Professional Documents
Culture Documents
My Philosophy Book
An Assignment
Submitted to
Dr. Binoy Barman
Assistant Professor and Head,
Department of English
Faculty of Humanities and Social Science
Daffodil International University
Contents
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Full name Arthur Schopenhauer
Born 22 February 1788 (1788-02-22)
Died 21 September 1860 (aged 72)
Era 19th century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Kantianism, idealism
Main Metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics,
interests phenomenology, morality, psychology
Notable
Will, Fourfold root of reason, pessimism
ideas
Signature
Søren Kierkegaard
Sketch of Søren Kierkegaard by Niels Christian
Kierkegaard, c. 1840
Full name Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Born 5 May 1813 Copenhagen, Denmark
11 November 1855 (aged 42) Copenhagen,
Died
Denmark
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
Danish Golden Age Literary and Artistic
Tradition, precursor to Continental
philosophy,[1][2], Existentialism (agnostic,
School
atheistic, Christian), Postmodernism, Post-
structuralism, Existential psychology,
Absurdism, Neo-orthodoxy, and many more
Religion, metaphysics, epistemology,
Main
aesthetics, ethics, morality, psychology,
interests
philosophy of religion
Regarded as the father of Existentialism,
Notable angst, existential despair, Three spheres of
ideas human existence, knight of faith, infinite
qualitative distinction, leap of faith
Signature
Jean-Paul Sartre
Full name Jean-Paul Sartre
Born 21 June 1905 Paris, France
15 April 1980 (aged 74)
Died
Paris, France
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
Existentialism, Continental philosophy,
School
Marxism
Main Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics,
interests Politics, Phenomenology, Ontology
Notable "Existence precedes essence", "Bad
ideas faith","Nothingness"
Signature
Karl Marx.
Full name Karl Heinrich Marx
Born May 5, 1818, Trier, Prussia
March 14, 1883 (aged 64)
Died
London, United Kingdom
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Marxism, communism, Hegelianism
Main Politics, economics, philosophy, sociology,
interests history, class struggle
Co-founder of Marxism (with Engels),
surplus value, alienation and exploitation
Notable
of the worker, The Communist Manifesto,
ideas
Das Kapital, materialist conception of
history
Signature
Charles Darwin
12 February 1809
Born Mount House, Shrewsbury,
Shropshire, England
19 April 1882 (aged 73)
Died
Down House, Downe, Kent.
Residence England
Citizenship British
Nationality British
Ethnicity English
Fields Naturalist
Institutions Geological Society of London
Academic John Stevens Henslow
advisors Adam Sedgwick
The Voyage of the Beagle
Known for On The Origin of Species
Natural selection
Signature
Friedrich Nietzsche
Full name Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
October 15, 1844 Röcken bei Lützen,
Born
Prussia
Died August 25, 1900 , Weimar, Garmen
Era 19th century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
Weimar Classicism; precursor to
Continental philosophy, existentialism,
School
postmodernism, poststructuralism,
psychoanalysis
Main aesthetics, ethics, ontology, philosophy of
interests history, psychology, value-theory
Notable
Apollonian and Dionysian, death of God
ideas
Signature
René Descartes
Full name René Descartes
Born March 31, 1596,France
February 11, 1650 (aged 53)
Died
Stockholm, Sweden
Era 17th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
Cartesianism, Rationalism,
School
Foundationalism
Main Metaphysics, Epistemology, Science,
interests Mathematics
Cogito ergo sum, method of doubt,
Notable Cartesian coordinate system,
ideas Cartesian dualism, ontological
argument
John Locke
Full name John Locke
29 August 1632
Born
Wrington, Somerset, England
28 October 1704 (aged 72)Essex,
Died
England
Era 17th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophers
British Empiricism, Social Contract,
School
Natural Law
Main Metaphysics, Epistemology,
interests Philosophy of Mind, Education
Tabula rasa, "government with the
Notable
consent of the governed"; state of
ideas
nature; liberty and property
Signature
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Full name Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Born August 27, 1770 Stuttgart, Germany
November 14, 1831 (aged 61)
Died
Berlin, Germany
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
German Idealism; Founder of
School
Hegelianism; Historicism
Logic, Philosophy of history,
Main
Aesthetics, Religion, Metaphysics,
interests
Epistemology, Political Philosophy,
Notable Absolute idealism, Dialectic,
ideas Sublation, master-slave dialectic
Signature
Baruch Spinoza
Full name Baruch de Spinoza
November 24, 1632
Born
Amsterdam, Netherlands
February 21, 1677 (aged 44)
Died
The Hague, Netherlands
Era 17th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Rationalism, founder of Spinozism
Main
Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics
interests
Panentheism, Pantheism, Deism,
Notable neutral monism, intellectual and
ideas religious freedom / separation of
church and state, not contract
Signature
Baruch Spinoza’s Philosophy
The second problem left by Descartes (the relationship between the soul
-- "res cogitans" -- and the body -- "res extensa") remains open and
unsolved in Spinoza. He reduces these two Cartesian substances to two
attributes; and to explain their mutual dependence he is obliged to
affirm dogmatically the existence of the psycho-physical law, in virtue
of which what happens in the "attribute" of the soul automatically finds
its correlative in the "attribute" of the body.
