After reading Sophie’s World, I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to learn more about the remarkable philosophers presented therein and summarize their wisdoms into a few bullet points. What started off as a curiosity-driven side project morphed into a monumental undertaking that’s taking way too much of my spare time. I ran out of steam by the third month after spending days trying to grasp the nuances of Kant’s transcendental idealism and how it differed from other forms of epistemology. The next three months turned into a slog.
I recognized very early on just how much there is to know, and how much I will never know. This six-month project could have easily taken me six-years. By the time I finished the last paragraph on Sartre, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. The overall experience has instilled in me a deep sense of intellectual humility. “I know that I know nothing”. What better way to encapsulate my thoughts than a Socrates quote.
One might wonder: some scholars spend their entire career on one or two philosophers. What hope is there for me to understand anything about anyone in six months? That is a fair observation. I doubt I am producing anything new or valuable here. But why should we view everything through the lens of productivity and production. I did this to learn, not to produce. The past few months have been incredibly rewarding intellectually. The hundreds of encyclopedia articles I read were of tremendous pedagogical value. While I hope this article can be useful for others, I know it was useful for me.
In the beginning of human civilization, we made sense of the world through myths: stories about the gods for why the world is the way it is. For instance, people observed that crops would grow after rain. Without science, myths were created to explain this natural phenomenon. In Norse mythology, Thor was worshipped as the god of fertility because Thunder (Thordon in Norwegian) and the accompanying rain often brought bountiful harvest.
History is replete interesting myths from the Pharaohs of Egypt, to the Azure dragons of China, to the thunder god who ruled Mount Olympus. Stories seems fundamental to how we understand the world even up to the present day.
From 600 BC onwards, some of the first Philosophers in the world (from Greece) sought to explain the world through natural processes, rather than supernatural ones. They were also known as pre-Socratic philosophers.
Early Natural Philosophers - What Are Things Made of?
Thales of Miletus - All things are made of water. Thales was one of the first person to emphasize reason over myths. We must understand the world through natural rather than supernatural explanations. He calculated the height of the Pyramid by measuring its shadow. He accurately predicted solar eclipses.
Anaximander - All things are are made of a material beyond human comprehension called “boundless”
Parmenides - Something cannot be created from nothing; everything that exist has always existed. Parmenides was also known for his empiricism. He believed change itself is an illusion. Human reason, rather than perception must be the primary source of knowledge of the world because our senses can deceive us.
Democritus - All things are made of tiny invisible building blocks he called “atoms” - meaning “un-cuttable”. Nature cannot be infinitely divided. The smallest piece possible is the atom. Modern science is very much in line with Democritus’s theory. He also held the materialist that human body and souls were no different. Everything is made of atoms. Souls were made of “soul atoms”.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man” - Heraclitus
Fathers of History and Medicine
Athens was the center of culture and history in the Greek world. Around this time, there was a class of people known as the “sophists”. Sophist were teachers or intellectuals for hire. They make a living by teaching and giving lectures to citizens. Topics were wide ranging from philosophy, music, athletics and mathematics. Most of their writings were lost to history and we often only have second-hand accounts.
Notable Sophists
Sophists were incredibly skilled in the art of persuasion (rhetoric) and were often paid well. Coupled with their often subversive views of the world, they eventually became viewed negatively (perhaps undeservingly). Their negative reputation was further amplified by the writing of Plato and Aristophanes. Over time, Sophistry became associated with fallacious arguments and deception. Aristophanes viewed sophists as hairsplitting wordsmiths, while Plato believed sophists were avaricious instructor who taught deception rather than lovers of wisdom.
“The unexamined life is not worth living” - Socrates
Most of what we know about Socrates came from the writing of his pupil, Plato. He was famously ugly, with a pot-belly, bulging eyes and a snub nose. Despite never writing down a single line, he is still considered the most influential philosopher to have ever lived; literally demarcating philosophy into pre-Socratic, and post-Socratic Eras.
