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These are Philosophers that have
contributed to shaping our times. Along with their personal info, are books
to read and review further the trains of thought they and others held. When reading this information, ALWAYS,
MEASURE IT AGAINST WHAT THE Bible says. So ….. you have to know the bible to
be able to decern properly their views. Remember ….. I didn’t buy your Bible for a display piece or dust
collector. – Read your Bible. Daddy
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As the heir of an
wealthy Athenian sculptor, Socrates used his financial independence as an opportunity
to invent the practice of philosophical dialogue. Since he wrote nothing of his
own, we are dependent upon contemporary writers like Aristophanes and Xenophon for our
information about his life. After dignified service as a soldier in the
Peloponnesian War, he lived for the rest of his life in Athens and devoted
nearly all of his time to free-wheeling discussion with its aristocratic young
citizens, insistently questioning their confidence in the truth of popular
opinions, even though he often offered no clear alternative. Unlike the
professional Sophists,
Socrates declined to accept payment for his work with students, many of whom
were fanatically loyal to him. Their parents, however, were often displeased
with his influence, and his association with opponents of the democratic regime
made him a controversial political figure. An Athenian jury officially
convicted Socrates (of corrupting youth and interfering with the religion of
the city) and sentenced him to death in 399 B.C.E. Accepting this outcome,
Socrates drank hemlock and died in the company of his friends and
disciples.
Our best sources of
information about Socrates's philosophical views are the early dialogues of his
student Plato, who attempted to provide a
faithful picture of the methods and teachings of the master. Here the extended
conversations of Socrates aim at understanding (and, therefore, achieving) virtue {Gk. areth [aretê]} through the careful application of a dialectical method
that uses critical inquiry to undermine the plausibility of widely-held
doctrines. In Euqufrwn (Euthyphro),
for example, Socrates systematically refutes the superficial notion of piety or
moral rectitude defended by a confident young man. Plato's Apologhma (Apology)
is an account of Socrates's (unsuccessful) speech in his own defense before the
Athenian jury; it includes a detailed description of the motives and goals of philosophical activity
as he practiced it. The Kritwn (Crito)
reports that during Socrates's imprisonment he responded to friendly efforts to
secure his escape by seriously debating whether or not an individual
citizen can ever be justified in refusing to obey the laws
of the state.
The Socrates of the Menwn (Meno)
investigates the nature
of virtue, defending the doctrine of recollection
as an explanation of our most significant knowledge and maintaining that
knowledge and virtue are so closely related that no human agent ever knowingly chooses evil:
improper conduct is a product of ignorance rather than of weakness of the will
{Gk. akrasia [akrásia]}. The same view
is also defended in the PrwtagoraV
(Protagoras),
along with the unity of the virtues. Although Socrates continues to appear as a
character in the later dialogues of Plato, these writings more often express
philosophical positions Plato himself developed long after Socrates's death.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, ed.
by Hugh Tredennick (Penguin, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates,
ed. by Hugh Tredennick (Penguin, 1990) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, ed. by Hugh H. Benson (Oxford, 1992) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Christopher Taylor, Socrates (Oxford,
1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Anthony Gottlieb, Socrates
(Routledge, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Gregory Vlastos, Socrates, Ironist and Moral
Philosopher (Cornell, 1991) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity
(Princeton, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates
(Anchor, 1989) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information on Socrates includes:
·
Richard Hooker's
excellent treatment.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
The son of wealthy
and influential Athenian parents, Plato began his philosophical career as a
student of Socrates. When the master died, Plato
travelled in Italy, studied with students of Pythagoras, and spent
several years advising the ruling family of Syracuse. He returned to Athens and
established his own school of philosophy, the Academy, in 387. For students
enrolled there, Plato tried both to pass on the heritage of a Socratic style of
thinking and to guide their progress through mathematical learning to the
achievement of abstract philosophical truth. The written dialogues on which his
enduring reputation rests also serve both of these aims.
