in its currently recognizable form was developed by the 19th Century
Danish philosopher ​Søren Kierkegaard and the German philosopher ​Friedrich Nietzsche​,
although neither actually used the term in their work. The ​Phenomenology of ​Martin
Heidegger was another important influence on the later development of the movement.
It can be argued that ​Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and ​Arthur Schopenhauer were
also important influences on the development of Existentialism, if only due to
Kierkegaard​ and ​Nietzsche​'s opposition to ​Hegelianism​ and ​German Idealism​.
Both philosophers considered the role of making free choices on fundamental values
and beliefs to be essential in the attempt to change the nature and identity of the
chooser. In ​Kierkegaard​'s case, this results in the "knight of faith", who puts complete
faith in himself and in God, as described in his 1843 work "Fear and Trembling". In
Nietzsche​'s case, the much maligned "Übermensch" (or "Superman") attains superiority
and transcendence without resorting to the "other-worldliness" of Christianity, in his
books "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (1885) and "Beyond Good and Evil" (1887).
The ​Phenomenologist ​Martin Heidegger was an important philosopher in the
movement, especially his influential 1927 work "Being and Time", although he
vehemently denied being an Existentialist in the Sartrean sense. Other major influences
include Max Stirner (1806 - 1856), Karl Jaspers (1883 - 1969) and ​Edmund Husserl​, and
writers like the Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881) and the Czech Franz Kafka
(1883 - 1924).
Existentialism came of age in the mid-20th Century, largely through the scholarly and
fictional works of the French existentialists, ​Jean-Paul Sartre​, Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)
and Simone de Beauvoir (1908 - 1986), all of whose works popularized existential
themes, such as dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment and
nothingness. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961) is another influential and often
overlooked French Existentialist of the period.
Sartre is perhaps the most well-known, as well as one of the few to have actually
accepted being called an "existentialist". "Being and Nothingness" (1943) is his most
important work, and his novels and plays, including "Nausea" (1938) and "No Exit
(1944), helped to popularize the movement.
In "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), Albert Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth of
Sisyphus (who is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it roll to the
bottom again each time) to exemplify the pointlessness of existence, but shows that
Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually
applying himself to it.
Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life alongside
Sartre​, wrote about ​feminist and existential ethics in her works, including "The Second
Sex" (1949) and "The Ethics of Ambiguity" (1947).
German Idealism
German Idealism is a philosophical movement centered in Germany during the ​Age of
Enlightenment of the late 18th and early 19th Century. It developed out of the work of
Immanuel Kant and is closely linked with the ​Romanticism movement. It is sometimes
referred to as ​Kantianism (although that more correctly also involves acceptance of
Kant​'s ​ethical​ and ​epistemological​ views).
Other than ​Kant himself, the main contributors (who all had their own versions of ​Kant​'s
theory, some close in nature and some quite distinct) were ​Johann Gottlieb Fichte​,
Friedrich Schelling​, ​Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and (arguably) ​Arthur Schopenhauer​,
and additionally Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 - 1819), Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761 -
1833), Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757 - 1823) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834).
Although essentially a German movement, the Swiss-French writer and philosopher
Madame de Staël (1766 - 1817) introduced (in her famous book "De l'Allemagne") the
works of ​Kant and the German Idealists to French thinkers, who were still largely under
the influence of ​John Locke​ at that time.
In general terms, ​Idealism is the theory that fundamental reality is made up of ideas or
thoughts. It holds that the only thing actually knowable is consciousness (or mental
entities), and that we can never really be sure that matter or anything in the outside
world actually exists. The concept of ​Idealism arguably dates back to ​Plato​, and reached
a peak with the pure ​Idealism of ​Bishop George Berkeley in the early 18th Century. See
the section on the ​doctrine of Idealism​ for more details.
The German Idealists, however, were dissatisfied with ​Berkeley​'s rather naive
formulation. In the 1780s and 1790s, ​Immanuel Kant tried to bridge the two dominant
philosophical schools of the 18th Century: ​Rationalism (which held that knowledge
could be attained by reason alone, a priori), and ​Empiricism (which held that knowledge
could be arrived at only through the senses, a posteriori). ​Kant​'s Transcendental
Idealism claims that we know more than ​Berkeley​'s ideas in our minds, in that we also
directly know of at least the possibility of "noumena" ("things-in-themselves"), which
are both empirically and transcendentally real even if they cannot be directly and
immediately known. The actual "phenomena" which we perceive and which we think
we know are really just the way things appear to us and not necessarily real.
Other German philosophers of the time used ​Kant​'s work as a starting point, adding in
their own interpretations and biases. As a movement, it was not one of agreement
(although there was some common ground), and each successive contributor rejected at
least some of the theories of their predecessors. Many of the German Idealists who
followed ​Kant​, effectively tried to reverse ​Kant​'s refutation of all speculative theology
and reinstate notions of faith and belief in their explanations of what exists beyond
experience, a trend which was continued later in the 19th Century by the American
Transcendentalists​.
Jacobi, although in agreement with ​Kant that the objective thing-in-itself cannot be
directly known, tried to legitimized belief and its theological associations by presenting
the external world as an object of faith, even if logically unproven. Schulze tried to use
Kant's​'s own reasoning to disprove the existence of the "thing-in-itself", arguing that it
cannot be the cause of an idea or image of a thing in the mind. Following from Schulze's
criticism of the notion of a "thing-in-itself", ​Fichte asserted that there is no external
thing-in-itself that produces the ideas, but our representations, ideas or mental images
are merely the productions of our ego, or "knowing subject". ​Schelling​'s view was that
the ideas or mental images in the mind are identical to the extended objects which are
external to the mind ("absolute identity"), so that there is no difference between the
subjective and the objective. Schleiermacher's variation was that the ideal and the real
do not have a productive or causal effect on each other, but are united and manifested
in the transcendental entity which is God.
Another German Idealist, ​G. W. F. Hegel​, claimed that pure abstract thought (as in ​Kant​'s
formulations) is limited and leads to unsolvable contradictions. In order to overcome
these shortcomings, ​Hegel introduced the integral importance of history and of the
"Other" person in the awakening of self-consciousness. In the process, he established a
whole new movement of ​Hegelianism​, which in turn was hugely influential in the later
development of ​Continental Philosophy​, ​Marxism and (by virtue of its opposition to
Hegel​) ​Analytic Philosophy​.
Schopenhauer claimed that ​Kant​'s noumenon is the same as Will, or at least that Will is
the most immediate manifestation of the noumenon that we can experience. He saw
the "will-to-life" (a fundamental drive intertwined with desire) as the driving force of the
world, prior to thought and even prior to being.
Schopenhauer​'s criticisms of the later German Idealists is seen by some as a sort of
"back to Kant" movement, giving impetus to a Neo-Kantianism movement in the
mid-19th and into the 20th Century, which yielded the Kantian analyses of such German
philosophers as Kuno Fischer (1824 - 1907), Friedrich Lange (1828 - 1875), Hermann
Cohen (1842 - 1918), Paul Natorp (1854 - 1924), Nicolai Hartmann (1882 - 1950), Ernst
Cassirer (1874 - 1945), Wilhelm Windelband (1848 - 1915), Heinrich Rickert (1863 -
1936) and Ernst Troeltsch (1865 - 1923).