Socrates believed knowledge came from within, and sought to help people “give birth” to the correct insight. He did this through a series of probing questions that lead participants to test their deepest assumptions. This became known as Socratic Method. His persistent questioning often shook the foundation a person’s belief system. People found him exasperating. He was accused of “corrupting the youth” and “introducing new gods” and condemned to die by drinking hemlock (poison). Socrates could have easily pleaded leniency and be exiled from Athens, instead he chose not to. Socrates believed in the importance of intellectual freedom and the pursuit of knowledge even if they challenged social norms. At his trial, he supposedly uttered the famous phrase: “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
Plato was Socrates’ pupil. We know a lot about Plato because almost all of his writings have been preserved. He founded his own school known as the Academy near Athens; named after the Greek hero Academus. Plato wrote about ethics, politics, metaphysics, and many other topics too numerous to list.
Plato is most well-known for his theory of forms. Forms are abstract, perfect representations of all natural phenomena and objects. For example, every horse in the world is an imperfect representation of the ideal, perfect “idea horse”. Everything in the world can be thought of as a gingerbread-man cookie. There might be many cookies but only one mold (its perfect form). Plato believed there are two worlds. We live in the world of senses which is fleeting and often deceiving. There exists a higher level of reality known as the world of forms.
To better explain his theory of forms, Plato came up with an analogy known as the allegory of the cave. Human beings are born prisoners tied to the bottom of a cave. We perceive reality through the dim reflections and shadows from lights entering from the cave’s entrance. We see a tree shadow and mistake it for an actual tree. Philosophy is ultimately a journey from ignorance to enlightenment; from the world of senses to the world of forms.
Plato believed that our soul is immortal and once resided within the world of forms. After the soul wakes up in a physical body, it has forgotten all the perfect forms. As such, we have a natural yearning (eros) to return to the world of forms; to exit the cave so to speak. Therefore, knowledge can be thought of as a process of recollection.
“Virtue is the golden mean between two vices: the one of excess and the other of deficiency” - Aristotle
Aristotle was a pupil of Plato. He was known as “The First Teacher” amongst medieval Muslim scholars, as “The Philosopher” by St. Thomas Aquinas, and as “The Master of Those who know” by Dante. Interestingly, he also personally tutored Alexander the Great. Throughout his life, Aristotle wrote voluminously on just about everything. In fact, he contributed to almost every field of human knowledge at the time. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that his theories started to be systematically replaced. He profoundly shaped scholarship during the middle ages, and consequently Christian theology. Here are some of the insights from Aristotle that resonated with me the most.
Aristotle both rejected and expanded on Plato’s theory of forms. He believed there is only one world. Both form (which Aristotle calls essence) and physical matter (substance) exists in this world. The “idea” horse we alluded to earlier is simply a concept our mind forms after seeing certain number of horses. Nothing exists in consciousness that has not first been experienced by the senses. To give another example, the substance of a chicken is its physical body. The essence (or form) of a chicken is its “chicken-ness”; that it lays eggs, cackles, and flutter its wings.
The “essence” of living things is its soul. Aristotle lays out three types of souls. Humans are special because we have all three.
Outside of metaphysics, Aristotle advocated for the Golden Mean in many area of his writing from virtue ethics to politics. He recognized a pattern where the extremes are often undesirable, and that the ideal is to be found in the middle. For example, a lack of courage is cowardice, yet too much courage can lead to recklessness. A lack of generosity is miserly and stingy, too much generosity may be imprudent and extravagant, the optimal lies in the middle of two extremes.
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality” - Seneca
By 320 BC, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world. With the fall of the Persian Empire, Hellenism flourished, and Greek language, art, culture, architecture, and philosophy became prominent throughout the Mediterranean. The Hellenistic age began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and ended with the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC when the Roman Republic morphed into the Roman Empire. Some scholars place the end of the Hellenistic age much later in 330 AD; right up to the beginning of the Middle Ages.
