We are continuing the summary of the book called "a little history of philosophy". If you haven't read the first post of this series, please refer to that post first :) This will be a bit longer than the first one since i will be talking about my own thoughts in the last post.
These two have both tried to merge philosophy and christianity like Augustine. Anselmus has a very technical definition for god, "god is the being that no superior design than itself can be made". From this perspective, god will not be an entity that i can think of or draw the outline. I cannot design something that is designed as the absolute best. Furthermore, according to Anselmus, just having an idea of a god proves god's existence. This idea is mocked later by others. The second philosopher Aquinas says god is the causeless cause of all the things. Because we end up in a dead-end if we keep asking "why this exists". The first cause is god and needs no other cause, end of the story :)
The perspective of Anselmus is like trying to define the stars from humans level, on earth. With a naked eye, you can at most define its descriptive properties. Like a bright star, white start, far away star ...etc. If you need to know the intrinsic properties, you would need more research. The second idea of Anselmus says, just by having the idea of god proves its existence. This sounds strange to me. From what i see, we have a limit that we can't progress further or deeper or better in nature and there is no guarantee that reality ends where we stop. I think this kind of proves god. Also, causeless cause argument is not a philosophical thought. This is a presumption. It is inevitable to have a gap between the concept of god and philosophy.
We can practically say that Machiavelli describes today's political tendencies. His philosophical approach is kind of shaped by the middle age Italy. He suggests that the governors can lie or cheat in some cases in order to keep the governing power and it could even be necessary. (In SOME cases, not ALL the time) The basis for this idea is the fact that humans are selfish and the responsibility of governing can not tolerate mistakes or naivety.
But what Machiavelli missing is that the government is also consists of these selfish people. This leads to people governing according to their benefits, instead of responsibilities, which is proven a lot of times. Basically people are proving Machiavelli's thoughts. Also, sometimes you can't help but think that you may need extra-ordinary precautions against the people who would risk the country or the people. But again, humankind is becoming selfish the moment they gain power.
Hobbes takes Machiavelli one step further and says that the selfish people are also tend to be bad and they can only be stopped by laws. Of course you need a government for this. But according to Hobbes, this government would not be a democratic institution. Instead, it would be an autocratic institution. He wrote these in the book called Leviathan and strangely i have heard this name in movies or tv shows. Leviathan is some sort of a sea monster. You may have heard it as The Social Contract.
When you consider the fact that people can be bad and good deeds or justice can't overpower the evil, one can deduce that we may need absolute power or maybe even bulliness against the possible evils. But if we also consider people are selfish, there won't be a rising power against the bad. In other words, humankind is bringing evil to this world but not trying to stop it. Hobbes and Machiavelli duo basically proves that the world turns into an awful place by us, humans.
From this moment on, we are moving to think about matter-meaning kind of mindset with Descartes. We will be seeing more of these delicate and deep subjects too. There seems to be a transition here. It looks like philosophers are thinking about concepts around the fundamental ideas, instead of directly pondering on them. It is like being unable to see the black holes in the universe but being able to spot them with the near stars and capturing a photo of them with the help of the material around it.
Descartes is the inventor or the coordinate system, which i was surprised to learn. He is known by his scepticism but it is different than Pyrrhon's. He believes that our senses can be deceptive. He wants to find the singular and ultimate reality. This is why he asks "can we be in a dream now?". Not only he asks this, also points out that it is impossible to tell. He explains this in the evil demon example. It says an evil demon may be influencing your thoughts and making you think that you are reading this post willingly and consciously. Better yet, you might be a mere brain in that evil demon's jar :) This example is the matrix as we know. If we were in matrix, it would be impossible to prove it. From this perspective Descartes says, I think, therefore i am. Because thinking is a result of existence, even if it might be manipulated. You can't think or experience things without existing at the first place. He goes on and snaps another question: If i exists, how do i exist? And this question brings up the duality philosophy. According to this view, there is a soul and matter. When these two collide or get mixed, you get a human being that can think and talk.
Sometimes i feel like i am a mixture of Descartes and Socrates. Back when i was 7 years old, i was once soiled my bed and thought, "what if we are now in a dream and we are wetting our bed in another reality when we use the toilet" :D Because i was using toilet in my dream and it turned out be, well, not a dream :) I don't think Descartes experienced the same thing but i would guess he was inspired by religious beliefs. Besides, christianity was widely accepted across europe those days. If i remember correctly, he suggests that human's soul is connected to meta-verse in epiphysis cerebri part of the brain. At this point, study of medicine comes into play and it produces a whole library of a field.
