Introduction to Philosophy Pages

The Renaissance (roughly spanning the 14th-16th c.) redirects modern philosophical thought in new directions. One can so divide “Modern Philosophy” into the following moments, however misleading such divisions may be, were we to be too rigid with the lines and dates, themes and thinkers:

Notably including the following:
The Renaissance: 14th-16th c. (Reformation (Luther): 16th c.)
The Scientific Revolution: 17th c. Descartes 1596-1650
The Enlightenment (The Age of Reason): 18th c. Hume 1711-1776
The Industrial Revolution: mid 18th c. – mid 19th c. Kant 1724-1804
The Romantic Period: 19th c. – early 20th c.

Early Modern Philosophy breaks from Medieval thought in breaking from the authority of tradition. The Modern’s desire, in its simplest terms, was to establish a solid foundation upon which to ground thought. This new foundation cast away much of the Medieval reliance on balancing questioning and authority. In the early modern work we begin with a dichotomy of experience and reason. The reliance on experience was held by the British Empiricists, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, who believed that our foundation could be composed from sensory experience. In opposition, the reliance on reason was held by the Rationalists, including René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz, who believed that sensory experience was essentially inadequate to found correct thought, and instead, used the powers of the mind’s reason.

These two sides of the debate were essentially reconciled by Immanuel Kant, who, in the simplest of explanations, argued that knowledge begins in experience and necessarily moves beyond it to reason, thus the foundation for thought, for Kant, was both sensory experience and reason. While Kant’s writing was in dialogue with the Empiricists and the Rationalists, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (whom we can more properly consider the father of Continental philosophy) engaged Kant in his writing to make the foundation of knowledge more firmly dependent on the mind itself in a universal historical movement. Most philosophy following cannot speak without engaging or revealing deep indebtedness to Kant and Hegel.

This period is very rich with diverse philosophers and ideas—in addition to the continuing question of what is knowledge and how we can know, the moderns reveal a deep concern with questions of morality, politics, aesthetics, language, logic, and so forth. The following highlights just a few thinkers that later postings will hopefully elaborate upon.

Niccolò Machiavelli: (1469-1527)
Machiavelli, the Italian Renaissance political theorist, is one of the earliest modern philosophers who really popularized modern philosophy’s concrete side. The Prince (1513), Discourses (1517), and the Art of War (1520) are three of his main books, each political in its discourse and proposing the universality of evil as a problem in that humans do what they desire to do instead of what they more often ought to do. Thus, a leader or society must constantly combat this evil of our indulgences, even by so far as granting politicians the right to enter into evil if necessary to accomplish something. Machiavelli’s writings are harsh, brutal portrayals of what rulers can and cannot do, and through these prescriptions he reveals a very negative opinion of human nature. It is interesting, however, to compare his harsh works to the Medieval preoccupation with the question of evil, the greatest differences lie in opposing views about morals and his grounding of the question of evil in the concrete, everyday world.

René Descartes: (1596-1650)
Descartes is rightfully the father of modern philosophy. Like Machiavelli, he was personally involved in the concrete studies of the world, although, unlike Machiavelli, he tried his hardest to avoid the political realm for fear of his life. Descartes was a scientist and mathematician of his day although most remembered today for his method of radical doubt and the Cogito Ergo Sum. His stated mission in the Meditations on First Philosophy is to reveal the compatibility of religion and philosophy by using his method to prove his own existence and the existence of God through reason alone.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: (1770-1831)
Hegel is certainly one of the most influential philosophers of the German Idealists and of the modern period, and whose voice echoes throughout contemporary philosophy. His topics of study are inordinately broad, from theology, classical languages, and literature to questions of morality, the theory of culture, history, and the philosophy of religion and art. His greatest achievement, however, is his systematic philosophy of the Phenomenology of Spirit. It is said that this work was completed as one could hear Napoleon’s bombs falling as his armies captured Jena (where he was a professor). The Phenomenology is astounding; he employs a dialectical method, a circular system that presents a thesis and antithesis, and then develops a synthesis from these to elaborate the unfolding of knowledge in the broadest conception (mind to culture to history). On one interpretive level this work is a philosophy of historical progression. On another level it chronicles the evolution of consciousness. On yet another level, it is about the human race itself as a developing progressively more self-conscious subject. In a sense, the work is all of the above.

Hegel upheld Greek philosophy and civilization as a commendable system, and thought that the modern predicament, with its characteristics of dogmatic religions and the lack of social solidarity, was dissatisfactory. He also considered the practices of philosophy in his day, lifeless classifying, to be detrimental to the discipline, and ultimately only contributed to the fragmentation of modern society. He believed that the proper subject matter for philosophy was reason, or the absolute.

Karl Marx: (1818-1883)
The German social and political thinker, economic theorist, and revolutionary. His theory both used and criticized Hegel’s philosophy. According to Marx, alienation is a state of radical disharmony among people, between people and their activities or labor, and between people and their system of production. Marx uses Hegel for his dialectical method in order to wage an internal critique of capitalism focusing upon the idea that people are a source of economic power. He predicted that the internal problems of capitalism would lead to a series of increasingly severe crises, which would end in the proletariats seizing power from the wealthy few capitalists. When the proletariats took control the means of productions would be then centralized and lead to greater rewards for all, no more alienation, and ultimately, a classless society. His philosophy is a dialectical materialism that can be seen as both a humanism and a naturalism so to propose that history is forged by human activity within material conditions that vary by time and place.

His early work Capital (1867, 1885, 1894) is the longer theoretical work that outlines this concept of alienation and the progression towards the revolution of the proletariat. His later, work co-authored with Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848) is where he more blatantly sets up the system that the proletariats will instate and reads as more of a call to action.

Friedrich Nietzsche: (1844-1900)
The central theme across Nietzsche’s oeuvre, were it possible to so easily name one in his diverse and anti-systematic writings, is that moral progress is not the progression of the greatness of humankind, but rather, the degeneration of humanity and history. Modernity is sick; “morality” is its disease. Nietzsche’s investigation promotes no project: there is no task to be undertake to “cure” the “sickness” of modernity; yet, if such was possible, then his project would command that conventional ethics must be overcome, that some future individuals can find their way beyond good and evil. Nietzsche understands the degeneration of humanity to be relative to the degradation of society, which is a result of the nihilistic (rationalized) structures of experience (reality). He poses a sharp critique of modernity, of the over emphasis we place on rationality and scientific or mechanistic explanations. This over-rationalization has blinded us to the true essential nature of ourselves and our world—the essential truth is that there is no truth and we continually commit a Cartesian “material falsity,” mistaking the false rationality for reality.

Søren Kierkegaard:
A literary master of pseudonyms and biting critiques and anxiety inspiring, rigorous thought.

“Self-Consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”

--Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §178.

(Picture: David Hume)

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Introduction to Modern Philosophy