The Hellenistic philosophers can be categorized into three groups: Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics. Broadly speaking, all three groups sought to answer the question of “how should one live?”. They explored topics such as the inner life, virtue, and happiness.
Epicureanism was established by Epicurus in 307 BC. It is a school of thought that proclaimed pleasure as the ultimate good. However, the Epicureans also believed in pleasure within constraint. Short term pleasure must be balanced with greater, more lasting long-term ones. Followers of Epicureanism generally withdrew from politics to limit their ambition and attain a greater peace of mind. Although the seeking of pleasure is at the heart of Epicureanism, it should not be confused with hedonism (common in modern usage). Epicureans practiced moderation, and generally avoided excesses and overindulgences, yet they are connoisseurs of arts and simple pleasures, and are open to occasional luxury.
Suppose a cynic, an epicurean, and a stoic all lost their jobs due to an economic downturn:
“The last shall be first, and the first shall be last” - Matthew 20:16 KJV
A summary of the development of the Western World is incomplete without a few paragraphs on Christianity, for it will be the sole focus of study for the entirety of the Middle Ages. There were two cultures important to the development of Western Civilization: Indo-Europeans and Semites.
Chronology of major events in Christianity:
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” - St. Thomas Aquinas
The middle ages, sometimes referred to as the “Dark Ages”, is a period extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 5th Century to the Renaissance. After the Roman Empire’s retreat from Europe, the church assumed governmental administrative responsibilities in place of the empire. In the span of roughly a thousand years, Christianity became the predominant philosophy of life. The focus of philosophical inquiries was placed exclusively on the integration of faith and reason. The most prominent philosopher of this era was St. Thomas Aquinas, who attempted to reconcile Christian Theology with the philosophies of Aristotle. He believed that truth could be reached both through reason, and through God.
During this time, the Arabs became predominant in chemistry, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics (think Arabic numerals, algebra, algorithm). The renaissance humanists would later consider this period as a barbaric age, a civilizational low between classic antiquity and the renaissance. To the dismay of many archeologists, many of the ancient Roman and Greek artifacts were demolished and repurposed as building material during this time.
Sola scriptura - “by scripture alone”.
Leading up to the 15th century, Europe experienced many calamities such as floods, severe droughts, famine, and the Black Death which killed 1/3 of the European population. There were peasant revolts, witch hunts, and general unrest. Many thought we have strayed from God, many others were dissatisfied with the abuse and corruption of the Roman Church authorities.
One of the most well known abuse by the church was the sale of indulgences; certificates that promised remission or reduction of time in purgatory on the way to heaven. Although Indulgences can also be obtained through other means such as acts of piety, making pilgrims, and performing certain good work, the monetary aspect of indulgence made it ripe for financial exploitation. Many dutiful Christians gave their life-savings to the church so that the punishment for their sins - or those of their relatives - can be reduced or forgiven. Sale of indulgences became a lucrative source of revenue for the Church, who used it to fund the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica.
In 1517, Martin Luther, dissatisfied with the Roman Catholic Church’s abuse and corruption, composed the Ninety-Five Theses and nailed it to the castle door in Wittenberg. Furthermore, he translated the Bible which is typically in Latin - an esoteric language only accessible by preachers and academics - to vernacular German. What’s more, he translated the bible directly from the original Greek sources. God’s words were henceforth to be interpreted by the people, rather a selected few. This was incredibly revolutionary and disruptive. Many were tried and tortured for heresy during this period. Eventually, Christianity was split into two: Catholicism with the Roman Pope serving as at the top, and Protestantism which emphasized faith and the Bible alone as the source of divine revelations.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned” - Leonardo Da Vinci
The Renaissance (French for “rebirth”) was a period of significant cultural, artistic, and intellectual progress. Although there is considerable overlap with the late Middle Ages, most scholars place the start of the Renaissance around the 14th century in Italy. It would later spread to the rest of Europe, reaching its peak between 1490s and 1520s. The Renaissance marked the transition between the Middle Ages and Modernity.