In his earliest
literary efforts, Plato tried to convey the spirit of Socrates's teaching by
presenting accurate reports of the master's
conversational interactions, for which these dialogues are our primary
source of information. Early dialogues are typically devoted to investigation
of a single issue, about which a conclusive result is rarely achieved. Thus,
the Euqufrwn (Euthyphro)
raises a significant doubt about whether morally right action can be defined in terms of divine
approval by pointing out a significant dilemma about any appeal
to authority in defence of moral judgments. The Apologhma (Apology)
offers a description of the
philosophical life as Socrates presented it in his own defense before the Athenian
jury. The Kritwn (Crito)
uses the circumstances
of Socrates's imprisonment to ask whether an individual citizen is ever justified in refusing to
obey the state.
Although they continue
to use the talkative Socrates as a fictional character, the middle dialogues
of Plato develop, express, and defend his own, more firmly established,
conclusions about central philosophical issues. Beginning with the Menwn (Meno),
for example, Plato not only reports the Socratic notion that no one knowingly does
wrong, but also introduces the doctrine of
recollection in an attempt to discover whether or not virtue can be taught.
The Faidwn (Phaedo)
continues development of Platonic notions by presenting the doctrine of the Forms in support of a series of arguments
that claim to demonstrate the immortality of the
human soul.
The masterpiece
among the middle dialogues is Plato's Politeia (Republic).
It begins with a Socratic conversation about the nature of justice
but proceeds directly to an extended discussion
of the virtues
(Gk. areth [aretê]) of justice (Gk. dikaiwsunh [dikaiôsunê]), wisdom (Gk. sofia [sophía]), courage (Gk. andreia [andreia]), and moderation (Gk. swfrosunh [sophrosúnê]) as they appear both in individual human beings
and in society as a
whole. This plan for the ideal society or person requires detailed accounts
of human knowledge
and of the kind of educational
program by which it may be achieved by men and women alike,
captured in a powerful image of the possibilities for human life in the allegory of the cave.
The dialogue concludes with a review of various forms of government,
an explicit description of the ideal state, in which only philosophers are fit
to rule, and an attempt to show that justice is better than
injustice.
Among the other dialogues of this
period are Plato's treatments of human emotion in general and of love in
particular in the FaidroV (Phaedrus)
and Sumposion (Symposium).
Plato's later writings
often modify or completely abandon the formal structure of dialogue. They
include a critical examination of the theory of forms in ParmenidhV
(Parmenides),
an extended discussion of the problem of knowledge in QeaithtoV (Theaetetus),
cosmological speculations in TimaioV (Timaeus), and an
interminable treatment of government in the unfinished LegeiV (Laws).
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Platonis opera, ed. by
J. Burnet (Oxford, 1899-1906)
·
Plato, Complete Works, ed. by John M.
Cooper and D. S Hutchinson (Hackett, 1997) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. (Princeton, 1961) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Great Dialogues of Plato, tr. by W. H. D. Rouse (Signet, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Plato, The Republic, tr. by G. M.
Grube (Hackett, 1992) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. by Richard Kraut (Cambridge, 1992) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Bernard A. O. Williams, Plato
(Routledge, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
R. M. Hare, Plato (Oxford, 1983) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
David Melling, Understanding Plato
(Oxford, 1988) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Feminist Interpretations of Plato, ed. by Nancy Tuana (Penn State, 1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, ed. by Gregory Vlastos (Anchor, 1971)
·
Plato II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art,
Religion, ed. by Gregory Vlastos (Anchor, 1971) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John M. Cooper, Reason and Emotion
(Princeton, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Nickolas Pappas, Routledge Philosophy
Guidebook to Plato and the Republic (Routledge, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Daryl H. Rice, Guide to Plato's Republic
(Oxford, 1997) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. by Richard Kraut (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity
(Princeton, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in
Plato and Aristotle, by Bat-Ami Bar On (SUNY,
1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Plato includes:
·
* Exploring Plato's Dialogues, the fine source from Anthony F.
Beavers.
·
Richard Hooker's
excellent treatment.