Also in the mid-19th Century to the early 20th Century, a movement which became
known as British Idealism revived interest in the works of ​Kant and ​Hegel​. The leading
figures in the movement were T. H. Green (1836 - 1882), F. H. Bradley (1846 - 1924),
Bernard Bosanquet (1848 - 1923), J. M. E. McTaggart (1866 - 1925), H. H. Joachim (1868
- 1938) and J. H. Muirhead (1855 - 1940).
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a philosophical school based on the writings of the ​German Idealist
philosopher ​Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel​, and the philosophical tradition that began
with him. It was centered in Germany during the mid-19th Century.
Hegel​'s major works include "The Phenomenology of Spirit" (1807), "Encyclopaedia of
the Philosophical Sciences" (1817) and "Philosophy of Right" (1821). His works are
considered notoriously difficult to understand, but his philosophy can perhaps be
summed up by the motto "the rational alone is real".
He advocated a kind of historically-minded ​Absolute Idealism​, in which the universe
would realize its spiritual potential through the development of human society, and in
which mind and nature can be seen as two abstractions of one indivisible whole Spirit.
Hegel developed his theory out of the ​Subjective Idealism (or ​Transcendental Idealism​)
of ​Immanuel Kant​.
Hegel was also probably the first philosopher to think of history itself as a dialectical
process, in which reality can be understood through a three-stage dialectic, starting with
the indeterminate concept (or thesis) to the determinate concept (or antithesis) and
then to the resolution (or synthesis). Hegel saw "Geist" (the absolute mind or spirit)
developing through history, with each period having a Zeitgeist (spirit of the age).
Hegel​'s theory of the dialectic was the inspiration for the Dialectical Materialism of ​Karl
Marx​ and ​Marxism​.
Hegel​'s immediate followers in Germany are generally divided into the Hegelian
Rightists (also known as Right Hegelians or Old Hegelians) and the Hegelian Leftists (also
known as Left Hegelians or Young Hegelians).
The Rightists (following the lead of some of the other ​German Idealists​) developed
Hegel​'s philosophy along lines which they considered to be in accordance with Christian
theology, and took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction.
The Right Hegelians felt that the series of historical dialectics had been completed, and
that Prussian society as it existed was the culmination of all social development to date.
They included Johann Philipp Gabler (1753 - 1826), Karl Friedrich Göschel (1784 - 1861),
Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz (1805 - 1879) and Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805 -
1892).
The Leftists accentuated the anti-Christian tendencies of ​Hegel​'s system, and believed
that there were still further dialectical changes to come, and that the Prussian society of
the time was far from perfect. Many of the more radical Young Hegelians disagreed with
many of ​Hegel​'s conclusions, but they found his dialectical approach to be very useful.
They included Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 - 1872), David Friedrich Strauss (1808 - 1874),
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763 - 1825), Bruno Bauer (1809 - 1882), Friedrich Engels
(1820 - 1895) and ​Karl Marx (who eventually fell out with the other Young Hegelians,
but nevertheless went on to develop his theory of Dialectical Materialism from ​Hegel​'s
principles). Max Stirner (1806 - 1856) socialized with the Left Hegelians but built his own
philosophical system, largely opposing that of these thinkers, and was influential in the
development of ​Nihilism​, ​Existentialism​ and ​Anarchism​.
The British Idealism movement of the mid-19th Century to the early 20th Century
revived interest in the works of ​Kant and ​Hegel​. The leading figures in the movement
were T. H. Green (1836 - 1882), F. H. Bradley (1846 - 1924), Bernard Bosanquet (1848 -
1923), J. M. E. McTaggart (1866 - 1925), H. H. Joachim (1868 - 1938) and J. H. Muirhead
(1855 - 1940).
There were also Hegelian philosophers in Denmark, Poland, France, North America and
Italy, where Hegelianism inspired the "Actual Idealism" and ​Fascism of Giovanni Gentile
(1875 - 1944).
Humanism
Humanism is a ​Renaissance movement in philosophy towards a more human-centered
(and less religion-centered) approach. It has an ultimate faith in humankind, and
believes that human beings possess the power or potentiality of solving their own
problems, through reliance primarily upon reason and scientific method applied with
courage and vision.
Rather than being a specific philosophical doctrine or school on its own (although see
the section on the ​doctrine of Humanism and the ​doctrine of Atheism​), Humanism is
more a general life stance or attitude that upholds human reason, ethics and justice. It is
a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems, and is incorporated
into some religious schools of thought. It is an optimistic attitude to life whose ultimate
goal is human flourishing (see the section on ​Eudaimonism​), doing good and living well
in the here and now, and leaving the world better for those who come after.
In ​Ethics​, it affirms the dignity and worth of all people and their ability to determine
right and wrong purely by appeal to universal human qualities, especially rationality,
and considers faith an unacceptable basis for action. It endorses a ​Moral Universalism
based on the commonality of the human condition, and encourages secularism and
freedom from religious rule and teachings.
In ​Metaphysics​, Humanism considers all forms of the supernatural as myth, and regards
Nature as the totality of being, and as a constantly changing system of matter and
energy which exists independently of any mind or consciousness. It rejects the validity
of transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the
supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin.
In ​Epistemology​, it supports scientific skepticism (i.e. it questions the veracity of claims
lacking empirical evidence) and the scientific method (the collection of data through
observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses).
In ​Political Philosophy​, Humanism emphasizes individual freedom and responsibility,
human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation, and it
rejects authoritarian beliefs.
Although some ancient Indian and Chinese philosophies, some individual elements of
ancient Greek thought, and some medieval Muslim thinkers pursued humanistic,
rational and scientific discourses in their search for knowledge, Humanism as an
identifiable movement can be traced to late Medieval and Renaissance Europe in the
15th and 16th Centuries.
Renaissance Humanists were opposed to the dominant ​Scholastic philosophy of the day
(derived from ​St. Thomas Aquinas​), and this opposition revived a classical debate which
referred back to ​Plato and the Platonic dialogues. Renaissance Humanists promoted
human worth and individual dignity, and believed in the practice of the liberal arts for all
classes.
Such Renaissance thinkers as the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304 - 1374), the
Dutch theologian ​Erasmus​, the English philosophers ​Sir Thomas More and ​Sir Francis
Bacon​, the French writers Francois Rabelais (c. 1494 - 1553) and Michel de Montaigne
(1533 - 1592), and the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 - 1494) can all
be considered early Humanists.
In the 19th and 20th Centuries, various organizations were founded to promote
humanist principles, including the Humanistic Religious Association (formed in 1853),
the British Humanist Association (1896), the American Humanist Association (1941) and
the International Humanist and Ethical Union (1952). Some famous 20th Century
humanists include ​Bertrand Russell​, Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Albert Schweitzer
(1875 - 1965), Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992), Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996), Kurt Vonnegut
(1922 - 2007), Gloria Steinem (1934 - ) and Richard Dawkins (1941 - ).
Kantianism
Kantianism is a philosophical school based on the writings of the key ​German Idealist
philosopher ​Immanuel Kant​, and the philosophies that have arisen from the subsequent
study of his writings. It was centered in Germany during the ​Age of Enlightenment of the
late 18th and early 19th Century. To some extent it is synonymous with the ​German
Idealism movement, although Kantianism also assumes acceptance of ​Kant​'s positions in
Epistemology​, ​Philosophy of Mind​, ​Political Philosophy and (particularly) ​Ethics​, in
addition to his ​metaphysical ​Idealism​. It is closely linked with the ​Romanticism
movement.