Origin of the Renaissance
A confluence of factors lead to the birth of the Renaissance. Firstly, the Black Death upended societal structures across Europe and acted much like a reset button. For instance, the population of Florence was nearly halved in 1347. Land value dropped up to 40%. The working class enjoyed more freedom and many traveled for the most economically favorable positions. Secondly, there was a flourishing of commerce in Italy. Unlike absolute monarchs of European states, Italy at the time was politically fragmented into city states that allowed for competition. Furthermore, Italy is located in the center of the Mediterranean, making it the ideal hub for trade and commerce. Cities like Florence became incredibly wealthy, fostering an environment conducive to cultural and artistic creativity. Wealthy patrons such as the Medici family funded artists and scholars (like Leonardo Da Vinci) and encouraged them to pursue their creative endeavors. Lastly, the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 led to mass emigration of Greek scholars to Italian cities. The influx of ancient manuscripts played a role in reviving interest in classical texts. Scholars began exploring classical texts directly from the original source rather than relying on Medieval translations. The invention of the printing press further accelerated the dissemination of these texts.
Key Features of the Renaissance
The Renaissance is perhaps best known for its art. Renaissance art employed realistic linear perspective and portrayal of light and shadow. The artistic and scientific contribution of polymathic figures such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo inspired the term “Renaissance man”.
The revival of interest in Classical literature and ideals also led to an intellectual movement known as Humanism; a human-centered worldview that celebrated individual achievements, potential, and virtue. Renaissance humanists sought to create a citizenry that can speak and write with eloquence. While Humanism is more secular in some aspects, most humanist are still Christians. It wouldn’t be until the Enlightenment that secularism gained more prominence.
Lastly, the renaissance marked the beginning of a time when human development started to accelerate. In 1440, the printing press was invented. In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the new world, sparking the Age of Discovery. In 1494, Luca Pacioli formalized modern accounting (double-entry bookkeeping). In 1503, Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Around the same time, Michelangelo sculpted David. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus formulated his heliocentric view of the universe.
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. […] It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.” - Immanuel Kant
“Dare to be wise!” - Immanuel Kant
The Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and political movement that occurred in Europe during the 17th and 18th century. Broadly speaking, the central doctrine of the Enlightenment is one of Reason: the belief that we can use our intellect to understand the world and improve society. This was a dramatic departure from superstitions and religious dogmas of the past. All throughout Europe, philosophers and scientists circulated their ideas at academies, lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses, and in printed media. Many of the ideas we hold dear today emerged during the Enlightenment. For example:
The exact dating of the Enlightenment is fuzzy. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method published in 1637, where he proclaimed: “Cogito, Ergo Sum”, or “I think, therefore I am”. This famous quote shifted the epistemological discussion from external authority to internal certainty. Most scholars place the end of the Enlightenment around 1800, choosing the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution or the subsequent Napoleonic Wars as a convenient dividing line. It should also be noted that there is considerable regional variations during the Enlightenment. Not all societies experienced these transitions the same way, if at all.
“I doubt therefore I think. I think therefore I am” - Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who was considered by many as the father of modern philosophy. His writings during the 17th century - including his famous phrase: “I think, therefore I am” - brought epistemology to the fore and gave “Age of Reason” its name and place in history.
Borrowing from his experience as a mathematician, Descartes wanted a way to study philosophy similar to how he studies math; systematically and with logical certainty. He wanted to arrive at a fundamental set of principles - similar to mathematical axioms - that can serve as firm foundation for genuine knowledge. To do so, he employed the method of doubt, also known as Cartesian doubt. It is not enough to know something beyond reasonable doubt, but all possible doubt.