·
A thorough explanation of
Plato's philosophy from* Christopher S. Planeaux.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
Bernard Suzanne's alternative
interpretation of Plato and his dialogues.
·
William Turner's article in The Catholic
Encyclopedia.
·
Eric Weisstein's discussion at Treasure
Trove of Scientific Biography.
·
Björn Christensson's brief
guide to on-line work on Plato.
·
A literary analysis of Plato's work in The Perseus Encyclopedia.
·
Discussion of Plato's mathematical thought at Mathematical MacTutor.
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Born at Stagira in
northern Greece, Aristotle was the most notable product of the educational
program devised by Plato; he spent twenty years of his
life studying at the Academy. When Plato died, Aristotle returned to his native
Macedonia, where he is supposed to have participated in the education of
Philip's son, Alexander (the Great). He came back to Athens with Alexander's
approval in 335 and established his own school at the Lyceum, spending most of
the rest of his life engaged there in research, teaching, and writing. His
students acquired the name "peripatetics" from the master's habit of
strolling about as he taught. Although the surviving works of Aristotle
probably represent only a fragment of the whole, they include his
investigations of an amazing range of subjects, from logic, philosophy, and ethics to physics,
biology, psychology, politics,
and rhetoric. Aristotle appears to have thought through his views as he wrote,
returning to significant issues at different stages of his own development. The
result is less a consistent system of thought than a complex record of
Aristotle's thinking about many significant issues.
The aim of
Aristotle's logical treatises (known collectively as the Organon)
was to develop a
universal method of reasoning by means of which it would be possible to
learn everything there is to know about reality. Thus, the Categories
proposes a scheme for the
description of particular things in terms of their properties, states, and
activities. On Interpretation, Prior
Analytics, and Posterior
Analytics examine the nature of deductive inference, outlining the system of syllogistic
reasoning from true propositions that later came to be known as categorical logic.
Though not strictly one of the logical works, the Physics
contributes to the universal method by distinguishing among the
four causes which may be used to explain everything, with special concern
for why things are the way they are and the apparent role of chance
in the operation of the world. In other treatises, Aristotle applied this
method, with its characteristic emphasis on teleological explanation, to
astronomical and biological explorations of the natural world
In Metafusikh
(Metaphysics)
Aristotle tried to justify the entire enterprise by grounding it all in an abstract study of
being qua being. Although Aristotle rejected the Platonic
theory of forms,
he defended his own
vision of ultimate reality, including the eternal existence of substance. On The Soul
uses the notion of a hylomorphic
composite to provide a detailed account of the functions exhibited by
living things—vegetable, animal, and human—and explains the use of sensation and reason to achieve genuine knowledge.
That Aristotle was interested in more than a strictly scientific exploration of
human nature is evident from the discussion of literary art
(particularly tragedy) in Peri PoihtikhV
(Poetics)
and the methods of persuasion in the ‘RhtoreiaV (Rhetoric).
Aristotle made
several efforts to explain how moral conduct contributes to the good life for
human agents, including the Eqikh EudaimonhV
(Eudemian Ethics) and the Magna Moralia,
but the most complete surviving statement of his views on morality
occurs in the Eqikh Nikomacoi
(Nicomachean
Ethics). There he considered the natural desire to achieve happiness, described
the operation of human
volition and moral
deliberation, developed a theory of each virtue as the mean between vicious
extremes, discussed the value of three kinds of
friendship, and defended his conception of an ideal life of
intellectual pursuit.
But on Aristotle's
view, the lives of individual human beings are invariably linked together in a social
context. In the Peri PoliV
(Politics)
he speculated about the
origins of the state, described and assessed the relative merits of various
types of government, and listed the obligations of the individual citizen. He
may also have been the author of a model PoliteiaV Aqhnawn
(Constitution
of Athens), in which the abstract notion of constitutional
government is applied to the concrete life of a particular society.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Aristotelis opera, ed. by
I. Bekker (Prussian Academy, 1831-70)
·
The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. by Jonathan Barnes.(Princeton, 1984)
o
vol. 1 [includes the logical works, Physics,
treatises on astronomy and animals, and Of the Soul] {Order this book from Amazon.com}
o
vol. 2 [includes additional scientific treatises, Metaphysics,
the works on ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, and Poetics.]
{Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. by Richard McKeon (Random House, 1941) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Aristotle : Introductory Readings, tr. by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine (Hackett, 1996) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Nichomachean Ethics, tr. by
Terence Irwin (Hackett, 1985) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, ed. by Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Aristotle the Philosopher, ed. by J. L. Ackrill (Oxford, 1981) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Henry Veatch, Aristotle, a Contemporary
Appreciation (Indiana, 1974)
·
Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to
Understand (Cambridge, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle, ed. by Cynthia A. Freeland (Penn. State, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Kenneth McLeish, Aristotle
(Routledge, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Joseph Owens, Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian
Metaphysics (Pontifical Institute, 1978) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Essays on Aristotle's De Anima, ed. by Martha Nussbaum and Amelie Rorty (Clarendon, 1996) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John M. Cooper, Reason and Emotion
(Princeton, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Sarah Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle
(Oxford, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Aristotle's Ethics: Critical Essays, ed. by Nancy Sherman (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
J. O. Urmson, Aristotle's Ethics
(Blackwell, 1988) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Anthony Kenny, Aristotle's Theory of the
Will (Yale, 1979)
·
Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and
Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford, 1997) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Aristotle includes:
·
Richard Hooker's
excellent treatment.
·
a thorough article in * The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
William Turner's full treatment in The Catholic
Encyclopedia.
·
articles in The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy on:
o
Aristotle's
logic by Robin Smith.
o
Aristotle's
metaphysics by S. Marc Cohen.
o
Aristotle's
political theory by Fred D. Miller, Jr..
·
Björn Christensson's guide
to Aristotle studies.
·
Gordon L. Ziniewicz on the physics and
metaphysics and the ethics of Aristotle.
·
the excellent treatment of virtue ethics from Lawrence Hinman.
·
A bibliography of recent articles from S. Marc
Cohen.
·
Eric Weisstein's entry in Treasure
Trove of Scientific Biography.
·
Aristotle and the morally
excellent brain, from David DeMoss.
·
A paper on Aristotle's treatment of
homosexuality by Guy Bouchard.
·
an article by D. K. House
on whether Aristotle understood Plato.
·
A literary analysis in The Perseus Encyclopedia.
·
an account of Aristotle's contribution to mathematics from
Mathematical MacTutor
|
In 1598, Niccolò
Machiavelli began his career as an active politician and diplomat in the independent
city-state of Florence. After more than a decade of public service, he was
driven from his post when the republic collapsed. Repeated efforts to win the
confidence and approval of the new regime were unsuccessful, and Machiavelli
was forced into retirement and a life of scholarship about the political
process instead of participation in it. The books for which he is remembered
were published only after his death.
Machiavelli
originally wrote Principe (The Prince) (1513) in hopes of securing the favor
of the ruling Medici family. It is an intensely practical guide to the exercise
of raw political power over a renaissance principality. Allowing for the
unpredictable influence of fortune, Machiavelli argued that it is primarily the character or virtue or
skill of the individual leader that determines the success of a state. The
book surveys various bold means of acquiring and
maintaining the principality and evaluates each of them solely by reference
to its likelihood of augmenting the glory of the prince. It is this focus on
practical success by any means, even at the expense of traditional moral
values, that earned Machiavelli's scheme a reputation for ruthlessness,
deception, and cruelty.