In the 1780s and 1790s, ​Kant tried to refine ​Bishop George Berkeley​'s rather naive
formulation of ​Idealism which, in general terms, is the theory that fundamental reality is
made up of ideas or thoughts and not physical matter. At the same time, he attempted
to bridge the two dominant philosophical schools of the 18th Century: ​Rationalism
(which held that knowledge could be attained by reason alone, a priori), and ​Empiricism
(which held that knowledge could be arrived at only through the senses, a posteriori).
Kant​'s Transcendental Idealism claims that we know more than ​Berkeley​'s ideas in our
minds, in that we also directly know of at least the possibility of "noumena"
("things-in-themselves"), which are both empirically and transcendentally real even if
they cannot be directly and immediately known. The actual "phenomena" which we
perceive and which we think we know are really just the way things appear to us and
not necessarily real. See the section on the ​doctrine of Idealism​ for more details.
Kant​'s view of ​Ethics is ​deontological (i.e. it focuses on the rightness or wrongness of
actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of
those actions or the character of the actor, and holds that ethical rules bind people to
an ethical duty). It is founded on his view of rationality as the ultimate good, and his
belief that all people are fundamentally rational beings. His major contribution was the
theory of the Categorical Imperative which, at its simplest, states that one should act
only in such a way that you would want your actions to become a universal law,
applicable to everyone in a similar situation. See the section on the ​doctrine of
Deontology​ for more details.
In the 1790s, there emerged in Germany the so-called "semi-Kantians", who altered
features of ​Kant​'s system they viewed as inadequate, unclear or even wrong. These
include Friedrich Schiller (1759 - 1805), Friedrich Bouterwek (1766 - 1828) and Jakob
Friedrich Fries (1773 - 1843). The period from 1790 to 1835 was the age of the
post-Kantian ​German Idealists​, among whom ​Johann Gottlieb Fichte​, ​Friedrich Schelling​,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel​ and ​Arthur Schopenhauer​ were the most influential.
Schopenhauer​'s criticisms of the later German Idealists is seen by some as a sort of
"back to Kant" movement, giving impetus to a Neo-Kantianism movement in the
mid-19th and into the 20th Century, which yielded the Kantian analyses of such German
philosophers as Kuno Fischer (1824 - 1907), Friedrich Lange (1828 - 1875), Hermann
Cohen (1842 - 1918), Paul Natorp (1854 - 1924), Nicolai Hartmann (1882 - 1950), Ernst
Cassirer (1874 - 1945), Wilhelm Windelband (1848 - 1915), Heinrich Rickert (1863 -
1936) and Ernst Troeltsch (1865 - 1923).
Logicism
Logicism is an early 20th Century philosophical and mathematical movement, initially
developed in the late 19th Century by the German mathematician and logician ​Gottlob
Frege​. It is based on the premise that mathematics is just an extension of ​Logic​, and
therefore that some or all mathematics is reducible to logic. It effectively holds that
mathematical theorems and truths are logically necessary or analytic. For more details,
see the section on the ​doctrine of Logicism​.
Although the movement was fathered by ​Gottlob Frege​, he later abandoned it after
Bertrand Russell pointed out a paradox exposing an inconsistency in ​Frege​'s naive set
theory. The Incompleteness Theorems of Kurt Gödel (1906 - 1978), which point out the
limitations of all but the most trivial formal mathematical systems, also impacted on the
credibility of Logicism to some extent.
Russell and ​Alfred North Whitehead​, however, continued to champion the theory in
their ground-breaking "Principia Mathematica", which was published in 1910 - 1913.
None of these early proponents actually used the term "logicism", which was only
applied retroactively.
There were subsequent attempts, known as Neo-Logicism, to resurrect ​Frege​'s theory
through the use of ​Frege​'s own Hume's Principle. The British philosopher Crispin Wright
(1942 - ) was a strong advocate.
Logicism, along with ​Logical Positivism​, was key in the development of the ​Analytic
Philosophy​ movement later in the 20th Century.
Logical Positivism
Logical Positivism (later also known as Logical Empiricism) is a 20th Century school of
philosophy that developed out of ​Positivism and the early ​Analytic Philosophy
movement, and which campaigned for a systematic reduction of all human knowledge
to logical and scientific foundations.
According to Logical Positivists, a statement is meaningful only if it is either purely
formal (essentially, mathematics and logic) or capable of empirical verification. This
effectively resulted in an almost complete rejection of ​Metaphysics (and to a large
extent ​Ethics​) on the grounds that it is unverifiable. Logical Positivism was also
committed to the idea of "Unified Science", or the development of a common language
in which all scientific propositions can be expressed, usually by means of various
"reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one science to the terms of another more
fundamental one. For more details, see the section on the ​doctrine of Logical Positivism​.
The most important early figures in the development of Logical Positivism were the
Bohemian-Austrian ​Positivist philosopher Ernst Mach (1838 - 1916) and the Austrian
Ludwig Wittgenstein (especially his "Tractatus" of 1921, a text of great importance for
Logical Positivists).
The school grew from the discussions of the so-called "Vienna Circle" of Moritz Schlick
(1882 - 1936) in the early 20th Century. A 1929 pamphlet jointly written by Otto
Neurath (1882 - 1945), Hans Hahn (1979 - 1934) and Rudolf Carnap (1891 - 1970)
brought together some of the major proponents of the movement and summarized the
doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. The contemporaneous Berlin Circle of Hans
Reichenbach (1891 - 1953) also propagated the new doctrines more widely in the 1920s
and early 1930s.
A. J. Ayer is considered responsible for the spread of Logical Positivism to Britain, and his
1936 book "Language, Truth and Logic" was very influential. Developments in logic and
the foundations of mathematics, especially in the "Principia Mathematica" by the British
philosophers ​Bertrand Russell and ​Alfred North Whitehead​, particularly impressed the
more mathematically-minded Logical Positivists.
The movement dispersed in the late 1930's, mainly because of political upheaval and
the untimely deaths of Hahn and Schlick. Logical Positivism was essential to the
development of early ​Analytic Philosophy​, with which it effectively merged.
Marxism
Marxism is a philosophical, political and social movement derived from the work of ​Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels (1829 - 1895) in the second half of the 19th Century. It is a
theoretical-practical framework based on the analysis of "the conflicts between the
powerful and the subjugated" with working class self-emancipation as its goal. It
promotes a pure form of ​Socialism and provides the intellectual base for various
subsequent forms of ​Communism​.
According to ​Marx​, it is class struggle (the evolving conflict between classes with
opposing interests) that is the means of bringing about changes in a society's mode of
production, and that structures each historical period and drives historical change. ​Marx
believed that a socialist revolution must occur in order to establish a "dictatorship of the
proletariat" with the ultimate goal of public ownership of the means of production,
distribution, and exchange.
The other major element of ​Marx​'s philosophy, and one which underlies much of the
rest of his work, is his theory of Historical Materialism (or the Materialist Conception of
History), his attempt to make history scientific. It is based on the principle of Dialectical
Materialism (a synthesis of ​Hegel​'s theory of Dialectics and the idea that social and
other phenomena are essentially material in nature, rather than ideal or spiritual) as it
applies to history and societies. Societies, and their cultural and institutional
superstructures, naturally move from stage to stage as the dominant class is displaced
by a new emerging class in a social and political upheaval. Although arguably more a
political ideology than a philosophy as such, Marxism clearly has a major philosophical
element in it, and that philosophy is essentially ​Hegelian in character. For more details,
see the section on the ​doctrine of Marxism​.
