HISTORY OF MODERN

PHILOSOPHY

In the 20th century, SCIENCE questions the validity of Philosophy.

But remember that SCIENCE is part of Philosophy since it deals with all definite knowledge: it contains hypothesis, theories and laws, which can be tested, verified or falsified by experiments.

THE BACKGROUND

But there are many theoretical issues and questions to which science cannot provide answers:

What is the ultimate reality?Is there a being that may be called

God?What is matter and what is mind and what is their relationship?

Is there a purpose and meaning in our lives?

Is there such a thing as free will or is it just an illusion?

Is the universe moving towards a destiny or is it being governed by blind forces

What is beauty? What is truth?

No definite answers

can be found to such

questions and it is

these very questions

which philosophy

attempts to study.

The Early Modern

Philosophers

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)“Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it,” states Machiavelli, the Italian historian, statesman and political philosopher, whose highly influential political ideas have converted his name into a synonym of cunning and deceit. Machiavelli was born in 1469 in Florence. He served as an administrator and a diplomat in the Florentine Republic, and knew many political leaders, including the great Cesare Borgia, thought to be the model for The Prince. Machiavelli’s political career ended after fifteen years when the Medici returned to power. After his dismissal, he retired to his farm in the country, and wrote The Prince and Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy in peace.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)The Prince is Machiavelli’s most important work

and is often described as a ‘handbook for dictators’.

1. The only end to be achieved is the success in political actions and all ethical and moral rules are meaningless in the procurement of this end.

2. Public success and private morality are entirely separate; the issue is not what makes a good human being, but what makes a good prince. “Politics has no relation to morals.” 3. In public life only the praise and blame of fellow human beings really matters to the prince. The prince must be aware of how to increase and maintain his fame among the people. Gaining the support of the populace is an important objective for the prince.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)Sir Francis Bacon was an English lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual reformer, philosopher, and champion of modern science. Indeed, such broad is his area of interest that he claimed “all knowledge as his province”. Francis Bacon is in many ways the first great spokesman of the modern philosophy. He didn’t create any philosophical system of his own, but he proposed a method of developing philosophy. He is credited with contributing a technique of inductive reasoning in logic known as ampliative inference. In his works, Bacon is secular in approach, empirical in attitude and rational in thought. He was the herald of a new age of science and attempted to systematize the whole scientific procedure. He was among the first to realize the importance of science in human lives; the prevalence of scientific outlook owes a great deal to him. In this respect, he is a very influential person. Bacon’s approach can be classified as belonging to empirical philosophy.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)He is important in philosophy owing to his great emphasis on Induction in logical reasoning. His

explains this in his book Novum Organum (The New Instrument)

Induction is the process of deriving general principles from particular facts or instances.

For example, you observe that bacteria, fungi, plants and animals reproduce; and bacteria, fungi, plants and animals are all

living organisms, so you induce the conclusion ‘All living organisms reproduce.

Bacon’s own method of induction involved collection and observation of data, and utilization of these to form general laws, initially of lowest degree. From these laws, laws of second degree of generality were to be arrived at, and so on.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)"The universe is corporeal; all

that is real is material, and what is not material is not real." --The

Leviathan

1. Man is inclined to live independently, acting on the sole

motive of self-interest without any regard for others. This

naturally leads to a state of war with everyone against everyone

or "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). Life in such a state is "solitary, poor,

nasty, brutish, and short".

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)But man wishes to end this state of

war; the only solution is to enter into a social contract — a mutually beneficial agreement to surrender the individual interests by choosing a sovereign, or a

sovereign body, which will exercise authority over them and put an end to

the state of universal conflict.

The only right of the individual is the right of self-preservation, since it was for this very motive the social contract was made. Hence, State is not allowed to harm the preservation of the individual.