His Dell'arte
della guerra (The Art of War) (1520) explains the
acquisition, maintenance, and use of a military force. Even in his more
leisurely reflections on the political process, Machiavelli often wrote in a
similar vein. The Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio (Discourses
on Livy) (1531) review the history of the Roman republic, with greater
emphasis on the role of fortune and a clear admiration for republican
government. Here, too, however, Machiavelli's conception of the proper
application of morality to practical political life is one that judges the
skill of all participants in terms of the efficacy with which they achieve
noble ends. Whatever the form of government, Machiavelli held, only success and
glory really matter.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere, ed. by
Sergio Bertelli and Franco Gaeta (Feltrinelli, 1960- )
·
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, tr.
by George Bull (Penguin, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses, tr.
by Leslie J. Walker and Bernard Crick (Viking, 1985) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
Machiavelli, ed. by
Maurizio Viroli (Oxford, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Harvey Claflin Mansfield, Machiavelli's
Virtue (Chicago, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli
(Chicago, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Machiavelli includes:
·
Philip Grose's excellent * collection of links
about Machiavelli.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
A brief article in The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
As a brilliant and self-educated
(but undisciplined and unconventional) thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent
most of his life being driven by controversy back and forth between Paris and
his native Geneva. His autobiographical Les Confessions (Confessions) (1783) offer a thorough (if somewhat
self-serving) account of his turbulent life.
Rousseau first
attracted wide-spread attention with his prize-winning essay Discours
sur les Sciences et les Arts (Discourse on the Sciences and
the Arts) (1750), in which he decried the harmful effects of modern
civilization. He continued to explore this theme throughout his career,
proposing in Émile,
ou l'education (1762) a method of education that would minimize the
damage by noticing, encouraging, and following the natural proclivities of the
student instead of striving to eliminate them.
Rousseau began to
apply these principles to political issues specifically in his Discours
sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality) (1755), which maintains that every variety of injustice found in human
society is an artificial result of the control exercised by defective
political and intellectual influences over the healthy natural impulses of otherwise
noble savages. The alternative he proposed in Du
contrat social (On the Social
Contract) (1762) is a civil society
voluntarily formed by its citizens and wholly governed by
reference to the general
will [Fr. volonté
générale] expressed in their unanimous consent to authority.
Although the
authorities made every effort to suppress Rousseau's writings, the ideas they
expressed, along with those of Locke, were of great influence during the French
Revolution. (For a very different interpretation of that historical event, you
might wish to look at Edmund
Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).)
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes,
ed. by B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond (Pléiade, 1959-)
·
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract,
tr. by Maurice Cranston (Penguin, 1987) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and
Other Early Political Thought, ed. by Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge,
1997) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions,
ed. by Patrick Coleman and Angela Scholar (Oxford, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or on Education,
tr. by Allan Bloom (Basic, 1979) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
Robert Wokler, Rousseau (Oxford,
1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Elizabeth Rose Wingrove, Rousseau's Republican
Romance (Princeton, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Rousseau includes:
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
A brief article in The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
·
An article on The Social Contract in The Catholic
Encyclopedia.
·
Björn Christensson's brief
guide to Internet resources.
|
Born the son of a
Lutheran pastor in Röcken, Saxony, Friedrich Nietzsche quickly abandoned his
own pursuit of theology in order to specialize in philology at Leipzig. His study
of classical literature led to an academic appointment at Basel and the
publication of Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The
Birth of Tragedy) (1872), with its distinction between Apollonian and
Dionysian cultures. When ill health forced an early end to his teaching career,
Nietzsche began to produce the less scholarly, quasi-philosophical, and
anti-religious works for which he is now known, including Menschliches,
allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human) (1878), Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1883), Die
Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The
Gay Science) (1882), and Jenseits
von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil) (1886).
Nietzsche never recovered from the mental collapse he suffered in 1889; his Der
Wille zur Macht (Will to Power) (1901) and the
autobiographical Ecce
Homo (Ecce Homo) (1908) were published posthumously.
Nietzsche sharply
criticized the Greek tradition's over-emphasis on reason in his Die
Götzendämmerung (Twilight
of the Idols) (1889). Reliance on abstract concepts in a quest for
absolute truth is merely a symptom of the degenerate personalities of
philosophers like Socrates. From this Nietzsche concluded that traditional philosophy and
religion are both erroneous and harmful.