My Own View
Spinoza's system did not meet with good reception at first, perhaps
because it was not understood. Idealism took it over because it found in
it the principal lineaments for a metaphysics in the idealist sense.
Starting from the principle that the will is the inner nature of the
body as an appearance in time and space, he concluded that the inner
reality of all material appearances is Will. Where Kant had concluded
that ultimate reality - the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) - lay beyond
being experienced, Schopenhauer postulated that the ultimate reality is
one universal will. This will is the inner nature of each experiencing
being and assumes in time and space the appearance of the body, which
is an idea. Accordingly existence is the expression of an insatiable,
pervasive, will generating a world that features such negatives as
conflict and suffering, senselessness, and futility as well as many
positives. It is the "will to live" that perpetuates this cosmic spectacle.
My Own View
My Own View
Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy has been a major influence in the
development of 20th century philosophy, especially in the movements
of Existentialism philosophy and Postmodernism. He was the first to
Introduce existentialist questions like Who am I? What is the role of
God in human life? What motivates as to work?
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy
My Own View
Marx had a special concern with how people relate to that most
fundamental resource of all, their own labour power. He wrote
extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the
dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but
developed a more materialist conception
My Own View
3) Food resources are limited, but are relatively constant most of the
time.
My Own View
Darwin imagined it might be possible that all life is descended from an
original species from ancient times. DNA evidence supports this idea.
Probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have
descended from some one primordial life form. There is grandeur in this
view of life that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the
fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most
beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
My Own View
He asserted that thinking is the sole aim, meaning and purpose of living!
This (in my opinion) is opposed to "Hedonism" which believes in
pleasure as the sole aim of humankind. His theory in a nutshell is 'cogito
ergo sum' meaning, ‘I think, therefore I am' He developed a dualistic
theory of mind (conscious experience) and matter. His approach was of
fundamental importance in the development of modern philosophy,
especially epistemology He has done extensive research on meditation,
reasoning and seeking truth in the sciences. He has extensively dwelt on
the relationship of the soul to the body, the nature of emotions and the
ways of controlling the emotions. He aimed to reach totally secure
foundations for knowledge. His method of systematic doubt to arrive at
the truth laid the foundation for subsequent development of philosophy.
His argument was that the sciences must be founded on certainty. He
invoked skepticism as a means of reaching certainty. Some of his
theories were paradoxical.
My Own View
Descartes held that part of the blood was a subtle fluid, which he called
animal spirits. The animal spirits, he believed, came into contact with
thinking substances in the brain and flowed out along the channels of the
nerves to animate the muscles and other parts of the body! Descartes
also believed that colors were caused by the rotation of "spheres" of
light, using the tennis ball as a model of a spinning sphere.
My Own View
Even more than Aristotle and the Stoics, Hegel believed that the study
of logic is an investigation into the fundamental structure of reality
itself. According to Hegel, all logic (and, hence, all of reality) is
dialectical in character. As Kant had noted in the Antinomies, serious
thought about one general description of the world commonly leads us
into a contemplation of its opposite. But Hegel did not suppose this to
be the end of the matter; he made the further supposition that the two
concepts so held in opposition can always be united by a shift to some
higher level of thought. Thus, the human mind invariably moves from
thesis to antithesis to synthesis, employing each synthesis as the thesis
for a new opposition to be transcended by yet a higher level, continuing
in a perpetual waltz of intellectual achievement.
My Own View
Hegel's philosophy is a rationalization of his early mysticism, stimulated
by Christian theology. He rejects the reality of finite and separate objects
and minds in space and time, the Kantian "thing-in-itself" and
establishes without Spinoza's dualism, an underlying all-embracing
unity, the Absolute. Only this rational whole is real and true. When we
make statements or otherwise draw attention to a particular, we separate
off this one aspect from the whole of reality, and this can therefore only
be partially true.