Hedonism First published Tue Apr 20, 2004 Motivational hedonism is the claim that only pleasure or pain

motivates us. It is the most significant form of psychological hedonism. Normative hedonism is the claim that all and only pleasure has worth or value, and all and only pain has disvalue. Jeremy Bentham endorsed both sorts of hedonism in the ringing passage that opens his An Introduction to the Principles of Moraals and Legislation: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do (Bentham 1789). Other major contributors to debate about hedonism include Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Moore, Sidgwick, Ross, and Broad. The discussion below nevertheless proceeds analytically rather than historically, discussing each main form of hedonism in turn. Pleasure will here be understood broadly, to include all pleasant feeling or experience, such as elation, ecstacy, delight, joy, and enjoyment. Pain will be taken to include all unpleasant feeling or experience: aches, throbs, irritations, anxiety, anguish, chagrin, discomfort, despair, grief, depression, guilt and remorse. Ordinary language must be stretched to accommodate these broad usages. Pleasure and pain themselves might be states, states of affairs, things, events or properties. Below, pleasurableness and painfulness will be used when talk of properties is intended; and pleasure and pain will do duty for all the other options. The intention is to avoid commitment as to which category pleasure and pain fit into. Further economy will often be secured by making pleasure do duty for pleasure or pleasurableness.

Existentialism First published Mon Aug 23, 2004; substantive revision Mon Oct 11, 2010 Like rationalism and empiricism, existentialism is a term that belongs to intellectual history. Its definition is thus to some extent one of historical convenience. The term was explicitly adopted as a self-description by Jean-Paul Sartre, and through the wide dissemination of the postwar literary and philosophical output of Sartre and his associatesnotably Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camusexistentialism became identified with a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s. Among the major philosophers identified as existentialists (many of whomfor instance Camus and Heidegger repudiated the label) were Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber in Germany, Jean Wahl and Gabriel Marcel in France, the Spaniards Jos Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno, and the Russians Nikolai Berdyaev and Lev Shestov. The nineteenth century

philosophers, Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, came to be seen as precursors of the movement. Existentialism was as much a literary phenomenon as a philosophical one. Sartre's own ideas were and are better known through his fictional works (such as Nausea and No Exit) than through his more purely philosophical ones (such as Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason), and the postwar years found a very diverse coterie of writers and artists linked under the term: retrospectively, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and Kafka were conscripted; in Paris there were Jean Genet, Andr Gide, Andr Malraux, and the expatriate Samuel Beckett; the Norwegian Knut Hamsun and the Romanian Eugene Ionesco belong to the club; artists such as Alberto Giacometti and even Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, and filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and Ingmar Bergman were understood in existential terms. By the mid 1970s the cultural image of existentialism had become a clich, parodized in countless books and films by Woody Allen. It is sometimes suggested, therefore, that existentialism just is this bygone cultural movement rather than an identifiable philosophical position; or, alternatively, that the term should be restricted to Sartre's philosophy alone. But while a philosophical definition of existentialism may not entirely ignore the cultural fate of the term, and while Sartre's thought must loom large in any account of existentialism, the concept does pick out a distinctive cluster of philosophical problems and helpfully identifies a relatively distinct current of twentieth- and now twenty-first century philosophical inquiry, one that has had significant impact on fields such as theology (through Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and others) and psychology (from Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss to Otto Rank, R. D. Laing, and Viktor Frankl). What makes this current of inquiry distinct is not its concern with existence in general, but rather its claim that thinking about human existence requires new categories not found in the conceptual repertoire of ancient or modern thought; human beings can be understood neither as substances with fixed properties, nor as subjects interacting with a world of objects. On the existential view, to understand what a human being is it is not enough to know all the truths that natural scienceincluding the science of psychologycould tell us. The dualist who holds that human beings are composed of independent substancesmind and bodyis no better off in this regard than is the physicalist, who holds that human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral

thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices. Existentialism, therefore, may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence. To approach existentialism in this categorial way may seem to conceal what is often taken to be its heart (Kaufmann 1968:12), namely, its character as a gesture of protest against academic philosophy, its anti-system sensibility, its flight from the iron cage of reason. But while it is true that the major existential philosophers wrote with a passion and urgency rather uncommon in our own time, and while the idea that philosophy cannot be practiced in the disinterested manner of an objective science is indeed central to existentialism, it is equally true that all the themes popularly associated with existentialismdread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, nothingness, and so onfind their philosophical significance in the context of the search for a new categorial framework, together with its governing norm.