Progress beyond the
stultifying influence of philosophy, then, requires a thorough
"revaluation of values." In Zur Geneologie der Moral (On
the Genealogy of Morals) (1887) Nietzsche bitterly decried the slave
morality enforced by social punishment and religious guilt. Only the noble
one—the Übermensch—can
rise above all moral
distinctions to achieve a healthy life of truly human worth.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Werke,
ed. by Georgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (de Gruyter, 1967- )
·
Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. by Peter Gay (Modern Library, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
A Nietzsche Reader, tr. by
R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin, 1978) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and
Evil, tr. by Helen Zimmern (Prometheus, 1989) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Birth of
Tragedy, ed. by Douglas Smith (Oxford, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How
One Becomes What One Is, tr. by R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin, 1993) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Genealogy
of Morality and Other Writings, ed. by Keith Ansell-Pearson and Carol
Diethe (Cambridge, 1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, tr. by R.J. Hollingdale and Walter Kauffmann (Penguin,
1978) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the
Idols or How to Philosophize With a Hammer, ed. Duncan Large (Oxford,
1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to
Power, tr. by R. Hollingdale and Walter Kaufmann (Random House, 1987) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche , ed. by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Marie Higgins (Cambridge, 1996) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Michael Tanner, Nietzsche (Oxford,
1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and
His Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. by Kelly Oliver and Marilyn Pearsall (Penn State, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche (Routledge,
1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Richard Schacht, Nietzsche
(Routledge, 1985) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of
Interpretation, ed. by David B. Allison (MIT, 1985) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, What
Nietzsche Really Said (Schocken, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Reading Nietzsche, ed. by
Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (Oxford, 1990) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
James I. Porter, The Invention of Dionysus:
An Essay on the Birth of Tragedy (Stanford, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Arthur Coleman Danto, Nietzsche as
Philosopher (Columbia, 1965) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Nietzsche includes:
·
Douglas Thomas's outstanding *
Nietzsche page.
·
Robert Wicks's article in The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
Katharena Eiermann's Nietzcsche page.
·
Gary Brent Madison on Nietzsche's influence on postmodern
thinkers.
·
G. J. Mattey's lecture on
Nietzsche's metaphysics.
·
A comparison of Nietzsche and
Kant by Scarlett Marton.
·
An interesting page (in German) from Jens Suckow.
·
Björn Christensson's brief
guide to Internet resources.
|
Born to a Christian mother
and pagan father at Tagaste in North Africa, Augustine was a confirmed Manichaean during his
early years as a student and teacher of rhetoric at Carthage and Rome. But in
Milan, during his early thirties, he began to study Neoplatonic philosophy
under the guidance of Ambrose and eventually converted to Christianity. An
account of his early life and conversion, together with a reasoned defense of
his Neoplatonic principles, may be found in the Confessiones
(Confessions) (401). He was named the Christian
bishop of Hippo (Annaba, Algeria) in 396, and devoted the remaining decades of
his life to the formation of an ascetic religious community.
Augustine argued
against the skeptics
that genuine human knowledge can be established with
certainty. His explanation of human nature and
agency combined stoic
and Christian elements. But it was by reference to the abstract philosophy of Plato that Augustine sought to prove the existence of god.
Acknowledging the difficulties of divine control and foreknowledge, he used an
analysis of the nature of time to defend human freedom in De
Gratia et Libero Aribitrio (On Grace and
Free Will).
In De Civitate
Dei (The City of God) (413-427) Augustine distinguished
religion and morality from politics and tried to
establish the proper relations among them, arguing for the church's strict
independence from (if not its outright superiority to) the civil state. You
might be interested in viewing portions of a Dutch library's copy of a
fifteenth-century illuminated
manuscript of this text.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Sancti Aurelii Augustini opera omnia (Paris, 1679-1700)
·
The Essential Augustine, ed. by Vernon J. Bourke (Hackett, 1974)
·
Augustine, The Confessions, ed. by
Susan B. Varenne (Vintage, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Augustine, City of God, tr. by Marcus
Dods (Modern Library, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
Henry Chadwick, Augustine (Oxford,
1986) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
James Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of
Virtue (Cambridge, 1992) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Augustine includes:
·
James J. O'Donnell's * excellent
survey of Internet resources.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
John F. Callahan's lecture on Augustine and
the Greek Philosophers.