As a philosopher, ​Marx was influenced by a number of different thinkers, including the
Kantian and ​German Idealist ​Immanuel Kant​; the ​Hegelianists ​Georg Hegel and Ludwig
Feuerbach (1804 - 1872); the British political economists ​Adam Smith and David Ricardo
(1772 - 1823); and French social theorists such as ​Jean-Jacques Rousseau​, Charles
Fourier (1772 - 1837), Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 -1825), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809
- 1865), Flora Tristan (1803 -1844) and Louis Blanc (1811 - 1882).
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1829 - 1895) first met in person in 1844. The defining
document of Marxism and ​Communism is "The Communist Manifesto", published jointly
by ​Marx and Engels in 1848. The first volume of "Das Kapital" (​Marx​'s ambitious treatise
on political economy and critical analysis of ​Capitalism and its practical economic
application) was published in 1867, with two more volumes edited and published after
his death by Engels. For the most part, these works were collaborations and, while ​Marx
is the more famous of the two, he was strongly influenced by Engels' earlier works, and
Engels was also responsible for much of the interpretation and editing of ​Marx​'s work.
The first large-scale attempt to put Marxist ideas about a workers' state into practice
came with the Russian Revolution (or October Revolution) of 1917, led by Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin (1870 - 1924) and the Bolshevik Party (even though Russia was not an ideal
candidate with a fully developed ​Capitalist system, as Marxist theory prescribed).
Despite Lenin's exhortations, however, other countries did not follow suit, and
attempted ​Socialist revolutions in Germany and other western countries failed, leaving
the newly-formed Soviet Union on its own.
Even in the early days of the Soviet Union, there were those, notably Leon Trotsky (1879
- 1940) and Rosa Luxemburg (1870 - 1919), who claimed that the form of ​Communism
adopted there (especially after Joseph Stalin took control after Lenin's death in 1924)
did not conform to Marxist theory, and much of the rest of the history of ​Socialism and
Communism​ is replete with different factions claiming their legitimacy from Marxism.
Following World War II, Marxist ideology, often with Soviet military backing, spawned a
rise in revolutionary ​Communist parties all over the world, some of which were
eventually able to gain power (e.g. the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, Romania,
East Germany, Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Cuba), and
establish their own version of a Marxist state. Many of these self-proclaimed Marxist
nations (often styled People's Republics) eventually became authoritarian states with
stagnating economies, which caused much debate about whether Marxism was doomed
in practice, or whether these nations were in fact not led by "true Marxists".
By 1990, the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe had all abandoned ​Communist
rule, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved, leaving China, Cuba and some
isolated states in Asia and Africa as the remaining bastions of ​Communism​, although in
most cases any identification with classical Marxism had long since disappeared.
In addition to the early Marxist pioneers (​Marx​, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg),
mention should be made of the prominent later Marxist thinkers, including the
Hungarian Georg Lukács (1885 - 1971), the German Karl Korsch (1886 - 1961), the Italian
Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937), the German-American Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979),
the French ​Existentialist ​Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980), the German Jürgen Habermas
(1929 - ), the Algerian-French Louis Althusser (1918 - 1990), and the British Marxists E. P.
Thompson (1924 - 1993), Christopher Hill (1912 - 2003), Eric Hobsbawm (1917 - 2012)
and Raphael Samuel (1934 - 1996).
Modernism
Modernism refers to a reforming movement in art, architecture, music, literature and
the applied arts during the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. There is no
specifically Modernist movement in Philosophy, but rather Modernism refers to a
movement within the arts which had some influence over later philosophical thought.
The later reaction against Modernism gave rise to the ​Post-Modernist movement both
in the arts and in philosophy.
Modernism was essentially conceived of as a rebellion against 19th Century academic
and historicist traditions and against Victorian nationalism and cultural absolutism, on
the grounds that the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith,
social organization and daily life (in a modern industrialized world) were becoming
outdated. The movement was initially called "avant-garde", descriptive of its attempt to
overthrow some aspect of tradition or the status quo. The term "modernism" itself is
derived from the Latin "modo", meaning "just now".
It called for the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to
philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was "holding back" progress, and
replacing it with new, progressive and better ways of reaching the same end.
Modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could discover radically new ways of
making art, and at the same time to force the audience to take the trouble to question
their own preconceptions. It stressed freedom of expression, experimentation,
radicalism and primitivism, and its disregard for conventional expectations often meant
startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects (e.g. surrealism
in art, atonality in music, stream-of-consciousness literature).
Some Modernists saw themselves as part of a revolutionary culture that also included
political revolution, while others rejected conventional politics as well as artistic
conventions, believing that a revolution of political consciousness had greater
importance than a change in actual political structures.
The first wave of Modernism as an artistic umbrella movement broke in the first decade
or two of the 20th Century, with ground-breaking works by people like Arthur
Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky in music; Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse,
Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian in art; Le Corbusier, Walter
Gropius and Mies van der Rohe in architecture; and Guillaume Apollinaire, James Joyce,
T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf in literature; to mention just a few. The movement came of
age in the 1920s, with Bauhaus, Surrealism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism and, perhaps the
most ​nihilistic​ of all, Dada.
After World War II, the focus moved from Europe to the United States, and Abstract
Expressionism (led by Jackson Pollock) continued the movement's momentum, followed
by movements such as Geometric Abstraction, Minimalism, Process Art, Pop Art and
Pop Music.
By the time Modernism had become so institutionalized and mainstream that it was
considered "post avant-garde", indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary
movement, it generated in turn its own reaction, known as ​Post-Modernism​, which was
both a response to Modernism and a rediscovery of the value of older forms of art.
Modernism remains much more a movement in the arts than in philosophy, although
Post-Modernism​ has a specifically philosophical aspect in addition to the artistic one.
Ordinary Language
Ordinary Language Philosophy (also known as Linguistic Philosophy or Natural Language
Philosophy) is a 20th Century philosophical school that approaches traditional
philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by
forgetting what words actually mean in a language, and taking them in abstraction and
out of context.
Some see Ordinary Language Philosophy as a complete break with, and a reaction
against, the ​Analytic Philosophy movement it grew out of; others see it as just an
extension of, or another stage of, the Analytic tradition. Either way, it became a
dominant philosophic school between 1930 and 1970, and arguably remains an
important force in present-day philosophy.
Ordinary Language Analysis typically involves eschewing philosophical "theories" in
favor of close attention to the details of the use of non-technical everyday "ordinary"
language. Thus, it argues, the contemplation of language in its normal use, can
"dissolve" the appearance of philosophical problems, rather than attempting to solve
them. For more details, see the section on the ​doctrine of Ordinary Language
Philosophy​.
Early ​Analytic Philosophy tended to dismiss language as being of little philosophical
significance, and ordinary language as just being too confused to help solve
metaphysical and ​epistemological problems. Analytic philosophers such as the young
Ludwig Wittgenstein​, ​Bertrand Russell​, ​W.V.O. Quine and Rudolf Carnap (1891 - 1970),
all attempted to improve upon natural language using the resources of modern ​Logic​, in
an attempt to make it more unambiguous and to accurately represent the world, in
order to better deal with the questions of philosophy ("ideal language" analysis).
However, ​Wittgenstein​'s later unpublished work in the 1930's began to center around
the idea that maybe there is nothing wrong with ordinary language as it stands, and that
perhaps many traditional philosophical problems were only illusions brought on by
misunderstandings about language and related subjects.