2. He advocated a strictly materialistic point of view; he thought of humans as nothing more

than sophisticated machines.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)"I am thinking therefore I

exist."(Cogito ergo sum)

from the Discourse on Method Descartes was among the first to build a new philosophical system from scratch and is rightly known as the father of modern philosophy. Although he has not managed to completely emancipate himself from the scholastic philosophy, he shows a new freshness and innovativeness in his thought, which was carried on by his successors.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)Descartes was a French philosopher, scientist and mathematician. He was deeply impressed by mathematics, and is well known for his systematization of analytic geometry. The fact that mathematical method of reasoning gives absolute certainty, he sought to give philosophy the same certainty as mathematics. He argued that we should turn to mathematical reasoning as a model for progress in human knowledge. He believed in deduction, the principle which presupposes some self-evident premises and then draws conclusions from them.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)His principle: only the indubitable is to be accepted and whatever is doubtful must be rejected.

Descartes then examines the dream problem: While we dream, we feel as if we

are in the real world. Perhaps, I am in a dream at this very moment. What if this

whole of external world is nothing but my dream? Hence, we can doubt the existence

of the whole of external reality.What about mathematics and logic? They give us the absolute certainty we need. He goes to the extreme of mistrust and asks his readers to imagine an omnipotent, evil god, who tempers with their minds and causes them to believe in irrational arguments, making them appear rational. [e.g. suppose that 2+2 is not equal to 4, but the deceiving god forces my reason to believe so.] Therefore, even the validity of mathematics cannot survive this dissolvant skepticism. Such a method of doubt is known as ‘Cartesian doubt’ (or Hyperbolic doubt).

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)Since everything can be doubted, does it mean that we can be certain of nothing?

There is still one thing which survives this extreme mistrust: my very existence. For if I doubt, then I

must think, and if I think I must exist. Even a deceiving god can’t

deceive me if I didn’t exist. Even if I am deceived, at least I exist.He proposes a general rule: everything

he perceives clearly and distinctly is true.

Can anything about the external world also be proven beyond doubt? Descartes says yes, but he needs to prove the existence of God to do so.

Benedict de Espinoza (1632-1677)“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of

reason.” Spinoza is one of the greatest of the modern philosophers, and is remembered not only for his philosophy but also for the nobility of his character..

Russell calls him “the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers.”Spinoza is a proponent of Pantheism and monism. Descartes believed in dualism; he had considered the world to be made up of two distinct substances which he called mind and matter. Although Descartes did believe in God as a separate substance which was superior to both mind and matter, but the world nevertheless existed separately from God.

Benedict de Espinoza (1632-1677)Spinoza believes in only one substance, which he calls God. The world as a whole is a single substance, whose parts are not capable of existing alone. There is only one underlying reality of the world, and all individual or particular things are its expressions in different forms. Spinoza calls them modes, a temporary expression of the substance.Spinoza’s Theory of Pantheism: He envisions a

God that is revealed in the order and harmony of nature. For him, the will of God and the laws of

the nature are one and the same thing.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are all rationalists. Rationalism is the system of thought, which believes in reason as a primary source of knowledge. A rationalist

may also believe that man has certain innate ideas, which exist in his mind a priori, i.e. not derived from

experience.

“Human mind is Tabula Rasa.”

The system of philosophy which John Locke was founded is known as Empiricism. It is opposed to Rationalism. It declares experience as the primary source of knowledge.

The empiricists were inspired by the development of science and its stress on observation and experiment.

John Locke (1632-1704)Locke’s most important work is An Essay

Concerning Human Understanding. He begins with ideas. An idea is a broad concept and

includes all the objects of understanding and contents of knowledge (sensory images,

thoughts and memories, hopes and desires, and political and moral views etc, are all

included in the term ‘idea’.) Locke inquires about the source of these ideas: from where

do we derive them?A prevalent answer was that many ideas are innate. However Locke maintained

that there are no innate ideas present in the human mind. He maintains that

neither logic and metaphysics nor principles of morality are stamped on our

mind from birth.

John Locke (1632-1704)Locke’s main argument is that since mind is defined as consciousness, there can be nothing in the mind of which it is not aware. If innate ideas like God and causality are present from birth, then even infants, savages and untutored men must be aware of them, but we find even the most learned philosophers differing on these problems. Hence, there are no such innate ideas.