·
a thorough article in The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
·
Michael Mendelson's article in The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
·
A lecture on Augustine from Charles Ess.
·
Björn Christensson's brief
guide to Augustine studies.
·
Robert Sarkissian's philosophical
summary.
|
Although he
completed a philosophical education at Oxford, John Locke declined the offer of
a permanent academic position in order to avoid committing himself to a
religious order. Having also studied medicine, he served for many years as
private physician and secretary to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of
Shaftesbury and one of the Lord Proprietors of the Carolina Colonies. Locke's
involvement with this controversial political figure led to a period of
self-imposed exile in Holland during the 1680s, but after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 he held several minor governmental offices. A friend of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, Locke
was also an early member of the Royal Society. He studied and wrote on philosophical,
scientific, and political matters throughout his life, but the works for which
he is best known were published in a single, sudden burst.
The fundamental
principles of Locke's philosophy are presented in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the
culmination of twenty years of reflection on the origins of human knowledge.
According to Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas,
and he devoted much of the Essay to an extended argument that all
of our ideas—simple or complex—are ultimately derived from experience.
The consequence of this empiricist approach
is that the knowledge of which we are capable is severely limited in
its scope and certainty. Our knowledge of material substances, for
example, depends heavily on the secondary qualities by reference to which we name
them, while their real inner natures derive from the primary qualities of
their insensible parts.
Nevertheless, Locke
held that we have no grounds for complaint about the limitations of our
knowledge, since a proper application of our cognitive capacities is enough to guide our action
in the practical conduct of life. The Essay brought great fame,
and Locke spent much of the rest of his life responding to admirers and critics
by making revisions in later editions of the book, including detailed accounts
of human volition
and moral freedom, the personal
identity on which our responsibility as moral agents depends, and the
dangers of religious enthusiasm. One additional section that was never included
in the Essay itself is Of the Conduct of the Understanding, a practical
guide to the achievement of useful beliefs about the world. The bachelor philosopher's
notions about childrearing appeared in Some
Thoughts concerning Education (1693).
By contrast, Locke
chose to avoid controversy by publishing his political writings anonymously.
With the Two Treatises of Civil Government (1690) Locke
established himself as a political theorist of the highest order. The First
Treatise is a detailed refutation of the (now-forgotten) monarchist
theories of Robert
Filmer, but the Second Treatise of Government offers a systematic
account of the foundations of political obligation. On Locke's view, all rights
begin in the individual
property interest created by an investment of labor. The social structure or
commonwealth, then, depends for its formation and maintenance on the
express consent of those who are governed by its political powers. Majority
rule thus becomes the cornerstone of all political order, and dissatisfied
citizens reserve a lasting right to revolution.
Similarly, Locke's Letter
Concerning Toleration (1689) argued for a broad (though not
limitless) acceptance of alternative religious convictions.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
John Locke, Works (Clarendon, 1975- )
·
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. by Peter H. Nidditch (Clarendon, 1989) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning
Education and of the Conduct of the Understanding, ed. by Ruth W. Grant
and Nathan Tarcov (Hackett, 1996) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John Locke, The Second Treatise on Civil
Government (Prometheus Books, 1986) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
(Prometheus Books, 1990) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
Richard I. Aaron, John Locke
(Clarendon, 1971)
·
Nicholas Jolley, Locke: His Philosophical
Thought (Oxford, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John W. Yolton, Locke and the Way of Ideas
(St. Augustine, 1993) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
The Cambridge Companion to Locke, ed. by Vere Chappell (Cambridge, 1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Locke on Human Understanding, ed. by I. C. Tiption (Oxford, 1977)
·
Locke's Philosophy: Content and Context, ed. by G. A. J. Rogers (Oxford, 1997) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Michael Ayers, Locke: Epistemology and
Ontology (Routledge, 1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John L. Mackie, Problems from Locke
(Oxford, 1976) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Michael Ayers, Locke (Routledge,
1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
in Focus, ed. by Gary Fuller, Robert Stecker, and John P.