Although heavily influenced by ​Wittgenstein and his students at Cambridge, Ordinary
Language Philosophy largely flourished and developed at Oxford in the 1940s, under
Gilbert Ryle​, J. L. Austin (1911 - 1960), Peter Strawson (1919 - 2006), John Wisdom (1904
- 1993) and others, and was quite widespread for a time before declining rapidly in
popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Phenomenology
Phenomenology is a philosophical tradition or movement of the first half of the 20th
Century, developed largely by the German philosophers ​Edmund Husserl and ​Martin
Heidegger​, which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events
("phenomena") as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and
not of anything independent of human consciousness.
It is the study of experience and how we experience. It studies structures of conscious
experience as experienced from a subjective or first-person point of view, along with its
"intentionality" (the way an experience is directed toward a certain object in the world).
It then leads to analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions
involving motor skills and habits, background social practices and, often, language. For
more details, see the section on the ​doctrine of Phenomenology​.
As a branch of ​Philosophy of Mind​, it has been central to the European ​Continental
Philosophy tradition for most of the 20th Century. Many of its proponents, however,
claim that it is related to, but quite distinct from, the other key disciplines in philosophy
(​Metaphysics​, ​Epistemology​, ​Logic and ​Ethics​), and that it represents more a distinct
way of looking at philosophy which has repercussions on all of these other fields.
Phenomenology, as it is understood today, is essentially the vision of one man, ​Edmund
Husserl​, which he launched in his "Logical Investigations" of 1901, although credit
should also be given to the pioneering work on intentionality (the notion that
consciousness is always intentional or directed) by ​Husserl​'s teacher, the German
philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano (1838 - 1917) and his colleague, Carl
Stumpf (1848 - 1936).
Husserl formulated his classical Phenomenology first as a kind of "descriptive
psychology" (sometimes referred to as Realist Phenomenology) and later as a
transcendental and eidetic science of consciousness (Transcendental Phenomenology).
In his "Ideas" of 1913, he established the key distinction between the act of
consciousness ("noesis") and the phenomena at which it is directed (the "noemata"). In
his later transcendental period, ​Husserl concentrated more on the ideal, essential
structures of consciousness, and introduced the method of phenomenological reduction
specifically to eliminate any hypothesis on the existence of external objects.
Martin Heidegger criticized and expanded ​Husserl​'s phenomenological inquiry
(particularly in his "Being and Time" of 1927) to encompass our understanding and
experience of Being itself, and developed his original theory of "Dasein" (the
non-dualistic human being, engaged in the world). ​Husserl charged ​Heidegger with
raising the question of ontology but failing to answer it, but ​Heidegger​'s development of
Existential Phenomenology greatly influenced the subsequent flowering of
Existentialism​ in France.
The movement split between the three main types of Phenomenology (Realist
Phenomenology, Transcendental Phenomenology and Existential Phenomenology), each
sub-branch having its own adherents. ​Husserl​'s early Realist Phenomenology was
prefered by the Munich Group at the University of Munich in the early 20th Century, led
by Johanes Daubert (1877 - 1947) and Adolf Reinach (1883 -1917), as well as Alexander
Pfänder (1871 - 1941), Max Scheler (1874 - 1928), Roman Ingarden (1893 - 1970),
Nicolai Hartmann (1882 - 1950) and Hans Köchler (1948 - ). Transcendental
Phenomenologists include (in additon to ​Husserl himself) Oskar Becker (1889 - 1964),
Aron Gurwitsch (1901 - 1973) and Alfred Schutz (1899 - 1959). Followers of ​Heidegger​'s
Existential Phenomenology include ​Jean-Paul Sartre​, Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975),
Emmanuel Levinas (1906 - 1995), Gabriel Marcel (1889 - 1973), Paul Ricoeur (1913 -
2005) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961).
Positivism
Positivism is a philosophical school developed by the French sociologist and philosopher
Auguste Comte​ in the mid-19th Century.
Comte believed that ​Metaphysics and theology should be replaced by a hierarchy of
sciences, from mathematics at the base to sociology at the top. The school is based
around the idea that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that
such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict
scientific method (techniques for investigating phenomena based on gathering
observable, empirical and measurable evidence, subject to specific principles of
reasoning). For more details, see the section on the ​doctrine of Positivism​.
As a religious system, developed by ​Comte later in his life, Positivism denies the
existence of a personal God and takes humanity ("the great being") as the object of its
veneration and cult, and in this respect has similarities to ​Humanism​. ​Comte developed
a hierarchical priesthood, positive dogmas, an organized cult, and even a calendar on
the model of Catholicism.
After ​Comte​'s death in 1857, a division arose among the Positivists between the
orthodox group under the direction of Pierre Laffitte (which maintained both the
scientific and the religious teaching of Positivism) and a dissident group formed under
Paul-Maximilien-Emile Littré (1801 - 1881). Orthodox groups (complete with its cult,
sacraments, and ceremonies) were formed in England, Sweden, Brazil and Chile. For
Littré, however, Positivism was essentially a method which limits human knowledge to
the study of experimental facts, and neither affirms nor denies anything concerning
what may exist outside of experience. Littré and his followers therefore rejected the
religious organization and cult of Positivism.
Although not a large movement in terms of individual contributors, its influence on
subsequent philosophic thought was quite profound. The principles of Positivism as a
philosophical system were accepted and applied in England by ​John Stuart Mill​, a major
figure in the ​Utilitarianism movement. Later, in the early 20th Century, it gave rise to the
stricter and more radical movement of ​Logical Positivism​.
Post-Modernism
Post-Modernism is a broad movement in late 20th Century philosophy and the arts,
marked in general terms by an openness to meaning and authority from unexpected
places, and a willingness to borrow unashamedly from previous movements or
traditions. It is often defined negatively as a reaction or opposition to the equally
ill-defined ​Modernism​, although some claim that it represents a whole new paradigm in
intellectual thought.
The term "Post-Modernism" (literally "after Modernism") originated in architecture to
denote a reactionary movement against the perceived blandness and hostility of the
Modernist movement, and also against the pretensions of high ​Modernism​, with its
pursuit of an ideal perfection, harmony of form and function, and dismissal of frivolous
ornamentation. It came to be used in art, music and literature (and, by analogy, in
philosophy) for any pluralistic or reactionary style that is often more ornamental than
Modernism​, and which is not afraid to borrow from previous artistic styles, often in a
playful or ironic fashion. It tends to lack a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle,
although it often embodies extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity and
inter-connectedness or inter-referentiality, and is typically marked by a revival of
traditional elements and techniques.
Some see Post-Modernism as just another phase in the continued unfolding of
Modernism​; some see it as a complete replacement for, and backlash against,
Modernism​. The burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the 1960s can be
considered as the constituting event of Post-Modernism in a more general sense. With
the current wide availability of the Internet, mobile phones, interactive television, etc,
and the instantaneous, direct, shallow and often superficial participation in the culture
they allow, some commentators have even posited that we are now entering the
Post-Post-Modern period.
In Philosophy specifically, Post-Modernism was heavily influenced by ​Continental
Philosophy movements like ​Phenomenology​, ​Structuralism and ​Existentialism​, and it is
generally skeptical of many of the values and bases of ​Analytic Philosophy​. It is generally
viewed as an openness to meaning and authority from unexpected places, so that the
ultimate source of authority is the actual "play" of the discourse itself. It can be
considered a "pick-and-mix" approach, whereby basic problems are approachable from
a wide range of theoretical perspectives.
