A Little History of Philosophy
Nigel WarburtonA Little History of Philosophy Gönderileri
A Little History of Philosophy kitaplarını, A Little History of Philosophy sözleri ve alıntılarını, A Little History of Philosophy yazarlarını, A Little History of Philosophy yorumları ve incelemelerini 1000Kitap'ta bulabilirsiniz.Glimpses of Reality, Arthur Schopenhauer
"Life is painful and it would be better not to have been born.
Few people have such a pessimistic outlook, but Arthur
Schopenhauer (1788–1860) did. According to him, we are all
caught up in a hopeless cycle of wanting things, getting them,
and then wanting more things. It doesn’t stop until we die.
Whenever we seem to get what we want, we start wanting some-
thing else. You might think you would be content if you were a
millionaire, but you wouldn’t be for long. You’d want something
you hadn’t got. Human beings are like that. We’re never satisfied,
never stop craving for more than we have. It’s all very depressing."
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The Owl of Minerva, Georg W.F. Hegel
‘The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.’
"This was the view of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). But what does it
mean? Actually, that question ‘What does it mean?’ is one that
readers of Hegel’s works ask themselves a lot. His writing is
fiendishly difficult, partly because, like Kant’s, it is mostly
expressed in very abstract language and often uses terms that he
has himself invented. No one, perhaps not even Hegel, has
understood all of it. The statement about the owl is one of the
easier parts to decipher. This is his way of telling us that wisdom
and understanding in the course of human history will only
come fully at a late stage, when we’re looking back on what has
already happened, like someone looking back on the events of a
day as night falls."
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Practical Bliss
,
Jeremy Bentham
"If you visit University College London you may be surprised to
find Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), or rather what’s left of his
body, in a glass case. He is sitting looking out at you, with his
favourite walking cane that he nicknamed ‘Dapple’ resting
across his knees. His head is made of wax. The real one is
mummified and kept in a wooden box, though it used to be
on display. Bentham thought that his actual body – he called
it an auto-icon – would make a better memorial than a statue.
So when he died in 1832 he left instructions about how to deal
with his remains. The idea has never really caught on, though
Lenin’s body was embalmed and put on display in a special
mausoleum."
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What if Everyone Did That?
Immanuel Kant (2)
"There’s a knock at your door. Standing in front of you is a young
man who obviously needs help. He’s injured and is bleeding.
You take him in and help him, make him feel comfortable and
safe and phone for an ambulance. This is obviously the right
thing to do. But if you help him just because you feel sorry for
him, according to Immanuel Kant, that wouldn’t be a moral
action at all. Your sympathy is irrelevant to the morality of your
action. That’s part of your character, but nothing to do with
right and wrong. Morality for Kant wasn’t just about what you
do, but about why you do it. Those who do the right thing don’t
do it simply because of how they feel: the decision has to be
based on reason, reason that tells you what your duty is, regard-
less of how you happen to feel."
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Rose-Tinted Reality, Immanuel Kant (1)
"If you are wearing rose-tinted spectacles they will colour
every aspect of your visual experience. You may forget that you
are wearing them, but they will still affect what you see.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) believed that we are all walking
around understanding the world through a filter like this. The
filter is the human mind. It determines how we experience
everything and imposes a certain shape on that experience.
Everything we perceive takes place in time and space, and every
change has a cause. But according to Kant, that is not because of
the way reality ultimately is: it is a contribution of our minds.
We don’t have direct access to the way the world is. Nor can we
ever take the glasses off and see things as they truly are. We’re
stuck with this filter and without it we would be completely
unable to experience anything. All we can do is recognize that
it is there and understand how it affects and colours what we
experience."
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Born Free, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"In 1766 a small dark-eyed man in a long fur coat went to see a
play at the Drury Lane theatre in London. Most of the people
there, including the king, George III, were more interested in
this foreign visitor than in the play being performed on stage.
He seemed uncomfortable and was worried about his Alsatian
dog, which he’d had to leave locked in his room. This man didn’t
enjoy the sort of attention he got in the theatre and would have
been far happier out in the country somewhere on his own
looking for wild flowers. But who was he? And why did
everyone find him so fascinating? The answer is that this was
the great Swiss thinker and writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712–78). A literary and philosophical sensation, Rousseau’s
arrival in London, at David Hume’s invitation, caused the sort
of commotion and crowds that a famous pop star would today.
By this time the Catholic Church had banned several of his
books because they contained unconventional religious ideas.Rousseau believed that true religion came from the heart and
didn’t need religious ceremonies. But it was his political ideas
that caused the most trouble."
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