To start, he realized sensory perceptions are often misleading. There is no way for humans to arrive at truths through our senses. It could all be an optical illusions, a dreams, a hallucinations, or even an evil demon deceiving you! Descartes quickly came to an impasse. How can we know anything is real? Everything we perceive could just be a simulation. Then the insight hit him! If he is doubting, then he is thinking, and if he is thinking, he exists. In Latin: “dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum”. In a world where everything could just be an illusion, Descartes became certain of one thing: that he exists. He would go on to build up his philosophical system from there (including a proof on the existence of God). While the insight regarding the certainty of one existence is of little practical value for us, it is nevertheless a landmark moment in that it represented a shift in epistemological discussion from external authority to internal certainty.
In addition to Descartes’ remarkable contribution to Philosophy, his mathematical achievements were equally notable. Anyone who has taken taken high-school math will appreciate the pervasiveness of Descartes’ ideas. He popularized the use of “x,y,z” as unknown variables, the use of superscripts to denote exponents, and the use of x and y axis in graphs (known as Cartesian Coordinate System). Descartes also made significant contributions to analytical geometry, law of refraction/reflection in optics, and many early works in mechanics.
“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace” - Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Jewish Dutch philosopher who had many radical and influential ideas. His controversial views, particularly his critique of the divine origin of the Hebrew Bible, made him an enemy of the religious authorities in Amsterdam. He was excommunicated and ostracized from his Jewish community at a young age.
Spinoza’s 1670 publication Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, often abbreviated to “TTP”, is considered by many to be one of the most significant event in European intellectual history. The book aimed to “liberate the individual from bondage to superstition and ecclesiastical authority”. In it, he criticized the divine infallibility of the Old Testament, argued for a more historical approach in looking at the bible, and advocated for religious freedom and separation of Church and State.
Spinoza was also known for his embrace of a deterministic view of the world and rejection of free will in the conventional sense. Everything that has happened in the past, and everything that will ever happen in the future, is in accordance with the necessary order of the universe. He rejects the idea of chance. Everything has a clean chain of cause and effect with no room for probability. To Spinoza, free will is not the ability to choose different courses of action, instead it is the capacity to align oneself with nature and realize our inherent potentials. For example, an apple tree in a yard with plentiful sunlight will yield more fruit than a yard in the shade. To Spinoza, if your yard lacks sunlight, it is far better to try and cultivate fruit that grow in the shade (such as pear or figs), rather than sticking with fruits that require full sun to thrive.
On the topic of God, Spinoza believed that the world is composed of one thing: substance. He calls this substance “God” or “nature” which he believes to be synonymously. God does not manifest himself as a divine figure, but rather within all of nature. God is nature.
“Life, liberty, and property” - John Locke
John Locke was an English Philosopher considered by many as the “father of liberalism”. His work on epistemology, political philosophy, and social contract theory influenced many subsequent thinker like Voltaire, Rousseau, and the American revolutionaries.
During the enlightenment period, there were two schools of thought for how we obtain knowledge. The first group is known as the Continental Rationalists which included figures like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The Rationalists believed that knowledge can be gained through pure rational/logical deduction, and that there are certain “a priori” knowledge innate in the mind independent from any lived experiences. The “continental” prefix refers to the fact that Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz all lived in mainland Europe. John Locke was part of the second group known as the British Empiricists (Locke, Hobbes, Bacon, Berkeley, and Hume) who believed that that knowledge must come from direct observations. Humans are a “tabula rasa” or blank slates. It’s worth stressing that the empiricists also viewed logic and reason as important; however, they believed that reason must ultimately be grounded by empirical observation.