John Locke (1632-1704)Locke gives the answer that he considers to be correct: all ideas are derived from experience

through senses. He calls the mind at birth a tabula rasa, an empty slate. It is bare of all knowledge; it is an unfurnished room. This vacant room is furnished with ideas by two means: sensation and reflection. Sensation depends wholly upon senses, and is the

perception of the external objects, e.g. ‘soft’, ‘green’, ‘sour’, ‘hot’ are all ideas of sensation. Reflection is

concerned with the internal operations of our mind, it is an ‘internal sense’ by which we think about

what we perceive and feel. When we form ideas by thinking, reasoning, believing or doubting, we are

using reflection.

George Berkeley (1685-1753)“To be is to be perceived”

• The only things which exist are what we perceive.

• Berkeley was an empiricist and is among the most prominent proponents of Empirical Idealism. Idealism is the view that physical objects are mind dependent and have no existence outside the mind that contemplates them.

• physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived. - He strongly criticizes the idea of abstract ideas. [For example, I have only seen particular triangles, but supporters of abstract ideas maintain that I have in my mind an abstract idea of a ‘triangle’, which is independent of these particular triangles I have seen.] Berkeley believes that the human mind possesses no such abstract idea.

George Berkeley (1685-1753)“To be is to be perceived”

• All sensible objects are nothing more than collections of sensible qualities, so they are merely complex ideas in the minds of those who perceive them. Therefore, there are no material objects.

• He says that the existence of what I perceive does not depend only on my perceiving it; it will exist as long as anyone perceives it. When I close my eyes, the object infront of me will continue to exist if someone is perceving it. And this ‘someone’ happens to be God. Even when none of us perceives any object, God does. All things are permanently present in the mind of God, and they exist independently of our perception. So, Berkeley claimed that the existence of God is far more clearly perceived than the existence of man himself. Hence, Berkeley thought, materialism was defeated and belief in God was restored.

• The Scottish philosopher David Hume is one of the most brilliant and skeptical of philosophers. Our ideas of epistemology would have been very different had Hume not been born. His famous work is entitled, “Inquiry into Human Understanding.”

David Hume (1711-1776)

• Hume begins with a distinction between our mental contents: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the direct, clear and forceful result of immediate experience; ideas are the faint and faded copies of these impressions. For example, the words you are reading right now on this page are impressions, but the words of your last assignment present in your memory are ideas. Hume says that every simple idea has a simple impression, and every simple impression has a corresponding idea. This is clearly a restatement of Locke’s principle that all ideas must enter through experience. Therefore, if no impression is associated with a term, it means that the term is altogether insignificant.

David Hume (1711-1776)

Then, he comes to the external world. He says that we have never really ‘experienced’ the external world. We perceive only impressions, which we causally assume to be caused by an external object, but we have no direct experience of the presumed cause. And Hume has just shown that causality is an irrational belief. As we perceive objects only by means of ideas, we cannot use them to establish a causal connection between the things and the objects they are supposed to represent. Hence, our knowledge of external world is not based on reason and logic, and there is no reason to believe that the external world exists.

For Hume, 1) There is no such thing as causality, and 2) The principle of Induction is not a valid principle. For example, if B follows A in all our observations, then 1) A doesn’t cause B and 2) it is not necessary that B will always follow A. We can only say that it is probable that B will follow A, but this probability is not a certainty, and it is always in the danger of being refuted by fact.

THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT(18th century)

• The Enlightenment writers believed that they were casting off the age-old shackles of ignorance and authority, and were entering an epoch enlightened by science, reason and humanism. In many respects, France was the center of this intellectual movement.

• there was a radical opposition to authority.• England was at that time more liberal and the political ideas of free thinkers like Locke influenced these thinkers greatly. •These ideas led to a mass reaction against the government and ultimately resulted in the French Revolution.

Voltaire (1694-1778) was the leading voice of the Enlightenment.

“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”

• Voltaire was a great proponent of the freedom of speech and press. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”• In the 1760s there were a number of appalling occurrences of persecution of Protestants in France. Voltaire was infuriated and enraged, and devoted himself to an intellectual battle with the Catholic Church in particular, and religious fanaticism in general.

• But Voltaire was not an atheist. He was a believer in God, and advocated a simple Deism, while rejecting the complex and intricate doctrines of Christianity. His line “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” has become more of a proverb.