Post-Modernism is a broad and non-specific movement (if it can be described as a
movement at all), and movements like ​Deconstructionism and ​Post-Structuralism
(among others) can both be considered Post-Modernist. Post-Modernists often defend
themselves from criticisms of philosophical incompetence and excessive informality by
claiming that they take a "wider" view of what philosophy is, that their use of academic
jargon is necessary to communicate their ideas, and that their critics simply do not
understand their work.
Among the best-known Post-Modernist philosophers are ​Michel Foucault​, ​Jacques
Derrida​, Jean-François Lyotard (1924 - 1998), Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007), Jean
Baudrillard (1929 - 2007) and Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980). Lyotard is perhaps one of
the most identifiable Post-Modernists, and he has described Post-Modernism as a
condition of the present state of culture, social structure and self. He is largely
concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and particularly how that role
has changed as we have left modernity and entered a post-industrial or post-modern
condition. Baudrillard has argued that we live in a "hyperreal", post-modern,
post-industrial, post-everything sort of a world, and global reality has become
dominated by an internationalized popular culture to such an extent that people have
great difficulty deciding what is real.
Post-Structuralism
Post-Structuralism is a late 20th Century movement in philosophy and literary criticism,
which is difficult to summarize but which generally defines itself in its opposition to the
popular ​Structuralism movement which preceded it in 1950s and 1960s France. It is
closely related to ​Post-Modernism​, although the two concepts are not synonymous.
In the Post-Structuralist approach to textual analysis, the reader replaces the author as
the primary subject of inquiry and, without a central fixation on the author,
Post-Structuralists examine other sources for meaning (e.g., readers, cultural norms,
other literature, etc), which are therefore never authoritative, and promise no
consistency. A reader's culture and society, then, share at least an equal part in the
interpretation of a piece to the cultural and social circumstances of the author.
Some of the key assumptions underlying Post-Structuralism include:
● The concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct, and
an individual rather comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g.
gender, class, profession, etc). The interpretation of meaning of a text is
therefore dependent on a reader's own personal concept of self.
● An author's intended meaning (although the author's own identity as a stable
"self" with a single, discernible "intent" is also a fictional construct) is secondary
to the meaning that the reader perceives, and a literary text (or, indeed, any
situation where a subject perceives a sign) has no single purpose, meaning or
existence.
● It is necessary to utilize a variety of perspectives to create a multi-faceted
interpretation of a text, even if these interpretations conflict with one another.
Post-Structuralism emerged in France during the 1960s, a period of political turmoil,
rebellion and disillusionment with traditional values, accompanied by a resurgence of
interest in ​Feminism​, ​Western Marxism​, ​Phenomenology and ​Nihilism​. Many prominent
Post-Structuralists (generally labeled as such by others rather than by themselves), such
as ​Jacques Derrida​, ​Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980), were initially
Structuralists but later came to explicitly reject most of ​Structuralism​'s claims,
particularly its notion of the fixity of the relationship between the signifier and the
signified, but also the overall grandness of the theory, which seemed to promise
everything and yet not quite to deliver.
In his 1966 lecture "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Science",
Jacques Derrida (a key figure in the early Post-Structuralist movement, although he later
founded the ​Deconstructionism movement), was one of the first to propose some
theoretical limitations to ​Structuralism​, and identified an apparent de-stabilizing or
de-centering in intellectual life (referring to the displacement of the author of a text as
having greatest effect on a text itself, in favor of the various readers of the text), which
came to be known as Post-Structuralism.
Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980), originally a confirmed ​Structuralist​, published his “The
Death of the Author” in 1968, in which he argued that any literary text has multiple
meanings, and that the author was not the prime source of the work's semantic
content. In his 1967 work "Elements of Semiology", he also advanced the concept of the
metalanguage, a systematized way of talking about concepts like meaning and grammar
beyond the constraints of traditional (first-order) language.
Other notable Post-Structuralists include Gilles Deleuze (1925 - 1995), Julia Kristeva
(1941 - ), Umberto Eco (1932 - 2016), Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007) and Judith Butler
(1956 - ).
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a late 19th Century and early 20th Century school of philosophy which
considers practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of both meaning
and truth. At its simplest, something is true only insofar as it works. However,
Pragmatism is not a single philosophy, and is more a style or way of doing philosophy.
In general terms, Pragmatism asserts that any theory that proves itself more successful
in predicting and controlling our world than its rivals can be considered to be nearer the
truth. It argues that the meaning of any concept can be equated with the conceivable
operational or practical consequences of whatever the concept portrays. Like ​Positivism​,
it asserts that the scientific method is generally best suited to theoretical inquiry,
although Pragmatism also accepts that the settlement of doubt can also be achieved by
tenacity and persistence, the authority of a source of ready-made beliefs or other
methods. For more details, see the section on the ​doctrine of Pragmatism​.
The school's founder, the American philosopher ​Charles Sanders Peirce​, first stated the
Pragmatic Maxim in the late 19th Century (and re-stated it in many different ways over
the years) as a maxim of logic and as a reaction to metaphysical theories. The Pragmatic
Maxim is actually a family of principles, not all equivalent (at least on the surface), and
there are numerous subtle variations with implications which reach into almost every
corner of philosophical thought.
The school of Pragmatism reached its peak in the early 20th Century philosophies of
William James and ​John Dewey​. The term "pragmatism" was first used in print by ​James​,
who credited ​Peirce​ with coining the term during the early 1870s.
After the first wave of Pragmatism, the movement split and gave rise to three main
sub-schools, in addition to other more independent, non-aligned thinkers:
● Neo-Classical Pragmatism inherits most of the tenets of the classical Pragmatists,
and its adherents include Sidney Hook (1902 - 1989) and Susan Haack (1945 - ).
● Neo-Pragmatism (sometimes called Linguistic Pragmatism) is a type of
Pragmatism, although it differs in its philosophical methodology or conceptual
formation from classical Pragmatism, and its adherents include C. I. Lewis (1883 -
1964), Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007), ​W. V. O. Quine​, Donald Davidson (1917 -
 2003)and Hilary Putnam (1926 - ).
● French Pragmatism is a specifically French off-shoot of the movement, and
includes Bruno Latour (1947 - ), Michel Crozier (1922 - 2013), Luc Boltanski (1940
- ) and Laurent Thévenot (1949 - ).
Rationalism
Rationalism is a philosophical movement which gathered momentum during the ​Age of
Reason of the 17th Century. It is usually associated with the introduction of
mathematical methods into philosophy during this period by the major rationalist
figures, ​Descartes​, ​Leibniz and ​Spinoza​. The preponderance of French Rationalists in the
18th Century ​Age of Enlightenment​, including ​Voltaire​, ​Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
Charles de Secondat (Baron de Montesquieu) (1689 - 1755), is often known as French
Rationalism.
Rationalism is any view appealing to intellectual and deductive reason (as opposed to
sensory experience or any religious teachings) as the source of knowledge or
justification. Thus, it holds that some propositions are knowable by us by intuition alone,
while others are knowable by being deduced through valid arguments from intuited
propositions. It relies on the idea that reality has a rational structure in that all aspects
of it can be grasped through mathematical and logical principles, and not simply through
sensory experience.
Rationalists believe that, rather than being a "tabula rasa" to be imprinted with sense
data, the mind is structured by, and responds to, mathematical methods of reasoning.