Pascal is a religious person and thought about the belief of god. He thinks that being a believer makes more sense than being a non-believer, since there might be a god. Because if we believe in a non-existing god, there would be no dire consequence. But if we don't believe in a god that exists, it would be very bad. Pascal was a pessimist who thought we are despicable beings who are in constant agony. Oddly, unlike Descartes, he thinks god can be found by heart instead of mind. He is also the inventor of the pressure unit pascal and the barometer.
I have concluded the same way Pascal did. If i worship a god for nothing, i wouldn't lose much in my life. But if there is a god, i must acknowledge it since i would be responsible. So believing makes more sense in order to save your skin :D Pascal also thought that believing is a big responsibility.
Spinoza is the pioneer of pantheism. He suggests that the god can be everything in this complex universe and it could be deduced with our minds. To put simply, god is the nature itself. Naturally (inevitably) he also suggests that there is no free will. A human is not much different than a stone. Because if you drop both of them from a certain height, they would both fall :) In other words, people are just passengers in this complex system. Spinoza is condemned by jews. He focuses on the urge to live instead of searching for a purpose in life.
Nowadays (maybe in order to avoid some reactions), some scientist who believe there are marvellous mechanisms around the universe talks about this kind of thinking, instead of saying they are atheists. I have heard this kind of thought from Brian Greene. He believes that my cells are being activated and i feel like i am making a conscious decision or action. He says this is all an illusion of free will.
Spinoza touches on consciousness and free will and this subject can go on and on for hours. I think there is a semi-god in pantheism. But i feel like the superior concepts like responsibility for example, can't be explained in this way of thinking. Or maybe there is an explanation for those that i am not aware of. I guess they would say our values are natural consequences or reflections of god. That would mean there is no being that i can call as myself. I can only be a soup of god particles which can interact physically. Anyways, my brain will explode, let's move on to the next philosopher :)
I once wrote a blog post called the concept of "Once" long before i read John Locke :) I said in that post that people change psychologically and physically every second, but i didn't mean literally. John Locke takes this idea one step further. For example, he thinks you shouldn't be responsible of crimes you have forgotten due to ageing. So if you stole something from someone and you get old and unable to clearly remember it due to your mental health, you should be absolved. This is basically asking is that person in the past the same as the person today.
But Berkeley who was inspired by him was asking questions on reality, rather than personality. He asks "does a tree make noise in a remote forest where nobody sees or hears?". Can we be sure of that? That is why he deduces that to be observed is existing. In other words, i am being observed, therefore i am. We can also say that his questionings on reality has inspired the Matrix as we know.
Locke has more profound thoughts than the book mentions. He has ideas about sensing or experiencing. People in his times say his ideas are contradicting with religion. They say he is implying deism. On the other hand, Berkeley's question seems rather contradicting to me. If a tree falls in a forest that nobody sees or hears, nobody would even know if a tree fell there anyway. This is the nature of unknown, you can only speculate on it. This question will arise in quantum physics around 200 years later than his times :) Observing is not realizing in my opinion, even though there is a probability function collapsing in quantum physics. But overall, i think i agree with Berkeley about being unable to prove the existence of outside beings.
It looks like he is born as a reaction to god and design arguments :) He suggests that a working system doesn't necessarily prove that a designer designed it. For example, he explains god creating handicapped people like this: "Maybe some higher level creature is experimenting and creating some deformed humans in the process of perfecting it". This is meant to prove that you can't explain the reasons directly looking at the results. Hume believes that causality doesn't make sense.
Actually, his argument makes sense. The results does not necessarily explain the reasons everytime. Because you may end up with the same result with different reasons. But when we think about god, if we reason the sequence of results instead of directly tying one result to god, it would make more sense. For example, if we ask "why this pen exists" and answer "because god created it", it would not make sense. But we can say "god has a role in the process of making that pen", that would be more explanatory. Because we can't necessarily jump to a conclusion from reasons whenever we see reason and result relation. But it can only be god when we transition from non-existence to existence. Therefore if you can unquestionably disprove that there is no coming to existence, you can scientifically destroy the concept of god. If you can define non-existence, you can automatically get rid of god.