Wright (Routledge, 2000) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
E. J. Lowe, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook
to Locke on Human Understanding (Routledge, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
David L. Thomas, Locke on Government
(Routledge, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Locke includes:
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
A thorough article in The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
·
G. J. Mattey's lectures on Locke.
·
A section on Locke from Alfred Weber's history of philosophy.
·
Discussion of Locke's critique of
innatism by Syliane Charles.
·
Björn Christensson's brief
guide to Internet resources.
|
Born and educated in
Paris, Simone de Beauvoir was among the first women permitted to complete a
program of study at the École Normale Supérieure. Through her lifelong
friendship with Sartre, she contributed significantly
to the development and expression of existentialist philosophy.
In Le Deuxième
Sexe (The Second Sex) (1949), de Beauvoir traced the
development of male oppression through historical, literary, and mythical
sources, attributing its contemporary effects on women to a systematic
objectification of the male as a positive norm. This consequently identifies
the female as Other, which commonly leads to a loss of social and personal
identity, the variety of alienation unique to
the experience of women. Her works of fiction focus on women who take
responsibility for themselves by making life-altering decisions, and the many volumes
of her own autobiography exhibit the application of similar principles in
reflection on her own experiences.
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
Simone De Beauvoir: A Critical Reader, ed. by Elizabeth Fallaize (Routledge, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex,
tr. by H. M. Parshley (Vintage, 1989) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
The Prime of Life: The Autobiography of Simone de
Beauvoir (Marlowe, 1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Secondary sources:
·
Margaret A. Simons, Beauvoir and the Second
Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism (Rowman &
Littlefield, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Debra B. Bergoffen, The Philosophy of Simone
de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities (SUNY, 1996)
{Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Simone de Beauvoir's the Second Sex: New
Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. by Ruth Evans (St.
Martin's, 1998) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Feminist Interpretations of Simone De Beauvoir, ed. by Margaret A. Simons (Penn State, 1995) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Sally Scholz, On De Beauvoir
(Wadsworth, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Beauvoir includes:
·
Melanie Garneau's * excellent
site on Beauvoir.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
a brief
summary at The Window.
·
Kristin Switala's brief
bibliography at the Feminist Theory Website.
·
An analysis of philosophical
influences on The Second Sex from Margaret Simons.
|
Educated at Paris
and Göttingen, Jean-Paul Sartre participated actively in the French resistance to
German occupation. Recognizing a connection between the principles of
existentialism and the concerns of social and political struggle, he wrote
philosophy, fiction, and political treatises, becoming one of the most
respected leaders in post-war French culture. Sartre declined the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1964.
l'Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness) (1943) offers an
account of existence in general, including both that of objects and the
being-for-itself that only humans have. Sartre devotes particular concern to
human emotions and action, including the self-deception by
which one may try to elude
the consequences of freedom. In the lecture l'Existentialisme est un
humanisme ("Existentialism is a Humanism") (1946), Sartre described the
human condition in summary form: freedom entails total
responsibility, in the face of which we experience anguish, forlornness, and
despair. Sartre's Marxist inclinations are more evident in Critique
de la raison dialectique (Dialectical Reason) (1960).
Recommended
Reading:
Primary sources:
·
The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. by Robert D. Cummings (Random House, 1972) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness : A
Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, tr. by Hazel E. Barnes (Washington
Square, 1993) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human
Emotions (Lyle Stuart, 1984) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, ed. by Christina Howells (Cambridge, 1992) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. by Julien S. Murphy (Penn State, 1999) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
·
Gregory McCulloch, Using Sartre: An
Analytical Introduction to Early Sartrean Themes (Routledge, 1994) {Order this book from Amazon.com}
Additional on-line
information about Sartre includes:
·
Katharena Eiermann's discussion of Sartre at The Realm of Existentialism.
·
The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
·
Andy Blunden's biography of Sartre.
·
An interesting page (in German) from Jens Suckow.
·
Björn Christensson's brief
guide to Internet resources.