The second most important philosopher of the Enlightenment was the Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78).- He had an intense dislike for authority and social institutions of all kinds.

- Science and arts are the worst enemies of humans. Progress in these fields has created more wants and has made man more of a slave to them. They have made governments more powerful and crushed individual liberty. They promote idleness and result in political inequality. He maintained that the natural state is morally superior to the civilized state.

- Rousseau believes that the basis of the civil society can be found in private property. He proposes that the only way to undo this evil is to abandon civilization because man is by nature good, and is corrupted only by exposure to society.

The second most important philosopher of the Enlightenment was the Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78).

Rousseau maintained that the feelings of awe and fascination produced by observing nature were sufficient for him to believe in the existence of God. However, Rousseau dismisses all organized religions and complicated theology. He believes in natural religion, which has no need of revelation. This natural religion claims to find its principles written deep inside the heart by nature, and we need only to follow our natural feelings to be virtuous. “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”

ON THEODICY:

The second most important philosopher of the Enlightenment was the Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78).

Rousseau begins with an emphasis on freedom as a birth right of man, and declares that no man has any natural right over any other person. Hence, slavery in all forms is unjustified. In Rousseau’s hypothetical account, men, in the state of nature, must have reached a point when individual abilities were not enough to maintain their state in opposition to different obstacles. The problem was to find a kind of association which will protect the interests of each citizen and yet, each member will freely obey himself alone. The solution is the Social Contract.

ON MAN & POLITICS:

Rousseau’s idea of Social Contract resembles that of Hobbes. In this contract, each citizen transfers all his rights to the community, and because the same conditions apply to everyone in the community, no one has any interest in making the terms and conditions very harsh. The people are the members of and the collective owners of the Sovereign power.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

- He attempted to reconcile the two opposing philosophies of rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism, by its stress on reason, had guaranteed certainty of knowledge but raised doubts about its practical contents. Empiricism, by making experience the source of knowledge, had secured the practical contents, but at the sacrifice of certainty.- The three important questions that summarized Kant

philosophy: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?”

- Kant believes knowledge to be indisputable. It would be self-contradictory to deny knowledge, because the denial is itself based on knowledge and is knowledge itself. So, Kant does not accept the position that no knowledge is possible. We do possess judgments, this is unquestionable. So, we must begin with the analysis of these judgments.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

His ethical theory:

- In his book, The Critique of Practical Reason and Metaphysics of Morals, Kant maintains that a ‘good will’ is something that is intrinsically good. It can be thought of being good without any qualifications—all persons know what a good will is.

- His ethical theory is deontological i.e. actions are morally right because of the intentions, which must be derived from a sense of duty. Moral worth exists only when an action is done from a sense of duty, and not out of inclination or any other reason.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

- According to this theory, a shopkeeper who is honest because of the fear of police is not virtuous, but a shopkeeper who is honest because he feels it his duty, is. Kant believes that morality must be based on a moral law, which is universal and is capable of being applied to any person at any place.-He brings out his idea of law. All things in nature act according to law, but man has the freedom to obey the moral law. Apart from being aware of the moral law, he also has some personal desires and self interests, and the interaction of the two results in the feeling of obligation, or an imperative, a command to act in a particular way.- There are two types of imperative. A hypothetical imperative states, ‘You must do A if you wish to achieve B’ i.e. it commands an action due to an end in purpose. The categorical imperative simply states ‘You must do A’ regardless of its consequences. Kant believes in the categorical imperative and maintains that it is a priori as well as being synthetic.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

- Using the idea that the moral law should be universal, Kant states the categorical imperative as: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” i.e. you should act in such a way that you can wish that all the other people in the world also do the same. For example, you can lie to achieve some benefit, but you can’t wish that everyone in the world should lie, because then there would be no promises at all. A thief may steal but he can’t wish that everyone in the world should start stealing. An action is wrong when you do it yourself but wish that it should not be done to you; the thief would not wish his possessions to be stolen.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, is well known for his philosophy of pessimism,

and in this respect, he is rather peculiar because nearly all other great philosophers

are more or less optimistic.