John Locke is perhaps most well-known for his Social Contract Theory. Social contract is an idea in political philosophy that explores the legitimacy of a state over the individual. The central question of social contract theory is this: why would rational individuals consent to give up their freedom to an authority? Many prominent philosophers (such as Hobbes and Rousseau) have explored this topic. John Locke’s social contract theory starts with the assertion that In the state of nature, every man has certain natural rights; namely the rights to preserve his life, liberty, and property. However, without a government, people would have to fend for themselves against those seeking to enslave or injure them. As rational beings, we come together and voluntarily enter into a social contract and establish a political authority. While we relinquish certain freedoms such as the right to violence, we expect in return that the authority will protect our natural rights. If a government fails to uphold its end of the social contract by violating the natural rights of the citizens, then the people have the obligation to rebel and overthrow the government. Furthermore, Locke also advocated for limited government with checks and balances that prevent concentration of power in any single individual; an idea central to most Western governments in the modern era.
Locke’s social contract theory is less pessimistic and more democratic than that of Thomas Hobbes, who believed that life in nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes believed the sovereign is a product of our attempt to escape the dreadful state of nature, rather than a product of rational beings in cooperation. The Hobbesian leviathan has no obligation to uphold individual natural rights, whereas the Lockian government is obligated to do so to prevent rebellions.
“All knowledge reduces to probability, and all probability reduces to nothing” - David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher best known for his system of empiricism and skepticism. He also happens to be a prominent essayist and historian, compiling a massive six-volume “The History of England” during his lifetime. Hume’s writing had profound impact on both his contemporaries as well as later philosophers. Adam Smith acknowledge Hume’s influence on his economics and political philosophy. Immanuel Kant credited Hume with waking him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Even Albert Einstein references Hume as an inspiration while developing his theory of relativity.
Like the other British empiricists, Hume distrusted reason as the sole means of arriving at knowledge. In fact, he took it one step further by formulating the problem of induction; putting the entire premise of inductive reasoning into question. According to Hume, we process the world through our senses, yet our observations are nothing more than a constant conjunction of events. In other words, the underlying causality of the physical world is inaccessible to us. Correlation is the best we can do. Hume does not see any justification for believing the future will resemble the past. For example, after observing enough triangles, we establish as fact that the sum of its interior angles is always 180 degrees. But this is not true in hyperbolic geometry, nor spherical geometry. A similar example can be made for Newtonian mechanics near the speed of light. Ultimately, causality is indeterminable. The best we can do is build model to make sense of an infinitely complex world. There might be more refined models we haven’t uncovered yet. Philosopher Bertrand Russel gave another example to illustrate this point.
“Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who usually feeds them. We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken”
Hume is also deeply skeptical of the role reason plays in human behavior. He believed that Passion trump over reason. People typically decide based on emotions first, then use reason to justify their action afterwards. For example, if someone wants to be healthy, reason can help them find the best diet or help them come up with arguments for why it is good to be healthy, but that initial desire is generated by passion. Reason alone is utterly ineffectual at producing or preventing actions.
Lastly, Hume was the first to clearly expound on the “is-ought problem”; also known as fact-value distinction. We shouldn’t make a normative statement from a positive statement. In other words, value judgements cannot arise from a statement of fact. Just because something is the way it is doesn’t mean it is the way it should be. For example, slavery has been practiced throughout history across many different cultures. Justifying slavery because it is widespread would be falling for the “is-ought” fallacy.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” - Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher considered by many to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time. As a foremost enlightenment thinker, his work in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics were incredibly influential, earning him titles like “father of modern ethics”, “father of modern aesthetics”, and “father of modern philosophy”. Kant was incredibly disciplined and lived a strictly ordered life. He taught philosophy at University of Konigsberg, and throughout his life, he never traveled outside of his home city. It was said that his neighbors would set their clock based on his daily walks.