Some of our knowledge or the concepts we employ are part of our innate rational
nature: experiences may trigger a process by which we bring this knowledge to
consciousness, but the experiences do not provide us with the knowledge itself, which
has in some way been with us all along. See the section on the ​doctrine of Rationalism
for more details.
Rationalism is usually contrasted with ​Empiricism (the view that the origin of all
knowledge is sense experience and sensory perception), and it is often referred to as
Continental Rationalism because it was predominant in the continental schools of
Europe, whereas ​British Empiricism dominated in Britain. However, the distinction
between the two is perhaps not as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested, and would
probably not have even been recognized by the philosophers involved. Although
Rationalists asserted that, in principle, all knowledge, including scientific knowledge,
could be gained through the use of reason alone, they also observed that this was not
possible in practice for human beings, except in specific areas such as mathematics.
It has some similarities in ideology and intent to the earlier ​Humanist movement in that
it aims to provide a framework for philosophical discourse outside of religious or
supernatural beliefs. But in other respects there is little to compare. While the roots of
Rationalism may go back to the ​Eleatics and ​Pythagoreans of ancient Greece, or at least
to ​Platonists and ​Neo-Platonists​, the definitive formulation of the theory had to wait
until the 17th Century philosophers of the Age of Reason.
René Descartes is one of the earliest and best known proponents of Rationalism, which
is often known as Cartesianism (and followers of ​Descartes​' formulation of Rationalism
as Cartesians). He believed that knowledge of eternal truths (e.g. mathematics and the
epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences) could be attained by
reason alone, without the need for any sensory experience. Other knowledge (e.g. the
knowledge of physics), required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method
- a moderate rationalist position. For instance, his famous dictum "Cogito ergo sum" ("I
think, therefore I am") is a conclusion reached a priori and not through an inference
from experience. ​Descartes held that some ideas (innate ideas) come from God; others
ideas are derived from sensory experience; and still others are fictitious (or created by
the imagination). Of these, the only ideas which are certainly valid, according to
Descartes​, are those which are innate.
Baruch Spinoza expanded upon ​Descartes​' basic principles of Rationalism. His
philosophy centered on several principles, most of which relied on his notion that God is
the only absolute substance (similar to ​Descartes​' conception of God), and that
substance is composed of two attributes, thought and extension. He believed that all
aspects of the natural world (including Man) were modes of the eternal substance of
God, and can therefore only be known through pure thought or reason.
Gottfried Leibniz attempted to rectify what he saw as some of the problems that were
not settled by ​Descartes by combining ​Descartes​' work with ​Aristotle​'s notion of form
and his own conception of the universe as composed of monads. He believed that ideas
exist in the intellect innately, but only in a virtual sense, and it is only when the mind
reflects on itself that those ideas are actualized.
Nicolas Malebranche is another well-known Rationalist, who attempted to square the
Rationalism of ​René Descartes with his strong Christian convictions and his implicit
acceptance of the teachings of ​St. Augustine​. He posited that although humans attain
knowledge through ideas rather than sensory perceptions, those ideas exist only in God,
so that when we access them intellectually, we apprehend objective truth. His views
were hotly contested by another Cartesian Rationalist and Jensenist Antoine Arnauld
(1612 - 1694), although mainly on theological grounds.
In the 18th Century, the great French rationalists of the ​Enlightenment (often known as
French Rationalism) include ​Voltaire​, ​Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles de Secondat
(Baron de Montesquieu) (1689 - 1755). These philosophers produced some of the most
powerful and influential political and philosophical writing in Western history, and had a
defining influence on the subsequent history of Western democracy and ​Liberalism​.
Immanuel Kant started as a traditional Rationalist, having studied ​Leibniz and Christian
Wolff (1679 - 1754) but, after also studying the empiricist ​David Hume​'s works, he
developed a distinctive and very influential Rationalism of his own, which attempted to
synthesize the traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.
During the middle of the 20th Century there was a strong tradition of organized
Rationalism (represented in Britain by the Rationalist Press Association, for example),
which was particularly influenced by free thinkers and intellectuals. However,
Rationalism in this sense has little in common with traditional Continental Rationalism,
and is marked more by a reliance on empirical science. It accepted the supremacy of
reason but insisted that the results be verifiable by experience and independent of all
arbitrary assumptions or authority.
Romanticism
Romanticism is a philosophical movement during the ​Age of Enlightenment which
emphasizes emotional self-awareness as a necessary pre-condition to improving society
and bettering the human condition. Like the ​German Idealism and ​Kantianism with
which it is usually linked in a philosophical context, Romanticism was largely centered in
Germany during the late 18th and early 19th Century. It stands in opposition to the
Rationalism and ​Empiricism of the preceding ​Age of Reason​, representing a shift from
the objective to the subjective.
Romanticism in general was a reaction against the scientific rationalization of Nature
during the ​Age of Reason​, which left little room for the freedom and creativity of the
human spirit, and it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. It was
embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but it also had a
counterpart in philosophical thought.
Philosophical Romanticism holds that the universe is a single unified and interconnected
whole, and full of values, tendencies and life, not merely objective lifeless matter. The
Romantic view is that reason, objectivity and analysis radically falsify reality by breaking
it up into disconnected lifeless entities, and the best way of perceiving reality is through
some subjective feeling or intuition, through which we participate in the subject of our
knowledge, instead of viewing it from the outside. Nature is an experience, and not an
object for manipulation and study, and, once experienced, the individual becomes in
tune with his feelings and this is what helps him to create moral values.
The roots of Philosophical Romanticism can be found in the work of ​Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and ​Immanuel Kant​. ​Rousseau​, (who is credited with the idea of the "noble
savage", uncorrupted by artifice and society), thought that civilization fills Man with
unnatural wants and seduces him away from his true nature and original freedom.
Kant​'s theory of Transcendental Idealism (see the section on ​Idealism​) posited that we
do not directly see "things-in-themselves"; we only understand the world through our
human point of view, an idea developed by the American ​Transcendentalism of the
mid-19th Century.
The ​German Idealists who followed on from ​Kant and adapted and expanded his work
with their own interpretations of ​Idealism​, can all be considered Romanticists in their
outlook. Among these the most important were ​Johann Gottlieb Fichte​, ​Friedrich
Schelling​, ​Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and (arguably) ​Arthur Schopenhauer​. ​Hegel
was perhaps the most influential of the ​German Idealist philosophers, and his idea that
each person's individual consciousness or mind is really part of the Absolute Mind
(Absolute Idealism) had far-reaching effects. After his death, however, the ​Hegelians
were split between the "Old Hegelians" who uncritically accepted ​Hegel​'s Romantic
views, and the "Young Hegelians" who wanted to continue the revolution of ideas using
his concept of dialectics.
Their ideas influenced a generation of Romantic writers, such as Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (1749 - 1832), William Blake (1757 - 1827), Samuel Coleridge (1772 - 1834),
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), John Keats (1795 - 1821),
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) and Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885); artists such as John
Constable (1776 - 1837), Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851), Théodore
Géricault ( 1791 - 1824) and Eugène Delacroix (1798 - 1863); and composers such as
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827), Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828), Hector Berlioz (1803
- 1869), Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849), Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856), Franz Liszt
(1811 - 1886), and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893).
Structuralism
Structuralism is a 20th Century intellectual movement and approach to the human
sciences (it has had a profound effect on linguistics, sociology, anthropology and other
fields in addition to philosophy) that attempts to analyze a specific field as a complex
system of interrelated parts. Broadly speaking, Structuralism holds that all human
activity and its products, even perception and thought itself, are constructed and not
natural, and in particular that everything has meaning because of the language system
in which we operate. It is closely related to Semiotics, the study of signs, symbols and
communication, and how meaning is constructed and understood.