He begins from Kant’s division of the reality into phenomenon and noumenon. Kant had restricted himself to experience and maintained that the thing-in-itself was unknowable, but Schopenhauer believed that it was possible to transcend experience and know the thing-in-itself.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) He claimed that the noumenon was same

as what we call Will. Will is our reality; what appears in perception to us, as our body is really our will. He sees the world in double-aspect, as Will and Idea. The world as an object in relation to a subject, as perception of a perceiver is Idea.

He does not believe that will causes the idea. Will and idea are one and same reality, seen from different perspectives. Their relationship is like two sides of coin, not that of cause and effect. The action of the will is nothing but the act of will objectified i.e. translated into perception

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) - being pessimistic, he believes the will to be a

mindless, aimless and non-rational urge. It is utterly devoid of all rationality. The will is wicked and evil, the cause of endless suffering.

Life is evil, and there is nothing but a continuous strife and war. The pain increases as the organisms go higher and higher in evolution. Knowledge affords no solution, as it makes one more conscious of the evil will and the pain of life. The genius suffers most of all. Life is nothing but a painful misery.

The reality is blind, irrational and evil. Love, progress and history are nothing but deceits and illusions because the will is never satisfied of suffering and life. The only way to reduce this misery is to suppress the will. The less we exercise the will, the less we will suffer. The lesser we desire, the lesser will be our misery. The root of all evils is the will to live. To repress and quench it is our only means of escape. The only way to reduce the suffering and unavoidable frustration is to minimize our desires. The only solution is a denial of the will to live.

Nietzsche was born in Germany in 1844 in a Christian family. His father was clergy man and it was assumed that Nietzsche would become a minister himself when he grew up. Fate, however, had the very opposite in store for Nietzsche, whose intelligence had begun to show its signs even in his student life. By the age of 18, Nietzsche had lost his faith in Christianity. In 1865, he happened to read Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea which had a marked influence on him. Nietzsche records “It seemed as if Schopenhauer were addressing me personally.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

After a life of illness and weakness, Nietzsche finally suffered a mental breakdown and became insane in 1889. He admitted to an asylum but his mother took him to her home. She loved him and took care of him till her death in 1897, after which his sister looked after him. Nietzsche had previously left his sister because she had married an anti-Semite, something which Nietzsche couldn’t tolerate. Elisabeth took up the job of publishing Nietzsche’s unpublished books and of promoting them. Elisabeth arranged and published Nietzsche’s notes as The Will to Power, but it is now well-known that she modified the original writings to impart her own ideology in them.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Nietzsche is an atheist and proclaims the death of God; “God is dead: but considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.” “God is dead,” because Christian ideology has ceased to play a role in the lives of the people, and that the idea of God has become useless. With this death of God, Europe is being haunted by Nihilism, a lack of any meaning, value or truth. It is generally believed that Nietzsche was an advocate of nihilism, but we must understand that this is not so. Nietzsche is not satisfied by nihilism; he sees it as a crisis being faced by the intellectual world. He considers it destructive to human culture, and leading to apathy towards life.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

We do not need saints or masses; we need Übermensch (‘Superman’ or ‘Overman’). “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that shall be surpassed.” Mankind’s existence is to be justified by the existence of the Superman. The sufferings and pains of the people are meaningless if they are necessary for the production of the great men. It is in time of distress and war that the human potentialities and abilities come to surface and are revealed. Hence, war and conflict is to be encouraged.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

He is in favor of strict discipline and training. The Superman should be tough, strong and powerful. He should even be cruel, if need arises. Evil is not to be despised. The Superman should have the ability and strength to endure pain, he wishes there to be more evil and more suffering. He is not soft and womanish. Power is the ultimate goal; “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? All that comes from weakness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Positivism began as a reaction to metaphysics. It is a philosophy based on the experience and empirical knowledge of natural phenomena.

Positivism and Utilitarianism

It restricts philosophical inquiry to the scientific problems, and treating philosophy as not something very different from science.

The founder of Positivism was a French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857).

Positivism and Utilitarianism

The Law of Three Stages. 1. Theological stage – every phenomenon is explained in terms of will of one or more deities, which are mythological supernatural beings. 2. The metaphysical stage in which metaphysics replaces religion and the phenomena are explained in abstract philosophical concepts. Last, is the positive stage, in which science gains superiority over metaphysical philosophy and all phenomena are explained in terms of cause and effect. All sciences pass through these stages.