Pragmatism First published Sat Aug 16, 2008 Pragmatism was a philosophical tradition that originated in the United States around 1870. The most important of the classical pragmatists were Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914), William James (18421910) and John Dewey (1859-1952). The influence of pragmatism declined during the first two thirds of the twentieth century, but it has undergone a revival since the 1970s with philosophers being increasingly willing to use the writings and ideas of the classical pragmatists, and also a number of thinkers, such as Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom developing philosophical views that represent later stages of the pragmatist tradition. The core of pragmatism was the pragmatist maxim, a rule for clarifying the contents of hypotheses by tracing their practical consequences. In the work of Peirce and James, the most influential application of the pragmatist maxim was to the concept of truth. But the pragmatists have also tended to share a distinctive epistemological outlook, a fallibilist anti-Cartesian approach to the norms that govern inquiry.

situationism Ethical doctrine that our moral duty cannot be rigorously subjected to general rules, but must take account of each situation as it arises.

Unlike anti-nomianism it does not reject such rules altogether, but insists on flexibility in applying them. Unlike casuistry it does not insist on breaching rules only if some other rule can be found which takes precedence, but appeals rather to love as its supreme guiding principle. It may, however, be accused of similarly leading to uncertainty, or even moral anarchy, with inconvenient comparisons being rejected because of the alleged uniqueness of the present case.

Legalism, school of Chinese philosophy that attained prominence during the turbulent Warring States era (475221 BCE) and, through the influence of the philosophers Shang Yang, Li Si, and Hanfeizi, formed the ideological basis of Chinas first imperial dynasty, the Qin (221 207 BCE). The three main precepts of these Legalist philosophers are the strict application of widely publicized laws (fa), the application of such management techniques (shu) as accountability (xingming) and showing nothing (wuxian), and the manipulation of political purchase (shi). The Legalists believed that political institutions should be modeled in response to the realities of human behaviour and that human beings are inherently selfish and short-sighted. Thus social harmony cannot be assured through the recognition by the people of the virtue of their ruler, but only through strong state control and absolute obedience to authority. The Legalists advocated government by a system of laws that rigidly prescribed punishments and rewards for specific behaviours. They stressed the direction of all human activity toward the goal of increasing the power of the ruler and the state. The brutal implementation of this policy by the authoritarian Qin dynasty led to that dynastys overthrow and the discrediting of Legalist philosophy in China.

The Philosophy of Humanism Humanism The philosophy of Humanism and the consensus of beliefs that are central to it are expressed in The Humanist Manifesto III. Humanism is the belief that human beings are a part of nature, that they have emerged as a result of a continuous evolutionary process, and that all their valuesreligious, ethical, political, and socialspring from human experience and are the product of their culture.

Humanism is free from any belief in the supernatural, and is dedicated to the search for meaning and values for individuals on this earth through reliance on intelligence and the scientific method, democracy and social sympathy. Humanism affirms the inherent dignity and worth of every human being, and asserts that persons are responsible for the realization of their aspirations and that they have within themselves the power of achieving them. In essence, Humanists seek truth rather than myth, understanding in the place of dogma, reason rather than blind faith, hope rather than despair, self acceptance rather than guilt, tolerance in the place of fear, democracy rather than authoritarianism, and kindness instead of selfishness.

Secularism Any movement in society directed away from otherworldliness to life on earth. In the European Middle Ages there was a strong tendency for religious persons to despise human affairs and to meditate on God and the afterlife. As a reaction to this medieval tendency, secularism, at the time of the...

Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophy of the Superman

Between the very many interventions of his sister Elisabeth and also given the misrepresentations of his work that are associated with the Nazi Era it is difficult to get a true picture of Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophical legacy. He began to actually write Thus Spake Zarathustra in February of 1883 but the germ of the idea behind it had been developing in his mind for some eighteen months. In Ecce Homo it is related how the idea occured to him in August 1881 and remained in gestation. When he came to actually write based upon his initial idea Nietzsche felt that he was actually inspired - as one of the most intriguing quotes from Ecce Homo suggests:"One hears but one does not seek; one takes - one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, it comes of necessity and unfalteringly formed". His fundamental contention was that traditional values (represented primarily by Christianity) had lost their power in the lives of individuals. He expressed this in his proclamation "God is dead."