There are four main common ideas underlying Structuralism as a general movement:
firstly, every system has a structure; secondly, the structure is what determines the
position of each element of a whole; thirdly, "structural laws" deal with coexistence
rather than changes; and fourthly, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the
surface or the appearance of meaning.
Structuralism is widely regarded to have its origins in the work of the Swiss linguistic
theorist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) in the early 20th Century, but it soon came
to be applied to many other fields, including philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis,
sociology, literary theory and even mathematics. In the early 20th Century, Saussure
developed a science of signs based on linguistics (semiotics or semiology). He held that
any language is just a complex system of signs that express ideas, with rules which
govern their usage. He called the underlying abstract structure of a language, "langue",
and the concrete manifestations or embodiments, "parole". He concluded that any
individual sign is essentially arbitrary, and that there is no natural relationship between
a signifier (e.g. the word "dog") and the signified (e.g. the mental concept of the actual
animal).
Unlike the ​Romantic or ​Humanist models, which hold that the author is the starting
point or progenitor of any text, Structuralism argues that any piece of writing (or any
"signifying system") has no origin, and that authors merely inhabit pre-existing
structures ("langue") that enable them to make any particular sentence or story
("parole"), hence the idea that "language speaks us", rather than that we speak
language. Structuralism was also to some extent a reaction against ​Phenomenology in
that it argued that the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures
which are not themselves experiential.
Although they would probably all have denied being part of this so-called movement,
the philosopher ​Michel Foucault​, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 - 2009),
the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981), the developmental psychologist Jean
Piaget (1896 - 1980), the linguists Roman Jakobson (1896 - 1982) and Noam Chomsky
(1928 - ), the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980) and the Marxist theorists Louis
Althusser (1918 - 1990) and Nicos Poulantzas (1936 - 1979) were all instrumental in
developing the theory and techniques of Structuralism, most of this development
occurring in France.
Barthes, in particular, demonstrated the way in which the mass media disseminated
ideological views based on its ability to make signs, images and signifiers work in a
particular way, conveying deeper, mythical meanings within popular culture than the
surface images immediately suggest (e.g. the Union jack signifies the nation, the crown,
the empire, "Britishness", etc).
By the 1960s, it had become a major force within the overall ​Continental Philosophy
movement in Europe, and came to take ​Existentialism​’s pedestal in 1960s France. In the
1970s, however, it came under increasing internal fire from critics who accused it of
being too rigid and ahistorical, and for favoring deterministic structural forces over the
ability of individual people to act, and schools like ​Deconstructionism and
Post-Structuralism attempted to distinguish themselves from the simple use of the
structural method and to break with structuralistic thought. In retrospect, it is more
these movements it spawned, rather than Structuralism itself, which commands
attention.
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism (often called American Transcendentalism) is a philosophical
movement centered in the New England region of the United States during the mid-19th
Century, grounded in the claim that divine truth could be known intuitively. Its ideas
were applied to literature, religion and culture in general, as well as philosophy. It is
unconnected with Transcendentalism in classical philosophy, which is the idea that God
transcends the manifest world and surpasses physical existence.
American Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of American
culture and society at the time, and in particular the state of intellectualism at Harvard
University and the doctrines of the influential Unitarian Church. To some extent, it can
also be seen as a nationalistic movement in the wake of American independence from
Britain, and it is sometimes referred to as the American Renaissance.
It built on the philosophy of ​Immanuel Kant​, the ​German Idealists and the ​Romanticists​,
as well as on ancient Indian Vedic thought. At its core is the belief in an ideal spiritual
state that "transcends" the physical and empirical, and is only realized through the
individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. It
specifically rejected the ​British Empiricism​ of the ​Age of Reason​.
Prominent Transcendentalists include ​Ralph Waldo Emerson​, ​Henry David Thoreau​,
Margaret Fuller (1810 - 1850), Bronson Alcott (1799 - 1888), Orestes Brownson (1803 -
1876), William Ellery Channing (1818 - 1901), Frederick Henry Hedge (1805 - 1890),
Theodore Parker (1810 - 1860), George Palmer Putnam (1814 - 1872), Elizabeth Peabody
(1804 - 1894) and Sophia Peabody (1809 - 1871). For some of these, Transcendentalism
was a purely individual and (likely unattainable) idealist project, while for some it was a
way towards utopian social change or ​Socialism​.
Transcendentalism first became a major movement in 1836 with the publication of
Emerson​'s essay "Nature" and the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge,
Massachusetts by prominent New England intellectuals including ​Emerson​, Putnam and
Hedge. The American Transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with the German
philosophy in the original, relying primarily on the writings of English and French
commentators like Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834),
Victor Cousin (1792 - 1867) and Germaine de Staël (1766 - 1817) for their knowledge of
it. The mystical spiritualism of the 18th Century Swedish scientist and theologian
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 -1772) was another major influence.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a movement in ​Ethics and ​Political Philosophy in 19th Century England,
which proposed "the greatest good for the greatest number" as the overriding rule in all
moral decision.
Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its
contribution to overall utility in maximizing happiness or pleasure as summed among all
people, i.e. the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. It starts from the
basis that pleasure and happiness are intrinsically valuable, that pain and suffering are
intrinsically disvaluable, and that anything else has value only in its causing happiness or
preventing suffering. See the section on ​doctrine of Utilitarianism​ for more details.
This focus on happiness or pleasure as the ultimate end of moral decisions, makes
Utilitarianism a type of ​Hedonism (and it is sometimes known as Hedonistic
Utilitarianism), and its origins are often traced back to the ​Epicureanism of the followers
of the Greek philosopher ​Epicurus​. It can be argued that ​David Hume and ​Edmund Burke
were proto-Utilitarians.
As a specific school of thought, however, Utilitarianism is generally credited to the
English philosopher and social reformer ​Jeremy Bentham​. ​Bentham found pain and
pleasure to be the only intrinsic values in the world, and from this he derived the rule of
utility: that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number
of people. ​Bentham himself, however, attributed the origins of the theory to Joseph
Priestley (1733 - 1804), the English scientist, theologian and founder of Unitarianism in
England.
Bentham​'s foremost proponents were James Mill (1773 - 1836) and his son ​John Stuart
Mill​, who was educated from a young age according to ​Bentham​'s principles. In his
famous 1861 short work, "Utilitarianism", ​Mill both named the movement and refined
Bentham​'s original principles. He argued that cultural, intellectual and spiritual
pleasures are of greater value than mere physical pleasure as valued by a competent
judge (which, according to ​Mill​, is anyone who has experienced both the lower
pleasures and the higher).
In his essay "On Liberty" and other works, ​Mill argued that Utilitarianism requires that
any political arrangements satisfy the liberty principle (or harm principle), according to
which the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of
a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others, a cornerstone of the
principles of ​Liberalism and ​Libertarianism​. Some ​Marxist philosophers have also used
these principles as arguments for ​Socialism​.
Other notable Utilitarians, after ​Bentham and ​Mill​, include Henry Sidgwick (1838 -
1900), ​G. E. Moore​, ​Bertrand Russell​, Richard Hare (1919 - 2002), J. J. C. Smart (1920 -
2012) and Peter Singer (1946 - ).
Content Credits: Philosophy Basics