Positivism and Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism attempts to define the ethical worth of an action on the basis of its utility value or its usefulness.

Hedonistic utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill analyzed happiness as a pleasure over pain.

Bentham believed that an action is not intrinsically good or bad, but that it is to be determined by its consequences i.e. how much pleasure it produces. Bentham believes in the happiness of the whole community, not just an individual, and hence the goal of an action is the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.

Positivism and Utilitarianism

The utilitarianism based on greatest happiness of greatest number works something like this: To determine the

ethical worth of an action, analyze how much happiness it leads to in every person, and add this happiness. The act that leads to the maximum total happiness is the one

that we ought to do.

Positivism and Utilitarianism

Bentham maintained that the justification of the criminal law in a community was to

coincide the interests of an individual and the interests of the community. For example,

stealing is in the interest of the individual but not in the interest of community. By setting up a punishment for theft, stealing is no longer of

benefit to the thief, and hence both the interests of the individual and community lie

in the same direction.

Karl Marx(1818-1883)

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is

the opium of the people.”

There are three aspects of the Marx’s philosophy. First is the metaphysics, which is the philosophy of dialectic essentially derived from Hegel, and a belief that history is being governed by dialectical forces. The second is an economic theory, which advocates a communistic economy over a capitalistic one. And the third is the ethical aspect, which shows how the capitalistic society has affected the relationships of men.

Karl Marx(1818-1883)

Marx was a materialist, but we call him a dialectical materialist or a historical materialist. He does not consider man as a passive receiver of the stimulus of an active object. Sensation, is for him, an interaction between the subject and object, in which both were affected. Man does not just gain knowledge about the world around but also changes it to suit his needs. It is a continual process of mutual adaptation, not a process of one-sided activity. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Marx calls the process as ‘dialectical’ because it goes on indefinitely and never arrives at an ultimate end.

Karl Marx(1818-1883)

According to this view of history, first there existed the king-states, which broke down into elements of rulers and the slaves. From this thesis and anti-thesis emerged a synthesis… a feudalistic society emerged. But soon the feudalistic society also broke up into lords and serfs. The conflict between the two resulted in the formation of modern capitalistic society. The capitalistic society has also divided into the thesis and antithesis. The most significant classes of the capitalism are the bourgeoisie, the class that owns the means of production, and the proletariat, the class that works for the bourgeoisie for wages. And there is a fundamental inconsistency between these two classes, which is giving rise to a state of conflict. This conflict between the thesis and antithesis will ultimately lead to a new synthesis—a socialistic society. Each stage in this dialectic is ethically superior to its previous stage.

Pragmatism and William James (1842-1910)

PRAGMATISM is basically founded by an American, William James.

He believed that an idea was true if it worked in practice, “it is true if it satisfies, is verifiable and verified in experience.”James believed that it was necessary to determine the “cash-value” of any idea i.e. what difference would it make to a person’s life if that idea were true.

Pragmatism and William James (1842-1910)

Theories and philosophies are therefore “instruments” which we employ in our lives to solve problems, and their truth is to be judged in terms of how successful they are in solving those problems. An idea is true if it works in our lives, an idea is false if it doesn’t.James has a special interest in religious issues and he believed that application of pragmatism could help resolve a number of issues.

Pragmatism and William James (1842-1910)

He argued that most religious beliefs pass this pragmatic test of being successful in practice, and are therefore ‘true’; they allow people to live a happy and contended life. If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in life, then ‘God exists’.James has a special interest in religious issues and he believed that application of pragmatism could help resolve a number of issues.

John Dewey became the leader of pragmatism after William James’s death. But while James is interested in applying pragmatism to religion, Dewey’s outlook is scientific and social.

His pragmatic theory came to be known as Instrumentalism. Dewey

concerned himself with broader social issues like education.

John Dewey (1859-1952)

He believed that education should not consist of imposing

a mass of facts and information on the minds of

students, but rather education should be ‘pragmatic’, it

should teach them how to deal with problems i.e. the

education should be based on the method of problem

solving.