Since God is dead Neitzsche sees the necessity for the emergence of the bermensch, the Superman or overman, who is to replace God. The first of the quotes attributed to Zarathustra is:"I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of the great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man? What is the ape to men? A laughing stock or a painful embarassment. And just so shall man be to the Superman: a laughing stock or a painful embarassment". The context in which Supermen are to be judged to be such is implied by Neitzsche's previous works. He maintained that all human behavior is motivated by the will to power. In its positive sense, the will to power is not simply power over others, but the power over oneself that is necessary for creativity. Supermen are those who have overcome man - i.e. the individual self and subliminated the will to power into a momentous creativity. Supermen are creators of a "master morality" that reflects the strength and independence of one who is liberated from all values, except those that he deems valid. Such power is manifested in independence, creativity, and originality. Nietzsche saw the Superman as the answer to the nihilistic rejection of all religious and moral principles that would be consequent on a widespread acceptance that God is dead. The Superman being the exemplar of true humanity. Although he explicitly denied that any Supermen had yet arisen, he mentions several individuals who could serve as models. Among these models he lists Socrates, Jesus, Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Napoleon. Nietzsche's philosophical concepts were often concerned with areas that came within the interest of the emerging school of Existentialism and came to the particular notice of numerous thinkers, writers, and theologians who were themselves broadly interested in Existentialism. Amongst these are Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

nihilism, (from Latin nihil, nothing), a philosophy of skepticism that originated in 19thcentury Russia during the early years of the reign of Alexander II. The term is an old one, applied to certain heretics in the Middle Ages. In Russian literature nihilism was probably first used by N.I. Nadezhdin in an article in theMessenger of Europe, applying it to Aleksandr Pushkin. Nadezhdin, as did V. Bervi later in 1858, equated nihilism with skepticism. Mikhail

N. Katkov, a well-known conservative journalist mainly responsible for interpreting nihilism as synonymous with revolution, presented nihilism as constituting a social menace by its negation of all moral principles. It was Ivan Turgenev in his celebrated novel Fathers and Sons (1862) who popularized the term through the figure of Bazarov the nihilist. Eventually the nihilists of the 1860s and 70s came to be regarded as disheveled, untidy, unruly, ragged men who rebelled against tradition and social order. The philosophy of nihilism then began to be associated erroneously with the regicide of Alexander II (1881) and the political terror that was employed by those active at the time in clandestine organizations against absolutism. If to the conservative elements the nihilists were the curse of the time, to the liberals such as N.G. Chernyshevsky they represented a mere transitory factor in the development of national thought, a stage in the struggle for individual freedom, a true spirit of the rebellious young generation. In his novel What Is to Be Done? (1863) Chernyshevsky endeavoured to detect positive aspects in the nihilist philosophy. Similarly, in his Memoirs, Prince Peter Kropotkin, the leading Russian anarchist, defined nihilism as the symbol of struggle against all forms of tyranny, hypocrisy, and artificiality, and for individual freedom. Fundamentally, nihilism represented a philosophy of negation of all forms of aestheticism; it advocated utilitarianism and scientific rationalism. The social sciences and classical philosophical systems were rejected entirely. Nihilism represented a crude form of positivism and materialism, a revolt against the established social order; it negated all authority exercised by the state, by the church, or by the family. It based its belief on nothing but scientific truth; science became the cure-all for social problems. All evils, nihilists believed, derived from a single sourceignorancewhich science alone would overcome.

Relativism First published Sun Feb 2, 2003 Relativism is not a single doctrine but a family of views whose common theme is that some central aspect of experience, thought, evaluation, or even reality is somehow relative to something else. For example standards of justification, moral principles or truth are sometimes said to be relative to language, culture, or biological makeup. Although relativistic lines of

thought often lead to very implausible conclusions, there is something seductive about them, and they have captivated a wide range of thinkers from a wide range of traditions. Relativistic motifs turn up in virtually every area of philosophy. Many versions of descriptive relativism (described below) bear on issues in the philosophy of social science concerning the understanding and interpretation of alien cultures or distant historical epochs. Other versions bear on issues in the philosophy of mind about mental content. Still others bear on issues in the philosophy of science about conceptual change and incommensurability. Relativistic themes have also spilled over into areas outside of philosophy; for example, they play a large role in today's "culture wars." Some strains of ethical relativism (also describedbelow) even pose threats to our standards and practices of evaluation and, through this, to many of our social and legal institutions. And the suggestion that truth or justification are somehow relative would, if correct, have a dramatic impact on the most fundamental issues about objectivity, knowledge, and intellectual progress. Relativistic arguments often begin with plausible, even truistic premises--e.g., that we are culturally and historically situated creatures, that justification cannot go on forever, that we cannot talk without using language or think without using concepts--only to end up with implausible, even inconsistent, conclusions. There is little consensus, however, about how to block the slide from inviting points of departure to uninviting destinations. Both sides in debates over relativism tend to oversimplify the views of the other side. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that relativistic theses often come in two forms: a bold and arresting version, which is proclaimed, and a weaker, less vulnerable version, which is defended-with the first having a tendency to morph into the second when under attack. Relativism also often sounds better in the abstract than it does when we get down to actual cases, which often turn out to be rather trivial, on the one hand, or quite implausible, on the other. But it is also true that most academic philosophers in the English-speaking world see the label relativist as the kiss of death, so few have been willing to defend any version of the doctrine (there is less reluctance in some other disciplines). Indeed, many explicit characterizations of relativism are to be found in the writings of unsympathetic opponents, who sketch flimsy versions to provide easy targets for criticism. Discussions of relativism are also frequently marred by all-or-none thinking. Phrases like everything is relative and anything goes suggest versions of relativism that, as we will see, often are inconsistent. But to conclude that there are no interesting versions of relativism is to err in the opposite direction. Often the important question is whether there is a space for an interesting and plausible version of relativism between strong but implausible versions (e.g., all