Kant is perhaps most well known for his moral philosophy. As enlightenment ideas spread throughout Europe, there was a marked decline in faith and religion. This was troubling trend for Kant because religion offered people two important things: meaning, and a moral system to inform them what constitutes “good” behavior. With the rise of secularism, Kant sought to create a system of morality based entirely on rationality. What he came up with - the Categorical Imperative - became the central concept in Kant’s moral philosophy. “Categorical” meaning applicable in all cases (unconditional), “imperative” meaning a directive, a moral commandment. There are three parts to the categorical imperative:
Kant also wrote extensively on epistemology. To reconcile empiricism and rationalism, Kant created his own epistemological system known as Transcendental Idealism. “Transcendental” meaning to be above (transcend) our senses and understanding of the mind, “idealism” meaning related to ideas and the mind. Taken together, Kant is saying that knowledge is ultimately shaped by our minds. We should view our mind as an active participant, not just a passive receptors in the formation of knowledge. Things only make sense in the context of our perception. According to Kant, there are two worlds: 1.) world of appearance (phenomena) 2.) world of things-in-themselves (noumena). We can never know the latter for they are ultimately unintelligible without perception. Consider a wooden table. Is it really solid and made out of wood? Or is it billions of atoms made up of mostly empty space?
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher whose idea has had profound and lasting impact on European history and subsequent thinkers. His political philosophy inspired political reforms and revolutions throughout Europe; most notably the French Revolution. His writing was banned in Paris, burned in Geneva, and forbidden by the Church. The association between Rousseau and the Reign of Terror turned him into a pariah. He fled from country to country for many years. Not only was Rousseau repudiated by many European countries, he was also despised by his contemporaries. He wrote hateful letters to Hume despite Hume’s best effort to accommodate him in England, he made fun of Voltaire’s essay on the Lisbon Earthquake. Voltaire hated him, Samuel Johnson called him a “rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been”, Edmund Burke called him egotistical and vain. The list goes on. Despite his controversial reputation, it is impossible to deny the potency of his ideas. To quote Historian Will Durant:
“[Rousseau], after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, the plays of Schiller, the novels of Goethe, the poems of Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley, the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy and, altogether, had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century”.
In his most influential work: Discourse on The Sciences, Rousseau responded to the question: “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?” with a resounding “NO”. Advancements of the enlightenment had not contributed to moral progress, if anything they have stymied it. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau believed Humans are innately good but was subsequently corrupted by society.
In the beginning, mankind were “noble savages” who roamed the land as hunters and gathers. As contact with other humans were rare, differences between individuals were insignificant. There would have been no envy, no distrust, no hierarchies, no private properties, and no conflict. As societies grew larger and larger, humans went from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled one. We would have grown less dependent on nature and more on each other. Rousseau posits that the invention of private property was a key turning point in history. The resulting inequality was a product of human choice, rather than a natural outcome. People began valuing more and more the opinion of others. To quote Rousseau: “the savage lives within himself, sociable man, always outside himself, can only live in the opinion of others”. Social hierarchies began to form. Inequality inevitably increased between the haves and have-nots. The end result was a political system by the powerful, for the powerful, that serve to perpetuates their rule. Rousseau’s idea directly challenged the existing political order and was profoundly destabilizing. It’s easy to see why the monarchical societies of Europe took issue with his writing. It’s also easy for an modern audience view Rousseau in a Marxist lens, but we must keep in mind that Rousseau’s First Discourse was published 100 years before Marx’s Das Kapital. It goes without saying Rousseau’s idea greatly influenced Karl Marx and therefore most of 20th century history.
Rousseau’s thoughts on education shared a common theme with his political philosophy; which is to preserve the innate human goodness (in children) and minimize the corrupting collectivity of society. Some of his ideas sound remarkably modern and progressive. For example, Rousseau rejected the militaristic tutelage that was common at the time and proposed a more child-centered learning which catered to the child’s interest rather than any specific rigid rubric. He was against punishment, against rote memorization, and against anything that would stifle creativity. Ideally, a child should have a tutor, live closer to nature in the country side, and learn manual skills like carpentry in addition to intellectual work. All in all, Rousseau believed education should be about developing reason and good moral character rather imparting any specific technique or concepts.
Be yourself. But who are you?