Rousseau's ideas were primarily on human, society and government fields, right before the french revolution. He thinks that people can live under the government authority and be free at the same time. This thought may present a contradiction but according to Rousseau, people should prioritizing the actions that considers the total benefit of humans. Because humans were not bad before they started living in societies. But the concept of grouping and colonizing gave rise to benefits outweigh the greater good. Therefore you must force people to prioritize the greater total good, so that they can be free to do good.
According to Rousseau, it looks like there is a government which is open for misuse, but he doesn't think people are bad like Machiavelli did. Rousseau has a wider philosophy than the book mentions. For example, he finds it absurd for people to say they say this land is "mine". This sounds absurd to me too :D These "mine"s get together to create nations and nations would need governments. Hobbes, Machiavelli and Rousseau are all big political thinkers but i'd say they prove that there can't be an ideal (where there is no harm to anyone) society or a political order in the world.
Kant is one of the most popular philosophers in the history of philosophy. He thinks a lot about metaphysics and he was a pioneer in this field. He says we are observing the world with a hypothetical pair of glasses and therefore we can never know the essence. He is not empirical like Locke or a rationalist like Descartes. He is somewhere in the middle and he thinks there is a fundamental truth or reality or knowledge that we can reach independent of our experiences. This leads to the concepts of phenomena and noumena. Phenomena means the observable things and noumena means the reality behind the curtain.
The second part is about the ethics of Kant. I'm sure this subject is largely discussed in the philosophers world :D According to Kant, good manner is acting according to duties or obligations. If you act on your emotions and good will, it is not good manners, it is your personality. Kant takes this idea to extremes. For example, if there is a killer after your friend and your friend hides in your house, you shouldn't lie to the killer if he comes and asks where your friend is. Because lying is a bad thing. According to Kant, ethics is obeying the duties instead of acting the way you see fit.
Kant has a vast field of ideas about metaphysics. But the subject of ethics is a bit strange. For example, if a soldier refuses to kill a child when commanded in a war, would it be unethical? If you ask me, ethics are derived from responsibilities and consciousness instead of duties or obligations. But the concept of ethics would bring up "by whom, for whom" questions and you would end up asking if there is a totally valid ethics.
Strap on. We are diving into a strange world with Hegel. Hegel thinks there is a meaning of the flow of the history and it will complete its own reality and purpose. He has a complex set of ideas and talks about a so called Spirit, which is not even something everybody agrees on. It looks like the thing called spirit is something that reaches its own ultimate ending. He says that knowing and understanding yourself would lead you to that ultimate destination. Because he believes humans are in between the generally accepted ethics and universe, and values are created by our minds (spot on).
He is also the founding father of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis approach. According to this formula, every thesis should be challenged with its antithesis to disprove it, so that the two can be synthesized. This produces a new thesis and it requires a new antithesis too. This way, the process can be completed at some point.
I agree with the idea of humans looking into themselves in order to understand the nature, god and history. As far as i understand, Hegel wants to say that the mistakes and lessons that humankind will make and take, will eventually evolve to a meaningful point. He says the history is completing itself and i guess he thinks there is no need for an external force or being like a god.
As a result of a strange experiment, Mill was able to read Plato at 12 and talk about economics and politics. He is a pragmatist and thinks that choosing to be an unhappy human instead of a happy animal makes more sense. He thinks mostly on people and their degree of freedom. He suggests that people should be given personal spaces inside the society without interfering or hurting others'. Also he says people with greater cognitive abilities (geniuses) should be given bigger spaces, so that they can be more free. This way you would be helping the people who can help the society. There is another reason for this idea. He points out that the good for a group of people may not be good for everyone else and denotes the danger called the "tyranny of majority". An interesting side note, he supports women rights even though it might have backlash in his times.
I think he is proposing that everyone should complete their own destiny and realize themselves. I would agree with this idea. Because people should be able to do whatever they are good at. Even more so when their skills can help humanity in total. So the people who can or want to produce added values should have more freedom to move than the people who just consume. I would also agree on the danger called "tyranny of majority". Because you can witness this in some of the so called democratic countries. Some of these democracies appear to be some part of the society ruling over instead of the equality and freedom for all.
Before we move on to the 3rd and the last post of this series. We are approaching 1800 and 1900 years. That is why we will be seeing more up-to-date or recent questions and problems. See you at the next post :)
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