truth is relative), on the one hand, and plausible but trivial versions (e.g., some standards of etiquette are relative), on the other. Finally, relativistic themes are frequently defended under alternative banners like pluralism or constructivism (with a particular author's line between relativism and pluralism typically marking off those views he likes from those he doesn't). I will use the label relativist for all such views, with the understanding that many species of relativism may be plausible or even true. But it is the views, not the labels, that are important. Section one contains a sketch of the general form of many relativistic claims and maps the general terrain. Section two explores the main things that have been thought to be relative and section three the main things they have been relativized to. Section four presents the chief motivations and arguments for relativism, and section five is devoted to the major responses to the major relativistic themes. After section one the sections, and in many cases subsections, are relatively modular, and readers can use the detailed tables of contents, an index, and hyperlinks in the text to locate the topics of most interest to them.

Kant's Philosophy of Religion First published Tue Jun 22, 2004; substantive revision Fri Jul 31, 2009 Throughout his career, Immanuel Kant engaged many of the major issues that contemporary philosophy groups together under the heading philosophy of religion. These include arguments for the existence of God, the attributes of God, the immortality of the soul, the problem of evil, and the relationship of moral principles to religious belief and practice. In the writings from his so-called pre-critical period, i.e., before the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant was interested principally in the theoretical status and function of the concept of God. He thus sought to locate the concept of God within a systematically ordered set of basic philosophical principles that account for the order and structure of world. In developing his critical philosophy he proposed a new role for philosophical principles in understanding the order and structure of the world. As a result, the critical project had a significant impact upon his treatment of the status and the role of the concept of God within the theoretical enterprise of metaphysics. In addition, the critical philosophy provided a locus from which Kant could address other important dimensions of the concepts of God and religion more explicitly than he had done in his earlier writings. Chief among these are the moral and the religious import that human beings attribute to the concept of God. In view of these developments in Kant's thinking this entry thus will locate his earlier discussions of these topics within the general philosophical context of his pre-critical period; it will then reference his treatment of these topics after 1781 to

key elements of his critical project. It will also highlight issues that remain important for philosophical inquiry into religion. These are the philosophical function of the concept of God, arguments for the existence of God, the relationship between morality and religion (including the notions of moral faith and radical evil), and the role of religion in the dynamics of human culture and history. A supplementary section, The Influence of Kant's Philosophy of Religion, discusses the impact of Kant's account of religion upon subsequent philosophical and theological inquiry.

Jean-Paul Sartre First published Thu Apr 22, 2004 Sartre (1905-1980) is arguably the best known philosopher of the twentieth century. His indefatigable pursuit of philosophical reflection, literary creativity and, in the second half of his life, active political commitment gained him worldwide renown, if not an admiration. He is commonly considered the father of Existentialist philosophy, whose writings set the tone for intellectual life in the decade immediately following the Second World War. Among the many ironies that permeate his life, not the least is the immense popularity of his scandalous public lecture Existentialism and Humanism, delivered to an enthusiastic Parisian crowd October 28, 1945. Though taken as a quasi manifesto for the Existentialist movement, the transcript of this lecture was the only publication that Sartre openly regretted seeing in print. And yet it continues to be the major introduction to his philosophy for the general public. One of the reasons both for its popularity and for his discomfort is the clarity with which it exhibits the major tenets of existentialist thought while revealing Sartre's attempt to broaden its social application in response to his Communist and Catholic critics. In other words, it offers us a glimpse of Sartre's thought on the wing. After surveying the evolution of Sartre's philosophical thinking, I shall address his thought under five categories, namely, ontology, psychology, ethics, political commitment, and the relation between philosophy and the fine arts, especially literature, in his work. I shall conclude with several observations about the continued relevance of his thought in contemporary philosophy both Anglo-American and Continental.

Karl Marx First published Tue Aug 26, 2003; substantive revision Mon Jun 14, 2010 Karl Marx (18181883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary communist, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics. However, in addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism Marx's theory of history is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Marx's economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx's prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal.